Future Imperfect

by K Ryer Breese

  “Your own personal Jesus…”

  And I won’t feel myself stand but will see my perspective change as I rise up above the table and over my little lesbian friend Paige’s sloping shoulders. It’ll feel like I’m going to float to the ceiling, but I’ll stop, caught up in that voice. She and I, we’ll stand there, staring into each other, for what will seem like millennia. Clouds’ll swirl, mountain ranges’ll rise and crumble to dust, oceans’ll swallow land and then retreat, leaving lakes and sinuous rivers, and dubbed on top of it all will be this girl’s voice.

  It’ll be epically sick.

  But I realize now there’ll be a little wrinkle in our whirlwind romance. This is because Jimi Ministry is there with Her. He’s an asshole. And the fact that he introduces Her, well, I didn’t know it a year ago but I know now that it’s not good. I can’t put my finger on it, but things could get ugly. With Jimi, that would make sense.

  Ten seconds.

  Below me no one looks up.

  Below me it’s just the ground rushing.

  I’ve spent two years of sleepless, clammy nights waiting for Her to arrive.

  Six seconds.

  Good thing I noticed the calendar in the vision. Right there on the wall just under the poster of the food pyramid. The date I’ve been counting down to for twenty-four months is August 10, 2010.

  Three seconds.

  Want to know the best part?

  August 10, 2010, is tomorrow.

  FOUR

  It’s an old joke, but it’s true: Jumping off a roof is easy; it’s the landing that’s hard.

  I need to land on the lawn.

  Last time, the time that Nancy Springer saw me and puked, I missed the lawn by two feet and hit the bike rack. Took twenty-seven stitches to get my scalp back on.

  Today, I’m feeling confident.

  My aim is good.

  There is a fury of wind.

  The flapping of my clothes.

  And then, well, forget the rolling, skip the falling on your side, the key to me making this a successful journey into my near future is by hitting my head at just the right angle and not busting up the globe of it too bad. From what I’ve read on the Internet, I’m guessing that giving the “dorsolateral prefrontal associative” area a decent wallop is what makes the magic happen.

  Smack.

  Crunch.

  Going unconscious, it’s like standing in an explosion.

  Most times, like this time, I find myself in a tunnel. I go down the tunnel and the lights whiz by me and then, where it ends, the light parts and I dive into the darkness between.

  It’s dizziness and sleep and then only pure, beautiful, matte black.

  And I open my eyes to the future.

  Today, what I see is me ten years in the future. How I know it’s the future is because things look plastic. Not twisted or distorted the way they do it up in the movies. No CGI, no carnival colors. Just plastic like you’re in the suburbs. Plastic the way the waxed-up leaves are on the zebra bushes in the planters by the play space at the Cherry Creek Mall. My skin is shiny. My body feels so much more malleable.

  And in this plastic future I seem happy.

  Really happy.

  I’m walking downtown, still Denver. This time I’m wearing a suit and it’s very sunny and I can feel the first pinpricks of sweat popping up in the small of my back. I think about taking off my coat but don’t because I’m turning the corner and now I’m on the shady side of another street. Downtown is busy. Cars pulling people places. Buses heaving back and forth on the mall. This must be spring because the sun is small and tight in the sky and the air smells like rain though there are no clouds anywhere. I walk into an office building and wave to someone, a woman with brown hair and thick-framed glasses sitting at a small desk, and then take an elevator to the fiftieth floor. When I get out, I stand at a bank of windows and admire the hustle and bustle of downtown, the mountains where there is snow.

  In this vision I’ve got a backpack on but it’s not heavy. No one mentions it.

  I take a flight of stairs to fifty-one and walk through a maze of offices where people wave at me. Then I walk out onto a balcony. I’m sweating more, but it’s not from the heat.

  What I do next is I climb up onto the railing.

  I stand there for a few seconds, swaying gently, my arms outstretched, just balancing on this two-inch-wide tube of metal. I’m thinking I’m glad it’s not a windy day.

  And then I jump.

  I fall face-first.

  Arms at my side the way soldiers drop out of planes in the movies. The wind’s rushing up into my eyes and ears, grabbing at my hair and making my cheeks float open like the cheeks of astronauts do when they’re in simulation machines.

  The backpack, it’s a parachute.

  I don’t pull the cord until I’m fifty seconds from hitting pavement; I time it on my wristwatch. And when I do pull the cord, and the chute explodes behind me, I’m smiling so wide that I can see the white of my teeth reflected into the dark windows of the office buildings as I rush past them.

  The way the chute’s set up, my fall won’t be totally broken.

  I’m going to hit the ground and hit it hard.

  My future: It’s just me getting crazier and crazier.

  I’m guessing I have the ultimate concussion from the fall. How crazy is it that I see myself in the future jumping off a roof just to see the future? I assume that I don’t actually die. Maybe I do. Can you imagine the future I’ll see in those few split seconds before my soul jets skyward? Must be like a thousand years in the future.

  I don’t see the landing.

  Instead of being there and finding out, I’m here with someone calling my name and I rocket back through the tunnel, the lights spastic. When the tunnel vanishes is when I open my eyes.

  My left eye, actually. The right one is swelled shut already.

  Everything’s blurry, but I’m on the ground at Mantlo High and there are people standing over me. I can see two of them shaking their heads.

  Already they’re shaking their heads.

  Me, back in the present, I’m on my back lying on some tossed cigarettes and wilted grass just after lunch has ended and everyone else at my high school is getting ready to go back to class. All of them have to walk past me as they go to physics and gym and whatever it is that Mr. O’Connor feels like teaching today in American history. Right now, they just think I’m a few concussions away from full vegetable. A few knockouts from the way my dad is.

  Someone, a girl, maybe Kristen LaFontaine, judging by the voice, says, “It’s only Tuesday and he’s already at it.”

  And someone else, someone gay, most likely Eric Hovda, says, “At least he waited until the second week of school. Don’t even know why they keep letting him come back.”

  I just close my eyes and try and let the vision drift back in.

  I wonder: What do I see next? Is She there too? Waiting for me in a getaway car?

  What happens after I hit that pavement?

  FIVE

  I’m woozy walking into school.

  I’m also bleeding from my head.

  This long stretch of crimson just shattering the nice white of my shirt.

  The way I’m walking, I look like a zombie.

  I barely notice because my body’s still jittery from the Buzz.

  The Buzz is what happens when I break the laws of physics, what happens when I see into the future. It’s getting a massive jolt of energy. Every nerve, every muscle fiber is jittery and on fire in the most beautiful way imaginable. It’s the equivalent of smoking a blunt, of downing some beers, of popping X, and then kissing.

  The Buzz is my high of choice.

  This is the second time this week I’ve gotten high via concussion.

  Right now, I’m trying to drink from the water fountain just outside Mr. Eveready’s office, and “trying” is the key word here as really all I’m doing is dribbling blood all over the hallway and trying to focus on working
the fountain. Of course a hall monitor, David “Suck Up” Lopez, notices me.

  “Dude, seriously?” he asks. This is what he usually asks when he see me.

  Then he just points down the hall.

  “Before I need to call an ambulance,” he says.

  Second time this week I’ve been sent to see the school nurse, Mrs. Caronna.

  As expected, she’s totally not happy to see me.

  Sitting here, the cotton balls getting heavy with blood, my skin is still vibrating. My head, whether it’s from the concussion or the high, is heavy and light at the same time, the way a really big pillow can be super heavy and yet perfectly light. I nod off every few minutes, eyes just dim like a computer when it’s not been touched for a while.

  Caronna shakes me awake in her unloving way. “You think you can fly, Ade?”

  I shake my head.

  “Why did you jump off the roof?”

  Again, I shake my head. “Hard to explain.”

  “Try me.”

  I shrug. “An experiment?”

  The look on her face is pure disgust. Then she hands me her cell phone. “Dr. Borgo,” she says, and her lips are all puckered.

  I ask Mrs. Caronna for some privacy before I talk to my shrink and she gets up slowly, eyeballing me the whole while, before walking out and slamming the door.

  “Hey, Doc,” I say into the phone.

  “Ade? Jesus, are you okay?”

  “Yeah, of course. Just the usual. Doc, you’re the only person in the entire medical world who believes me. Don’t start doubting me now. That would kill-”

  “I’m not doubting you, Ade.”

  “What are you saying then?”

  “Can you at least take a few days off? Maybe a week? Nurse says you look like hell. Like you were hit with a baseball bat. Is that what happened? Again?”

  “No. I jumped off the roof. Again.”

  Into the phone, my shrink groans. “Ade, the number of concussions you’ve had puts you at significant risk for developing Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s. You’re seventeen and already your head has been bruised and battered like you were a prizefighter. Please, Ade, please, take a week off.”

  “I have the strange feeling you’ve told me this before.”

  “Memory loss isn’t something to joke about.”

  “Honestly, Doc. Promise I’ll be good. Any chance you can pacify the blowhards? They keep threatening me with expulsion and, well, this time I think they-”

  “I’ll see what I can do, Ade. Have your mom wake you every two hours tonight, don’t want you slipping off into a coma.”

  I can only imagine. “By the way, not sure if you remembered or not, but tomorrow’s the big day.”

  “I’ve got it marked on my calendar right here. Been marked for over a year.”

  “Well, it’s going down, Doc. My life changes tomorrow.”

  “If it happens, it sure will.”

  “Don’t be such a doubter, Doc.”

  I lean forward, open the door, and wave for Mrs. Caronna to come back to the phone. She storms back in huffing and puffing. Sweating and shaking. Veins popping out of her forehead like worms struggling out of puddles. She grabs the receiver and puts her head to it. She grunts a few times. Nods twice. Says, “Okay, Dr. Borgo. We’ll certainly take that into account. Yes. We do. Of course.”

  Then she hangs up and gives me this scary smile. “I don’t mean this to be offensive,” she says. “But one day I hope you break your neck.”

  SIX

  Mom’s great about waking me during Concussion Time.

  She goes to bed early. Sets an alarm for every two hours and rocks me-hand on my shoulder since I sleep on my side-awake gently. Mom in her bathrobe with her big glasses on and her hair pulled back asks me, “Are you feeling sick?”

  Just the fact that I wake up means that I’ll be okay.

  Plopping herself down on the end of my bed, with the Revelation Book under her arm, Mom says, “I’m making short ribs again. With the brown sugar the way you like it.”

  I say, “Yum. With mashed potatoes?”

  “Garlic and Parmesan.”

  Mom opens the Revelation Book on her lap and licks the point of her pen and then looks at me, eyes wide, for me to bust out a new segment of my future history.

  “I’m downtown. Maybe ten years from now. Feel great,” I say.

  Mom scribbles it down. Asks, “Were you wearing the black suit?”

  I think back. Close my eyes. “Not sure.”

  Mom, back to writing, says, “Probably the black suit. If it’s ten years, then, yeah. You said it was warm but not hot, so most likely early May or maybe, at the earliest, mid-April. Get a sense of the direction of the sun. I mean, how were the shadows? Longer?”

  “Not sure, Mom.”

  Mom nods and keeps writing. Talking to herself out loud she says, “Fiftieth floor. Good sign.” And, “Woman at the desk is named Louise. You met her during the interview, right?”

  I just shrug, not sure.

  I describe the rest. The jump. The chute. Mom says, “You’re my little stuntman.” And she pats me on the head like I’m five.

  To make Mom happy, I add, “Also there was a cloud in the sky, looked just like a hand. I don’t know if this means anything, but it was pointing east.”

  This, it makes Mom swoon.

  See, my mom has my whole adult life mapped out.

  Every vision I’ve had of myself somewhere in the future, she’s written it down and traced it out the way explorers chart rivers. Since the visions are quick and nonlinear, she’s painstakingly pieced together a basic narrative over the past three years. “Basic” is the key word. Lots of times she just fills in the blanks with guesses.

  In her room, there’s one wall completely filled, top to bottom, with index cards. At the top of each card, a date. Each one a day in the life of my future self. There are sketches of clothes, of buildings. She’s got blueprints of rooms that I haven’t been in yet. Rooms that no one’s been in yet. Mom’s written it all down, this time line of me, looking for one thing: Jesus.

  She’s looking for the Rapture.

  The Second Coming.

  The Antichrist.

  All those good things.

  I think it started at her church, someone mentioning how there will be signs and portents for the Second Coming. Only, the key to seeing them was you had to know where to look. You had to be open to receiving them. Mom latched on to that idea something fierce. The past seven years she’s been looking everywhere for those signs, those portents, and found them in my visions. My visions, they’re like her road map to Heaven. Mom’s peek into the clockwork of God.

  Fact is: The visions in the Revelation Book are real.

  But the details that Mom writes down, mostly I just make those up to make her happy. I’ll make up the tiny miracles. The little portents. Like how my seeing a mule with three legs was a sure sign peace would be coming to the Middle East in a matter of years. Maybe as soon as three. I lay it out so that the chrysanthemum I saw was a sign that Grandma was well and smiling from up in Heaven. I feel bad every time I lie, but keep on doing it because Mom is always ecstatic. And when she’s ecstatic she’s so nice to be around. I’m cool playing the little golden goose.

  Tonight, sitting there writing away, Mom says, “It’s been two years, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  Mom, she smiles so hard it’s like she’s got the moon in her mouth.

  “Tomorrow will be so beautiful. Will you tell it to me again?”

  This is my mom, I oblige her.

  And once again I describe how it’ll happen, how the girl I’ve been dreaming about for twenty-four aching months will show up and sing to me, I hit all the beats, and for the first time this evening she looks up from her notebook and takes her glasses off. As I run through the story, she’s grinning and nodding. When I finish she sighs and rubs my head the way she did when I was just old enough to ride a Big Wheel.

  “The waitin
g is so hard,” Mom says. She frowns as though she really knows.

  “Yeah. It almost made me crazy.”

  “And what will you say to her?”

  “I’ve told you how this works. You know how this works. I just wait.”

  Mom tells me she’s very proud. She tells me that it’s clear that Jesus has special things planned for me. She says, “You are a very fine blessing. So very strong.”

  Then she stands up and straightens out her nightgown and leaves. Closing the door slowly, she whispers, “By the way, I’m sure your dad is very proud of you.”

  “Is very proud?”

  “Of course.”

  “Mom, Dad hasn’t been anything but a vegetable for three years. I don’t think he’s proud of me. I don’t think he’s proud of anything. Dad’s just a lump lying in a hospital bed, growing its hair and nails out.”

  The look on my mom’s face, it’s disappointment. It’s deep down, very hurt. Her face still scrunched up with emotion, wedged there in the door, Mom says, “He’s very, very proud of you.” And then the door closes and I turn the light out.

  Tomorrow, I say to myself. Tomorrow it will happen and my life will begin.

  Tomorrow.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ONE

  Dad-

  You remember that time we went to the sand dunes?

  You and Mom were still together and I was maybe six. My memories from the trip are pretty choppy, but I do remember us walking in that really shallow creek and climbing the dunes. I remember sleeping in a tent. But most of all I remember something that you told me. We were sitting at the campfire, Mom had gone to bed, and you were looking at the way the smoke was twisting up into the sky, up into the stars, and you said, “When you get older, you’re going to want to escape sometime. Escape from what you made, from what you can’t change. And the only way to really do it, to get away from this, from everything that’s been done, is to lose yourself in repetition.” And I asked you what you meant and you just shook your head and said, “You’ll figure it out later.”