The First Male (7 page)

“You don't look good. Maybe you should sit down,” Franklin said with worry, but Simon didn't pay attention to his words. He felt a stabbing pain in his head and saw bright flashes. With his head held low, sweat dripped from his face. A bead of moisture fell from his face and splattered against the dirty floor. When it hit the floor, it sounded like an explosion in Simon's ears. He saw more flashes in his head:

A man with a dirty beard, in a black bubble coat that looked like a trash bag.

The man was walking down the sidewalk near the diner.

He fiddled with something in his pocket.

It was a gun.

He burst into Cisco's Soul Food Café and fired a single round into the ceiling.

He demanded money.

He pistol whipped Crystal and she hit the floor hard.

Then, he shot Cisco in the chest when Cisco pulled a pistol from underneath the countertop. Blood gushed from his chest. He was dead.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, man?” Franklin's voice grew desperate. “Hey, Cisco! Something's wrong with Simon. You better get back here!” he called out. As soon as Cisco rounded the corner to the kitchen, Simon broke free from his vision. He was sweating profusely and struggling to breathe. He felt as if someone was strangling him. He needed air. Fresh air. The smell of frying bacon fat and grease was clogging his nostrils. He raced out of the kitchen and ran quickly past Crystal, almost causing her to drop the hot plate of shrimp and grits that she was carrying.

He sprinted to the front of the restaurant and as he leapt out of the door, he collided with a man in a black bubble coat. Both men hit the sidewalk hard, with Simon falling on top. The gun in the man's pocket flew across the sidewalk and a female passerby screamed.

“He has a gun!” she yelled as she ran for safety into a storefront shop. Pedestrians scattered and screamed.

“Get the fuck off me, fool!” the angry man said as he pushed Simon off of him. His face was mangled with rage. Simon looked at the man. He wore the same bubble coat as he saw in his head. The man had the same unkempt beard. It
was
the same man as the man he had just seen moments ago in his head. The man scampered to his feet and raced immediately for the gun, which was wedged between the wheel of a SUV and the curb. When he couldn't retrieve it fast enough, he looked around at the crowd
and took off running down the sidewalk, shoving people to the left and the right as he made his escape.

As Simon lay on the sidewalk, the magnitude of what had just happened hit him like a ton of bricks. He had seen the future and stopped Cisco's murder.

C
HAPTER
4

W
hat the fuck is happening?
Simon thought to himself as he sat alone in a seat on the bus heading to the other side of town to make his appointment. He hadn't managed to catch his breath since
the incident
at Cisco's and he felt jittery, like he was wired on caffeine or some other drug. His head rested against the window of the semi-crowded bus and his arms were folded across his chest. The bus smelled of stale food mixed with a hint of body odor and it agitated his stomach. He watched the couple who sat a few seats in front of him kiss and hug as if they didn't have a care in the world. All their energy was directed toward each other, and Simon tried to force a smile, hoping they could serve as a distraction from the odor and the thoughts that still made it hard for him to breathe. As the bus wound its way through the city streets, his mind was focused on his transformation. He didn't feel right. Nothing about him felt right anymore. The strange occurrences that had plagued him all his life were happening with much more frequency and at a higher intensity, as if they were building to a climax. He didn't want to think about what that climax would be, but he wanted to do everything he could to prevent it. There were no reasonable or rational explanations for what he was going through. Deep inside him he had always known that he'd undergo a remarkable remaking, a rebirth, but he never understood why he felt that
way. He just knew, and now it seemed as if that time was near. He was terrified.

Simon's mind struggled to process what happened.
I'll pretend none of this is happening. If I don't believe it's real, then it's not. I'll go about my business, like everything is fine and not worry about it. Yeah, that's what I'll do. Everything is fine
. He tried to convince himself, but worry still held him tightly.

He arrived at the red brick building that housed Dr. Myles' office, stepped into the elevator, and hit the button marked “10.” The elevator was populated with a few people who paid him little attention, even though he felt as if all eyes were on him. Christmas music piping through the speakers of the elevator relaxed him only slightly, and he pulled himself tightly into the corner in the back and folded his arms, hoping he could reach his destination before anything else strange happened to him. He wasn't sure he could deal with another episode.

He stepped into the office and walked to the counter with unsure feet. His mind was still elsewhere, but he tried to focus on the task at hand.
Let me get through this
. This was a new experience for him. A doctor's office. He was definitely out of his element. He smiled, almost timidly, at the woman behind the counter and informed her of his appointment. She handed him a stack of forms on a clipboard and he took a seat in the waiting room.

After filling out a set of five different forms that all seemed to ask for the same information, Simon returned the papers to the woman and returned to his seat in the waiting room, hoping to relax and pull it together. He felt a slight cramp in his hand from all the writing, in addition to being annoyed at the questions that he found to be too intrusive. He had long since grown tired of filling out forms that asked him to identify his race. Truth be told, he didn't know his race. No one knew his race. His phenotype
baffled everyone. He had full red lips and his skin was very fair. His hair was jet-black with a wavy texture and his eyes changed color, depending on the light, but usually were a deep-ocean blue. He surmised he was part African-American and part Caucasian, but there were so many other parts of him that remained a mystery. By any standards, whatever race he was, he was considered a thing of extraordinary beauty, a reflection of the best the world had to offer. One of his foster mothers said he was an
amalgamation of the world's races
. She praised him as representative of a bold, new world in which the boundaries erected by race would all tumble.
We shall be as one race
, she used to say to him. She was an optimist, but Simon didn't care much about her “we are the world,” one race, rainbow theory. He just wanted to know who he was.

He scanned the people who sat around him in the waiting area. They were a diverse group, myriad races, sizes and shapes, and ailments. Some sat with sullen faces that hung low, while others wore blank expressions; all trying to pass the time by toying with their cell phones or flipping through outdated magazines that were scattered across the table in the center of the waiting area. Simon looked at a pale-faced, red-headed boy who sat in the corner near the window, and the child looked at him, too. The sunlight dissecting the room illuminated the child's tear-stained face. The child was no older than four, but his eyes were heavy, as if he had been to hell and back and hell again. The child, with his head resting in his mother's lap, stared at Simon as if he knew him. Something desperate and something familiar in his eyes prevented Simon from looking away, even though he wanted to, more than he could express. Simon felt uncomfortable, shifting his weight in his seat, but he couldn't turn away. The boy's gaze held him and would not let him go. When he looked at the boy, he felt something stir deep inside of him. The boy raised his tiny
hand and waved at Simon, who, after an uneasy pause, waved back; it would have been rude not to.

Simon studied the face of the child. He had freckles and little red lips like thin slivers of meat. He was small, even for four. He looked like a Raggedy Andy doll.

Then, Simon's fingers and toes began to tingle. He felt his body temperature rising, heat radiating from some internal source.

“Oh no,” he said to himself. “Not again.” The child continued to stare at Simon, his gaze remaining unbroken. Simon couldn't deal with the pleading in the boy's eyes, especially with the prickly sensation he was feeling. Simon closed his eyes and took slow, deep breaths. The tingling became less intense, but he still felt hot.

As he sat there in darkness, he
felt
the boy. Incoherent images flashed through Simon's head. He saw toys and hospitals and a black-and-white puppy and the sad face of a man, probably the child's father. He saw a huge two-story house with the address 864 Rosecrest. He saw an older woman, probably in her early sixties, dressed in a uniform, putting a plate of pancakes in front of the boy who sat at the table with the woman, whose lap his head now rested on, and the man with the sad face. He saw tears and felt a strong stabbing sensation in his gut.
Pain
. The word flashed in his head as the unfamiliar feeling rocked his body for a few seconds. Simon had never experienced pain, and it took more force than he knew he had to prevent a wretched scream from escaping from his lips.

Then he realized this was the child's life. His family. His toys. His dog.
His pain
. But how? How could Simon know these things?

Another word flashed in his head that he didn't want to see:
Leukemia
. The child had leukemia. Simon knew it.

Simon shuddered and opened his eyes.
Blaine
. That was the child's name—it just came to him.

Blaine continued with his uninterrupted eye contact.

Will you help me?

“Excuse me?” Simon said. He wiped a pool of sweat from his glistening forehead and turned to the elderly black man who sat to his right.

“What?” the man replied with confusion.

“Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you said something to me.” The man shook his head and continued working on his Sudoku puzzle.

Will you help me?

Simon looked at the child again. Then, the terrifying realization hit him. The voice he heard wasn't the old man's—it belonged to Blaine, and it was in his head! He felt a powerful tingling at the base of his spine that shot through his entire back, and rested in the back of his skull. The feeling was different; unlike the tingling he had felt previously. Now, it was concentrated, un-diluted; it circulated at the place where his neck connected with his head.

Help you? How can I help you?
Simon thought this before he could fully understand what was transpiring.

I don't feel good and my mommy is very scared. Will you save me?

I don't understand
.

You will. Will you take my hand? Please
.

Before Simon could speak again, the little boy had raised his head from his mother's lap. He slid out of the chair and landed on his feet. He stood there, looking at Simon, waiting for Simon to make a move.

His mother smiled. “I think he likes you,” she said to Simon, forcing a smile. Blaine walked over to Simon, putting one tiny foot in front of the other.

“No, it's okay,” Simon said to the woman when she tried to prevent the child from moving. “He's okay. I got him.” The
woman paused, not sure whether to trust Simon, but she backed off. When Blaine made it to Simon, she looked relieved.

Blaine didn't speak. He looked tired, as if conquering the space that had separated the two of them moments ago had taken a lot out of him. He simply looked at Simon as if he was trying to figure him out. The laden expression on Blaine's face chilled Simon a bit. It was as if Blaine was privy to a secret that involved Simon, but wasn't at liberty to discuss. Simon didn't know what to do. Or say. Blaine stood there. Watching.

You hafta take my hand. I'm not 'pose to take yours
.

Then, the door to the back opened and a nurse stepped out. “Simon Cassel.” She looked around and called out again when Simon didn't respond. “Simon Cassel.”

“That's me.” Simon stood up. He looked down at the child whose eyes were pleading with him. Then, Simon did it. He didn't know why, but he took the child's hand. As soon as he touched Blaine, he felt heat surge in his body. Blaine seemed to feel it too. It didn't last long, but for the few seconds that they connected, Simon's body felt electrified. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end and his knees buckled.

When Simon released his grip, he felt compelled to pick up Blaine. This child was now a part of him and he didn't want Blaine struggling to walk back to his mother. Simon walked over to the lady and gently placed him down in her lap.

“All betta now,” Blaine said as he smiled warmly.