Because You'll Never Meet Me (14 page)

After he was gone, I pulled the blinds down and kicked away enough of my books and models to shut the door. It was nighttime inside again.

Maybe I could climb out of dark places, if someone pulled me out. It can't be you, Moritz, because you'll never meet me.

And maybe it can't be Liz, either, but it used to be.

Liz began trying to treat my incurable illness—in secret, of course. If Mom had known what Liz and I were up to, she wouldn't have let the girl within a fifty-foot radius of me. I remembered how she'd flipped out at Auburn-Stache after the house fire because she thought he might be “experimenting” on me. If she realized what Liz and I were doing, she might have chased her with more than a variety of rolling pins. There might suddenly have been bodies in the fishpond after all.

But because Mom had no idea, because she saw that I was a
happier kid and I didn't try running away from home anymore, we had some fun before Liz started going to high school.

Liz explained my circumstances to her parents, who were exactly the sort of accepting people she had described them to be. Her father wrote Mom a letter that made her teary-eyed, made her run around opening windows and singing. Despite the locked doors, I think Mom always wanted me to have friends, but it was pretty hard to persuade people to send their kids to a cabin in the woods to spend time with someone they presumed was a young delinquent and his basket-case caretaker.

Starting the fall I turned eleven, every Wednesday afternoon Liz's dad dropped Liz and her bicycle off at the end of our long driveway. She rode up to our porch, usually wearing a plaid skirt and white tights coated in mud.

She always shouted “I'M HERE!” at the top of her lungs, even before she was within sight of the cabin.

I was always already in the driveway.

“And I'm HERE!”

Where else could I be?

The second time Liz came over, she came to my room carrying her dad's “borrowed” book light inside her raincoat. The book light had a tiny electric battery in it that I could practically smell on her.

“Why would you bring that?” I snapped.

“Calm your jets, UpandFree. It's turned off. It's
tiny
.”

“Yeah, well, so are particles of Hebenon. They'll still curdle your blood.”

“What's Heb—oh, forget it. Look, Ollie, don't pretend to be a sissy. Because you aren't.”

“Oh! So you've noticed I'm not a girl?”

“Sheesh, Ollie. You'd have a hard time making friends even if you could go to school!”

“You're a charmer.”

She actually punched my bedspread in annoyance. “Gah! This is what I'm saying! You're never serious about anything!”

“I'm serious about being afraid of that book light.”

“No.”

“What?” I blinked.

She didn't look away. “You're not. You can't be. I watched you run straight at that power line. You let it tackle you without even hesitating. Don't pretend to be a sissy!”

And she pressed it into my hand.

“I
like
you because you don't pretend.”

It was the most precious thing I'd ever held—imagine being able to read at night without a lantern!

Every week, she handed that book light to me. And I would hold it, even though it buzzed oddly against my skin and flared in my aura, gave me the pre-seizure wooziness. I held it tight.

Because she asked me to.

But before she started “helping” me, she began each afternoon by listing off things I'd never done until I was crazy annoyed. No one could rile me like Liz. Even if I met all the other people in the world.

“You've never sat in a massage chair, or seen a sitcom!”

“I hear they aren't funny anyway!”

“You've never seen a tollbooth!”

“Why would I want to?!”

“Or a humidifier.”

“Hey, low blow! I'd love to see a humidifier!”

“Or even a
lamp
.”

“I've seen lamps, damn it!”

Once I was angry, she would toss the light to me.

I shivered when I caught it, my head throbbing, but I wouldn't fall in front of her again.

I held it for as long as I could. My palm sizzled.

She grinned. “See? No biggie.”

Over the several months' worth of Wednesdays, we got up to a lot of shenanigans in the woods, climbing trees and looking for frogs, building forts and digging disgusting, muddied swimming “pools” that always ended up filled with earthworms and leaves and deer piss after a day or so.

We spent a lot of days at the junkyard, too. We had scavenger hunts orchestrated by Uncle Joe, who mostly liked to sit on the porch with a beer and, weirdly, Noam Chomsky books in hand, hollering instructions at us from his lawn chair. He also liked to take photos of birds; the batteries in his camera were small and far enough away that they didn't bother me. We used to lie on the roof of the Ghettomobile and count stars, which sounds hammy but was actually nice. Or we'd set up a tent in one of our backyards and have a campfire and catch fireflies and shout “rabbit!” whenever smoke wafted into our faces.

I never challenged the power line, although we passed close to it when we were walking the trails. We were always quiet when we were near it. It was like an unspoken rule. I was biding my time; so was the power line. But I didn't really want to leave home as much anymore. Home was where Liz came to find me, where I shouted, “I'm here!”

Liz brought the book light all the time, for what good it did. The
one time she tried switching it on before tossing it to me, I started shaking and it somehow got flung against the far wall of my room. I hadn't thrown it. It just buzzed and jolted and got as far from me as possible, like it had a mind of its own. Like it couldn't bear the bizarre charge of me.

That electromagnetic repulsion effect had happened again, and I was panting.

“Maybe next week,” she said. “Don't let it get you down.”

It made me queasy. Not the electricity. The way she said that. Maybe she was starting to believe what I'd told her from the start: there was no getting better.

But let's stave off the darkness a little longer, okay?

I've saved the best day for last.

Moritz—I don't know why I didn't say it clearly. Caught up in my own crap, I guess—but it's
awesome
that you're learning to read. I'm going to send you the best reading list I can think of, and purposely tuck some crappy books between the good ones to keep you on your toes.

I'm evil. It's funny imagining you reading, oh-so-slowly, oh-soclickity, just to realize that you've read a “bodice-buster” romance about a lusty pirate and a blushing damsel. (Don't ask me why I have those books. I have broad tastes, okay. Are you interested in space cats?)

I'm not going to say that you could be “any other boy,” though, Moritz. Because I still think you should be aiming for total badass superhero type. Yeah, I knew about Matt Murdock's darn echolocation. I was being
cunning
, see. I am waggling my eyebrows and nudging you with my elbow. MBV is worthy of comics.

All those times I told you to have confidence and you finally get
it from a disgruntled librarian? Are you shitting me? You are
a decent human being
(again, I despise the way you despise yourself!), and if you really want to talk to Owen Abend, you should go for it anyhow! Fieke the Fierce can't stop you.

Maybe that's why Liz left me behind. I never threw an airplane at her face.

Ha, ha.

~ Ollie

P.S. I guess I haven't been needling you so much lately because I'm sick of getting needled myself. Seriously, if people keep tiptoeing around me like I'm on my deathbed, I'm going to go from troubled Jekyll to apeshit Hyde. I may throw battle-ready Dorian at their faces. He may be a cuddlesome lump, but he's got the teeth of a piranha, my deadly Persian cat!

I am irritated that you're trying to, ah, “set me up” with three different ladies that I am acquainted with. I know you think yourself quite the comedian. I want no part of your speculation. You snickering fiend.

You may not be needling about the lab. But allow me to silence your newest needles: I don't wish to discuss my romantic inclinations. This has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me, Oliver. I trust you. But this issue is not one I trust myself to speak about.

As for Fearsome Fieke (that's pronounced “FEE-kuh”), there have been unusual developments in that area. Calm yourself: they are of an unromantic nature.

I did not know how to approach Fieke. It was not that I could not find her. I saw her every morning before school started. Fieke is always easy to find. She jangles. Thumps. She
announces her every movement with an arrogance that would terrify lesser men than you.

I am a lesser man. But I had to brave an attempt. Thanking Owen has become a fixation. After he was absent from school for several consecutive days, I resolved to confront her.

On a brisk April morning I heard her stomping on the far side of the school. She was looming by the recycling bins. There was her slight wheezing. Her noisome piercings. She was tapping away on the keypad of an outdated, battered phone. She has taken to jabbing her cigarettes into a long, sharp cigarette-holder.

I had carefully considered what I would say. How I would describe the debt I owed to Owen. I wanted to tell her, as thoroughly as possible, that—

“Fluff off.”

Like a hissing viper.

“Yo.” My disarming introduction.

“I told you to fluff off. Never say ‘yo' again.”

“Duly noted.” I coughed. “An American boy sometimes encourages me to use outdated slang. And I am fond of eighties hip-hop music.”

She flicked her cigarette to the ground. Stomped on it. “God, I wish I could
beat
you. Spit out what you want.”

“It's regarding—beg pardon. Were you chewing tobacco and smoking
simultaneously
?”

“Do I have to answer that? You can see what's inside my mouth.” She tucked her hands into her pockets. “You still forget to use your cane half the time, you know. And real blind people don't tap them like that. You look fluffin' spastic.”

“I'm sure I would know more about that. Being the blind one.”

This time she aimed a punch at my nose. I twisted my head away.

“Are you done?”

“You've made your point.” I breathed deep. “I read your note.”

The bell rang overhead, but she began walking away from the school building, toward the back entrance and the street.

“Took you long enough.”

“There's no call for rudeness.”

“Wow. That means a whole lot, coming from you.”

“Tell me why I have to stay away from Owen Abend.”

“What, you gonna beat me up if I don't? Oh, wait. You're a pussy.”

“I am not. And yes, theoretically—I
could
beat you. I'm capable.”

She was still scowling. “Yeah, you could. But you fluffing didn't. You let Lenz smash your face in. Then he bashed in Owen's face for helping you, you mopey bastard. But you don't give a shit about that.”

“I do. I want to thank him. You and your confounded boots won't allow me to.”

“‘Confounded boots'?”

“Or whatever you call them.”

She eyed me in silence. Then: “Owen's thinking of dropping out of school, you know.”

“Let me speak to him.”

Trying to be heroic, Ollie.

She coughed into her hand. “Fluff it. Come on.”

And she walked right out of the schoolyard and into the street.

“What are you doing? The final bell has rung!”

She kept walking. Loud as a rampaging elephant.

What could I do? Soon she would be lost in the early morning crowds. Lost to my sight despite the volume of her.

I followed her into the chilly morning.

Fieke led me to a
Kneipe
I hadn't known existed, a pub of sorts called
Der Kränklicher Dichter
(“The Sickly Poet”). It was tucked away behind a city plaza, not far from the
Städtisches Kaufhaus
, a multistoried shopping mall. Halfway there, while we were passing through a flower market that smelled so strongly of blossoms that I imagined I could almost see colors in the scents, she yanked the cane from my hands.

“I'll show you how it's done.”

Fieke waved the cane in huge arcs. People scurried left and right to avoid her blows. She closed her eyes and mimed a look of utmost concentration. Old women covered their mouths and tittered with concern.

“Stop that,” I said.

Fieke smirked. “But I'm
blind
.”

“It's distasteful!”

She thrust the cane against my chest. “Isn't it, though?”

I was relieved when we escaped the stares of stallholders, but my face was still burning. We entered the cool dark of the
Kneipe
, the smell of smoke and damp.

The barman, wearing a beret of all things, nodded at
Fieke like they were old friends. We sat down in a corner booth removed from the weekday morning patrons. I noticed a stage in the center of the room. A circular space where a man was crouched beside a microphone.

She nodded at it. “Look.”

“What is he doing?”

She pursed her lips. “You didn't even turn around. You can see what's behind you, even?”

“Well. Yes.” I often forget to turn my head when people say “look.”

“How does it work, exactly?”

“It isn't dinner conversation.” Here we were, casually discussing the ailment that usually made young ladies trip backward over things, Oliver.

“Why not? I'm not ordering a damn thing.”

“I can ‘see' anything that I can hear. A crude way to describe it. Are you familiar with echolocation? Although the comparison, ah …”