Because You'll Never Meet Me (2 page)

“Can't I go outside?”

“Homework first. ‘During an aura, sufferers may experience acute sensory dissonance.'”

“Are those
all
real words?”

“It means that many people's senses start going haywire before a seizure, Ollie. They might taste pepper—”

“I'd rather taste ice cream.”

“—or smell sulfur. Or maybe they start to see the world
differently. I think you know about that last one.” Were we outside in the yard, or inside by the kitchen window? I can't remember. But I remember that Mom squeezed my hand and I squeezed my eyes shut.

For sure I see things differently, Fellow Hermit. I can't look at
anything
electric without seeing blobs of color. It's like my vision measures electric currents on a spectrum or something. If getting blinded by multicolored electric hazes is because of an aura, then I must have an eternal aura. It never goes away. It's downright immortal.
Dracul-aura
.

Mom says I'm almost off topic again and that I should focus. I swear that lately it's just:
Ollie, stop moping! Ollie, eat your tuna sandwiches!

Focus!

Do people ever tell you to focus? What does that even
mean
? Whenever Mom or Auburn-Stache says “Focus, Oliver!” I try to wrangle my thoughts into the shape of a laser beam. I've seen laser beams on the covers of my favorite sci-fi novels; I've even painted some. I usually paint what my aura shows me when I look at electricity: saffron-slashing walkie-talkies, sunbursts floating out of headlights. Before it knocks me flat, electricity can be really cool to look at.

All the MRI machines I saw, back when Mom and Auburn-Stache still bundled me up in rubber clothes and dragged me to hospitals, were wrapped in scarves of golden light that gave me pounding headaches. X-rays emit rich scarlet ringlets. Fluorescent bulbs exude a silver mist that drifts downward like craft glitter. Power sockets? They spit out blue-white confetti curls. Batteries in use are little twists of bronze radiance that shatter to gray when
they run low. Every single machine gives off its own brand of colorful energy, and my seizures are triggered by all of them: anything and everything electric.

I know this does sound unswallowable. But it's so real to me. It's the reason I'm bored but not boring. Why I'm stuck out here by myself.

At least when Liz used to come by I could act like I was normal, just like she is. I listened to her talk about her school stuff, and it was almost like I was the sort of kid who could go there with her, who could text during class and type essays and later come home on a bus and plop myself in front of a television and eat food from a microwave. (Those sound
magical
, Fellow Hermit.)

But I've never looked directly at a television; that would probably send me tonic-clonic in seconds. Televisions are bursting with inorganic light and organic color, a miasma of noise. I'm told that's all televisions are to anyone. I'm not sure I buy that. (I think I would love cartoons.)

And motor vehicles! Engines are hard for me to see because the smog of energy around them is pitch-dark. I can't tell you what color Mom's truck is; every time I've stood at my bedroom window and watched it pull away, it has been surrounded by a gritty, opaque nebula.

My favorites are all those electrical things that people seem to superglue to themselves, things Liz used to show me: phones, music players, laptops. When they're switched on, their colors bounce off the skin of their users. Phones lend the faces they are pressed against a luminous green sheen. Headphones coat ears in minty residue. But laptops are the best. Fingers on keyboards are traced by trails of light, like long blades of grass.

You may be wondering whether I'm complaining or not. I'm not really sure myself. Mom says the way I see things sounds beautiful. But I'm not sure the sight of rainbow explosions is worth toasting a bunch of my brain cells over. It's not really beautiful when I'm drooling on the floor and rattled with tremors.

What was I saying about laser beams?

I'm going to try to beam my life story to you, as directly as I can manage. So these letters will be my autobiography. You don't have to read them if you don't want to, but I would appreciate it if you could write me your story back. There's enough boredom to drown in around these parts. And please don't tell me that people can drown in an inch of water. I know that. I'm being figurative! I'm just trying to tell you that it's a
lot
of boredom.

Especially now that Liz might never stop by to see me ever again.

I'll tell you about that later because Mom says that good autobiographies are linear, like life. Like, I should tell you about being a toddler before I talk about being a kid.

That's good. I don't think I want to talk about what it feels like when I'm waiting outside in the dusty driveway and Liz doesn't come biking down it, smiling. When she doesn't come biking down it frowning, even. When she doesn't come biking down it at all, and I just stare at the same old jack pines as ever and the same old stumps and breathe the same old smell of emptiness and sap, until it gets dark out.

First I want to make sure you exist. I can't wait to hear from you, Fellow Hermit! I doubt I've ever done half of what you have. I would trade all my glockenspiel skills for a chance to go online. Or to ride a
school bus or feel air conditioning. Are you also hypersensitive to electricity?

Mom says that fifteen double-sided pages are enough to scare anyone away, so I'll stop here at page fourteen.

Write me soon. It's getting boring here. Did I mention that?

~ Ollie Ollie UpandFree

P.S. Here's a teaser to make you want to read my autobiography: I've
died
before.

Oliver:

Firstly, my father has confirmed that your penmanship is atrocious. At least you can spell. I would hate to outmatch you in your own language. How embarrassing that would be for you. I am sick of people deciding that being young means being ineloquent. Yet the idiots who attend school with me are too preoccupied with
gossip
to care about language. I do not expect them to meet my standards, but you needn't be a
Wunderkind
to educate yourself.

I despise other people my age.
Jugendlichen
. Let them rot.

You mentioned Japanese. But the glockenspiel is a German musical instrument. Can't you speak and write
auf Deutsch
? I doubt you are aware, but the glockenspiel has rarely been used in hip-hop music. I pity your ears for never having been graced by Public Enemy.

Secondly, you are correct. We will not be meeting. This has little to do with your deafening personality. I am electric. Exposure to me would floor you.

Doubtless that hyperactive mind of yours is already jumping to outlandish conclusions: “My, is he an android? What sort of monstrosity is he, the son of one of my doctor's old friends? What is he, that he is electric? A reanimated corpse, veins coursing with lightning? Oh boy!”

Calm yourself. This is not science fiction. This is not fun.

For the past five years, my heart has remained pumping only with the assistance of a small apparatus that feeds electric pulses into the lower-left chamber. If I ever met you, the electricity in my rib cage would trigger your seizures. If I shut off my pacemaker to spare you that, my blood flow would weaken. I could go into shock or even cardiac arrest. You could kill me.

Your postscript teaser fails to impress me. I have died also, Oliver UpandFree. (I feel foolish writing that. I will call you Oliver.) Dying was not an enjoyable experience. It's enough to say that I woke from death with an electric heart. You and I will certainly never meet.

And yet I do have a morbid interest in continuing our correspondence. I may have chuckled once while Father read your words to me yesterday evening. If I were sickened by phones, by vehicles and amplifiers, and not merely sickened by my classmates, perhaps I would resort to babbling as well. Not that this excuses you.

I thought I had seen EVERYTHING. But your mother
is right. Your worldview is remarkable. So is your earsplitting enthusiasm. So I do not blame her for hiding in the garage.

I am not certain that I want to share the details of my life with you. I do not trust you, Oliver. I am uncomfortable with spitting every thought I have ever had onto paper. People like you do not realize what power words have. Words are impossible to see. Words can be twisted in so many directions. Some of us are more careful with them.

As for your questions about “secret laboratories,” I am not nearly as interested in this subject as you are. Talk about something you know about. If you don't want to be bored, don't bore me. There's nothing fascinating about laboratories, in my experience.

Tell me more about your life. If you must.

Besides. It is more entertaining if I do not speak.

Moritz Farber

P.S. Yes. A man can drown in an inch of water. But in Germany we would call it 2.54 centimeters of water. The metric system is altogether superior.

Well, riddle me this, riddle me that! Do you read comics? Wait. Let me rephrase that: Marvel or DC? Also, you didn't tell me whether you like cartoons.

Way to write a letter and tell me almost nothing about yourself, although I guess I'm impressed by your refusal to reveal your tragic past! Now I
really
want to know your thoughts on laboratories. But at least you know I exist!

So you're German? What's that like? I've read a lot of history books, and a lot of fairy tales. Germans are featured in both, and not always nicely, but you probably already know that. Are all Germans as stuffy as you? No offense, but reading what you wrote felt a little like I was
conversing
with a Victorian gentleman, by Jove! Do you read Oscar Wilde? He was Victorian, but, like, the
exact
opposite of you! He was way less
reserved
, by gum!

I think language
is
pretty awesome, so we already have something in common! But don't you think English is the greatest?
Sometimes I just sit here at my desk and chortle because
but
and
butt
sound the same. The other day I was just snickering about it in bed, and Mom got all wide-eyed because I started coughing and she thought maybe I was hysterical again, but—
butt!
—sometimes I need something to laugh at.

Oh! I looked up “
Jugendlichen
.” So that's German for “teenagers,” huh? Well, say what you want. I would
kill
(not actually, because I'm not a psychopath) to know more idiotic teenagers. I want to be one of them!

And Auburn-Stache says you're sixteen. You've got two years on me! I'm not your age, so you can't despise me yet.

Despite your depressing response to my awesome I-Died-Once teaser, I'll attach Part One of my autobiography. This way Mom can keep believing that writing to you is helping me focus, helping me get better, and stopping me from standing in the driveway all day.

Here goes:

The Linear Autobiography of
Oliver Paulot, the Powerless Boy
PART ONE: SCREAMING

When I was born, I was born screaming. It was the same for almost everyone I've ever heard of; if you weren't born screaming, then you were probably born with too much optimism.

But my scream made even the most jaded night nurses in the natal center cover their ears. The old doctor at the bedside nearly dropped me. Auburn-Stache told me that old doctor probably wanted to holler at me to “put a sock in it,” but that's usually frowned upon. Besides, I bet the socks of a full-time doctor are even less sanitary
than the socks of teenage boys, if Auburn-Stache's grubby feet are anything to go by.

Mom was quiet. She claims that I was making enough commotion for both of us.

The old doctor pulled a penlight from his lab coat and aimed it down my throat. The beam shot past my empty gums and into the center of me, and finally I stopped screaming.

The room exhaled….

And I had my first seizure.

Last time I asked Mom about it, it was a snowy afternoon and we were both biding time by firelight in the living room.

“The day I was born—what was it like?” I tucked my calligraphy brush behind my ear.

She put down the heavy tapestry she was cross-stitching, letting it drape across her legs. To me it looked like the most violent quilt known to man. Mom is always making things; she gets as bored as I do. This was her seventh tapestry or something, and it depicted a pretty gory stag-hunting scene. She jabbed her needle into the arm of the couch. It was still trailing the red thread she was using to sew the eviscerated innards of the unfortunate stag.

“You've read about childbirth.
Tch
.”

Sometimes Mom makes a slight clucking sound near the front of her teeth. It's her type of sniggering. I used to wonder if it was something everyone did. Now I know it's a family habit.

“I was a
huge
pain in the vagina, I bet.”

“Ollie.” In the half-light, the lines of her face seemed deeper.

“It's a medical term, Mom.” I rolled my eyes. “What else do you want me to call it?”

“Most people wouldn't call it anything. Most people have
tact
.”

I held my arms wide apart to illustrate the vast nothingness outside our cabin. “Wherefore, Mother?
Wherefore?
”

“Yes. Fine. You were a
huge
pain. Like I was splitting in two.”

“Nuclear fission!”

“I don't know about that. But putting you on this earth was the most painful thing I have ever done. Since you asked.”

“Sorry.”

“
Tch
. I don't think what I felt compared in any way to what you felt during that first seizure.” She grimaced. “Your face was so red. It looked as though you might burst.”