Because You'll Never Meet Me

by Leah Thomas

  I hope you knock it out of the park when you go back to school. It’s really crappy that the dinguses of Bernholdt-Regen suspended you when you were the one who got your face turned to potaters.

  They can’t expel you for being eyeless! Isn’t that discrimination? Or are the rules different in Germany? I don’t know what Hauptschule means, really, and Mom threw out what was left of my English-German dictionary last Wednesday after I, um, angrily tore it to pieces.

  Please tell me about more of your superpowered shenanigans.

  If my autobiography is starting to bore you, I’ll stop before we get to the bad parts.

  I can write about chromatic scales and what a pain it is to tune my glock on warm days when metal instruments go flat due to humidity.

  ~ Ollie

  P.S. Heh—you’re superpowered, I’m powerless. We’re two ends of a freak magnet!

  P.P.S. Apologies. I’m really sleepy, and I’ve started to speak fluent Stupid.

  P.P.P.S. Hey, I just sat up in bed to write this, but what if it isn’t a laboratory that connects us? What if we’re actually related in a different way? I mean, aren’t you a little curious?

  I mean, wouldn’t it be amazing if we were somehow brothers?

  Chapter Ten

  The Piercings

  Ollie, I don’t need a brother.

  I can see why Liz is so alluring to you. Yet I stand by my previous deduction, Mr. Holmes. She sounds something like the girls who giggle in the cafeteria, who toss their hair in the hallways. Why do they want to be looked at?

  Of course, you, too, wish to be seen. Perhaps two similarly poled magnets don’t always push each other away. This isn’t the same equation as Oliver Paulot versus the Driveway Power Line. Perhaps you and Liz make sense. Given your circumstances. She is not as confident as she seems. You have that in common also.

  I wonder what happened to leave you lovesick and without her, Ollie. But I appreciate your attempts at linear storytelling. You’ve begun to hone your focus. It is not a laser beam yet. A wide laser ray. Small steps.

  The state of affairs in Kreiszig: since I have returned to Bernholdt-Regen, some aspects of my daily life have improved in ways I never hoped for.

  Others leave me deeply uneasy.

  After my suspension ended, I dared not step out of the Strasse into Bernholdt-Regen’s open campus until I was certain no one was waiting in ambush inside the school gates. Lenz Monk might be just beyond the threshold, fists at the ready.

  I listened with all my might through the open gates, trying to still my shaking hands and heart. Straightened my tie. Clenched my hands tightly around the cane. Father had handed it to me that morning. He does not say much, my father. His movements speak for him.

  In the tiny kitchen, I could see the anxious tilt of his head. Could see/hear how his breath caught when he handed the stick to me. My breath caught as well.

  My face is still swollen. Sometimes the bridge of my nose experiences twinges. Acupuncture inside my nostrils. The stick I had always refused to hold had more weight than ever before. I understood it to be my armor.

  The cane was the stipulation that allowed me to attend public school once more.

  My new mask, Oliver?

  The morning my suspension began, I ate cereal by the crunchy handful. I focused on the noisy insides of my mouth and nothing more. But Father, home from the factory that day, ushered me away from the table and alongside him to Bernholdt-Regen. He strode me right into the headmaster’s office. Most of my “peers” were in the cafeteria. We stood in front of the glass wall. He stared at the headmaster, Herr Haydn, from between the blinds. They couldn’t just leave my father there. Haydn and several loitering faculty members agreed to discuss my future studies.

  Father spoke. He began by convincing the unsettled staff that I am legally blind. That I had refused to use my cane out of a misplaced sense of pride. I nodded in time with his words. I tried my hardest to look unfortunate. It was not very difficult.

  You are correct to mention discrimination. If I was blind, they were on thin ice. They had been less than accommodating.

  The wondrous thing? I wanted to return, Ollie. I wanted to speak to Owen Abend. To thank him.

  When I strapped on my goggles this morning, I tried to smile.

  You’ve made me reconsider my surroundings. You’ve made me hopeful.

  If that means using the cane, so be it.

  From the street, campus sounded as disorderly as ever. It overflowed with the cacophony of those idiotic Jugendlichen. They spoke as if they were Sirens hoping to drown out the sound of the school bell. There was a great deal of movement. Students pushed and jostled and smacked against one another. MBV informed me that no one was lurking by the wall. Somewhere on the right side of the courtyard, a boy was being lambasted for his choice of trainers. Near the front steps a girl was getting her hair pulled from the roots by an envious friend. Hair-pulling and footwear-lambasting are standard fare at Bernholdt-Regen.

  You asked about German schooling. In Deutschland, our futures are decided early. After Grundschule (elementary school), we are separated into three possible groups. The students who excel academically, who cross their t’s and double-dot their umlauts, end up at a Gymnasium. Gymnasium is preparatory school for those who wish to attend university. Students who wish to become technicians—those who wish to be mechanics, say—must qualify for Realschule, but may join a Gymnasium later.

  For everyone else—for those who don’t excel, those who are indifferent, or those who are problem students—there are Hauptschulen.

  Ollie, I am certainly problematic. Bernholdt-Regen is for the unwanted and unworthy. I deserve nothing better.

  The boy in unpopular shoes was trying to claw his way out of a headlock by the time I stepped into the courtyard. I bit my tongue to keep from clicking. I crossed the campus threshold. The earth did not crack. Hellfire didn’t bother raining from the sky. Nowhere was the bulky outline of Lenz Monk.

  I let the air out of my lungs. Perhaps it was safe to enter after all. Perhaps I would not whimper today.

  But as I made my way forward, students made a noticeable effort to step out of my path. I am often ignored. This was something worse. It was just as when I left the gym bloodied: the seas of body odor and cheap cologne and cigarette smoke parted before me.

  I am used to whispers, but there were none. People went silent when I passed. And the quieter they were, the less I could see. The hazier their faces. The blinder I became.

  My pacemaker was straining as my heart rate increased. My chest ached. Sweat beaded on my brow. I bit my tongue harder. Picked up my pace. It was the strangest sensation, being the focal point of so much attention. I had to restrain myself from thwapping the spectators with my cane in an effort to see them properly. It was as though I were walking through a layer of static. Trying to catch movements obscured by cuts of nothing. Soon all I could hear was my own heart straining.

  I became self-conscious about the cane. Surely none of them were buying the charade. Is there a certain tempo at which the visually impaired tap their canes? I kept falling into musical patterns. Tapping the beat of Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message” against the sidewalk. At least in the cane’s resonance I could see.

  When I reached the stone steps at the front of the building, a girl was sitting on the top of the banister. Smoking a cigarette. There are smoking areas on some German Hauptschule campuses. Our school is pathetic enough that it seems to be the entire campus.

  Her hair was an unruly, stringy nest on top of sides shaved down. Perhaps not so different from your enforced rooster cut. Her boots looked heavy enough to leave dents in concrete. She had more piercings than I could count, cluttered together in her lips and nose and ears; when she wrapped her lips around her cigarette, they clinked together. The sound of them illuminated her face: a sharp nose and eyes set in deep, dramatic hollows. I could hear the wheezing in her chest even from the bottom of the stairs.

  She was so
vivid after the silence, Ollie.

  What she was wearing was against dress code. She had a skirt hiked up very high, her socks yanked past her knees. Her sleeveless shirt untucked and spiked chains hanging across her chest. But I wouldn’t begrudge any teacher for choosing not to confront that awful glare.

  She shared it with me the entire time I clacked up the stairs. I wanted to retreat, even into the static behind me. Doubtless she was plotting to twist her cigarette into my ear. When I was level with her, I fought the urge to sprint beyond her reach.

  I stepped inside the school. Unharmed.

  And then my heart all but stopped:

  “Hey,” she said, turning as I passed. “You.”

  She tossed a paper airplane at me. I clicked my tongue and caught it at face level.

  “Read it.”

  I tucked the plane into my satchel. I did not tell her I could not read.

  “Fffrt.” She narrowed her eyes. Leapt off the banister and stomped away in her boots. The echoes around her feet made waves of clarity wherever she laid her heels down, Ollie. I could see the dust in the air wherever she stepped. Could see the fibers of her tights and the way they hardly seemed to contain the strength of the legs beneath them.

  Herr Haydn had suggested I drop out of the athletics course to avoid further entanglements with Lenz and the others. I was tempted. I am not brave.

  But Athletics is the only course I share with Owen Abend, who is one year my junior. I could have sought him out at other times. Perhaps in the cafeteria or in the courtyard in the morning. But that would require a lot more gall. In the past, whenever I wandered away from the eyes of teachers I was inevitably taunted. I could not recall the last time I spoke to any of my peers outside a classroom.

  When I entered the sour-smelling locker room, another hush fell. There was enough noise from the water running down from showerheads, from lockers slamming, for me to see everyone avert their gazes. I pulled my gym clothes from my bag. Changed as quickly as possible. Waited for Lenz Monk to appear behind me and shove my head against the tiles.

  But neither Owen nor Lenz appeared.

  I traipsed into the gymnasium with my head down. I could hear the smack of basketballs lessen for a beat as I entered. Herr Gebor, standing on the sidelines, spared a moment to bench me before telling the others to get back to their dribbling drills.

  I had barely settled into the bench when Gebor approached me.

  “I hope you appreciate all we’re doing for you,” he told me. “All the allowances we’re making. If you’d told us sooner, this might have been sorted sooner. You need to talk to us, Farber. So that we can help you.”

  “Beg pardon,” I said. “What allowances?”

  “We had an assembly while you were … recovering. Every student here has been told about your circumstances, lectured about bullying. So don’t you worry, Farber.”

  I clenched my fists. This explained the silence. The non-looking. “Tell me—have all my classmates been told that I am disabled?”

  “That’s … just know that you’re safe. You’re safe and you can talk to us. Understood?”

  “Of course. Thank you.”

  In my absence, there’d been an assembly about bullying “disabled” students. In my absence, I’d become a label. Less than wondrous, Ollie.

  I watched my peers bounce basketballs back and forth to one another. Watched how their faces creased when they laughed or grimaced in the echoes of the smacking. I experienced a dark moment there on the bench. A dark moment where I realized that I never leave the sidelines. Perhaps I never would.

  The door at the back of the gymnasium creaked open. The volume of the room’s activity revealed the face that peered through the doorway.

  Owen Abend, all but tiptoeing into the gymnasium. Willing himself invisible. He was so quiet. He nearly succeeded. Something was slightly different about the shape of his face.

  I was irrationally pleased to see him, Ollie.

  I raised a hand. He caught sight of it. His eyes bulged. Spinning on his heel, he left the way he’d come.

  What did I expect? That moment had been nothing to him. Nosebleeds may not always be enough to create friendship. Doubtless he hardly remembered handing me my goggles. Hardly remembered that he didn’t recoil as though soullessness was infectious.

  Basketballs slammed around me and my breath was loud in my ears, and once again I was seeing more than I wished to, seeing wood grain and the tension in my own face.

  Was that all? Was this it?

  We have talked about standing up. I hadn’t come back not to speak to him.

  I got up and ran the length of the gym. A ball bounced toward me. I thrust it away without pausing. Followed him into the hallway. I saw him pushing his way outside into the courtyard. I sprinted after him, using MBV to dart around obstacles before me. Doors opened; I skidded sideways. A boy put his foot out and I leapt over it. I did not have time to feel foolish.

  “Owen!” I shoved the door open and burst out onto the steps. “Um, hallo!”

  I often experience disorientation when I move from indoors to outdoors, because of the sudden shifting of echoes. This time it cost me dearly. I ran directly into someone standing outside the door. This someone shoved me back against the wall.

  It was the piercing girl. Baring her teeth at me.

  (Ollie, this girl is fond of profanity. To spare your retinas repeated scarring by the notorious F-word, I have substituted it with a less vulgar word. You’re very welcome.)

  “Hey, didn’t you read the fluffing note I gave you this morning, freak show?”

  “I can’t read,” I gasped.

  “Don’t try the blind card. You forgot your fluffin’ cane. And you caught the paper airplane.”

  “Even so. I can’t read.”

  “Look, stay the hell away from Owen. He’s been through enough. Or are you going to pretend you didn’t see the bruises?”

  “I did not,” I said, which was true. I cannot see blotches or bruises, although I can see swelling. Which explained why his face had appeared misshapen. “What happened?”

  She took four steps back. Aimed a kick at my face.

  She tried to kick me in the face.

  It happened very quickly. There was simply no thread in my body that did not tell me to avoid those heavy feet. I had no say. I could not take that boot to the face.

  I ducked.

  “Pissing Nora!” I cried. “Are you psychopathic?”

  “I knew it,” she said, and she looked likely to try it again. “You complete ass. You could have beaten the shit out of him. And you didn’t.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Fluff off,” she said. “I don’t want to see you. You could have stopped him, but you haven’t. You didn’t! Fluffin’ unbelievable. Coward.”

  “I know what I am. Why do you think I’m here?”

  She stomped away. There I stood on the steps for the second time that day. I considered collapsing atop them.

  To think I had looked forward to returning to school.

  I am so unsettled by the piercing girl’s rage. Will she be a second Lenz in my life? My hands are unsteady as I type this. My father is waiting for me to walk to school again. I do not want to.

  She has been watching me for the past few days. I dodge into closets or around corners whenever I hear her boot steps. She sits atop the stairs and glares me into school. I haven’t approached Owen, but I have seen him in the cafeteria. Sitting alone, silent and half-vanished. Always looking away from me.

  Rumor has it that Lenz will return from his extended suspension at the start of the new term.

  Hoping you and yours are well.

  Best,

  Moritz

  P.S. I needs must tell you that glock is not the shorthand version of glockenspiel, but of a rather nefarious pistol, weapon of choice for many inner-city gangsters.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Puddles

  Did you really just type “needs must tell
you,” Mo? Really? New pompous low, man. I know you like using wondrous language to sound ULTRAFANCY. But we’ve got to draw a line somewhere before your nose gets perma-stuck in the air.

  And holy crap! You, with your bangs in your face, going for the scary Goth girl? It’s like Johnny the Homicidal Maniac! Well, not really (you don’t nail stuffed animals to your wall, right?). I can’t wait to hear more. You know it’s love when a girl throws a plane at your face and says she’d like to beat you to a pulp. Tch.

  If she isn’t your love interest, tell me who actually is. If you’re also lovesick, I won’t feel like such a loser for telling you about my romantic pining. In most stories, love is kind of a big deal. Even freakin’ Charles Dickens wrote a romantic alternate ending to Great Expectations! He was even more cynical than you are. And Pip was a complete dork. If he deserved love, so do you.

  Which reminds me—again with the whole “I’m not worthy” shtick, Moritz? Why don’t you deserve a nice school? You’re still singing that song and it sounds like Grade A bullpucky.

  You deserve as much as any “normal kid.” We’ve been through this. Do you still have your homemade letter-bat handy?

  Don’t let the anti-rubberneckers get you down. Let them notstare. Like you said, you can totally thwap them with your cane. You’re Dolphin-Man! Anything is possible! You leap feet in hallways! You duck Goth kicks! Kapow!

  As for wondering why Liz ditched me, why I’m plagued by antiappetite for tuna sandwiches, why Mom basically drags me to the bath after she fills it, and why she actually locks me outside now to make sure I get “daylight”—well, we’re getting there. It’s sort of inevitable. Like the driveway being empty is inevitable.

  I got to have a few awesome years with Liz before I ruined our friendship. Let’s keep this mask on for a little while, all right? It’s not about faking optimism, I swear. It’s just … I still can’t really think about the camping trip without freaking out. Mom’s not the only one who tears things off shelves around here.