Because You'll Never Meet Me

by Leah Thomas

  “Is he okay?” Martin Mulligan, my knight? Screw that. “I’ll get—get help.” His footsteps joined those of the exiting, hollering masses.

  I opened my eyes. Liz was leaning over me. I could see her face in the glow of her skeleton dress, although it hurt to stare through the red haze of broken blood vessels.

  “I brought the … house down,” I said, all stumbling tongue.

  “You’re crazy.” Her relief was almost tangible, like another color.

  I didn’t look away. “You wanna dance?”

  “You didn’t bring your glockenspiel.” She laughed, or maybe choked.

  I could see her eyes, just barely. She didn’t look bored. I thought her freckles were piercing through the makeup. And when she hugged me in the emptying gym, a current passed between us.

  She held out her hand.

  “Do you wanna stand, Ollie?” A hint of that old grin. “Or do you wanna lie there and bleed some more?”

  I stood.

  Liz and I kicked balloons and untangled orange and black streamers from our shoes. We stepped out of the school through a fire exit.

  I was riding some kind of high, face open to the air, dragging my gas mask behind me. I was still grinning like an idiot as she pulled me away from the school, despite the blood cooling on my face. The streetlamps overhead burst as I passed under them. When the first bulb shattered, Liz yelped and I ended up dragging her too, but the air was cool and fresh and new, and there was blacktop under my feet for the first time ever, and I wanted to think only of this moment.

  But she stopped halfway across the large parking lot to catch her breath and we were alone, and I didn’t even know what to say. I looked at her and peeled my womble farther down from my face. We walked slowly across the remainder of the lot. It just felt like we should keep moving or I would have to stop and think, and I did not want to.

  “So you beat the power line,” she said. There was pumpkin-shaped confetti in her hair.

  “I had help.”

  “But hey, maybe you can start coming to school here now.”

  Overhead, another streetlight went out. I felt the slightest release of pressure in my temple as the colors faded, but nothing more.

  “I’m not sure that’s the best idea.”

  “Who needs computers if you’ve got origami?” She was beaming. “It’ll work.”

  We’d stopped walking, standing behind the lone vehicle in the back lot, an old minivan that made me nostalgic. When I stood near it, my stomach clenched and its black smog vanished. Maybe we were going to kiss again.

  But …

  “I’ve got a better idea!”

  “I know that look,” she said, but I didn’t want to think about why she was frowning or why maybe I should be frowning, too, so I grabbed her hand and pulled her forward, toward the road that ran behind the school.

  “We could go anywhere! Where do you think we should go, Liz? Where’s a good place to eat? Maybe a sushi joint, because I’d probably take out ovens if I got too close. And after that, how do you feel about Kreiszig? I don’t know whether I could get on a plane.” I chortled, yanking her forward, walking down the yellow lines in the road. I forgot that roads had such a thing. Genius!

  “Ollie!” Liz cowered as another bulb burst overhead. “Can’t you shut it off?”

  “I mean, maybe if I got in a plane it would crash, but maybe not. Maybe I could rein it in a bit. Or we could get a skiff. Either way I’ll see the ocean. The ocean, Liz! I bet confessions are even bigger at ocean sunsets! Stands to reason.”

  Liz pulled her hand away. I couldn’t see her expression beneath the makeup, but her teeth were showing. “You’re manic again!”

  “No, no, I’m not.” I showed my teeth, too. “Just excited!”

  “What’s happened?”

  Man, she knows me well, Moritz. My smile slipped. And as it did, I felt queasy. The electric aura from the next streetlight suddenly seemed stronger than I was and I took a step back.

  “Nothing’s happened,” I said. “I just don’t want to go home.”

  “Ollie?” she said. “Calm down. Breathe.” She put her hands on my shoulders. Since when was I crouching? “Is it your mom?”

  I didn’t answer. She helped me up and started walking me back toward the school, back across the parking lot. That womble was so heavy. My feet were so heavy.

  “Come on. Pull on your mask. Let’s go.”

  “Auburn-Stache … he isn’t coming back until ten PM.”

  “I’ll drive. I wasn’t lying about driver’s training.”

  It didn’t end there, Moritz. But the moments I have left with Mom are running out, and right now I’d rather be at her bedside than writing you.

  Thanks for the womble. Send me more hope?

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The Microphone

  Ollie, I would pull you from every darkness, if I ever met you.

  Bernholdt-Regen did not welcome our merry band back with willing arms. But it seemed Lenz’s father truly had influence. I had feared he would want to pursue further punishment for me. Facing him in the hospital had been even harder than facing Lenz. The way he’d stared at me with bags beneath his eyes. Cracking his dry knuckles. But he’d said, “My son has been known to ask for trouble. I told the authorities he fell from the bridge. I told them not to trace the emergency call. I told them he is clumsy, like me.”

  “He … fell.”

  “I know some of what he’s done to you. To the other boy who frightened him.”

  Frightened him?

  “Goodness knows he’s hospitalized a classmate before. Goodness knows I did, in my day. Like father, like son.” He tried to chuckle. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Clumsy, like me.” He sighed a deep sigh that seemed to reach the bottom of him. “I did not mean to raise him like me.”

  “I’m as … clumsy as he is.”

  I felt his eyes crinkle up. “You were also raised by someone. We follow examples. I … I have been a bad example since his mother passed. I shooed you from my bakery, years ago. What was I teaching him?”

  “But it has to be more than following examples,” I told him. “I have to be more than that.”

  “Maybe you are. Some of us never get there.” I heard his bones creak. His knuckles tightened on his knees. “It is very hard, to be human.”

  I clutched my shoulders. “It really is.”

  He held out one cracked hand. With a burning throat, I shook it. His palm was as warm as mine.

  Fieke and Owen awaited my arrival in the courtyard at school. My heart leapt, Ollie, but this was not a sign of breathlessness or fear. I didn’t pay much attention to what the other students were doing. It was enough that the Abends were chattering away, sending their own waves back to me. Not in color but in vivid detail. Owen laughed and wiggled his fingers. He’s trying to teach me sign language. It is as difficult as reading!

  Pruwitt demands I keep up with reading. She handed me a stack of manga the other day, which must please you, Ollie.

  As we walked, Fieke said she might actually attend class for once. Her teacher will wonder when Siouxsie Sioux registered for his course! Ha!

  We shared lunch together. I spoke. Owen spoke in his way, holding my hand beneath the table. I doubt you will mind, Oliver. Despite your kind words about meetings under power lines.

  This is not science fiction. But I almost feel I am in a fantasy world.

  Except when I think of you. This is not fantasy. In a fantasy world, your mother would not be in such pain. And neither would you. If I could tell you this in person, you could hear the truth in my voice.

  But perhaps one day I shall meet you, now that you have the womble. After all, you overcame the power line. Perhaps one day you’ll be able to find the happy medium between your polarities—between rejecting electricity and it rejecting you.

  I am not afraid that you will hurt me. If you do, the scars won’t last for eternity. People hurt each other all the time. Especially when they
care for each other.

  Lately I have been dwelling. I asked Father where the laboratory that made us is. I had no idea whether it was still operational. Whether it still smelled of antiseptic and windowlessness. My father wrote the latitude and longitude down.

  “I never thought you’d ask for this,” he said as he wrote.

  “Neither did I,” I said. “But …”

  He nodded. “Vergangenheitsbewältigung.”

  At the Sickly Poet, I laid the folded coordinates before Fieke and Owen.

  “What’s this? You couldn’t even throw it at me?” she said while Owen unfolded the paper airplane. I am only capable of the simplest origami, Ollie.

  Owen’s eyes widened. He signed a symbol similar to “hospital” to my untrained ears.

  Fieke frowned in a clinking sound. “You mean the place where you were raised?”

  Owen frowned at me as well. Or perhaps frowned at the obnoxious racket that the current performer was making on the evening stage. Wailing ineptly along to K-pop songs. Help, Ollie.

  “Why the fluff would you wanna go back there? Are you looking for your sociopathic mother?”

  “She wasn’t sociopathic. And no.”

  Fieke opened her mouth. Owen put his hand up to her face and nodded.

  “I was hoping one of you could google how I can get there. If it isn’t too much trouble.”

  Owen held the unfolded plane close to his face. Set it down again. Moved his hands at Fieke.

  “Owen can find anything online. So when are we going?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t expect you to accompany me.”

  “God, you’re a prat,” said Fieke.

  Owen kicked her under the table. He looked frightened, but he pointed to himself.

  Once this might have upset me. Their recklessness. Their curiosity about the source of my childhood torment. As if this were a field trip. Once I might have been angry.

  “I’ll come,” grumbled Fieke, “if your next performance isn’t shit, Brille.”

  I looked at the two of them. Two people, Oliver, who are content to follow me into the dark. Fieke’s cheeks twitching, despite her fixed scowl. Owen’s eyes, wide but determined.

  I made my way to the stage. Pushed past the quiet crowd of regulars. Climbed into the spotlight. Adjusted the microphone. Finally, I peeled off my goggles.

  Perhaps someone gasped. Perhaps the bartender dropped a glass. But I was not listening for it. Such a hullabaloo was coming from the table in the corner. Such a large amount of whooping and foot-stamping and table-pounding. It ricocheted off all the walls of the Kneipe and shook my very soul.

  Lenz met us at the train station. Standing on the platform, looming over Fieke’s shoulder. He cracked his knuckles as Owen and I approached. Fieke showed her teeth and squeezed his forearm.

  “I passed him by the good old bridge this morning. He offered to help me.”

  I could see evidence that he had changed, at least physically: a dent at the back of his head. A dent I put there.

  “Hallo,” he murmured.

  Fieke grinned like a proud mother.

  He nodded and set down her satchel and left us. As he turned I remembered once more the day I’d first seen him: the day the sight of me had set him to screaming.

  Perhaps he’ll head off and hurt someone again.

  Perhaps he thinks the same thing when he looks at me.

  For all I knew, there was a dead mouse in his pocket.

  But I hope not.

  Freiberg was once a small village, but with the excavation of its ore mines over the centuries, it grew to prominence. Now Freiberg is home to a technical university. It attracts additional tourists because of the ruins of Freudenstein Castle. There are old, crumbling walls scattered here and there among the town houses and shops. Scraps of an old world displaced in time. You live in America, where things are still new. In Germany, the old and the new exist side by side.

  The area surrounding Freiberg is said to be “green” and scenic, due to its proximity to Tharandt Forest, an ancient sprawl of trees and sandstone caves. The forest is listed among the most beautiful places in Saxony.

  We did not enter the national park there, but rather we climbed a fence along the lines of the forest. Owen led us through those aging woods. The air was cool beneath the canopy. Thick moss drooped from the trees, sweet-smelling. Peculiar in its familiarity. Had I smelled this from the car seat where I drowsed? While my mother drove me in dizzying silence to the laboratory?

  We hit a dirt road somewhere amid the trees. I imagined we might have stumbled onto your driveway. Wish as I might, heart swelling as my companions stopped so that I might catch my breath, at the end of the driveway was no triangular cabin.

  Hidden in the sandstone cliffs was the entrance to an underground car park. It was dark within. I asked the others to hold on to me. We formed a human chain, and I led them through the damp garage. They held their phones aloft for additional light. Grass had invaded even here, and the entire lot was empty. Devoid of machinery. Of any sign that once the place was the source of so much strangeness and pain.

  We approached closed automatic doors. I hesitated. Fieke stepped forward and kicked in the glass with her boots. As if she did such things on a frequent basis. Of course she does, Ollie.

  I stopped in the familiar reception area. No lights buzzed inside. The wallpaper was curling with water damage. Everything smelled cold. We could all sense it. The entire facility was vacant.

  “Ghost town,” said Fieke.

  We wandered the halls that used to house me, calling to what I used to be and hearing no reply. All the medical equipment was gone. Posters had been torn down. There was nothing. Not even paper litter. Just dampness and silence and empty counters. Even the clipboards were absent from the walls. Even the magazines were absent from their tables.

  I half expected to see anxious women sitting in the waiting rooms after all this time.

  “Yeah, I can believe you used to live here,” said Fieke, stopping outside the cafeteria across from the stairwell. “It explains why you’re such a mopey bastard.” The fire was gone from her voice. Everything sounded hollow in that hallway.

  “I have been trying to smile more.”

  Fieke let out a nervous bark of a laugh. “As if that isn’t the saddest part of all.”

  I cannot see darkness, but I could feel it gathering down those steps as I pushed open the door to the stairwell. The air was icier. Smelled fouler. I took a deep breath and a step forward.

  Owen grabbed my arm. He shook his head and began to tap a message to me. I put my hand on his fingers to stop him.

  “I’ll return before you can even ponder missing me.”

  He released my arm, finger by finger. Despite his silence, I knew all that he was saying and was stronger for it.

  I descended alone.

  The door to the anechoic chamber remained open. It remained a gaping vault of blackness. I forced myself forward and fell to my hands and knees. I crawled into the soundless void.

  I could feel my heartbeat. Could feel the grate beneath my fingers as I listened. I shouted once, just to be certain. The foam pallets had moldered enough that the room was not so silent as I recalled. It was not so good at swallowing everything up.

  She was not there, Ollie.

  I put a hand over my mouth and breathed through my nose, again and again.

  If I made any sound after that, the walls halfway absorbed it.

  Upstairs, Owen and Fieke waited on benches in the cafeteria. Owen met me when I pushed the doors open. For once, Fieke did not speak.

  “It’s all gone.” The sound of my voice echoed in the halls. Halls that used to house me. “There’s no one. Nothing’s here.”

  Fieke sighed. “So what are we meant to do now?”

  Though no one could see me do it, I smiled.

  “Anything we fluffing want,” I said.

  Frau Pruwitt showed up on my doorstep to deliver the results of my trans
fer assessment. She came into the kitchen and nearly smiled when Father gave her a coffee. I could hear the creases in her face protesting the unfamiliarity.

  My father smiled, too. Oliver, romance might not be impossible for all of us.

  “You passed,” she said. “Not a big fuss. Here is a list of potential schools you may consider transferring to.”

  “Not a big fuss. But worth hiking up five flights of stairs to inform me.”

  She sniffed.

  Father grabbed my hand. “I’m proud, Moritz.”

  He didn’t have to say it aloud. I felt it in his posture. But he’s trying to speak more. We both are.

  “You should also start considering universities. You’re behind, Mr. Farber.”

  “I’ll leave that until I get back.”

  “What do you mean, until you get back?”

  “After Gymnasium I’m going to take advantage of the grace year. Postpone pursuing higher academia. Travel.”

  It is traditional for German students to spend one year abroad before beginning university. A year to see the world or work and discover what it is they would like to do with their lives.

  Frau Pruwitt clearly wanted to throw a book at me.

  “Let me tell you something, Moritz. Going out looking for the woman who left you won’t make any of us happier. You’ve found a good father here in Herr Farber.”

  “And he has a son in me,” I said, “and he understands me well enough to know I’m serious.” I smiled. “I’m not looking for her. But if I meet my mother in my travels, well, I suppose I can finally accuse her of being the one who pooped.”

  Even father looked shocked.

  How uncouth you’ve made me, Ollie.

  One day, I will meet you. I will meet you and neither of us will die for it. By then you’ll have seen more than enough humidifiers to sicken you.

  In one year, I hope to be where you are, Oliver Paulot. I am saving pennies. In the meantime, the handful of friends you’ve helped me gather will be enough to deal with.

  Perhaps I’ll surprise you even sooner.

  Perhaps I am in your driveway. Not far from where you sit folding origami dragons. Tapping your fingers against the bones of your glock. Painting electricity.