Nowhere Near You

by Leah Thomas

  “But . . .” It looked so tangible, Moritz. Real, actual weather.

  After I tried squinting again (and got subsequently smacked by hiccuping sneezes), I could see the outlines of bluish skyscrapers on the horizon. That’s probably what most people have to settle for.

  But when this Blunderkid stopped squinting, Moritz?

  “Holy shit.”

  “Ollie! Is the hat not working?”

  I put my hand on his hand, on the wheel. “No, it’s good. It’s just . . . ’Stache. It’s just . . .”

  “Then—”

  “Shh.” I don’t think I’ve ever shushed someone before. (The hypocrisy!)

  Once I helped Liz create a density jar for her science homework. We sat in the cabin kitchen and poured milk, canola oil, cola, and cherry syrup into a bottle and watched all the layers separate. Chicago was the ultimate density jar, this massive glow cloud that crept over us in billowing layers, probably across four or five dimensions. I saw it in every color imaginable. To cater to my batboy audience, I’m going to pretend I saw textures, too.

  The orange of infinite wiring in walls sparked above buildings in jagged spears, jagged like bread knives, and beneath them, shining from countless windows, beams of emerald and purples, and if they had a texture, I’d say they were long tubes of glass, and lower down more tangerine stripes coiled like unwound paper clips, more grass greens layered like woven baskets or torn bits of corn leaf, and a blue misting layer of gauze that was maybe something electric I’d never thought about—maybe it had something to do with stoplights? And farther down, Moritz, maybe hundreds of feet, near the foot of the glow cloud, the brown oatmeal of vehicles and machinery, and burgundy strands like bacon-y ribbon underground that I later learned had to do with trains.

  And everywhere, like pores on the glowing cityscape? Speckled punctures of green light that made cheesecloth out of air, green pinpricks growing larger as we drove into the city limits, pinpricks like stars in the ether, stars reflecting a million people I never thought I could have shared space with. People who were probably parents and siblings and friends and enemies and police officers with saffron-slashing walkie-talkies and babies in cribs with cottony night-lights warming them, the welcoming people of the Lincoln State?

  And I couldn’t meet them all.

  Seeing so much electricity in one place should have shut me down, beanie or not.

  The city was alive, Moritz. Every part of it fought to outshine every other part, and if there were dark parts, I couldn’t see them. Instead—oh god, I think I was in lovesickness, Mo! This city was like I am sometimes, just screaming to be heard.

  A city like this could only create heroes.

  Moritz, the where really matters.

  “Ollie! What’s wrong?” Auburn-Stache, shaking me.

  “I just want to meet everyone,” I choked.

  The tension left his shoulders. “Steady on. We’re going in, Ollie.”

  But he was wrong. I think the city was going into me.

  I wish I could share every thought I had in Chicago, but I can’t spend years writing about just one city. I mean, after our visit, during the flat drive from Illinois to Ohio, I wrote twenty pages just about elevated trains that travel over your head and over streets and make you maroon-y sick in trash cans. (No one ever told me there are helpful trash cans on the street corners of America. Bless this land, where man is free to vomit where he may!)

  Auburn-Stache saw me drawing maps and reminded me he wasn’t going to send “bloody novels” to you every week. He could have told me that before I got carsick writing the pages. Auburn-Stache would rather deal with my actual vomit than my question-vomit.

  I’m only ever quiet when I’m writing you.

  But I need to be more than quiet. I need to be professional. A real storyteller.

  (Granted, my audience is probably pretty limited in this case.)

  Travels with the Teenage Lord of Glockenspieling:

  An Electro-Sensitive Hermit’s Guide to Chicago

  (SERIOUSLY ABRIDGED, ALAS AND DAMN IT)

  Chicago isn’t exactly hermit-friendly. However, any electro-sensitive hermits who brave a trek to the Windy City won’t be disappointed!

  Electro-sensitivity will always be our personal ass-pain to bear, but remember: people are the best distraction. Normally, I can count all the people I know on my phalanges, fellow hermits! In Chicago, every stranger feels like a new species. Inquisitive hermit types should approach this aspect of the world through the lens of a scientist conducting important research!

  A man in a long coat? The inquisitive hermit asks: Why so long, coat?

  A lady with long red fingernails? Why so long and so red, fingernails?

  Oh, bearded man, beating the living crap out of buckets on a street corner—what did buckets ever do to you?

  The least hermit-friendly aspect wasn’t the noise, either. Fragile hermits might want to pack some earmuffs just in case, but the cacophony (that’ll be on the vocab test!) melted into a steady hum of activity. Blips when horns honked or music blared in the street. Music through speakers sounds really tinny and staticky to antielectric ears. But remember, brave hermits: the woods are noisy, too. Only instead of the hum of insects you get roaring traffic.

  And then there’s the gimmick-shattering voice of your intrepid caretaker:

  “We can’t stay here long. We can head directly to Arthur’s home in Logan Square. I’ve spoken to his guardian. Lately, he’s been homeschooled, so he’ll be around. Or we could see some of the sights. Millennium Park, the Shedd Aquarium, the shiny Bean, et cetera.”

  I’m losing the gimmick, but the least hermit-friendly part about visiting Chicago: “I have to pick between Superman and the fishes?”

  “Ollie, Arthur’s not Superman. Quite the opposite. Prone to accidents.”

  “Wait, you’re actually telling me things? What’s Arthur allergic to?”

  “He’s really very sick. A bone disease.” We crossed a bridge over Lake Michigan and got caught between buildings, swallowed by skyscraper shadows.

  “Very sick, huh.” Having Auburn-Stache say sick so bluntly, I had to face facts: maybe all those times our doctor left me moping in bed, he knew other kids with way better reasons to be in bed.

  Maybe that’s what he doesn’t want to tell me.

  Moritz, maybe I’m the least heroic of all hermits.

  “Let’s see more wonderland. . . .” The rubber tugged at my underarms. That’s why I was sweating. I don’t get claustrophobic. Not about dark parts, not about buildings on all sides.

  “This isn’t a wonderland. It’s a city, Ollie. You’re not living in one of your science-fiction novels. You must be careful in the real world.”

  “I’m not a toddler.”

  “In a sense you are. The dangers here aren’t just to do with your electromagnetism. People in cities aren’t worse—but there are more people.”

  “But that’s miraculous.”

  “Of course. But when so many people group together, a few are bound to be unfriendly.” He bit his nails. “I shouldn’t be taking you here, understand? What would your mother say?”

  In that second, I wanted to stop the car and run in any direction: over bridges, across city blocks. Just run and find whoever had sprayed their names on the graffiti-slathered bricks and ask them about their families and whether they’d gone a day without electricity and what that felt like.

  I wanted to climb up every rusty ladder on every old warehouse-y building, as high and as far away as I could get from this car, with its heaters and sudden quiet.

  What would she say?

  Outside our car, nobody wore wombles. I couldn’t just say hi to total strangers. I couldn’t ask them things. (Why so grumpy, bus driver? Why so tired, woman with Coney dog?)

  Moritz, if I forced my way in . . . how many batteries would get shorted? How many trains might stall, go from burgundy bacon to nothing? How many electric hearts could I stop? Big and worth being in as
Chicago felt, there might not be room for me here.

  Just like there isn’t room to tell you about it.

  “Ollie? I worry when you’re quiet. Are you with me?”

  I nodded.

  “Now I’m absolutely petrified.”

  The thing is, Moritz, there are people with wombles of their own. And I thought maybe if I met some of those Blunderkids, maybe I’d see how they fit into the world. Selfish again: learning their stories might put me in the world, too.

  I wasn’t asking to belong. I just wanted to be the good kind of tourist. The sort that doesn’t leave traces behind.

  “Can we go see Arthur, please?” I had to prove her wrong or right, Moritz.

  I’ll never know what she would say. She might have said go home. She used to lock the doors.

  But she knitted this beanie, too.

  We left Chicago two weeks ago. I know my storytelling is lagging behind the present day, but, Moritz, I’ll make it worth it. If I’m going to spend my life telling Blunder-stories, I’m going to do them justice. Especially when those stories beat the one I’m living . . .

  Moritz, Myriad would accept you in a heartbeat; you HAVE to apply. Even if you think you’re not creative (doofus!). Even if you think you can’t afford this.

  Even if it means waiting two years to meet me.

  We’ll be okay! We have our letters, and we have all these people filling the world around us, and we agreed that’s a good thing. (Is there a German word for “delayed gratification”? Delunderisch Gratifikationisch, or something?) Before I meet you, Moritz, I want to finally leave Rivendell. I want to be someone worth meeting. I have a lot to learn from the people of the world, Blunderkids and beyond.

  And yeah. Every time we meet a person, it’s a potential near-death experience.

  But, Moritz, I have to believe in near-life experiences, too.

  ~ Ollie UpandFree

  P.S. What gives? Send me Owen’s address! This is Campaign Blunderfind. OLLIE WANTS YOU! I am pointing my finger and my eyebrows are Pruwitt-level wacky. It’s not just about finding Blunderkids. I also have to ask Owen about your ear-kittens.

  chapter six

  THE ORCHID

  Oliver,

  Far be it from me to tell you how to tell a story. But remember, however you tell it, your story it remains. I have followed your antics for far too long to shift my affections from my heroic protagonist to some newcomer. No matter how interesting.

  Do not think for a second that you aren’t worthy of anyone. I am content to hear you rattle on about strangers only because it is you who rattles.

  If ever I suspect, even for a moment, that you are telling me about Arthur or any of the others to distract me from something that ails you? I will, as DJs say, SHUT THE CLUB DOWN. I won’t allow you to hide yourself in woods of words.

  There is more to the day I met Molly.

  I walked away from the gates of Myriad and Molly’s farewells, and the world grew only colder. Grimier. Crossing the canal into Ostzig, I’d entered a dystopian civilization. The eastern side of Kreiszig is half abandoned. Filled with vacant buildings made prey to foreclosure. Or made of stone so old it crumbles when touched. Frigid wind chilled my ears. Difficult, faced with soot-coated churches, tiptoeing under bridges so as not to wake the homeless, to maintain the sense of optimism I’d found in the auditorium. Myriad is a where far removed from my home.

  Night had arrived. Frau Pruwitt no longer haunted our kitchen.

  Father had fallen asleep at the table. I pulled a cold mug of coffee from his hand so he would not overturn it. The applications lay before him. I clicked at the pile.

  Father lifted his head as if I’d pulled a trigger.

  “Have you eaten?” He gathered the papers. Tucked them between the bread box and the refrigerator.

  “I’m not hungry. Thank you.”

  “Thirsty?”

  I shook my head. I wished, Ollie, he would become angry. Punish me like any parent should when his son is awful. My father is too understanding. It has been years since he rescued me from the laboratory. Years since I should have gotten better. Still, he tiptoes. Telling him about Molly would only make him tiptoe more.

  (My honesty is reserved for you, confidant.)

  Father put the kettle on. “Assam or oolong?”

  “Neither. Thank you.”

  “Owen stopped by to check on you. He left something.” Father plucked a tea bag and a cup from the shelf. “In your room.”

  An ache in my chest. How crestfallen Owen must have been, to catch the brother of a lie.

  “Will you ask me whether I’ve considered the applications, Father?”

  The water boiled before he answered. “I didn’t think you wanted to talk about that.”

  “Because you can sense my apprehension? I’m stinging you with it?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Don’t, Father.” Maybe I paled. “Don’t accommodate me. I don’t deserve it.”

  Father poured hot water into the cup. “You deserve it.”

  “I—”

  Father looked at me, necessary or not. His voice kind. “My son deserves whatever I can spare him.”

  “So you won’t get angry. Even if I stay at Bernholdt-Regen?”

  He stirred the water. “Not if you want to stay.”

  “Or if I actually wanted to go to, say, Hogwarts, you would not argue. If I wanted to go to that useless art school across town. You would not argue.”

  He set the mug on the table between us. “We would find a way, Moritz.”

  I laughed. A pathetic, squawking ibis.

  “Moritz?”

  “We can’t afford proper tea leaves. You darn your socks. Be reasonable.”

  “Do you want to go to . . . Hogwarts?”

  “Yes, I want to go to Hogwarts. But I never got a damn owl, did I? As ever, since you took me in. You just have to make do!”

  “What do you want, Moritz?”

  “Buy yourself some new socks. Stop bothering about me.”

  I swallowed half the tea in one angry gulp, scalding my tongue.

  Very quietly: “That tea was mine.”

  I set it down. Left the kitchen.

  A potted orchid waited on my desk. The note attached? Überraschung.

  I lay back on my bed. Pulled my headphones on. Checked messages.

  Fieke: “Brille. You twat! Owen’s just told me that you stood him up? You’d better have a fluffing good reason; he gives you the benefit of the doubt, but I don’t. For fluff’s sake! You can’t—”

  Delete.

  “I know you, you android, and you deleted that message. So again: this isn’t how you keep friends. For whatever reason, he wants to keep you, so you’d better step up and—”

  Delete.

  “Moritz. My brother fluffing loves you.”

  I did not delete that one.

  The final message came from Owen. I listened, dry-throated.

  “Hey, Moritz!” In the voice I had programmed for him. A sort of musical, youthful tenor. Perpetual exclamation marks. “Looks like you decided to surprise me today instead!”

  This is what I amount to. Heroic or subhuman, Ollie?

  “Frau Pruwitt told me you left angry! But we could have talked about it! You didn’t have to lie! You never asked me what I thought about you switching schools! You clam up!”

  I have programmed him to sound like you, Ollie. Or how I imagine you sound.

  “But I know if I had a chance to leave Bernholdt-Regen, you would send me on my way!”

  He knows this? I don’t even know this.

  “I’ll miss your frown! But Kreiszig isn’t that big!”

  I messaged him back:

  Some of the schools aren’t in Kreiszig.

  And, within seconds, the voice answered: “The world isn’t that big, either! You can send me photos of your wrinkly forehead from Russia! I’ll see the lines just fine!”

  I am laughing appropriately.

 
“Just give in already and write ‘Hahaha!’ Be like everyone else!”

  Never.

  “I would send you a winky face, but I’m pretty sure text-to-speech would just read ‘SEMICOLON D!’ Hahaha!”

  TTS wouldn’t even enunciate the semicolon. Send me a so-called winky face and I’ll only hear “D!”

  “D! D! D!”

  Laughing appropriately. And, Owen?

  “Yes?”

  Apologizing. Profusely.

  One can sense hesitation through machines. “Apologize in person!”

  In person?

  “You said ‘rain check’! That part better not have been a lie!”

  It wasn’t a lie.

  “D!”

  That hardly seemed wink-worthy.

  “That wasn’t a wink! It was a happy face! Tomorrow?”

  I bit my lip, hand hovering.

  Owen, do you ever feel what I’m feeling? As I’m feeling it?

  “D! Not sure what you mean! But I hope we’ll be ‘feeling it’ together really soon! D!”

  I cannot see blushing. I wish this emolocation worked both ways. If only I could understand the emotions of those around me. Through a phone, would it matter? Owen might have been laughing as he wrote me.

  Or crying.

  I clicked. Traced the outline of the binder that holds your letters. Peeled my headphones down to my neck and my goggles off my head. Rubbed hands against my long forehead. Despite the lateness of the hour, I pulled pen and paper from my desk drawer.

  I began writing you.

  Three minutes in, paper rustled outside my bedroom door. I stood, opened it. A teacup pinned the Myriad application to the floor. The heat of a teapot steamed the linoleum. All print portions of the application had been filled out in my father’s block-lettered handwriting. Only the essay portion remained.

  Father’s bedroom door was closed. He could be trying to sleep. He works Sunday mornings.

  I hoped he could sense some of the feelings seeping out of me.

  I took his gift inside. Poured myself a cuppa before turning back to my computer, replacing my headphones. The Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come for Free. Opened my word processor while Mike Skinner shouted at me.