Nowhere Near You

by Leah Thomas

  “Ahuh. Hey, man. I just work here.”

  “Why do you need sunglasses?”

  “Prescription lenses. Doesn’t matter if my eyes keep healing if they were crappy eyes to begin with. Myopic all over the place. And they’re different sizes, too. Quick healing doesn’t make you purty, guy. But watch this.” Arthur got up and loped his way once around the gallery, scanning the placards, then sat down right next to me again. “Point at some shit.”

  I pointed at a tapestry on the far wall.

  “That’s a Franco-Flemish piece called Tapestry (Moose Hunt and Falconry from a Forester Series), circa 1523. Wool and silk, silt and double dovetailed weave.”

  “No way.” I pointed to a cannon.

  “Oh that? That baby came from Normandy in 1582. Belonged to a Master Fromont.”

  He can’t have looked at the placards for more than a few seconds each, Moritz! But if the neurons in your head heal on a constant basis, what you could end up with is a perfect memory. (There are things I’ve forgotten about Mom already, like the smell of her hair after she worked in the garden, the way she sneezed.)

  Finally, I pointed at a bust of some man wearing a ruff.

  “Ahuh. That is Ugly Motherfluffer, by Johnson P. Dick. Ahuh.”

  “Art.”

  “The highest, man.”

  “Could you grow limbs back? Attack on Titan–style? Like a salamander tail?”

  “Here, chop off my arm.”

  A middle school girl in a uniform overheard him; her eyes bulged and she scurried to rejoin her class.

  “Erm . . . maybe later.”

  “I’m also totally wearing a wig. My hair grew so fast I had my whole head lasered to forever-bald.”

  I reached right out and tugged on a tuft—

  “Gotcha. That shit’s just hair.” Arthur’s guffaw frightened a few other kids forward, echoed off old iron.

  I laughed with him. “Shoulda guessed. Who picks a brownish mop wig? You go eighteenth-century pomp or you go home!” I leaned back, looked at him in all his gawky-as-hell glory. “Behold!”

  Arthur blinked. “Behold what?”

  “You. You’re amazing.” You still believe we can’t be heroic, Moritz? I didn’t even care about anatomical impossibilities, because this was classic Marvel nonsense, here.

  “Sure, it sounds amazing. Especially when someone like you says it, all enthusiastic and shouty!” His lazy smile became a wince. “There are downsides, guy. My bones heal so quick sometimes they heal the wrong way. And to reset them—”

  “You’d have to break them again?” I blinked. “Ouch, Arthur.”

  “Shitty city.” He wiggled warped fingers. “Beats being grounded. Bad enough Beau stopped letting me go to school.”

  For the first time, Moritz, Arthur seemed less than cool. His eyes locked onto the trebuchet again.

  “Um, want me to help?” I tried to forget the Bubble Wrap crunch.

  “You a doctor now?”

  “Nope. But I read a lot of books. And I have fingers that aren’t scary Twixs. I have to help you, fellow hermit. That’s why I’m out of the woods! My quest!”

  “You don’t have to. Seems like you have enough problems, you know?”

  “I’m fine.” Nobody ever believes this, which is annoying. “So how do we do this?”

  He sized me up. “Reach into my pants, will you?”

  “What?”

  “Ahuhuh. My pocket, beanie guy.” He gestured with elbows at his right cargo pants pocket, and yeah, there were a bunch of thin steel rods with holes in them—the same kind that made up the axles of that flying drone—a screwdriver, and masking tape. “Make splints.”

  Arthur gave me his hand, and it felt like trying to save a bird, like the ones that used to end up hitting our cabin’s windows. “Right. You gonna scream?”

  “Nah, man. You?”

  “Maybe!” I reached for the tip of his middle finger, trying to decide how much pressure it would take to break a chalk bone, and—pop!—the thing crunched in my hand.

  “I didn’t even—”

  “Never mind, just put it back, hey?” I did what I was told, like handling pasta noodles. I pushed it into place, taped a rod against each side of it.

  “If your bones are this fragile, how come the weight you put on your legs every time you stand up doesn’t shatter you?” If I wanted a distraction, Arthur did, too.

  “Well, you’re, what, allergic to electricity but fine during lightning storms? Fine with a brain full of electrical shit?” This laugh was not his usual one. “We’re all freaks.”

  “Don’t say that.” I scratched my head, surveying my handiwork.

  Arthur guffawed so hard this time a grown man fled the scene. “Beanie guy, why are there three joints in my thumb now?”

  “Oops.”

  Arthur wiped his nose on his shoulder. “It’s cool, UpandFree. Stick me with the modern art. Ahuh.” He stood all the way up and up. “Let’s see actual shit, hey? Magritte was definitely on something. Imagine having an apple for a face.”

  “I’ve actually never imagined that!”

  Minutes later, Arthur waited for me near the entrance to a special exhibit. Huddles of people gathered around surreal art, more people I’d never meet. I’m realizing that’s something normal people have to live with, too. “This should make up for the Tearslaughter. And I thought that room sucked last time.”

  “What was in there before?”

  “Videos of clowns playing with toilet paper. No lie, beanie guy.”

  Broken fingers and all, Arthur faces the toilet-paper clowns of the world. Maybe I can, too. Arthur’s showing me that the world doesn’t mind weird. What difference does being weird make, Moritz, if we can do everything anyone else does, in our own weird way? If we can snort like immature assholes at some great paintings (especially this one featuring a woman with boobs where eyes should be)?

  The best thing we saw, if I had to pick, was a painting called The Pleasure Principle.

  It’s this portrait of man in a suit, a man with an orb of light where his head should be. Just endless golden light, and anything could be under the light, an eyeless face or maybe a face like Arthur’s or a face with two mouths. Anything. Didn’t matter what was under the light, only that one body was too small to contain all that beautiful, scary brightness.

  Moritz, why didn’t you tell me up front that you’re against looking for the Blunderkids? I feel like you just told me “rain check.” I knew you weren’t exactly pumped about my life purpose. But I didn’t realize you loathed the idea. Now who’s keeping secrets?

  If you’d told me, maybe I would’ve stopped sending you stories you’re not interested in reading. Do you even want to hear about Arthur? If I’m the only part you care about, I mean, I might as well send you sticky notes with my name scratched on them.

  Or maybe I could just talk about weather?

  It’s snowing outside today, but it’s hot in the room I’m writing from. There are lots of terrariums in here, reptiles on heating rocks lying under UV lamps, making the place smell greasy somehow. I’ve been alone for weeks, in the room I’m writing from. Is that the story you want?

  Moritz . . . we have to be honest, right? At least with each other.

  So, honestly? It feels like one of the branches of our friendship just got hairline fractured.

  chapter ten

  THE SCHOOL

  Oliver,

  I am accustomed to the pains in my chest. I am accustomed.

  But my stomach churns now. You and I. Though we have always been very different people, we have always fought for common ground. If I have compromised that, I apologize.

  Please do not misinterpret me. You are my favorite storyteller, and I will hear anything you wish to tell me. Honestly. Only lend me sympathy, Ollie, where the laboratory is concerned.

  Perhaps we should kill this ugliness. Revert to a more formal friendship. Find our footing again. Siezen, not duzen. The world is opening up to us, Olli
e, a well at our feet. We will need each other. We must be steadfast.

  I’ve tripped already.

  On the second day of the new year, another confounded bus deposited me outside my new school, half queasy and wholly anxious.

  Molly waited by the Myriad gates, as she’d promised in a message. Earmuffs, muff, faux-fur collar. A girl from another era. An era of tea and movie musicals. Parasol tucked into the belt around her peacoat. Affectations suit her. I did not have my cane, did not know what to do with my hands. Until she interlocked her arm with mine.

  “There you are! I’ve told everyone a prince is coming.”

  “You haven’t.”

  “Of course not. But I put in a good word for you. I really do want to think the best of everyone.” Perhaps because she knew I would hear it, she smiled wide in the back. Her second mouth is honest, Oliver. Something reassuring: if she can feel my emotions, I can see hers.

  “Now we take the plunge. On the count of three. One, two”—she pulled us across the frosted entrance—“three! Still breathing, Prince Moritz?”

  I straightened my goggles, stepped forward at her urging. Aisles of trees with icicle ornaments. The campus, a separate entity from the wintry city. The cold lessened here. Lessened by her.

  Everywhere I went across meringue-snowed lawns during my first day, Molly accompanied me. She distracted me from my incessant social ineptitude. Before I could finish spitting garbled sentences, Molly would pat me on the shoulder as if I were the wittiest creature imaginable. Others believed her. They downright adored her.

  Molly dominated campus like there was no pleasure greater. She aspires to be a stage actress. Were it not for that second mouth, I would believe her to be the most confident creature that ever lived. I could sense anxiety only when her back teeth clenched. When the lips became chapped and she wetted them with her second tongue.

  The scent of cherry lozenges.

  At Myriad, students pick two focus areas. I enrolled primarily in Literatur courses. And in Musik. Vocal, not instrumental. I had an elective hour to fill. I am no actor or painter. I scheduled a block of Stagecraft. All these courses feel like electives.

  My favorite course? Music Interpretation. Students create their own musical arrangements and perform them during an assigned hour every other week. This is no glee club—this is a critical audience. Fortunately, because of experience garnered at the Sickly Poet, I survived my introductory performance. By the time I entered the third verse of “The Sounds of Science,” I received approving nods from Chloe-Bowie.

  My least favorite course? Stagecraft, where Klaus the curmudgeon dwelled. First impressions carry weight. His was less than fond. He couldn’t fathom Molly’s interest in me.

  “We’re, ah, friends.” I smiled, warmly as I could, backstage in our first class together. Other students already at work, smearing paint across a canvas backdrop.

  “Don’t you smirk.” Sawdust speckled Klaus’s hair; I could hear the hiss of it slipping down strands. “Friends from where? I’ve never heard of you, and I’ve known her for years. And what can you even build with those arms? If I’d wanted a stick person, I’d have drawn one.”

  “I’m sure you’ll teach me a great deal.”

  “Don’t try it. I’m straight.”

  I puffed up my chest. “I wasn’t—”

  “Just get painting the grass at the bottom of the skyline. Paint’s in the storage closet.”

  “Paint it?”

  “Greens, browns, and swooping textures. Got it?”

  “I’m, ah, color-blind.”

  Klaus cursed, threw up his hands. Walked away, barking at the skyscraper painters.

  He treats me as a rival. No one else has ever considered me that.

  Come early afternoon, Molly showed me to an office beyond a frost-covered tulip garden. In the overheated building, Molly introduced me to the headmistress, a frazzled, bespectacled woman named Laurel Welter. She smiled at my goggles. Told me she used to wear those to steampunk conventions.

  “You must do things like this while you’re young so that you can do them even better while you’re old. We’ve arranged to give you a proper tour of the campus during lunch hour.”

  “Molly has been marvelous in that regard.”

  “A student has volunteered to cover for her. Molly has an audition.”

  “Really?”

  Molly smiled on both sides. “I’m trying out for the Year Two production of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. Frau Welter, who’s offered to show Moritz around?”

  “Max Fassner. He insisted.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he did.” Her downturned back mouth.

  Outside, the crunch of snow outlined an incongruous hole in the sole of one of her furry boots. Molly sighed. “I did warn you about Max, didn’t I?” She patted down her curls. “Keep your head on, Prince. He’s unsavory.”

  “I remember.” I recalled the boy in the prep uniform.

  But what harm could he do during a campus tour?

  I met him a few hours later and saw he wore his shirt halfway unbuttoned. Despite the chill. Saw he grinned at me in a manner distinctly predatory.

  I understood what harm he might do.

  “Moritz,” he purred, “let me show you things.”

  “No, thank you,” I replied before I could think.

  Max grabbed my hand and pulled me forward down the path and through the gardens. He led me directly away from the crowded mess hall. Into deep snowbanks. The frozen top layer snagged my pants. Numbed my toes in my boots. Max dragged me underneath wisps of a barren willow tree and pushed me against the trunk.

  I knew he had no interest in showing me the campus.

  Of course I could have dodged his chapped lips. Just as I dodge fists and projectiles. I could have, Ollie.

  I allowed Max Fassner to kiss me. I did not protest.

  I can’t say why. Perhaps because he was warm and the air was very cold. Perhaps because the tension in his body was not quite the same as the tension of a body about to hurt me.

  “I’m not,” I told him. “By which . . . I mean to say, I have a boyfriend.”

  Max took one step back. Mustered a grin. I might call it entirely shit-eaten.

  “Not for long.” Max bowed.

  I stood alone in the snow until his departing footsteps faded. My vision dulled with no echoes to ignite it, apart from the creaking of icicles in the branches.

  I put my fingers on my lips. No denying Max has a tongue.

  A tongue Owen does not have, even if his breath against my chest was soft when we slept together. A tongue Owen did not have, when he whimpered himself awake.

  Tell me I’m disgusting, Oliver. Won’t you let me rot?

  After two rain checks, I met the Abends at the Sickly Poet. Busy on a winter’s night. Owen and Fieke sat at our usual table. Owen tapping into his phone, Fieke scowling at the woman onstage currently butchering a rendition of “Not Waving but Drowning” by dumping vases of water over her head after each line (there are Tearslaughters everywhere). I could see every tiny piece of that room in the clinking of glasses and the brief bursts of verse as the woman onstage recited the poem again, this time backward. I saw them when they could not see me.

  Fieke said my name. I halted between tables and the bar.

  “I’m not bothered what Moritz will think, actually. I’m bothered about you. You’ve spent so much time on that fluffing forum this past week. You prefer it to reality.”

  I heard Owen flick his fingers at her. Signing too fast for me to comprehend, but I could sense his annoyance.

  “If you think this is going to get you closer to him somehow—wake up. He doesn’t give a shit. He’ll think you’re an idiot or he’ll think you’re being cute. He doesn’t take you seriously.”

  Owen’s grip on the phone tightened. The dreadful thing: this made me want to hold him. As though he really were something that needed coddling. Something cute.

  I felt another crack, som
ewhere near my sternum, somewhere in our branches.

  Fieke narrowed her eyes and spun around to face me—had she felt it, too?

  I pursed my lips and slid in next to Owen. He squeezed my knee. A fragile smile.

  “Hey,” said Fieke, not kindly.

  How is it? Owen signed. An instant ago, I had wanted to pull him close and bury the thought of Max. His damnable tongue. Now . . .

  There are many actors at Myriad. I tried to mimic Molly. But the undercurrents of everything I feel escape my jurisdiction. Not all of us are so adept as you at wearing cheerful masks, Ollie.

  “It is a remarkable change of pace. Everyone is terrible—terribly friendly. And very musical. You would appreciate that aspect, Owen.”

  He stared. I cleared my throat.

  “I’ve heard Myriad is like a fluffing queer candyland. Take your pick of boys,” Fieke said.

  Owen picked up his phone. Tapped away. His rhythm trapped on a screen, illuminating something inaudible.

  “I didn’t find any company I prefer to nights with the Abends.”

  Fieke bit her lip. “Don’t try so hard. Just promise you won’t be buggering other boys this year, and we’ll be just cake.”

  “I will promise no such thing.” Affronted, Ollie, and who would not be?

  The tapping stopped.

  “Surely I’ve earned more trust than that. Leaving Bernholdt-Regen doesn’t make me any less your friend. You encouraged me to go.”

  “Methinkeths he doth protesteth too mucheth.”

  “I’m not the only one trying too hard,” I snapped.

  “No, but you’re clicking at the end of your sentences.” Sneering. “That’s your tic, yeah? What’s got you so nervous, exactly? What is it about the topic of infidelity—or was it what you heard when you were nosing into our conversation?”

  “Beg pardon. I didn’t ask to be discussed behind my back. Our relationship is not your business.” I reached for Owen’s hand. He pulled away and tapped, tapped.

  “I introduced you! It’s been my fluffing business from the start!”

  “In lieu of having no life of your own to mismanage, Fieke.”