Nowhere Near You

by Leah Thomas

  That was around when Ms. Arana handed me the printout of your letter about your acceptance to Myriad, where you said something like, “if you must leave your doorstep, so must I.”

  Maybe your feelings knocked people out. But they also knocked me back onto my feet.

  Moritz, I got off the couch.

  During the first weeks of standing and trying to be a living person again, I collected all the pet dander around the house into this massive pile. I wanted to stuff pillows with it. Trouble was, I didn’t really have fabric to sew the pillowcases, so I dug out my tattered sweatshirt, cut up in the ambulance, and set to work on repurposing that. I wanted to do a whole themed pillow set of Patronuses from Harry Potter, so I had to use my shirt and jeans as well.

  “You’re nuts,” said Brian when he got home and caught me sitting around in nothing but the bodysuit, stuffing fluff into the fourth pillowcase. “And you stink.”

  These were the first words he’d said to me since our lukewarm Christmas dinner, when he asked me to pass him the crescent rolls and Ms. Arana got toasted drunk on box wine and told me about her wedding day.

  “Yeahhh, I do. Truth is your mom set up a kiddie pool and a hose in the shed, but I avoid it most days.”

  “Go use it. God.”

  “Aye, there’s the rub. Your neighbor’s generator is real close, right across the fence, and so I can’t actually take off my hat to wash my head, because that sucks for either me, drowning in the tub, or them, unable to watch sport-ball games. So basically there’s this like patch of my head that I can’t wash, and it’s driving me crazy just thinking about it. No bath could ever be satisfying, you know? So why bother?”

  “I didn’t ask for your life story. I just told you that you stink.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know how you can smell anything in here, Mr. Ornery.”

  “Don’t be freakin’ rude. You’re a guest.”

  “Why? You’re rude, too. It’s not nihilism, it’s Brianism. Pretending to hate things.”

  He skulked away (skulking is like sulking but more action-packed).

  When I woke up the next morning, there was this weird sort of apparatus lying on the table in front of me—a little bristle brush that someone had attached to a long, thin wire. Maybe part of a cat toy? Attached was a note: Take a damn bath.

  Don’t tell Brian, but that brush did the trick.

  Days after Brian started talking to me, I spent hours tailing him around the house while he fed and cleaned up after things in kennels and cages. I figured learning the routine would give me something else to do, but when I tried to scoop kibble he knocked the cup out of my hand. “These are my pets. I’ll take care of them.”

  Speaking of taking care of things—you and Auburn-Stache may have ditched my life purpose, and yeah, so did I, but habits are still vampires.

  “Does Bridget know you’re a softie? Hey, are we going to give her heart back soon? Also, does your mom know about this situation? She started using a blender and I nearly blabbed about heart smoothies.”

  “All Mom cares about is never mentioning Dad ditched us. And I’m dealing with Bridget.” Brian locked himself in his bedroom. I guess he was playing video games. I could see sparking particles of electricity popping through the floor over my head.

  I finished stitching my pillows. Mom was better at embroidery and detail work, but my sewn-on otter didn’t look too shabby.

  What the hell was I going to do next?

  At the end of January, I reorganized the house from top to bottom because I woke up with my eyes full of dust and gunk and a lizard of some description licking my ear like nobody’s business for the umpteenth time and wondered where the heck his tank or aquarium was. Or maybe because I’d just told you about poison ivy. (You wanna be the pot or the kettle, Moritz?)

  I went gung ho on the shelves.

  I inhaled lots of weird crap that day and ended up getting distracted by the collection of glass bottles underneath the kitchen sink, because they were all different sizes, right, and I arranged them into a makeshift glockenspiel by flipping them upside down and wedging them into a broken chair frame. Instead of a mallet, I only had a spoon and I couldn’t tune the bottles, which was frustrating enough to set me back to cleaning up the house again.

  It was tricky finding places to put things where the dogs couldn’t get them. I jammed lizards and snakes back into cages they seemed to belong in. I felt a little guilty when I latched their lids down.

  “Because this is safer. Believe me.”

  I did my best to sweep all the dog food free of the carpet and out the front door. I used dish soap and water on just about everything and that seemed okay.

  When Ms. Arana woke up from her deep slumber, she just pulled out her earplugs and stared at the way I’d arranged the terrariums all along one wall of the living room. Next to the window, so that they could air out: a whole wall of animals.

  “Pet shop.” She blinked at her carpet as if she’d forgotten what color it was.

  “Charge admission!”

  “You swept the carpet. Why didn’t you vacuum?”

  “A vacuum? As in the absence of matter?”

  The laugh started at her shoulders and rattled her up and down.

  While she whipped up instant mashed potatoes and told me about workplace drama, she looked lost in her own kitchen. Probably because she didn’t have to dislodge any hissing creatures from her dishes!

  All Brian said when he came home was, “You didn’t go in my room, did you?”

  “No.” I’d broken into his room right from the day I started getting up again and noticed that the fishbowl was empty. He’s been carrying her heart around, probably in his backpack. Or in his brown paper lunch bags.

  Ms. Arana gave me a hug before she left for work.

  When she left, though, the house felt so empty. Mutterseelenallein.

  I undid all the latches.

  Brian came downstairs and hollered when he saw all the lizards stepping over each other.

  “God! Get a life!”

  “When can we go see Bridget?”

  That sent him back up the stairs again.

  After two more weeks of this, even Ms. Arana was done.

  Which brings us to yesterday, Moritz.

  I was whittling the legs of her hideous Swedish box-furniture coffee table into elaborate spiral-motif columns while she slouched on the sofa, trying to yank her eyes open by way of coffee, halfway dressed in scrubs patterned with Dr. Seuss characters. Fox in Socks peered out of her front pocket while she rested her feet on the table.

  “Ollie, as much as I like having a live-in musician/pet sitter/maid/interior decorator around, it’s time you get out more.”

  “But I need to be here if Auburn-Stache comes back.”

  “That’s the thing, honey: your doctor phoned me yesterday to—”

  I nearly cut myself with the Swiss Army knife. “He what?”

  “Let me finish. He called to say he’s going to be gone awhile longer. In the meantime, we’re happy to have you. Gracious knows I like the enthusiasm. But you can’t just sit in the house all—”

  “What’s keeping him?”

  “He didn’t say. Careful, honey. There’s only so much vinery a table like that can take.”

  I hacked away at it. “So I’ll just stay here?”

  “Always room for one more stray.”

  It was true. But it was also true that she wasn’t so great at looking after the strays after a while. She was busy, and sometimes dogs busted out of their kennels or month-old cat spew was discovered under pillows or—

  “Ollie, stop—!”

  The particle-board leg snapped in two, and the table keeled over, almost pulling Ms. Arana off the couch. She stood up, hands on her hips, coffee down her front. “That’s it! No more hangin’ around the house.”

  “You want me to leave?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “But if I can’t hang around the house, what do
I do?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? Go to school.”

  My jaw dropped. No, it plummeted. It cascaded.

  I protested, for obvious reasons.

  “You know about the bus! I’ll blow up the school!”

  “Honey, you’ve had your mourning period.” Ms. Arana riffled through the shoe closet. “Time to toss the black dress and get yourself back into gear!”

  “But I’ve never been to school before!”

  “You’re plenty clever. Didn’t you paint the constellations on the living room ceiling?”

  “Yeah, but only the ones for the last week of January. And only for this hemisphere! I don’t even know the charts for June to December! I’ll be a laughingstock!”

  She cackled. “Only here, Ollie.”

  “What about my beanie? People will think I’m a gangster!”

  “I’ve got that figured out.”

  “But—”

  She pulled something gray from under the shoes; Auburn-Stache handing me Mom’s hat all over again.

  “How long have I known you, Ollie?”

  “Not even three months! So—”

  “Stop.” I followed her as she waddled to the kitchen, smacking dust or dirt from the gray object. “My daddy used to say you could tell the measure of a man by how he tied his shoes.”

  “My dad couldn’t even tie his shoes. I’m doomed.”

  “And my daddy was an idiot. You know how you really can tell the measure of a man?”

  “With a yardstick?”

  “Ha! No. Look: folks who are good spend ninety percent of their time worrying that they might not be. Now, sit.”

  “I had Velcro shoes until I was seven.” I bit my lip and sat at the table; something squeaked beneath me and I had to pluck a kitten from the chair. “Did you know Velcro wasn’t invented until 1948, and it was like space-age technology or something, it was so new! And it was invented by a Swiss guy named—”

  “Oliver, you are going to school. Try this on for size.” She somehow wrangled the gray backpack onto my shoulders and then took a step back to look at me. “It’s one of Brian’s old ones. Don’t mind the Totoro face. He used to be really into that Japanime stuff.”

  “That must have been back when he actually liked things.”

  Ms. Arana lost all her enthusiasm at once. She turned away and made some crack about seeing a man in the bathroom. Then I was just standing awkwardly in the kitchen with that backpack on.

  I almost took it off, but it was easy to pretend. Pretend I was packing textbooks into it. Maybe sneaking in my phone. Like any other kid. I kept the backpack on and went to the living room. I pulled Bridget’s notebook out of my pile and tucked it into the bag. Even the sound of the zipper made me smile a little.

  I mean, going to school. Me, Moritz.

  Maybe I wouldn’t hurt anyone.

  The door in the hallway opened and slammed shut. Brian entered the living room, took one look at me in his old backpack and swore. “No way.”

  He carried his usual lumpy paper bag. “What you got there?”

  “Don’t worry about it. You really think that’s a good idea? I mean, really?”

  I didn’t want to answer that. “When are we going to go see Bridget?”

  “If you want to see her, go ahead. I’ve never stopped you.”

  “I’m not the one who can persuade her to take it back.” I adjusted the straps of the bag. Stupid. “And I don’t know how to get there.”

  “Electro-kid can’t read a damn map, I guess.”

  “Not really, no,” I said, grinning.

  “You’re just afraid to go outside.”

  “Not really, no.” Not grinning.

  “You’re afraid to go outside, but you want to go to school?”

  “Just because you fail all your classes doesn’t mean I will.”

  “No, you won’t bomb your classes. Just the generators, right?”

  I glared at him. “If you’re carrying it around all the time, why doesn’t Bridget have it yet? It’s Valentine’s Day. Perfect day to pass a heart out.”

  “I hope you don’t expect me to get on a bus with you.”

  “You could run to school,” I said, face burning, “except it’d take you ten years, slowpoke.”

  “Slowpoke? You’re not even good at insulting people. Go crawl back under whatever rock you lived under.”

  “I’m not the one who looks like a salamander.”

  “Are you four? That’s so lame.”

  “So why’s it getting your goat? Also, your dumb face matches your dumb hair.”

  “Fuck you very much,” said Brian, spinning out of the room just as Ms. Arana returned. She hollered as he left, but I didn’t stop to listen to her cussing. I made for the hallway and the front door and tried not to wonder whether the light flickered.

  When I opened the door, someone stood on the step, hand raised to knock.

  And because that sort of cliffhanger might make you want to write me back immediate-fluffing-ly, I’ll leave it there, Moritz.

  Feel better, and don’t say you’re dying. Just write me, okay?

  chapter twenty-four

  THE STOOP

  Okay. I’m going to pretend your silence is because you’re sick of my terrible pacing, and not because you’re dying somewhere somehow, Moritz. All I know for sure? You dropped an atom bomb of a letter on me, all about emolocation doom and earache doom, and then went grave quiet on me.

  We both hate silence, okay?

  So here. I’m shouting for both of us!

  On Ms. Arana’s doorstep:

  “Ha!” said the man. “I knew it would be you.”

  It took me a few seconds to figure out who the hell this guy was. He was tall. He had a crazy snaggletooth. This almost perfect smile but just one incisor chipped past his bottom lip. It wasn’t until I looked right at his eyes that I recognized him—he’d been wearing a mask before.

  The blue-eyed doctor from the hospital.

  “Wharton.” He put his hand out, but I noticed he sort of tensed up like he didn’t know what would happen if I touched him. “Going somewhere, Kilimanjaro?”

  “That’s a bad nickname. And yeah, I’m pretty much storming out in a rage.”

  I ducked under his arm with that backpack bouncing on my back, tiptoe-hopping over the ice. He didn’t call after me. But I didn’t turn around just in case he was looking hungry again.

  God, the air outside was so clean, Moritz. I felt like the world was an oxygen mask, making me woozy. Snow reflected light into my eyes. Moonwalking.

  In the neighborhood, I passed a few kids making snowmen in the front yard. An old man sitting in a lawn chair in his driveway, people watching in his snow pants. Someone doing a futile snow-shoveling routine.

  Bridget’s house couldn’t be far. I could definitely walk there, no biggie.

  After an hour of wandering aimlessly around the subdivision, fingers chilling to needles, I kind of realized I’d been optimistic. Back when I lived in the woods, I never, ever got lost. There were just some things that were huge tells to me: hit the evergreen patches along the creek and turn left into the red pine grove near the fallen birch, and you’d find the driveway. But I didn’t have any bearings here. Everywhere, clones of homes spilled electric fog into the evening, electric fog blurred by snow.

  Whenever cars crept behind me, I got to the far side of the sidewalk. I waited for someone to stop and yell, “That’s the rascal who took out the power! Dagnabbit!” If that happened, I didn’t know what I’d do.

  Definitely not take my hat off. Definitely not. For years what kept my doofus head safe was the pointed roof of a triangular cabin, Moritz, and then rows of trees and an electric fence and a power line. I was so stupid to think that suddenly I could just go from the woods into the world without needing a new roof. If a hat’s all I’ve got, I have to keep it close. Just because I’m in the world doesn’t mean a part of me won’t always be a hermit.

  Finally, I saw the haze
of that stupid phone booth. That, and one or two houses on this corner were completely dark: the empty houses hadn’t had their power boxes fixed after my freak-out. I pulled my hat down lower.

  Next thing I knew I was on the right street. That Stop sign where Brian had loomed. And there—the house!

  I crunched up the snowy sidewalk to the spotless porch. I held my hand up in front of the door. Right then, someone opened it: a small blond girl. She wore a tiny tux and a festive bow tie. Her feet clicked when she stopped short.

  Strange meetings under strange circumstances, Moritz.

  “Dad! Someone’s here!”

  “Sorry. I’ve got the wrong house. I was looking for Bridget.” I turned around, but she followed me out, tap shoes clicking.

  “I remember you! You were in the ambulance with me! I’m Tricia.”

  I stopped. The ice squeaked underfoot. “I’m Oliver. People call me Ollie.” I noticed her sling. “Um, look. Look. I’m so sorry.”

  The freckled man from the hospital waiting room stepped up behind her, duffel bags on his arms. “We’ll be late for the recital! Your father’s already— Oh, hello. Who’s this, Tricia?”

  “He was in my ambulance!”

  His expression softened. “Hope you’re hangin’ in there.”

  “Yeah. I’m good.”

  “You live nearby? You and your family should come by for dinner.”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “He’s looking for Bridget.”

  “Across the street.” He pointed. “You can usually catch her running laps around this time. Wait on our stoop, if you’d like.”

  “You can come to the recital. I can’t dance, but they let me wear the costume anyhow.”

  “It’s totally an awesome costume.”

  “Nice meeting you,” said Tricia’s father.

  They bustled into the car and waved at me before pulling away.

  I wonder if I should have fessed up. But they were “hangin’ in there.” Sometimes people are happier not knowing things, Moritz.