Nowhere Near You

by Leah Thomas

  Maybe that’s the sort of logic Auburn-Stache raised me by.

  I sat on the stoop and waited.

  A sprinkling of snow had fallen by the time Bridget appeared. She wasn’t wearing enough clothing to be warm: track shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt, a headband holding back her hair. She nearly passed the house moving like some machine. The street lamps lit her yellow.

  I called her name, feeling like a dingus, and to my amazement she didn’t slow down—she just stopped and maintained her balance.

  “Um, hey. It’s great to see you!”

  “Is it,” she said.

  “Um. I wanna talk to you. But let’s maybe get out of the road so that I don’t go exploding things and whatnot?”

  “You’re smiling,” she said, “but you don’t feel happy.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Trust Bridget to deliver the facts. “I have something for you. Valentine’s present.”

  “I don’t want it. I tell Brian every day.” She led me instead to her own front step. She didn’t ask me to sit, but I did anyhow, partly because when you’re cold it’s best to keep your body compact and partly because I wanted to have a real talk with her.

  “Not your heart.” I pulled that backpack off and pulled out her notebook. “Your story. It wasn’t my favorite thing to read. You skipped a lot and I kind of wish you’d written at least one entry with your heart in. I bet that would be some amazing writing—”

  “You can stop talking.”

  “‘Can’ is a great word. But I wanted to ask. I know writing’s therapeutic, but not for people who don’t feel things. I’ve had a lot of time to sit and think, and I’ve been wondering: Why did you write that for me?”

  Did I detect the slightest trace of a facial expression?

  “Okay, fine. Second question: Why’d you save my life?”

  “I knew you had my heart.”

  “Aha! But that’s what’s been bugging me! I didn’t have it; Brian did. If you always know where your heart is, you only needed to save Brian. Besides, you were all ‘I don’t care’ about your heart, so why save it at all? Finally, after that you also knocked me unconscious so that I wouldn’t short out that ambulance.” I rubbed my hands together; the rubber palms sort of stuck. “You do give craps about the people around you.”

  She shrugged.

  “Maybe you aren’t missing feelings when you take your heart out. Maybe you just feel things differently. Like in your own way?”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “Nope, you’re right.”

  Bridget surveyed me for a long, quiet minute. “You came outside. And ran away from Brian’s house.”

  I flapped my hand at her and got to my feet. “More sort of wandered. It’s a thing I do. You’re the one who runs. I dunno. Maybe one day you’ll let someone catch you?”

  She blinked. “Poetic nonsense.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, that was pretty bad. Nobody should take advice from a guy who didn’t leave the woods till he was fifteen.”

  Like talking to a brick wall, Mom used to say.

  Or not.

  Because the next second, Bridget said: “You didn’t leave the woods so you never had the world. But I never had a mother. We’re all missing things.”

  “Are you . . . are you trying to make me feel better? You?”

  “Only stating facts.”

  “Really?” To me that sounded almost like she was downplaying herself, and that reminded me of someone else. “Hey, do you know Arthur? With the chalky bones?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve met him. A few times during moves.”

  My grin got real. “Do you talk to him? Like, does he answer your letters?”

  “I don’t talk to him.”

  I gaped. “You don’t talk to any of the kids like us? The Blunderkids?”

  “I don’t talk to other people.”

  “Yeah, but that’s other people. We weirdos have to stick together!”

  “No.” Even stare. “I don’t talk to other people. You’re still other people, too.”

  And I could only blank-stare her back, because it seemed like Bridget had just somehow hit on something obvious and genius and true, something sort of like what Arthur tried to tell me on the train, something I keep missing. I’m still mulling it over, Mo.

  I felt a twinge in my neck: an approaching car. It sputtered and spat and made me think a fire truck was on its way, but no. The black smog of a beater stopped directly in front of the house and Wharton peered out at me.

  “Kilimanjaro! Please get in the car.”

  “No thanks, Creeps McGee. Get that engine looked at. The smog is thick with this one.”

  His eyes widened. “Really?”

  “Yeah, really.”

  “No, you can see that? How? What does it look like?”

  I started walking along the sidewalk. He crept alongside me.

  “An unsolved mystery!”

  Someone leaned over Wharton in the driver’s seat. “Get in, honey!” Ms. Arana. Her exasperation swayed me into the backseat. I waved at Bridget as we pulled away.

  She lifted her hand, Moritz.

  I squinted through the electric smog of the car.

  “Get out of my face,” said Brian.

  “Bridget actually waved. So why didn’t you say ‘hi’?”

  He was doing his skulking act. Definitely not looking out the window at Bridget’s house. “Fluff off.”

  “Brian! Apologize!”

  I held up my hands. “Don’t do me any favors.”

  Brian rolled his eyes. I think. It was hard to see in the smog. “Don’t worry.”

  “You two have to start getting along. You’re going to be classmates soon.”

  Be still, stupid heart.

  “Brian told me I’d blow up the school,” I said, “and he’s right. Also, there’s the whole I-don’t-have-any-documentation thing. I’m the nameless man.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” said Wharton.

  “Whatever happened to doctors just being people who prescribed medicine?”

  Brian hit me on the shoulder. Not hard, but it was a surprise.

  “Shut up and say thank you.”

  The Aranas’ house stands out now because of the terrariums in the window, the slow snakes and silent lizards against the glass. Opposite of Tearslaughter.

  Dr. Wharton brought out his briefcase. Inside were these pamphlets about a program called School Daze, which yeah, was a bad pun. The School Daze program is a sort of exchange student organization for kids with diseases. Seriously.

  Basically, a doctor belonging to the program becomes your sponsor and monitors your health. This doctor works with schools to allow terminally ill kids into classrooms on unusual schedules. To give them a chance at normal school life. When kids have to visit hospitals out of state for months at a time, they can attend classes at whatever local schools take part in the program. They can show up on whichever days they aren’t coughing up their lungs and they don’t do makeup work. (I’m not being tactful.)

  “You want me to pretend to be terminally ill? Isn’t that kind of morally deplorable?”

  We sat in the living room. Dr. Wharton didn’t say anything about the collapsed coffee table, but he did seem a little bothered by all the creepy-crawlies. I asked him if he wanted to hold François the Tarantula. He said “Nope” before I even hit the question mark. Brian didn’t stick around for the talk; he super-skulked up the stairs.

  “It’s a program for students who can’t have the same school experience as most kids. The way I see it, honey, you fit the bill.”

  Wharton watched my face. I watched him back.

  “What’s in this for you?”

  Wharton let shine that snaggletooth. “If I sponsor you, you’ll have biweekly appointments. You’ve got to let me test your electro-sensitivity as I see fit.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Anyone else getting mad-scientist vibes from this guy? If going to school means I have to get needles stuck in me, I
’ll stay a delinquent. Thanks.”

  Wharton put a little crease between his eyes. “But don’t you want to get better?”

  “You can’t cure awesome.” I clenched my fists.

  “Not cured. Better. More in control. Doesn’t that appeal to you?”

  He almost had me. “If there were ways for that to happen, Dr. Auburn-Stache would have figured it out.”

  Wharton leaned forward. “Are you sure he ever wanted you to get better? That doctor of yours? How do you know he wasn’t the one experimenting?”

  “He wasn’t.” I remembered that swooping needle in the hospital. The lamp next to my armrest flickered. Wharton didn’t say anything, but those eyes of his definitely noticed.

  Soon, Ms. Arana edged him out the door, all “We’ll let you know by next week.” I stood in the hallway, feeling totally at a loss. Arana didn’t tell me what to do, either. She just squeezed my arm on her way to the kitchen.

  “Hey.” I looked up; Brian was sitting on the staircase, peeking down between the bannisters with Nyanko-Senpai, a fat calico cat, spread across his lap. “What did Bridget say to you?”

  “You coulda told me you’ve been trying to give her heart back. Every day?”

  “Today I tried to pass it to her at lunch. She told me she’d start a food fight with it.”

  I couldn’t help it; I laughed. “No way she said that.”

  “No. We don’t even talk. We don’t eat together. I fucked up. I always fuck up.”

  “Something else. I think she started caring about her life again after you befriended her.”

  A creak on the stairs; Nyanko rolled off his knees. “Whatever.”

  “I think you have to catch her. Don’t give up.”

  “Like you can talk. You shouldn’t let some loser stop you from going to school.”

  What kind of loser calls himself a loser? An . . . antiloser?

  I spent the next few days not thinking about it. But I kept coming back to your last letter. The “dying” thing. I circled that in pen so many times that I tore a hole in the paper.

  Over dinner yesterday, I told Ms. Arana that I wanted to take Wharton up on his deal. She dropped a burrito right past my plate into my lap. Three to five dogs gobbled it up while she hugged me.

  Look, Mom. I’m going to school.

  Moritz, my selfishness won out. I’ve decided to go to school. Not because I’m not scared of hurting people—I always will be. But maybe I have to risk it if I ever want to get better. Especially if I might be dying? If maybe I am the perfect candidate for School Daze? (I can’t sleep, Moritz.)

  I have packed and unpacked my backpack seventeen times so far.

  Never thought my hands shaking could have to do with a good lie.

  I hope you’re feeling better. I hope writing all this will make you write enough back to even us out.

  I miss you.

  ~ Ollie

  chapter twenty-five

  THE RABBIT

  Ollie! Did I not say I was crippled by an ear infection? Patience!

  Consider: How could I read a thing when I cannot hear a thing? Your words stacked up on my nightstand. The only way to absorb them would be for someone to etch them into my arm. I could not write you. I could not see paper. Let alone read your letters and respond on blind-handed home keys. I couldn’t even be read to.

  There were days when I couldn’t be sure whether I was alone. Father’s hand was often on my arm. He spelled out short messages to me. The doctor suggested it might get worse before it got better. Perhaps a recently ruptured eardrum. Severe “swimmer’s ear.” Had I your temperament, Ollie, I may have laughed. No one had even tried to drown me this time!

  I woke up on the third day insensible. I rely on ears for both sight and sound, and an infection deprived me of both, leaving me lesser than paramecium in the sea. I had only my fingertips to help me stumble out of bed. I called out for Father. Did not realize he was already beside me until he was helping me back and humming softly into my less-encumbered left ear. He tucked me in, traced Schlafen—“sleep”—into my arm. Then also: Ich bin hier. “I am here.”

  That was such a reminder that Owen was not. That Owen would probably not trace into my arm again. That I had hurt him, predictable as anything.

  I gasped and gasped as though something crawled out of me; hands fell on me. There were vibrations. Later, Father told me that the other patient in the room started gasping when I did. They left the other beds empty after that.

  I’ve had three visitors apart from Father.

  First came Frau Pruwitt. I knew her fingernails. She told me to take better care of myself. Angrily scribbled that I should help at the library even if she had moved on. I could hardly speak.

  Second: on the third day, Father had to work. The boy who brought me would miss school and stay in his stead. I would not have known Klaus was even there had he not propped his feet up on the bed midway through the day. Had he not smelled of wood shavings.

  The third visitor came while Klaus was there. I sense the world through my ears but also through movement. Klaus stood when she stomped through the doorway.

  The visitor took my wrist, briefly. Perhaps angrily. A familiar hand, a girl’s hand. Not Molly’s. This was the girl who was there last time I was in a hospital. Could I have forgotten her?

  Boot steps, and Fieke was gone.

  Eventually, the infection waned. Soon I saw the hospital walls. The dust in the crevices. As if I had opened my eyes. I clicked in all directions. So relieved to have what I’d lost. What I’d taken for granted.

  I heard Klaus coming down the hallway. I scrabbled for my goggles on the nightstand. Cursed when they fell to the floor, held my hand over my face when he entered.

  “Klaus.”

  He scowled. “Don’t bother. I’m not going to run screaming, batboy. And before you even start, don’t bother with ‘thanks,’ either.”

  I clasped my hands on the bedspread. “Thank you.”

  “What did I just say? You never listen to me, Farber.” He leaned against the windowsill and folded his arms. “I guess you’re too busy listening to everything else.”

  I nodded.

  Frown lines deepened. “Oh, don’t be a martyr. You’re as bad an actor as you are a stagehand. If you just owned up to things you feel and dealt with them, you wouldn’t end up crippling yourself and a handful of others whenever you sniffle.”

  That was something you might have said.

  “You are not me. I quite literally cannot control what I feel.”

  “You think other people can?” A barking laugh. “Do you think I like falling for a girl who pays more attention to some whiny gay kid than she does to me?”

  I straightened up. “Where is Molly? Busy, I expect.”

  “I don’t know.” The tension returned to his shoulders.

  “A safe assumption. She’s always busy.”

  “I don’t know,” grumbled Klaus. “She hasn’t been in school since the play.”

  I set your letters down on the nightstand. Father had brought them for me. And beneath the stack of them lay my letter from Auburn-Stache, Ollie, though I had not asked him to bring it.

  “She hasn’t?”

  “Something happened. Maybe something you can explain. I was useless.”

  I remembered the muttering. “What was it, Klaus?”

  “She started screaming. Screaming with her mouth closed.”

  While I was in the foyer knocking intimate friends unconscious, Molly performed her heart out as Beatrice, playing the mad mother, Betty the Loon, with scene-stealing grace. The suspense rose. Imagine the audience: rapt, leaning forward in their threadbare seats.

  “Molly doesn’t think so,” Klaus told me, “but she really could make it as an actress.”

  He saw through her confident facade. He already saw her second mouth.

  The climax of the play arrived. The actress playing Ruth, the daughter with epilepsy, let go a bloodcurdling scream. Came to the fore of
the stage. The audience watched her hold the corpse of the prop rabbit up before she dropped it and collapsed.

  “All this was scripted. I saw the dress rehearsal. Beatrice is supposed to sit back and let Ruth seize. But instead Molly got up.”

  Molly ran forward. Picked up the rabbit. Held it to her chest. The other actors waited for her lines. She didn’t say them. Ruth’s actress kept seizing. Molly stared at the rabbit corpse.

  “That’s when the screaming started,” Klaus said. “No one knew where it came from.”

  A scream that tore through the rafters and the wonderful acoustics. A wall-scoring wail. Molly fled the stage. Klaus’s crew waited a moment and then let fall the curtain. The audience believed this was the play’s actual finale. They applauded. That screaming continued. Beyond the curtain. Perhaps it inspired a standing ovation.

  The scream trailed Molly as she fled the auditorium through the wings. Klaus followed. An ambulance out front. Police in the foyer. He left through a fire exit. The screaming had not stopped but faded. As if the mouth had run out of breath.

  “I would have caught her, probably. But in the gardens, this agonizing waft of air stopped me dead. Air full of hurt. Farber all over. That’s what I felt that night I found you in the giantess. You need to learn to let that out gradually.”

  “You’re an expert on such matters.”

  Klaus shrugged. “I say it like it is. You’re repressed.”

  I let go a laugh of my own. “So simple as that.”

  “It is that simple. Other people deal with worse things. So deal.”

  “Other people don’t have to worry about incapacitating their fellows.”

  “All the more reason to get on top of it, then.” Klaus stood up straight. “You and Molly both. I’m going to go see her soon. And when I do, you’re coming, too.”

  A twinge of blindness in my ear again. Auburn-Stache’s letter on my mind. The letter I buried for weeks. A letter I want not to exist, Ollie.

  “How will we find her?”

  “I know where she lives.”

  “You said you didn’t know a thing about her!”

  “I said I wanted her to tell me things about her. Get better and we’ll go visit her.” He was biting his fingernails. Down to the quick. “She’d better be all right.”