Nowhere Near You

by Leah Thomas

  I hit the road and walked in the exact opposite direction and didn’t stop.

  Tell me it’s a lie, or at least the brother of one.

  You can’t pull me out of the dark place when the dark place is me.

  chapter thirty-four

  THE URN

  Ollie, Dr. Auburn-Stache canceled his visit. Rain check.

  I am forwarding this to you. It is only right. Please know that I am here, even if nowhere near. Please know you’ve come through all sorts of forests, and the last thing you deserve is to be condescended to.

  Ollie, please don’t be reckless.

  Dear god, I’m worried you’ve walked into traffic. Ollie.

  Moritz,

  I apologize for not calling, but some words are hard to say and easier to type. I’m postponing your scheduled checkup. I’ve been preoccupied with pressing matters in Chicago.

  Arthur asked to be cremated. Beau was sure to joke about it at the wake. I don’t think many of the mourners laughed. Chicago people are hard. Industry in their blood, the struggle to stand tall in their veins. If they did not appreciate the humor, they could understand it. Arthur had many friends, it seemed. I don’t know what sort of people they were, as all I saw of them were confused faces. That’s all I often see of people these days; there’s a wall between myself and other people, people who’ve never had a hand in harming children.

  Beau said some words, but all I can remember was a joke in poor taste: “Art said he’d been trying to fall to pieces for years and hadn’t done it properly.”

  Morbid talk, but where else is such talk justified? And essentially that’s what had happened to Arthur, on my watch. Far from my first funeral, hopefully close to my last.

  After the services, she had invited the mourners to her duplex for “scenic views of an alleyway and terrible casseroles.”

  The urn sat on the stoop between us. Beau smoked her cigar like she might any other day. There were no words worth saying, only inane questions worth asking, and one of them I asked: Had Arthur asked for his ashes to be spread anywhere?

  She told me that was none of my business, that my business should have been the business of stopping this outcome. She accused me of playing favorites. All this she did quietly, because the weight of the words was worse than shouting ever could have been. She was smoking, of course, and the smoke is still in my nostrils. I may take up cigarettes again.

  Beau is correct, of course. I have been playing favorites. I have ignored overwhelming evidence, Moritz, kiddo, and perhaps I sent you on a wild-goose chase when I asked you to seek your mother. I’ve spent the last few months in denial, wandering like a vagrant, and Beau’s saying so, with smoke on her breath, cold ice under us, made this impossible to ignore.

  Beau asked a final question. “Tell me, do you think he’ll thank you for this?”

  I had no answer, and she told me we’d just have to count the funerals.

  Arthur asked for his ashes to be scattered in the sky. But Beau told him no.

  “I told him ‘You’re mine and I’m keeping you,’ and good kids don’t argue with their grandparents.”

  I couldn’t bear to hear any more, Moritz. I’m always going to be a coward.

  I drove down the street, and in the rearview mirror, Beau clutched the urn like an infant.

  Moritz, Arthur fell ill within hours of meeting Ollie. In those hours, his unique anatomy experienced in high-speed concentration the selfsame symptoms that eventually ended the life of Ollie’s mother.

  We’ve always known Ollie’s body emits electromagnetic pulses. But I’ve often ignored the knowledge that electromagnetic radiation can be as innocent as beams of light, or as corrosive as gamma rays. The niggling suspicion that Ollie could be radioactive as well as electromagnetic was one I’ve always been eager to dismiss. After all, surely I myself would be cancerous by now. Surely his childhood friend, Liz, would be.

  That is the selective nature of denial. Of course I realize that low doses of radiation may take years to accumulate to hazardous proportions. Some people who witnessed Hiroshima died in days, and others lived for decades before tumors developed. After the Chernobyl disaster, exposure to tainted water resulted in birth defects before early deaths.

  When Ollie was small, he laughed so loud that birds took flight.

  How could I let myself suspect that Ollie could be as deadly as he is lively? How could any world be so cruel as that? How could mankind create such a tragedy, and how could I have a hand in it? How could such consequences continue to devastate, years after my actions?

  How can I ever face him? How can I live with knowing that the very moment I tell him the extent of those consequences, he may never laugh again? How can I ever be honest?

  Moritz, it isn’t that Ollie can never meet you.

  He can never meet anyone.

  Gregory Auburn-Stache

  Oliver Paulot, you are so loved. This is your sickness and never you. You better every life you enter. God, can I attest to that. Please do not be rash. Please stop to breathe. Please.

  I have been so happily lost in the woods of you.

  chapter thirty-five

  KRYPTONITE

  Moritz.

  Poor, poor fucking Arthur. You didn’t meet him but he was IMPOSSIBLE AND MIRACULOUS and cool and he was stoner superman and I guess that makes me kryptonite. I can’t stop gagging and there’s nothing left to spit up. Moritz, can I have Auburn-Stache send my ashes to you? Moritz, I’m wondering if all my letters to you are radioactive too. Like Marie Curie’s documents. How can I just keep writing then? What sucks is I want to anyhow. But this isn’t about me. It doesn’t matter what happens to me. This stupid damp letter and my stupid bad handwriting and knowing that every day only counts because I was counting them and our letters were counting them, me counting you and you counting me and I guess I don’t get more than that. But you should get more than that. You should get letters that aren’t radioactive and in the meantime you should burn the ones on your desk, please tell me you’ll burn them? I could die tomorrow or kill three people tomorrow and I don’t want you to worry either way, okay man. I want you to have the world Moritz and even though it’s selfish after you already gave me SO FUCKING MUCH of your time and so much of your life, it still wasn’t enough for me, I can’t think of a future without your sarcasm and I wish I could spend every day writing you and if that’s not love, then I don’t know what is and I’m sorry I’ve been so stupid about that. I want to spend today writing you one last time but I can’t even tell a story, I can’t think of anything funny, like I started writing a pun about “urning the future” but I gagged instead. I can’t even remember what I’m writing. Moritz, I’m not the superhero. I’m not the villain. I’m walking death. But I’m choosing not to be that. I’m choosing to stop being. I’m going to stop.

  Good-bye, fellow hermit. Thank you for the world.

  chapter thirty-six

  THE RETORT

  Oliver Paulot. Walking death is the farthest thing from what you are.

  I am not confessing love. I’m confessing life.

  I was half-dead for years. My heart stopped in an anechoic chamber, and for half a decade afterward, I believed my resuscitation unsuccessful. Every beat of my mechanical heart amounted to nothing but vacuous sound. Convinced me of nothing but my emptiness. Every beat, a hole.

  Your letters became another pacemaker. A tattoo to counter the voids. Every damn word plugged meaning into my existence. Reminded me there’d been meaning all along. That even the holes themselves were a sign of life.

  We are not dictated by what we are. We become our choices. This was no choice of yours.

  So the beanie’s been pulled off you again.

  Remember the world is full of wonders. Remember there may be answers we cannot guess at. With my mother and elsewhere. Remember the world is vast, Ollie. There will always be a place for you in it. There has been for a long time.

  Ollie, let me be your Geborgenheit. Your shel
ter, your safety. The place that contains all the thorny pieces of you. Please accept the confines of my patchwork heart.

  chapter thirty-seven

  THE MESSAGE

  Ollie. The Blunderkinder story continues. I choose to believe you remain part of it.

  It’s been a while since I heard from you, but you are forever on my mind.

  I choose to remain calm. I choose to believe the best, because believing otherwise—

  Suffice it to say I know something of what Auburn-Stache felt when he would rather lie to himself than think of a world without you in it.

  Of late I’ve spent a lot of time on the Blunderkinder forum. Speaking to the people there. Learning who they are. Trawling through old threads that have existed for months despite my ignoring them. I think I have been trying to fill the silence you left me with.

  Ollie. I want to share with you something I found.

  I found a message. A thread titled “Beanie Guy” on the board. Upon printing the pages, I held them close. I hope you will do the same. I hope you will not recoil from this.

  username wrightguy:

  Hello World!!!!

  Thoght I’d use this space to try to send a message to Beanie Guy who visited me. And he told me about this place in one of his letters that I never wrote back to him on because guys I’m not good at writing, I’m better at bilding shit, I mean I can’t even spell for shit

  I forgot what I was saying and that keeps happening

  Oh Yeah

  Basicly yeah I can’t build anything anymore and I can’t get out of bed to go to the mailbox and send a letter now anyhow so maybe one day when one of you guys meets Beanie Guy you can tell him I wrote this? One of youll definately meet him because hes trying to meet all of you and I think hes like a dog chasing cars and he willll catch us eventuly. No offense Beanie Guy.

  So the reason I’m writing even tho I’m shit at writing is because that night you were at my house and you asked me what happened to my arm and I told you and then you asked me WHY I punched some kid even tho my bones are chalk and I pretended to be sleeping and I didn’t tell you. Yeah that was Lame of me Beanie Guy but you know even tho you said I’m Cool sometimes I’m really Cool at being lame lol.

  And you wanted to intervew me like I matter which made you so much cooler but I didn’t want to tell you the story because I thoght it wasn’t a good enogh story for your collection. But you know now, that i might kick the bucket any day I want to do something nice for you because you did something nice for me. So mano e mano!

  Here’s the story of why I punched a guy and my arm exploded.

  I can never ever win a fight, no way in chalky hell. When people look at me they see skinny arms and ugly legs and people say stupid shit all the time and its so, so not worth getting broken over. But there was this OTHER kid this guy who takes special classes and worrys about shit I never even notice. Like he counts lockers and tiles and he can’t step on cracks and he Screams like he’s dying when other guys bump into him.

  He was differnt and that made me like him. I mean I wanna scream when people run into me because, when people run into me yeah I can break BONES. but beau always tells me to laugh it off and that’s what I do. but I guess I liked this kid, Locker Guy, because he dosent front. He just does HIM. That’s cool. That’s how I wish you were to Beanie Guy but you’re more like me, I think you laugh when your scared.

  But there are these assholes at my school. They glued a penny to the ground in the hallway one time at break just to screw with Locker Guy because they know it bugs him like drives him up the wall when things are messy. So the bell rang and Locker Guy was late for class and I saw it happen because I was skipping.

  Locker Guy started crying waterfalls trying to pull that penny off that ground. He didn’t care when I told him it was glued. Maybe if my toes weren’t shit I could of helped him kick it loose. But the kids who COULD of helped, the Asshole Guys, just watched and snorted like pigs.

  So I didn’t care how much it sucks. I punched one of the Assholes. And then I ruined my arm for good and then I got suspsended.

  THE END

  I told you it wasn’t a very good story. But I wanted to do something nice for you after you did something nice for me Beanie Guy. If you are thinking what nice thing you did then I’m not surprised Olly because, you are the kind of person who does nice things by acident. The nice thing you did for me wasn’t just calling me cool, it was bigger than that. When you met me you didn’t care what i looked like, you just cared about what I made and how I lived and shit.

  I don’t know why I’m only getting sicker and, I just want to say that was cool. Maybe your right. Maybe things that die can’t be replaced, maybe if you can’t I can’t either. Because if I’m gonna die I thought at first maybe it’d be okay, because I didn’t want to live in a world where Locker Guy is waterfalls and assholes are laughing at kids like him or kids like us.

  But now I feel like if you were in the hallway with me and that crying kid and those Assholes you would of kicked the coin for him and no one would of got punched, olly.

  I just wanted to tell you that you make the world cooler. Stay you, guy.

  chapter thirty-eight

  THE SKY

  Ollie,

  I am writing you from the sky.

  I am typing with trembling hands. Airplanes hum so loudly. The air here is clearer than the air in trains and cars. It is clearer but clogged with pressure. I am grateful for the hand I hold.

  I am not alone on this flight.

  I thought the events of our lives had sufficiently overwhelmed me for the time being.

  But no. Allow me to copy another message to you, received while I’ve waited for any sign of life from you. I have to warn you that it contains more unorthodox English. My computer did not read it well. From username genekittenkelly:

  hey. maybe you won’t believe me. but i know where ur mom is. i live somewhere really boring and maybe that’s why i’m always trolling but anyhow, since you asked everyone 2 look 4 ur mom i went to all the places i like, spamming things like 5chan and fumblr and seddit and i posted her pic everyywhere for two weeks and even hacked some sites and made that picture the homepage. it was pretty sick, but the fbi was getting real pissy. but whatever. i have my ways.

  anyhow. someone on the board, username area51? ze sent me an sms saying ze knows this lady, like she’s zir’s actual neighbor in Arkansas. i told zir, yeah, so give me proof. and ze sent me this:

  My frustration knew no bounds. Screens tell me nothing! I printed the picture and clicked at it. Heart in throat.

  A face shadowed by a sun hat. But a face I knew. I knew the hollows under its eyes and the lines around its mouth. Could almost feel the chill.

  I have those lines.

  I wanted to write you. I wrote to the board instead:

  We may have found her.

  I thought the rapid-fire responses and emoticons would have been audible even if my computer had been voiceless.

  Not even five hours after I announced we had found my mother on a separate continent the Blunderkinder gathered funds to send me to Arkansas. I did not ask them to, but still they did. I did not refuse this charity.

  Some things are more important, Oliver.

  I arrived at the airport four hours early. Frau Pruwitt joined me on the sidewalk. She looked younger to me when we picked her up. Somehow.

  “I won’t shake your hand, Moritz. You stopped coming to work.”

  “You stopped coming to our apartment,” I replied.

  “Your father came to mine instead. You didn’t think he was working all the time?”

  “But . . . but why?”

  Did she blush. I regretted asking when she said, “You hear too much, Moritz Farber.”

  “Right.” Prepared never to look at her again. She pulled me into a stiff embrace.

  Father stood behind me, uncertain and silent. For farewells, we revert to quiet. He asked whether he should come in with me. I shook my head
.

  “It’ll be noisy in there. I’ll see too well.” I did not want to see good-bye.

  Neither of us said anything else. There are things I can never manage to tell my Father. My gratitude that he saved me. That he appreciates the loneliness and the silence. We do not say these things.

  A minute passed. I stood on the sidewalk. He shook my hand. Set down my suitcases. They got in the car and pulled away.

  I stepped into the terminal.

  A small line of people awaited me. You may wonder how I knew it was me they waited for, in a place so bustling and bright. I knew. All of them, understand, were wearing goggles. Presumably black. Not haunting, this time. Hoping.

  One by one, they introduced themselves by username. Two of them had joined after seeing the video. One of them had been there from the beginning. Five of them were my age; three of them were a decade older, and one was in her sixties. They shook my hand. Embraced me. Wished me well. Were we all friends?

  At the end of the line of Blunderkinder who wanted to hold me were four people who weren’t strangers at all.

  First came Klaus and Molly.

  “I’ve already replaced you in Stagecraft. Don’t come back expecting we’ll take you. You and your stick-insect limbs are stuck in America until you sort this mess. Or longer.”

  “Don’t drown,” Molly told me from both sides. Her arms on my neck. She stands on steady feet again. Smelling of cherries and sawdust now.

  “There are worse things,” I whispered into her shoulder.

  I could hear that Fieke’s piercings were not made of metal today, but of plastic. Her boots remained.

  “Fieke. I—”

  “Let me get a fluffing word in, will you? Username nadiaproblem. Username cortexualann. We will fluffing find your fluffing motherfluffing mother, motherfluffer.”