by Leah Thomas
“Then … what are friends like? Do you think I’ll ever have any?”
I was smiling, but Mom dropped the wrench. She frowned at me through the wheel axle. “I wish that … well, for now you have me, Ollie. Better than nothing?”
“S’pose.” I grinned wide to scrunch up my eyes because for some reason they were damp and I didn’t want her to see that. “S’pose you’ll do. Tell me about Dad?”
Needling immunity! Mom inched out from under the bike frame and stood up to look at it. “There. But you have to be careful. If you kick up the kickstand now, the bike will just fall over.”
“That’s okay. Mom?”
She was wiping her eyes, just staring at that bike. I felt like if I climbed on it she’d push me right off it again, or she was fighting a powerful urge to reattach the training wheels or cement the whole frame to the ground.
I let myself fall to lean against her—she put a foot out to her left to catch herself.
“I’ll be your kickstand.”
She snorted and rested her elbow (articulatio cubiti) in my hair. The bone was sharp. “Nah. You’re my armrest. You aren’t going anywhere.”
Mom means well. But do you see why I couldn’t buy her promises, Moritz?
I’m a lousy kickstand.
A few days later, I stole the keys from their most recent hiding place on the second oak bookshelf (I always find them), burst out onto the lawn, and pulled the bike from the tangled hoses in the shed. I pedaled down the driveway that led out of the woods. Tree roots jutted into the path. They looked a lot like outstretched hands. Every time I ran one over, I thought I was running over someone’s fingers.
It wasn’t just about escaping Mom. I was chasing after humidifiers, semitrucks, and cash registers. Stereos and movie theaters and tablets and tennis shoes with lights in them. I wanted to see the things everyone else saw, even if it was just from a distance. I wanted the world.
That power line halfway down the driveway all but blew me off my bike. Orange electrical tendrils dangled from the overhanging cable, probably draping from the wire like your Goth bangs drape across your forehead, Mo. The moment I neared them, my stomach clenched up. Definitely we had opposing charges, that power line and me.
A spasm went through my right foot; it slipped from the pedal. It was like the tendrils had grabbed me, had wrapped hot wires around my cranium and squeezed. The roots on the path had done nothing, but that silver cable in the sky threw me sidelong into the ferns.
But just as there had been something hypnotic about the laptop, there was something about those billowing, tangerine tendrils that made me determined to cross them, even if their licks left me twitching.
“This isn’t over,” I told the power line. And so began our legendary rivalry.
When I returned to the break in the pines, I rode one-handed with an old fishbowl lodged under my other arm. (Dorian Gray had shown the beta fish it once held a proper burial inside his stomach.) I dismounted, let the bike fall, and shoved the bowl over my head. It caught on my ears. I fought it down. Soon my breath was fogging up my vision. Trying not to tremble beneath my makeshift helmet, I approached the tangerine agitators that swung from the power line.
I’d read pamphlets about hazmat and NBC suits, about scientifically insulated clothes (although Mom always told me they just weren’t worth the risk—whatever). I’d also read that glass doesn’t conduct electricity.
Besides—glass seemed to work for spacemen, right?
Liz must have been laughing at me. She lived in town, but her father loved blackberry pie and there are lots of berry patches near our driveway. Picking berries wasn’t really what other kids did on the weekends, but Liz wasn’t other kids, Mo. I didn’t see her standing in the ferns, watching me; I assumed that no one was around because no one ever was.
Liz crept up beside me while I was craning my neck to stare at my ropy nemesis. She could have taught Mom something about being quiet, or else the glass muffled sound pretty well, because I didn’t even notice her until she pressed her face close to the fishbowl and hollered:
“GOING DEEP-SEA DIVING?”
The sound echoed in my ears. I fell backward into the leaves.
“What the heck are you wearing?”
I wiped pine needles from my palms and raised my eyes to her. Through the distorted glass, she could have been anyone, anything. I pulled the bowl off my head.
She was the girl I’d seen with the laptop. Her dark hair was tied back in a ponytail. Her tanned face was freckled, completely at odds with my pasty complexion. She was wearing short overalls with pockets full of blackberries that were staining the jean fabric purple. One dirty kneecap had a wet leaf stuck to it.
“Oh no.” Her expression softened. “You aren’t developmentally disabled, are you? Do you maybe suffer from a mental impairment?”
“No …”
“Oh. Well, my parents are both social workers; my mom works crisis calls, which means she stops people from killing themselves.” Liz smiled. I’m sure she thought it was reassuring, but it was such a wide smile. “If you have a mental illness, I’m totally cool with it. I could probably even help you with it.”
“I’m not mental!” My ears were burning.
“And you are—?”
“I’m sick. Um, allergic to electricity.”
Liz raised her eyebrows. “So you are crazy.”
“No.” I stood up on wobbling legs and pointed at the power line. “Watch.”
I ran full tilt at the break in the trees. It was the most reckless thing I’d ever done, and when the tendrils tossed me back and I ended up shaking on the forest floor with a nosebleed, I was amazed that I’d suffered nothing worse.
“Whoa! That was weird. Almost like you hit an invisible wall or somethin’. Did it hurt?”
I nodded.
“Cool.”
My face flushed.
“But that’s not why I said you were crazy.” She suddenly became stern. “I said you’re crazy because you said your illness before you said your name. That’s like one of my dad’s clients.” She pointed a reprimanding finger at me. “DO NOT DEFINE YOURSELF BY YOUR ILLNESS, Mr.—?”
“O-Oliver.”
“I’m Liz.” She reached a hand out. I thought she was going to help me up, but she proffered juicy purple berries. “You want some, Ollie? Or do you wanna sit there and bleed some more?”
“Thank you.” I plopped one berry into my mouth, but I could taste blood over top of it. “Thanks a lot.”
“No biggie, Ollie.”
It was a biggie, Moritz. She had no idea how big of a biggie.
Tomorrow is Wednesday, so maybe Liz will stop by. Or maybe not. I mean, it’s okay either way. It’s not like I don’t have anything else to do. I’ve been trying to get into origami, but I can’t even begin to fold the dragons right, because you’re supposed to build them up from cranes, but every time I fold a crane it goes all saggy in the middle. It’s taking up a lot of time. It’s better than just lying around and tearing my hair out, though.
You have to tell me more about whatever else is worth knowing about your life and times in Kreiszig. Cure the boredom again, won’t you?
~ Ollie
P.S. Hey, why do you have a scar behind your ear? Was that Lenz or the laboratory? You can’t just tell me you aren’t interested in SECRET LABS and then strongly hint that people did actual experiments on you. That’s like dangling the carrot after cutting the donkey’s legs off! Please, Moritz.
There’s no one else for me to ask. Just squirrels and trees. Hey?
Chapter Six
The Words
Why, Oliver? WHY DID I LISTEN TO YOU?! You complete cat-pisser!
I am not implying the use of italics. I am SHOUTING at you! I am writing this damned letter after being awarded a one-week suspension from Bernholdt-Regen Hauptschule pending my potential expulsion! I am sitting alone in my apartment with a bloodied nose and battered face. Both of which I hold you responsible for. But why should you
care? I’m not boring you.
I was so pleased about your last letter. That is why I have acted like a fool. Acted as you might have. When someone tells you for the first time in your existence that you are heroic, it is difficult to remain sensible. That charming nature of yours has made an Arsch of me. You don’t understand me, Oliver, any more than you understand the world. I can only hope that your dreadful advice was not an act of cruelty but of ignorance.
But if my hopes are justified? How terrible. It is as if your ignorance is being passed to me simply because you wrote something that moved me. I am furious. But then I am also to blame. I chose to trust you. You have a misleading tendency to sound wise.
But what could you possibly know? All the words you have ever written to me are words you learned in books. Words you learned in a cabin far removed from the real world. Or they are something worse: they are words you learned from a teenage girl who strings you along like you are a mindless plaything. Are you eating, Ollie? Why is getting out of bed a victory? You try so hard to sound happy, but what would you do without distractions? Are you so lovesick that you would whimper for eternity if Liz never returned?
You are the one who needs to stand up.
So how could I find solace in your words?
You have never gone to school. You have never had objects thrown at your head. You have never watched your classmates feign illness. Coughing and spitting and sighing when they are assigned your partner during science courses.
You have never walked through an indifferent city in the afternoon and waited for Lenz Monk to knock you down, worried that the whooshing of the wind might obscure some of his movement. You have never hurried home on cold afternoons with eyes on your back. When you can almost feel hands clawing at you and snagging at your hemlines. The hands of someone who is itching to grab you, just to hear you shout.
“MBV” does have some benefits. MBV tells me whether someone is looming along the path up ahead. Whether someone is following me. I can hear their paces quickening. Footsteps. The sound makes my heart strain, my lungs soften. Rattles my very brain, Oliver.
But you wouldn’t know anything about this. You have not seen the shape of words in echolocation. It is not the same as seeing electricity. It is not beautiful.
“Freak!” bounces off every surface until it reaches me. It seeps right into my forehead.
“Fag!” pierces me in the chest. Coils around my loins, my fluttering heart.
“Retard!” is one I can hear forming on lips. I see it in the spittle that casts it out, because I click, click, click my tongue twice as much when I think someone might utter it. “Retard.”
To say nothing of the laboratory. You ask why I am scarred? You wonder about my heroic origins? What a fun mystery! I am scarred because when I was small, people in that laboratory cut me and put electric machines inside my skull. For the sake of science. Are you pleased you asked? You want to know more? Do you really hope that you and I have that place in common?
You say people may be cruel to me because I poison the air with, what, negative energy? You imply that the way others treat me might be my fault? Because I show them I am afraid?
How can I help but show that, when I can hardly breathe and sweat pours off me and I wish only that I could close eyes I don’t have so that I don’t have to see the looks on their faces?
You don’t have to tell me I deserve this. I know that already.
Fick dich, Oliver.
To think I had begun to consider you a friend.
Our parents wanted our letters to be medicinal. This is bad medicine. I want no further part of you. Consider this the end of our correspondence.
Chapter Seven
The Cabin
Okay. You need to calm down. Part of me is afraid to say anything that might upset you more, but part of me wants to scream right back at you. All of me is wondering if you’ve gotten any help. Where’s your dad while you’re busy bleeding all over and screaming? You’re sitting all alone in your apartment? Have you told anyone else about Lenz Monk? Anyone who isn’t powerless? Or do you just close your mouth and accept it?
So what the hell happened?! What triggered this? I would never say you deserve to be hurt, so why are you saying it?
I may have an attention deficit or whatever, but I think you might have manic depression or a mood disorder, Moritz! I’ve read about these things, and I don’t pretend to be an expert, but I think you should get a counselor or social worker or psychiatrist to help you, if you haven’t already. I even asked Auburn-Stache to have a look at your last letter, but that was pretty pointless. Here is what he said, while taking my pulse:
“Sometimes friends in crappy situations can be unfriendly and crappy themselves.”
I’m worried about you, and it sucks that I can’t do anything about it. Maybe we’ve never met and never will, but I think I’ve made it clear that I want to be your friend. And if friends are just crappy to each other, I guess I’m allowed to be a bit crappy, too. So I’ll tell you that I won’t be sorry until you tell me what happened and why you got suspended and how on earth that’s supposed to be my fault!
You’re right. I don’t know much about how other kids act around one another. I’ve never stood in a classroom. I’ve never waited at a freakin’ bus stop. So maybe I am the worst person to listen to. But I think you’re taking this out on me because you’re too scared to face the people who actually hurt you. Like the people in the lab I don’t know about, I guess.
Do us both a favor and tell me what the hell happened before you start screaming at me! Because here’s the truth about how I feel about our “correspondence” so far: I have been really honest with you.
But you, Moritz?
You talk around everything like you’re talking in those waves you see by. You don’t say what you mean! You pull your punches. You say you don’t want to hurt my “simple ears.” I call bullshit. You’re just too scared to trust me because you think if I ever met you I might shove you into a drinking fountain just like Lenz does.
As if I needed one more reason to feel like a leper.
Next time you talk to me, actually talk to me.
If you really don’t want to write to me anymore, I guess that’s okay. I mean, I’m getting pretty used to the whole abandonment thing. It’s been four months since I last saw Liz. Four months since she stopped by after school and told me how her days were booked with basketball games and acting competitions and basically filled with lots of people who aren’t powerless.
Anyhow, I hear the word freak all the time. I hear it in this empty house. It’s so quiet here sometimes. You would be blind. You think my talk fills up the space? Who is there to talk to?!
And you know what? I’m not sorry about asking about the lab. It’s easy for you to ignore because you have other distractions. It’s easy for you to just forget about where you came from because you’re going to go other places.
I may never get out of here, Moritz. What do I have to look forward to but the past?
Sorry I told you to enjoy the “real” world. Sorry I told you not to take being surrounded by people for granted.
Mom says she feels like maybe I shouldn’t have tried writing you to begin with. She’s trying to lock this door like she does all the others. She says I shouldn’t even reply. But there’s not really much to lose if you’re already ditching out.
As for my terrible advice—I told you to stand up and face your troubles. Blaming your troubles on me isn’t heroic at all. You could have had a cape and mask, Moritz. I guess I thought you were braver than this.
Chapter Eight
The Goggles
Ollie. May I call you Ollie? As an apology? I do not have a lot of experience with apologies or friendship. I do not know where to begin.
I was prepared never to speak to you again when I wrote that last letter. Because you’ll never meet me, I wrote like a coward. Wrote knowing that you could not fight my accusations, at least not to my empty face.
/> But after I screamed at you, you replied first with concern. That was humbling. I am two years older than you, Ollie. I don’t feel those years. You … you could not let me rot.
Thank you, Ollie.
No, I do not have a psychiatrist. I have no intention of contacting one. I admit that my temperament is sometimes unstable. I attribute this to unfortunate genetics. A troubled upbringing. I have had enough of people in lab coats. A doctor regularly visits to ensure that my pacemaker is functioning. Beyond him I will have no one.
But I am grateful for your concern. Father is concerned as well. Quietly. Sometimes when I sit on the balcony listening to Kreiszig at rush hour, cars and horns and the echoes of footsteps far below, he sits beside me. He puts his hand on my shoulder.
But family is compulsory. Family that does not care is not family. Perhaps friends who do care are something more than family? How sanctimonious I sound. Let me speak plainly: I appreciate your friendship. Apologies for making an awkward dirge of it.
Did I deserve all your reprimands?
Firstly, I resent the accusation that I do not trust you. I may never be the extrovert that you are. But I am learning to trust you. You know more about me than almost anyone.
Secondly, you aren’t being objective. As much as I admire your honest writing, you aren’t always honest with yourself, Ollie. Let me elaborate:
You say you see no point in dwelling on things you can’t have. But you think of these things constantly. Take the Internet. You insult it. You express a desire to see it. Then you claim a lack of interest once more. Why pretend? Can you tell me to treat my temper when you are so contradictory? Hypocrisy.
Perhaps I vented my anger at my circumstances on you. You have done the same to me by feigning happiness. Trying to be funny even when you are in pain. I am not a hero and you should not pretend to be one. Wearing a mask cannot change that you are wincing underneath it!
I would like to visit your empty house. To give you someone to be noisy to. I cannot. So when you write: Be angry! Be upset! How else will I ever “meet” you?
