Because You'll Never Meet Me

by Leah Thomas

  “So you’re acquainted with the X-Men?” My second comics series, Oliver. “We have that in common. But there are no lasers in my eyes. This isn’t science fiction.”

  “Where did you find this kid?”

  “Fine. Sorry, Brille.”

  “Why are—”

  She yanked my arm down with one hand. Shoved my goggles up with the other.

  Mel cursed. “You didn’t say he’s blind!”

  “Tragic, right?”

  “I’m not blind.”

  Mel recovered with noteworthy speed. “Oh. Well, I guess I’m acquainted with one of Xavier’s rejects now. Go on in. Owen’s at the tables.”

  I was likely a furious shade of red. Whatever red looks like. I held my chin high to reclaim my dignity. Replaced my goggles. Mel snapped his fingers when I passed. I tilted my head toward the sound.

  “Wahnsinnig,” he said. Crazy.

  A wall of sound. A wall of sight. Bass beating through the soles of my feet. Even in the recoil the buzzing world was clear in there. When the bass boomed, I saw follicles.

  Electronic music, Oliver, is something else I wish you could experience. I say this without mockery. It imitates life. Crashes and peaks. The rise and fall of tension! I might call it wondrous.

  So much motion. So much sweat. So much detail. It was overwhelming. I felt I could see the veins of people, the very tissues of them. Almost down to their bone marrow. They basked in what the DJ was spinning out. It was as if I almost understood them.

  “Don’t stand in the doorway.” Fieke dragged me across the floor, squeezing us between writhing torsos and jumping feet. Not for the first time I wished I could see lights.

  “WHERE ARE THE TABLES?”

  “OVER THERE!” She pointed upward, toward a stage.

  “WHY ARE WE SHOUTING?”

  “IT’S A CLUB!”

  I focused on the stage. She meant “turntables.”

  There was Owen Abend. Performing in a vest and a flat cap. “Jamming” with a laptop before him. Perhaps it reflected him as he reflected it. The quietest student in Bernholdt-Regen, making more noise than anyone in the room. Transferring all the sound and volume he could want through the speakers.

  Owen Abend looked up. Caught sight of us. Somehow. Perhaps because we were standing still. Perhaps because Schicksal (fate) is strange.

  This time he did not retreat. He waved and mouthed “Hallo!” at us.

  Behind me, Fieke’s face curled into a smile. A real one.

  Owen Abend opened his mouth wide. The noise showed me his teeth when it echoed inside his cheeks. Showed me his gums and two empty sockets where Lenz had knocked his teeth out. And showed me one more thing:

  Owen Abend had no tongue.

  At the bar after his DJ set, Owen Abend blinked at me. Moved his mouth. No sound came out. Moved his fingers in signing. His sister translated for him.

  “HE WANTS TO KNOW IF YOU’D LIKE TO GO SOMEWHERE QUIETER?”

  “Not in particular.”

  He laughed at me, a laugh much stronger than a tongueless boy had any right to. I’d thought he was shy.

  I didn’t feel like laughing now. I did not want to think of why he was tongueless. I did not want to think of my mother. We weakhearted fools. People are born without things all the time. Really. It probably had nothing to do with her. Nothing to do with the place that raised me. With that damned laboratory, Ollie.

  Fieke cussed. Grabbed the hands of Owen and me. She led us to the ladies’ room, much to our mutual humiliation. There was a line as long as any I’d ever seen. Fieke stomped her way through it. A few girls whistled and jeered as she shoved us all into a bathroom stall.

  “Yeah, yeah. And one of them’s my brother!” Fieke cackled evilly.

  “Ewwww.”

  “Well, get on with it, Brille.” She folded her arms. Leaned against the door. “Here’s that golden opportunity you rapped for.”

  And so it was while we two were standing on either side of a toilet that I finally thanked Owen Abend for handing me my goggles before my suspension:

  “Thank you for handing me my goggles before my suspension.”

  He blinked at me. Moved his hands.

  “He says ‘no biggie.’”

  I shook my head. “I’m grateful to you. And sorry he hurt you after.”

  “He doesn’t want an apology or gratitude.”

  “What do you want?”

  Owen stared at me. Slowly, carefully, he moved his hands.

  “He just wants it to stop. Lenz to stop.”

  Stop, Owen mouthed. Holding up his palm.

  Owen Abend’s story is not unique. Apart from his tonguelessness. His muteness has always been part of him. Some people are born without things. There’s not always a laboratory to blame. There’s no reason for me to recall my mother and the scars I have.

  Lenz Monk has hated Owen for as long a time as the Abends can remember.

  Of course I was never Lenz’s only whimpering target. Of course not.

  Although Owen spent much of his youth in sign language camps, he is not deaf. Just as I am not blind. He attended public school. Became accustomed to writing his thoughts out on a whiteboard he carried with him. He has forsaken this board for silence at Bernholdt-Regen. Silence is harder to mock.

  At the age of seven, Owen attended the same Grundschule as Lenz Monk. Not far from our homes in Ostzig. I was elsewhere then.

  One of Owen Abend’s earliest childhood memories: Lenz Monk pushing him down a playground staircase. Pressing his face into gravel. Not a “biggie.” Children push. Fieke helped him up. Pushed Lenz in return. The way they speak of it, Lenz Monk was a bulky boy. Shiny with grease. Notorious for bowling kids over. Unaccustomed to being shoved back. Fieke was already a kid to be reckoned with, despite her pigtails. I can be fanciful: I imagine she already wore black boots.

  Fieke’s resistance only encouraged Lenz’s brutishness. Owen could not so easily defend himself.

  Another memory Owen shared in that bathroom stall retold the day that Lenz Monk discovered that Owen Abend was not only quiet. Owen Abend could not cry out for help.

  Lenz was old enough to be punished for his more worrisome delinquent acts. He was nearly expelled for pouring bleach into a goldfish tank. And again, for vomiting inside another student’s desk during snacktime. Lenz had taken to plucking dead mice from his father’s traps and force-feeding his classmates “fuzz sandwiches.” I suppose wedgies were growing dull. Though I’ve so far avoided sandwiches from Lenz, this is no stretch to believe.

  On this day, Fieke had stayed home sick. (Where home was, she neglected to say; the Abends are quieter about the past than even I am. I do not needle.) What choice had Owen but to walk back alone with Lenz pattering behind him? Spitting on his back without Fieke to cuss him away?

  Under a bridge by the canal, Lenz waited. When no one else was around to see, he yanked Owen up by his backpack. Pried open his jaws and jammed a dead baby mouse between them before clamping his mouth shut.

  Most people would have shoved such a repulsive thing out with their tongues. They would have screamed. Called attention to their plight.

  Owen could not. His tonguelessness meant he could not spit, and Lenz held his arms behind his back so he could not pull the mouse out with his fingers.

  Owen could either choke or swallow. He swallowed.

  Lenz released him. He forced Owen’s mouth open. He saw neither mouse nor tongue inside. He gagged and threw Owen down against the pavement.

  After that, Owen became a primary target. Lenz sought him out on a daily basis. He waited in the street outside Owen’s home. Waited with pockets full of stones and glass and decaying mice. Waited with no expression. Waited for Owen to whimper.

  I looked at Owen. Delicate features. Wide eyes. “You may drop out of school?”

  He nodded.

  “You should not. I’ve been reading a great deal of late. About, ah, heroism. Dropping out won’t help the others he’s tormenting. A
nd what good could it do you? He knows where you live. He will wait.”

  We hung our heads. Listened to the sounds of a girl in the next stall vomiting the entire contents of her stomach into the porcelain toilet.

  “Why do you care?” shot Fieke, suddenly.

  Owen stared. I restrained a click.

  “I … well, it is only … it is only that I feel responsible for you.”

  Hands and faces moving.

  “This was going on for ages before you got punched in the gym. You don’t owe us crap, Owen says.”

  “I feel indebted to you.”

  He frowned. Fieke sniggered.

  “Don’t mock me. Let me help. Few people have been … so kind to me.”

  Owen stared. Nodded.

  Fieke slammed her fist against the wall. Someone in line squeaked in surprise.

  “Look, if you’re really looking to prove you’re thankful, there is something you can do.”

  Owen blinked at her; I lifted my head.

  “You can use your supersonic hearing. Stand up to him and scare him off for good.”

  Like a superhero, Oliver?

  “You’re suggesting that I, ah, confront him?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m suggesting you beat the living shit out of him.”

  Owen Abend is sitting across from me in the Sickly Poet. This is my first handwritten letter, Oliver. Owen is not wearing his flat cap today. He sips water, not coffee. Perhaps he is only halfway pretentious.

  You were my first friend, Ollie. Could this be another?

  He smiles rarely, but those smiles are bright. He may not speak, but he laughs in waterfalls, dolphin-wavy as that may sound. I can’t read his hands. I can read the notes he writes me. Read the rhythm of his feet and fingertips against floors and tables.

  Owen hasn’t returned to Bernholdt-Regen, because Lenz is on the prowl once more, pushing faces into urinals. I see Owen elsewhere. He is always pleased to see me. He does not care that I have no eyes, just as I do not care that he has no tongue. Perhaps we could both forget ourselves in not caring. I am as human as he is.

  Outside school, he is constantly fiddling with things. Picking up pens and tossing them or doodling on napkins. He redeems his silence with perpetual motion.

  Often we go to the Kneipe to watch Fieke spout poetry. He taps a foot in annoyance. I tsk in my teeth, and then we smirk at each other. For once I am grateful not to have eyes. I do not think I could make proper eye contact with Owen Abend.

  Now he taps his feet against the floor. Just from the way he is going heel-to-toe with his shoes I can tell he is getting impatient.

  Owen has an uncanny sense of rhythm. I knew this the moment I saw him manning those turntables at Partygänger. His wondrous musicality would probably extend to his pitch. If he could enunciate, I believe he would have a beautiful voice.

  Owen is sighing now. Looking at me pointedly.

  “Almost, almost,” I tell him.

  I’ll finish writing later. Fieke is performing soon. I do not want to face her glare while she rattles off Radiohead or Deerhunter lyrics. She does not realize she is a cliché. She gets offended.

  I embody your old optimism, Ollie Ollie UpandFree.

  My friends and I—friends, Ollie?—are going to prevent Lenz from hurting anyone else.

  Fiecke is onstage glaring at me. Giving me the finger. Owen looks at me with hope. Perhaps that is what friendship is. Spending time with people who aren’t repulsed by you. Even when they should be.

  I will not fail them. I am not my mother. I am better than she was.

  I used to dislike everyone. Even now I don’t know what to expect from the people around me, Oliver. Alone in a crowd. Now the crowd is unfolding before me, and it is full of life and terror and wonder.

  All this, because you told me to stand up, Oliver Paulot.

  I am more than nothing because of you. If you are swallowed in grief or in pain, please know this: my life is forever improving.

  Please. Whatever you are about to tell me, don’t ever doubt your worth. Don’t worry that I will turn away from you.

  You made me real, Ollie.

  Your dearest friend,

  Mo

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Phone

  Let’s get the needling out of the way:

  Why do you keep mentioning your mother all of a sudden? Who was she? I want to know, Moritz, even if I stopped asking.

  It’s cool that you think so highly of me, but you’ve got me on a pedestal. You may be my best friend, but you can never be here. And sometimes it just sucks. I’m happy for you but sad for me, and then guilty for feeling sad for me when I should just be happy for you, and then I feel like an ass in general.

  It’s also cool that you’ve found friends and more in Kreiszig. And now I have some idea about why you didn’t want to talk romance. Owen means a lot to you, doesn’t he? I get it. Are you guys really planning on beating up Lenz? I’m glad you’re feeling more heroic, but … well, that seems like a weird thing to bond over. Then again, it’s been nosebleeds all along.

  I really could use a friend out here in the woods. I wish I could meet you. Really. Mom’s back in the house again today, but she’s white as snow. Did you know her hair’s been falling out? I’ve seen it on the floor, on couch cushions—strands of blond that catch the light and look almost like electricity. Before, I thought she wore hand-woven wigs for fun….

  I keep thinking about the medical bills that arrive at the mailbox. Her trips to the pharmacy. Maybe I’ve been ignoring it all this time. It’s been here all along, her being sick. But somehow it’s getting deeper and darker in the woods.

  I wrote the remainder of our camping trip. I’m sending it to you today.

  Maybe it’ll explain why I’ve been so haphazard and stupid up until now. Or maybe not.

  Is it really summer already? I should go write in the living room, where it’s warmer, but I can hear Mom wheezing down there. It’s quieter up here.

  Here’s the last part of my autobiography, Moritz.

  Here’s what Mom wanted to distract me from.

  “Do you know what some kids at school started calling me when I first moved out here?”

  I shook my head. I felt paralyzed after that face-mashing session. My half-frozen foot was resting on a warm stone by the campfire, my sock and boot drying out beside it. Liz sat across from me, eyes shining in the dark.

  “White trash.”

  “I don’t get it. You’re not even pale. And yeah, sometimes you’re muddy. But that’s not the same as being garbage.”

  “Oh, Ollie. Sometimes I think it’s awesome that you don’t know about things like this. Other times I think …”

  “You think what?”

  But right then we both almost jumped out of our skins when a huge crack! broke the night air.

  “Maybe they’re lighting off fireworks across the lake?”

  “That was only one sound.”

  “Someone’s started hunting season early? Hope they’ve got a license.”

  Liz frowned in the firelight. “It’s too dark to be hunting. I mean, sometimes hunters wear night-vision goggles because deer get pretty active early in the morning. But it’s not morning.”

  “Maybe Uncle Joe is trying to get a lead on the competition. That’s his venison, damn it.”

  “Maybe …” She pulled up the hood on her sweatshirt. “I’m going to go ask him if he heard it. Hand me that lantern.”

  “My foot isn’t dry yet.”

  “Wait here, then.”

  But I was already hopping along behind her with one boot on, wincing when I stepped on acorns and pinecones barefoot. The blind felt a lot farther away in the dark. Fog had crept off the lake to curl around trees, around our waists. I huddled near Liz as she walked, still really aware of how close she was. Every few steps or so, something on the forest side of us scurried along the ground, crackling on leaves and brushing through undergrowth. Probably only squirrels, but we
picked up our pace. The water seemed too dull, somehow. It wasn’t reflecting the moon.

  By the time we turned down the trail toward the deer blind, we were jogging.

  “Man, he’s going to laugh at us—”

  The moment we burst into the clearing beneath the blind, Liz put her hand over her mouth. It’s a good thing we’d learned our lesson years ago about buying sturdy lanterns; it didn’t break when she dropped it. Liz rushed forward in the dark. When I scrabbled to lift the lantern up again, I saw why.

  Junkyard Joe was sprawled at the foot of the tree like a dead thing.

  I think you’re the only one I could talk to about this, Moritz. I can’t even describe how it felt. If my handwriting’s worse, it’s because my hands are shaking. And it’s hard not to smear the ink. Sorry.

  “Oh god, oh god.”

  Liz was shaking him. In her panic, she was rattling him so much that it almost looked like he was seizing.

  “Don’t shake him. If he’s hurt, don’t shake him. That’s … um …” I couldn’t think, I couldn’t think. “Bad for his anatomy.”

  “Uncle Joe? Oh god. Uncle Joe?”

  “He was shot? Has he been shot? Who shot him? Was he shot?”

  “I don’t know! I can’t see anything! I can’t really see without a damn flashlight, can I?!”

  Some part of my brain registered that there wasn’t any blood; I looked up the ladder to the blind. It was hard to be sure in the lantern light, but what we’d heard was the sound of one of the rotten plywood floorboards falling through. It looked like he had fallen twenty feet to the ground.

  “He fell. He just fell, Liz. You can see it. You can see the boards gave out. He just fell.”

  “Just? He’s not moving! I can’t tell if he’s breathing! Oh god, oh god!”

  “He may have broken, um, broken his spine?”

  “Oh god. Ollie, we need help. You need to go get help. Call someone.”

  I just kept shaking my head. “I can’t call someone. Phones. I can’t.”

  She was tearing at her hair, snot running out of her nose. God, I was breathing so loud! And when I blinked, I almost heard the sound of my eyelids in my ears. Almost like you. But this was nothing out of a comic book. This made no narrative sense. This was a freak accident that already I could see did nothing for any of us, didn’t allow any of us—not Liz, not me, not Joe (poor motionless Joe)—to develop as characters. This was—