Because You'll Never Meet Me

by Leah Thomas

  She stood up. “Why are you being this way?”

  “I’m Captain Tact.”

  “Fine. Whatever. I’ll see you next week.”

  Maybe she used to run away to me, but now it wasn’t to but from. One word, a whole world of difference, Moritz. Sometimes I don’t appreciate language after all.

  When I went back inside alone, Mom was standing just past the screen door in the hallway. There was no lemonade in sight, and she was looking just like she did on the day when Liz knocked on the door all caked in muck.

  Well, almost like that.

  You could play the glockenspiel on her rib cage now, after all.

  It might have been the perfect time to needle her about Dad. A breeze could bowl her over. Probably her walls would have crumbled if I mentioned the lab.

  Seeing her like that, it didn’t even cross my mind.

  The following Wednesday, I met Liz at the power line and we trekked through the same old trails to get to Joe’s place. But Liz didn’t stop to pick up a single pudding stone, and the junkyard looked more like a graveyard than ever. The trailer at the center of it was just as abandoned as the rest of it now.

  “Man, this is just awful.” My mutter rang against aluminum skeletons.

  “You don’t always have to say what you’re thinking.”

  Her lip trembled, and I thought for the briefest second that I didn’t know who she was anymore, that she might be the type of girl to collapse in the leaves and then I could hold her or help her up and—

  Liz walked toward the trailer. “Wait here.”

  “Obviously.”

  Soon she was up on the porch and inside the trailer. Hard not to think about the first time I’d stood here waiting, and how different that was. Déjà vu is pretty common when you never leave a square mile of land.

  Why did she want me here? It could have been anyone else, right?

  Again, I wasn’t expecting her to come out so quickly.

  “I never gave you this back.” She held the old fishbowl I’d worn to the power line.

  I grinned. “Oh, wow! How thoughtful. You know I’ve been so lost without it! Wow!”

  “Ollie.”

  “I mean, I was really hoping you’d drag me out here to remind me about the uncle I almost killed and then regift me with the symbol of our friendship!” I laughed. “You know what? You should shatter it. That would be really symbolic.”

  “I don’t think you almost killed him,” she whispered.

  “Oh, well, that’s a relief! I’m a freak but not a murderer! Great! Well, let me do the honors! I’m more used to breaking spines and phones, you know, but I can do this! I can break this!”

  Her eyes were welling. “Ollie!”

  I snatched the bowl from her hands and threw it against the porch.

  You may wonder why I was trying so hard to make the girl I’m lovesick over bawl her eyes out. Maybe I just wanted to know whether I could still make her feel things.

  Of course the bowl failed to shatter. The glass was thick, and it bounced once and rolled away along the wooden boards. I reached for it, but pulled my hand back quickly.

  Those tendrils of electricity were still itching their way up from under the porch and they nipped at me. I cringed and recoiled from the buzzing heat, but when Liz tried to pull me away, I shrugged her off.

  “Enough, Ollie! I just can’t worry about you on top of everything else.”

  “You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “Look at yourself! You look like you’ve got cancer, or like you’ve forgotten how to hold a fork, or—”

  “Or like I spent months alone in a cabin in the dark, huh. Maybe I’ve got scurvy, hey?”

  “Never mind.” She was stomping away, maybe like Fieke does, arms flat against her sides, hands clenched into fists. She no longer looked remotely like she was going to cry. “We’re just talking about you again.”

  “Who else do I know?” I threw my hands up and followed her. “I don’t have all your amazingly distracting high school friends!”

  She spun around to confront me and part of that terrifying expression from the clearing was there on her face again and I almost swallowed my tongue (almost but not really because we’ve been through that).

  “He was my uncle. My family.” Her shoulders sagged. “And he’s just this stranger in a wheelchair now, and always will be, and you were there, and no matter how I try to think about it, no matter that I know it wasn’t your fault, you were there—”

  “Please just stop.”

  “No matter what, you were there, and when I look at you, I see him lying there, and I just can’t remember you any other way than jumping out of those bushes and handing me a phone that didn’t work, that wouldn’t work, that can’t work. Can never work with you.”

  We were standing in the center of the yard now, right where she’d set up my living room.

  “So you’re angry and sad because … your phone doesn’t like me?”

  “Try to be serious for once.”

  I took a few steps back and leaned against the nearest decrepit vehicle. The rust-eaten metal seemed to give beneath me.

  “Okay,” I said after a deep breath. “Okay. Makes sense.”

  “Ollie—”

  “Nah, it’s totally cool.” I grinned; it felt wrong, but I was going for it. “Then why didn’t you have one of your new friends come out here with you today? Why ask me, murderer—”

  “I told you—”

  “Murderer of phones?”

  “Ollie, you’re still my best friend. I just had to stop coming here. Because I’m not like you.”

  “Liz—” She wasn’t saying “freak” but that’s what I was hearing.

  “Listen to me.” She closed her eyes. “I spent so much time wishing that this was the world. I sat in school and just waited for Wednesdays, because on Wednesdays I wasn’t just some piece of trash, some gray person that no one bothered thinking about.”

  “You’re every color, Liz,” I blurted, because my throat was burning.

  “I know you think that, Ollie.” Her expression softened. “But don’t you see how messed up that is? That the only time I felt important was around someone who didn’t know any better?”

  “Ouch.” I tried to laugh. She sounded like you now, Moritz.

  “Don’t be hurt. I’m not a hermit. I can’t … I can’t live out here in the woods. You’re my best friend, but you can’t be my only friend.”

  “We’re best friends who can’t look at each other.” I laughed. “Maybe we should start wearing big black goggles around, too.”

  “What?”

  But thinking about you, Moritz, just choked me up a bit, so I tried laughing again.

  “Well, next time, bring the other friends along, too!”

  She pursed her lips.

  “Yeah, let’s do it! Let’s have everyone over for my next birthday. That’ll give you plenty of time to warn them not to climb into deer blinds when I’m around.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t feel like I’m the same person out here.”

  “Are you a worse person?”

  She shook her head again. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “Then have ’em stop by. I bet they’re curious about the local leper, too. I can’t leave the woods. Let me meet all those people you think are more interesting than you and let me be the judge! You don’t have to tell them you kissed me.”

  God, the look she gave me!

  “I’m not embarrassed of you. I just don’t want them to … be dumb about it. Not you. Them. People can be so dumb sometimes.”

  I drew myself up. “Yeah, you shouldn’t worry. I’ve heard from my best friend that I’m pretty likable. Or I used to be. Not sure what happened. Well, maybe I’m sure. But I think at some point I wasn’t always boring enough to drown in or whatever.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ollie. You aren’t making any sense.”

  I held my arms open wide.
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  “Tell them I’ll show them a good time! Invite the whole damn school! The circus is open!”

  Her eyes narrowed. I realized I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, whether she was angry or sad or annoyed or frightened or what. She stood up and held her finger up to my face.

  “Look. I’ll do it. I’ll ask everyone to come out for your birthday. But only if you promise me something.”

  “What, fair lady?”

  “Start taking care of yourself, doofus.” She wiped her eyes. “Eat something. Look after your mom. Start giving a crap again. Because that’s what we’ve got to do.”

  “We have to start giving craps? To whom?”

  “I mean it, weirdo.” She jabbed me in the chest. “You’re important to me.”

  “Even if you can’t stand my face.”

  “Yes, even then.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

  “Come on. Help me sort this stuff out.”

  Liz spent a couple of hours going in and out of the trailer, pulling out odds and ends, cleaning out the fridge and going through the closets. It wasn’t a big trailer, but it seemed Joe had filled it up with himself. She was collecting photographs and books and throwing them into her backpack alongside his camera.

  “Do you want any of these?” She gestured to the collection of taxidermied birds and rabbits she’d deposited on the porch. Their glass eyes were catching the afternoon sunlight so that the animals almost looked alive again.

  “My symbolic fishbowl should be enough, thanks.”

  The afternoon was growing chilly when we walked back to the driveway. Liz stopped beside the power line. Her bike was parked beside the post.

  “Why didn’t your parents come out here with you?”

  She shrugged. “Mom still wasn’t really feeling up to it. She and Uncle Joe were pretty close growing up. And after what happened, I think she feels guilty for growing apart or something. She’s basically renting a room at the hospital.”

  “Oh.”

  “Keep your promise.” She pointed that old accusatory finger at me but lowered it slowly. “Are you going to be all right, Ollie?”

  And the first thing I thought was no, not now that Moritz doesn’t write me. But then I remembered how I don’t know how to feel about anything anymore, about Mom or you or anyone, so I opened my mouth and let my jaw hang for a second before replying.

  “Just dandy. Will you be back next week?”

  I wished I hadn’t asked. Pathetic.

  “Um, I might be busy.”

  “Yeah, yeah. No biggie. Well, tell your friends about the party! Tell them it’ll be a real riot.”

  “Mmm,” she said. “See you around, Oliver.”

  And she pedaled away through the curtain of tangerine light, and she couldn’t see how the streaks lit up her skin so that when she was beyond them, she looked like an amber light going out.

  Please write me.

  ~ Ollie

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Deer Blind

  Moritz,

  This birthday party I made Liz promise to. I’m going to turn it out. It’s going to be a party those kids will never forget! It’s a month away, and that gives me a month to make it awesome.

  I told Mom, and at first she was all apprehensive. But then she totally got on board, and now she’s at least as excited as I am, plotting party favors and sketching out plans for how we’ll rearrange the cabin. (I don’t want to spoil the party for you, but it’s going to kick Arsch.)

  Also, there’s something else. Liz has started visiting again. Not a lot, but every now and then. Twice since the day I failed to shatter the symbolic fishbowl.

  I tried to be less ANGSTY (already sick of that word, and now it’s being retired). It was kind of a struggle because I asked her to pass me the book light again. Like old times.

  “Sure it won’t hit me in the face?”

  September. Liz is back at school now. This year she’s started wearing eyeliner, like some demented Egyptian princess. And her clothes don’t fit her like they used to, or else I never noticed before. They’re snug, to say the least, and she’s not just a tree-climbing stick insect like she used to be and I still am.

  I smiled. “I wouldn’t want to mess up your makeup.”

  She rolled her eyes, and I pulled the battered old light from the pocket of my hoodie. I handed it to her. She began our mantra:

  “You’ll never hear New Wave, or a dentist’s drill … or the bell chime between classes … or …” She stared at the old book light and sighed.

  What right did she have to be bored?

  I held my hands up. “Here.”

  She passed it to me, but for a single moment, there was pity in her eyes. That was something I’d never seen there. It made me drop what I’d caught.

  “Oh, Ollie.” She frowned. “If it hurts, let’s stop. It’s just sorta … cruel.”

  I picked it right back up, but Liz wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at my room, and the books and models and telescope and skeleton and puzzles and such. And then her eyes caught sight of the massive pile of letters on the table. Did you know you’ve written me half a book by now?

  “What are these?”

  I wanted to jump up and shove them away for some reason, but I didn’t. “Letters from my pen pal. He lives in Kreiszig. That’s a city in Germany.”

  “Really? Well, he sure is devoted.”

  “Yeah. He was. He was sort of my hero.” I actually said that, Moritz. Because it’s the truth.

  “‘Sort of,’ huh? I’ve heard writing letters can be therapeutic.”

  The light in my hand was building in pressure, but I didn’t release it. Not after that look she gave me, Mo.

  “This room feels like home.”

  I scratched my chin theatrically. “Profound. Yes, very profound.”

  She didn’t laugh. “I mean it, Ollie. This was where I wanted to be, growing up. This was where I was happy.”

  “You love your parents. You never shut up about them.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But they shut up about me plenty.”

  She took the light from me. Her fingers brushed mine, and I remembered, suddenly, standing by Marl Lake with her. She must have remembered, too, but for us that memory was immediately followed by the one of the man who fell in the forest. She pulled her hand away.

  I cleared my throat. “One month till the big day. Did you tell everyone to come? Tell them to prepare for the hermit party?”

  She nodded. “I will, yeah. I will.”

  “Promise?” I shot for nonchalant. (Is just chalant a thing? You know more about English than I do.)

  “Well, you’re not looking so cancerous anymore, after all.”

  “All those kids will be disappointed.”

  “Nah, you’re still plenty ugly.” Her lips twitched.

  “But you’re looking at me now.”

  I wasn’t sure whether she was about to say something or not, and then the way I looked at her might have changed her mind, and she left with the book light still in her hand. Like she was confiscating it.

  The next time she came, she didn’t bring it back.

  I had a dream about you, Moritz. It was really weird. We were both crouching up in Joe’s deer blind. Even though I’ve never met you, I knew it was you because you just had these gaping black holes where eyes should be. (I know you don’t, but dreams are like that.) And we were looking out the window and you were pointing at deer and hares and things, but I just kept seeing white static, white lines, and saying, “I can’t see anything. I can’t see anything.”

  And you just smiled at me and said, “Tch.”

  I don’t know if it was a good or a bad dream.

  Can I tell you what the worst thing about your silence is? I mean, one of the worst things?

  It ruins your character arc. No, listen—I mean it. In a decent book, you would have been allowed to, like, grow up and get the girl (Sorry—boy, right?) and save the day before vanish
ing forever. Your disappearance doesn’t make any narrative sense! It’s been driving me crazy.

  I keep thinking of stories where similar things happen—where friends or loved ones vanish. And do you know what usually happens? The ones they left behind chase after them, through hell or through gates of truth or through magic wardrobes or across oceans aflame in gasoline fires or through collapsing black holes, by magic or science or willpower and mental muscles. They go out and they find the lost ones.

  I would do that if I could, Moritz.

  But I can’t. I can no more go looking for you than I can go moonwalking. Even if I found you dangling off a cliff, I couldn’t pull you up without dropping you when your pacemaker triggered one of my seizures.

  More than ever I’m powerless.

  And so this must mean you’re not gone forever. Because you’ve been writing to me like a fantasy character from the best books, like a kid pulling a sword from a stone. You’ve been writing like the underdog about to blossom into something great. Like the best of the X-Men. So you can’t just leave your own story.

  You’ll be back. You have to be back. And you’ll have a lot of reading to catch up on.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Cane

  Dear Mr. Paulot,

  I am pleased you still write to my son. It has come to my attention that he no longer sends replies. He can read without my help now. I felt it would be invading his privacy to read the letters you have written to him. In the years that he has been under my guardianship, I have always tried to respect his privacy. He has not always had any privacy to respect.

  Because of this, it was only last week that I became aware that all the letters he has written to you remain stacked on his desk in a neat pile, sealed and stamped but never sent. I was sorry to learn that he has not sent them, because I had hoped you remained his last source of solace. Watching his recent decline was bearable when I thought you were counteracting it. Now that I know that is not the case, I feel I must contact you and tell you about Moritz’s behavior.

  Something has happened to my son, and it is something he will not speak to me about. We have always been quiet, but this silence is different. I once looked forward to clocking out of the factory to enjoy a few hours’ time with him in the evenings. Now when I return from work, our home is awash in a melancholy that is difficult to bear. I have a hard time crossing the doorway; the lights seem to flicker, the furniture looks older even than it is. If I approach Moritz’s bedroom at the end of the hallway, the gloom in the air feels so heavy that my eyes water.