Nowhere Near You

by Leah Thomas

  “What are you saying, you complete prat?”

  “I’m saying you meddle in our affairs because your own life is dull.”

  She slammed her fist on the table—

  Owen stood. Walked away from the table. Approached the microphone the woman had abandoned.

  He screamed silently on the stage, the same three words over and over. Mouthing them with such quiet rage that every patron in the Kneipe turned to bear witness.

  “Ich bin hier, Ich bin hier, ICH BIN HIER!”

  I am here.

  Tell me why I’m still a person, let alone a superhero?

  Who knows whether Owen would have “screamed” into the microphone if I had not been feeling ashamed. Who knows what Fieke might have said about queer candyland if I hadn’t felt so damned uncertain. Spitting waves of guilt.

  Tell me more than weather, Oliver Paulot. Tell me everything you are. Show me how real people behave. I may take notes.

  And perhaps if we are not good people, we can at least be better to each other.

  chapter eleven

  THE BLENDER

  Moritz.

  Can we put away our recent bullshit? Give it a sea burial? So when we get our damn amphibicars and take on the Atlantic and meet halfway to high-five in the middle of it, our fossilized bickering will be totally buried by the sands of time?

  Look. Maybe I’m not qualified to comment on what’s going on with you and Max and Owen and Fieke, but I’ll say this much: I get you, Moritz. More than you get you.

  You spend a lot of time worrying about emolocation instead of working out what you feel and why you feel it. It comes down to the same old issue: you’re always half convinced you aren’t worth loving. That you should be punished for your past. That’s been your trouble all along!

  So you were born in that place full of needles. Maybe steady footing’s always hard if you started life without feet, and your scars don’t heal like Arthur’s?

  But do you really think I’ll ever let you rot? I mean, really? After all we’ve been through? Don’t be such . . . such a Moritz.

  There are real reasons why you and I can’t stop writing each other. I mean, it’s ridiculous! Even when we’re annoyed and annoying, we’re pen-palling addicts. We write pages upon pages at least twice a week just so we can paper-whine at each other.

  Person or not, you’re definitely good enough for me.

  When Arthur and I got back to Logan Square, Beau and Auburn-Stache were both waiting on the stoop. I don’t know who hollered more. At one point Beau slipped into Japanese and Auburn-Stache slipped into SUPER BRITISH! (“A bloody reckless bit of messing about, that was!”), and Arthur and I started guffawing, which really set them off.

  “Oh, they’re trouble together.” Beau shook her head. We grinned.

  “We’ll be leaving in an hour or so, Pro—Beau! Ollie, don’t look at me like that—we have elsewhere to be. And Arthur certainly seems healthy enough.”

  Arthur didn’t look sheepish, I swear, and definitely didn’t hide any hands behind backs (he’d taken the splints off on the train and wiggled fingers good as new and not triple-jointed).

  Beau sighed. “You think I’ll let you leave tonight? Don’t insult me. Ollie, you’re in Arthur’s room, although you’ll have to sleep in that hat because I can’t afford to lose the leftovers to another power outage. Greg, the couch is all yours. Art, go get us some Tso’s.”

  Moritz, in Chicago I met a hundred miracles, and Chinese takeout was one of them.

  Arthur offered me his bed, but I noticed his comforters and quilts were arranged into a sort of cubby of cushioning. I wasn’t as likely to break in half by rolling into a bedpost, so I chose a tatami mat and tucked my feet under his wheelchair.

  We didn’t sleep. We shot the shit for hours, talking about my woods and his city. When I asked about school, his tone changed again.

  “If I didn’t have this stupid cast . . .”

  “Why do you, Arthur-mander? Fashion?”

  “I fluffed up, guy.”

  “You slam it in a door?”

  “Nah. I punched a guy and it folded like a bendy straw.”

  “Punched him? Was he a Tyrann?”

  “A what-now?”

  “A bully.” I stared at the wheelchair, all black and silver. “Did he have it coming?”

  I could almost see him nodding, maybe by the light of the electrical sockets spitting confetti colors into the room. Or by all the lamps on his desk shining on the glowing blue pieces of robotic machinery, his supertech indoor hobby. Or by the plastic stars glued to his ceiling. (It’s never dark anywhere outside the woods, Moritz.)

  “Um, I tried to fix it myself.”

  Here’s what happened to Arthur’s arm.

  His fracture was a total one, halfway down his radius. His arm split clean in two. The bones ended up overlapping and healing that way, in a thick sort of lump where they joined (a bone callus, Moritz). Arthur panicked and broke that callus, but then the two bones didn’t line up anymore.

  “I never go see doctors. Beau does it all herself—she used to be a badass surgeon. Afterward, she locked me indoors for weeks. Can you imagine how much that sucked?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I bet you can, OllieUpandFree.” I heard him roll over. “I’d done a few fixes myself, you know, ever since middle school when I broke my toe on a soccer ball. Usually that shit goes fine. I was off my game. That lump got bigger and bigger, and I just felt . . . smaller.”

  For two hours, Arthur sat in a dark auditorium breaking and rebreaking bone.

  By the time he came home after dark, his arm was a club.

  “They tried to replace it. Give me an artificial radius? Ass came over to help with the procedure, but, um, my shitty skeleton was not on board. The fake bone kept breaking the others. So I don’t get to have two arms anymore.”

  I stretched out on the floor, listening to the alien sound of traffic outside. (I guess cities never go dark or quiet, Moritz?) “Here’s a perk: you’re kind of a cyborg.”

  “A really shitty one.”

  “Still cool, Arthur.”

  “Thanks, guy.”

  “That could have happened to your fingers today.” I squeezed my eyes shut. Watched electricity drift in my aura. Like when you press on your eyelids and sparkles refuse to leave you. “If I did it wrong, I could’ve killed your hand.”

  “I know.” He laughed. “Stupid of me to trust a dope like you, right?”

  “So, so stupid.”

  “Yup.”

  “Arthur?”

  “Present, guy.”

  “Start using this wheelchair, okay?” I tapped it with my foot, felt my sock slip on the rubber. “For Beau.”

  “She’s going into overdrive, man. There’s no reason to—”

  “You’ll regret it. If something happens to her and you didn’t listen, you’ll regret it.” I should have worn the damn coat, I should have stayed close, I should have . . .

  “Okay, UpandFree.”

  “Arthur, why did you punch that guy?”

  No answer, because Arthur was asleep even if the city would never be. Even if I couldn’t really be, the first night wearing the rubber suit.

  I didn’t ask Arthur in the morning, and I didn’t hug him just in case, although Beau softly held me and roughly held Dr. Auburn-Stache before we trundled off to the car. Auburn-Stache seeming like he was in a hurry, me wanting to move right into the museums or maybe live under Arthur’s bed or just stay.

  “What’s this?” Arthur asked me. I’d handed him a crinkled piece of notebook paper.

  “Your contract. Sign on the line so I can tell your story.”

  Arthur laughed. “You still think my story’s worth something?”

  “Probably not money, but yeah. Something.”

  He signed it against his armrest with his good hand. “Cool.”

  Through the side-view mirror, I watched them wave from the stoop I forgot to spend time on.

 
Arthur, long arms reaching almost as high as Beau’s even though he sat in his wheelchair, quietly declaring himself, if not a man of steel, a man of Metropolis.

  After five hours of riding and writing and Auburn-Stache totally refusing to tell me about his collegiate shenanigans in Beau’s classes (no word on whether they had a sordid affair, because obviously Auburn-Stache never tells me squat), the Impala left the freeway and turned into the subdivision where another Blunderkid lived.

  This wasn’t the woods, and this wasn’t Chicago.

  In this neighborhood, all the houses looked identical to one another. Everyone’s backyard basically rested on the one next door, or would have if everyone didn’t insist on fencing themselves in. I’m not a big fan of fences. And these fences were crazy low. If people cooked out on their grills, they could have staring competitions in four directions while their neighbors burned bratwurst. Is that normal for suburbia? The weird closeness crossed with fake distance?

  No one was barbecuing when we drove by. It was late afternoon in November, and hamburgers taste better when peppered with summer sunshine. You’d think I’d be comforted by the trees lining the sidewalks, but their branches were barren. I’m used to underbrush of crinkling brown leaves so thick that you have to dig to find soil. All the people here raked their leaves up and . . . put them away somewhere? Burned them? Stuffed mattresses with them? I don’t know. Hid them so their neighbors couldn’t make fun of them for being too leafy?

  Ohio, Moritz. (Arthur, give me strength!)

  “So, Sergeant Secrets, does this kid have a name? Or can’t you tell me?”

  “She’s called Bridget.”

  I wrote that down in my notepad, like a professional storyteller. “And can you tell me if she knows we’re coming?”

  “She’s the reason we had to leave Arthur so soon.” This was floodgates opening, by Ass standards. “Bridget’s accustomed to extremely regular monthly appointments.”

  “Is she homeschooled, too?”

  “Not homeschooled, but rarely socializing.”

  “Well, so long as I can get her story!” I tried to punch the sky and smacked my knuckles against the roof.

  “Ollie, you may need to exercise patience. Bridget doesn’t always present herself well.”

  “We can’t all be cool like Arthur. I just want to help her with her beef.”

  “Sometimes there’s only so much help to be had. Just because you made headway with your epilepsy doesn’t mean you’ll never seize again. Yes, we’ve found new ways to manage your sickness—”

  “Please don’t call me sick. Here I sit, victorious in my giant body condom, overcoming an evil electrified vehicle.”

  “But we haven’t cured you.”

  “Good. Because I am living for this giant body condom, and I never want to take it off.”

  “And we can’t cure Arthur or Bridget—”

  “Stop saying the c-word.” Moritz, I’m not looking for a cure. Really. I can’t imagine being someone who didn’t see the world how I do. Can you imagine if someone tried to hand you some eyeballs? You’d flush them down a toilet. With dignity.

  As a kid, I daydreamed about being normal, like kids with glasses still daydream about being astronauts. Daydreams aren’t realistic. I only wanted normal because I thought normal was a word that meant “surviving the world.”

  But Arthur walked city streets abnormally, awesomely. He got my hopes up, and he helped me keep my hat on. I’m going to write him a hundred letters.

  “’Stache, I don’t want to fix anyone. If it ain’t broke, you don’t.”

  “Ollie.” Auburn-Stache smiled. “I don’t regret bringing you.”

  “I’m irresistible.”

  “Indomitable, at least.”

  He slowed by a house like the other houses: gray paneling, boring lawn and all.

  “We’ve arrived.”

  “How can you tell the houses apart?”

  “There’re numbers on the mailboxes.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” Things obvious to most people make for hermit surprises. I’d get lost in a cardboard box—anywhere—without familiar ferns to guide me home.

  I pushed the door open—

  “I HAVEN’T PARKED THE BLOODY CAR YET!”

  —eager to get into spaces open enough for fist-pumping. Eager to meet another superhero, Moritz. I kissed the grass, got up, and stared at Bridget’s house, iridescent with electricities. The windows curtained, insides shuttered in. Legs tingly from household currents, I pulled my hat over my ear tips and climbed the clean-swept steps to the door. (All three at once, how Arthur would.)

  “Well, she’s not rushing to meet us.”

  “She wouldn’t. Don’t bother with the doorb—”

  DING-DONG! DING-DONG!

  The first doorbell I ever rang, to the joy of my rubber fingers! I dinged it again before Auburn-Stache grabbed my shoulders and pulled me aside.

  “She on the couch like the famous potato?”

  “Not likely.” I’m as tall as Auburn-Stache nowadays, so he didn’t really have to lean forward to talk to me. “Ollie, best behavior.”

  Auburn-Stache pulled a crowded key ring from his coat pocket. I bet he has keys to the homes of all the Blunderkids. He twisted a silver key in the lock, pushed open the door. We laid eyes on a cold blue living room and a narrow beige hallway. No tapestries here. No autographed album covers like the ones coating Beau’s duplex.

  The place was spotless. My skin itched.

  “Bridget . . . ? It’s Dr. Auburn-Stache.”

  Moritz, Auburn-Stache never announced himself at my house. He never tiptoed, either.

  “I’m in the kitchen.”

  Something about that voice was really dull? Like it’d been laced with disinfectant and lost all its character. This person spoke because she was expected to, and at exactly the right volume for us to hear her.

  Auburn-Stache’s face didn’t register surprise so much as resignation. He didn’t hurry as he led me down the hallway. Under the floors and in the walls, the wiring hummed. I tugged at my bodysuit.

  The walk took way too long.

  The second we stepped into the white-tiled kitchen, Auburn-Stache’s demeanor changed. His shoulders stiffened, and he put one arm out to block me from pushing past him.

  I pushed past him anyhow, because this reminded me too much of Liz and me finding Joe with his spine broken. If this was another accident, I’d rather face it.

  I took a deep breath and squinted past the auras of the microwave, fridge, and power sockets to the girl tucked between it all.

  Bridget had the straightest posture I’ve ever seen. She was lean and ochre-skinned, with long ropes of russet-colored hair pulled completely away from her face. She stood behind a counter, hands on an electrical device I’d never seen: a glass beaker with silver blades at the bottom, perched on a base that oozed gravel-gray in my aura. Her tank top hung low off her left shoulder, revealing the weirdest branching slit near her sternum—it looked almost like those pictures you see of cracking earth in the desert.

  Bridget held something red and meaty above the electrical device. I remembered our Edgar Allan Poe birthday party back home. I remembered countless nights falling asleep to Grey’s Anatomy.

  What Bridget held was almost definitely, certainly a beating human heart.

  The heart looked dry; no blood dripped down her fingers. And her eyes revealed nothing at all. Like she was sleepwalking and no one had bothered to wake her up, maybe not for years.

  “Hello,” Bridget said, calm as anything.

  Tell me the Blunderkids should be left alone, and I’ll tell you you’re a liar.

  Tell me you don’t want to hear more of this, Moritz.

  chapter twelve

  THE STYROFOAM TABLE

  There you go dropping science, Ollie. You’re dropping it all over.

  Set science aside. We are living science fiction.

  Oliver, foreboding as she seems, I am fascinated by this girl and her
removable heart. Certainly, I want to hear more. You dangle the bait, storyteller. I bite.

  Whenever we are petty with each other, I want to slam my head into the desk. The world regardless, you have me when you need me. Even if I’m nowhere near.

  Perhaps it doesn’t matter what opinion I have of myself on dark days. Your good opinion persists. I am not in command of my feelings. But I feel confident that even at my worst, your feelings remain constant. That is no small thing, Ollie.

  Consider the bicker-fest shipwrecked.

  If my opinions are always low and yours are always high? We even out.

  Together we pass for human, Oliver Paulot. Veins pulsing with lightning.

  Two mornings after the disaster at the Sickly Poet, I awoke gasping. Wind outside the high balcony screeched. Eked through my window. Coughing beyond my door: Father, preparing for another double shift.

  I messaged Owen from bed. I want to listen. If you want to speak.

  His answer came swiftly for 4:00 am: “If you’re doing this out of pity, forget it!”

  I have resolved to reassign him a different voice as soon as possible. (Apologies.)

  You shouldn’t believe everything your sister says, I wrote.

  “Leave her out of it! And you’re still talking down to me!”

  I’m sorry. It isn’t intentional.

  “It never is! People think that being silent is the same as having nothing to say! It’s not!”

  I don’t think you have nothing to say. Your actions speak volumes. Tomes of chronicles of volumes.

  “You can never say things simply!”

  Things: simply.

  “And you have a terrible sense of humor!”

  I never laughed until I met you.

  I realize, Oliver: this is almost precisely what your mother said about your father. I lack creativity. Haven’t I said?

  “You don’t laugh now, actually!”

  Ahahahahaha?

  A pause.

  “Congratulations then! D! God! I can’t even stay angry!”

  Another pause.

  From separate buildings within the same cold city, I nearly told him about Max. But what good could it do? The kiss was an error. I’d told Max I’m spoken for. That tome was closed.