Nowhere Near You

by Leah Thomas

  “It’s hard to be well, coming from where we come from.”

  “Right.” He looked at my goggles. “Molly isn’t missing any body parts, is she?”

  “Would it matter?”

  Klaus stiffened. “Not even a little bit.”

  “I didn’t think so.” I smiled. “Klaus, can we make a bargain?”

  He eyed me warily. “Yeah . . . ?”

  “Show me new scenery. And I’ll tell you a story.”

  Klaus’s posture told me not to comment. But what a home. A town house with dual staircases in the front hall. Cold marble floors. Lofty windows. Old wealth. Klaus thanked a butler and declined refreshments. Asked not to be disturbed before he led me upstairs.

  I will not waste space detailing the finery of Klaus’s magnificent bedroom. I settled in across from him.

  “What is this, Farber?”

  “Will you believe,” I told him, “that I’ve never spoken my past aloud?”

  “I’d believe that.” I waited for cynicism. It did not come.

  “Standing,” I breathed. “Do you happen to have a computer with a camera?”

  Minutes later, I watched his furrowed brow lift as he perused the forum.

  “What is this? An RPG?”

  “For me, it’s the brother of truth.”

  “A laboratory,” he murmured, scanning the page. “That’s pretty messed up.”

  “You have asked about my history with Molly. Turn on the camera and you will learn a thing or two. When I raise my hand like this, please throw something at me. After we’re done recording, can you help me post this?”

  “This will help Molly?”

  “I won’t make any promises.”

  He nodded. “Ready when you are.”

  A click and a beeping countdown.

  Three . . .

  Two . . .

  One.

  “I am user dolphinmo, and I am not a fiction. This is not science fiction.”

  I pulled off my goggles and raised my hand. I clicked and caught the miniature globe that Klaus tossed at me.

  “Please look at my user profile. Everything you see on it is the truth. This isn’t a game. Dozens of children in the world had to undergo torment at the hands of scientists in a laboratory. Some of you may know this. But that is not important.

  “It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re actual Blunderkinder. I am calling you to arms all the same. If you retain any of the humanity that your characters seem to—your characters on dairy farms and in Victorian London. Your characters learning kung fu. If you are half as brave as your creations, I need your help. We all need your help. We have to find her.”

  I told them all I knew about my mother. Described her appearance. Spoke of her mannerisms and her upbringing in Wien. Mentioned the hollows under her eyes. Her pacemaker. Showed and promised to upload the only picture of her I had: Me, six years old. The two of us outside the castle in Freiberg.

  I told them who we are. Not superheroes, but a few dozen teens around the world. A few dozen who have felt powerless. Who may have expiration dates. “We can’t sit by. Not if there is hope for any one of us to be happy. Not if a boy allergic to electricity can go to high school. Not if someone might love a girl with two mouths. If a girl without a heart might feel. If we can love, there’s hope for us.”

  Your poetical nonsense. Desperate times, Ollie.

  Klaus stopped the camera. I opened my mouth to thank him. He held up a tear-dampened hand. “I felt every emotion you did during that. I don’t know how you kept your face straight.”

  “Let’s hope they feel it through the digital veil, then.”

  “They might, Farber.” He coughed, stared at the ceiling. “Two mouths.”

  Ollie, my mother didn’t destroy her soulless workings.

  I won’t sit by and let us destroy ourselves.

  The word for being sick of the world, Ollie, is Weltschmerz. I’m fighting that.

  I hold to hope. Always and ridiculously. You taught me this.

  chapter twenty-nine

  THE ELECTROMAGNET

  Okay. I’m applauding. I’m laughing. I’m sobbing. I’m dying again. (Kidding!)

  Moritz fluffing Farber.

  You have to tell me what happens on the forum, Moritz. I would give my three stubborn baby teeth to see that video. To see how everyone reacts to you coming out of the Total Badass closet. Maybe soon! I tried watching TV at the Arana Zoo once, and it was just a messy blob of colors that made my eyes cross, but I’m working up to it. I hardly sneeze when I pass the computer labs at school, even though they make my neck prickly.

  Then again, nowadays I’m always prickly. I blame Wharton.

  The first time he picked me up after school, I nearly sprinted back inside again. Wharton pulled up to me and Brian and honked the horn. He didn’t have to. His car is such a black-breathing beater that I have dubbed it the Dark Lord Morgoth.

  “Time to pay up, Kilimanjaro,” he called through the window.

  “Spare me, doctor!” I cried, clasping my hands together. “Spare me or I’ll just kill your car with the fall of a hat.”

  He looked wary as I climbed in next to him. “If you really want to take off your hat, go ahead. Take a deep breath and do it.”

  I jokingly tugged at the gray fabric, but not enough to move the duct tape. “Okeydokey.”

  “Let me drive away from the main road first, just in case.”

  I let go. “You’re serious. You actually want me to just take my hat off. You do know that I’m the AMAZING human electromagnet. If I take this hat off, I’ll either seize or kill your car.”

  “Why do you think I bought this junker? If anything AMAZING and electromagnetic happens, I won’t be mourning my Fiat.”

  “So you’re kind of saying you bought a car for me?”

  “Guess so.” Wharton smirked, heading for Fayton’s outskirts. “So you seize when you’re overexposed, huh?”

  “Well, that used to be how it went. I’d have a seizure and bite my tongue and feel like crap for a few days. I hated that, but at least then . . .”

  “At least then what?”

  No way the hat was coming off. “It wasn’t hurting anyone else.”

  We stopped at an intersection.

  “When did that change?”

  “I think the lights change on a timer. Based on my limited traffic research.” I peered up at the yellow traffic box.

  “No.” Those twinkling eyes. “When did you start ‘killing cars’?”

  “There was an accident in the woods. A friend got hurt.” I squinted out the window. “It’s not my favorite day to talk about, actually.”

  “So it was a time of emotional distress. See, it’s a matter of figuring out your triggers.”

  The light switched back to green. He pulled forward. I didn’t even want to ask where we were going. Wharton made me jittery.

  “Eyes on the road. You can stick me in a test tube later.”

  “Did anything happen when your mom died?”

  The EMP at the dance. I closed my eyes. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “I can tell. Look.”

  He pointed to the digital clock under the dashboard, which was nothing but a blur of green bars now. “I take it that it wasn’t your favorite day, either. Okay. I’m just establishing that your electro-sensitivity is related to your emotional state.”

  “It didn’t used to be.”

  “Yeah, well. Puberty sucks for us all.”

  “Especially if you have a snaggletooth.”

  Wharton blinked at me. “Not cool, Ollie. We’ve got to work on your filters.”

  “Get your tooth fixed and asshats like me can’t say a thing.”

  “Sometimes it’s about working with your bad parts, not fixing them.” Totally deadpan. “I am doling out wisdom right at this very moment, Kilimanjaro.”

  He signaled left and pulled into a parking lot in front of a very specific store.

  “A death trap,�
� I intoned. “You’ve taken me to a death trap.”

  “Kid, by the end of April, I want you to walk right into the Electronics Megamart and take your hat off.”

  I borrowed your catchphrase: “Beg pardon?”

  Let’s talk delusions. I thought Wharton was the most delusional guy ever to get a medical degree. (Other than your mom, trying to make her superhumans, but that’s not even funny.)

  Dr. Wharton believes I do have a say in my electromagnetic pulses. He thinks seizures are more likely when I’m anxious or frightened, and EMPs are more likely when I’m flooded with adrenaline. I told him Auburn-Stache kinda thought the same thing.

  “He and Moritz say it’s about balance. But I’ve never been very good at balance. I tried using a jack pine log as a tightrope once.”

  “It’s a different kind of balance.”

  “I was joking.”

  “It wasn’t funny.”

  The following week, he took me to an ice-cream parlor, despite the snow on the ground.

  “The more I hear about your doctor, the more I think he was too close to it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was too worried about your welfare. He wouldn’t take risks worth taking.” Wharton gestured with his straw. “Mankind has to take risks to move forward.”

  “He regrets stuff.” I crushed sprinkles between my fingertips. “Failed experiments.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. You aren’t grown up. You’re not a failure yet.”

  “Gee, thanks?”

  Wharton never took his eyes off me. Just sucked down his strawberry milk shake like brain freeze isn’t a thing.

  “I don’t need you to explain what your doctor was afraid of. It’s the same thing every doctor is afraid of. It’s the same as being in an operating room and hearing that long beep. Everyone has to hear it sometimes. It’s the reason some people quit being doctors. They get blood on their hands and they back off. You can’t be so easily discouraged.”

  “You’re saying I have to stand up,” I provided.

  “I’m saying you can’t be a coward.”

  Auburn-Stache calls himself a coward, but I didn’t like a stranger talking smack.

  “Blood is sticky. But I guess you wouldn’t mind, so long as the blood wasn’t yours.”

  Wharton did not blink. “It’s going to be a struggle, but if we work on it, by the time you’re grown up, you could be in full command of this. Walk around without thinking twice about power lines. Just imagine.”

  I could meet you, Moritz, without worrying about frying your heart. I could take Liz to a sock hop without worrying about sneezing. I could sleep next to a humidifier. Maybe fly one of Arthur’s drones.

  I don’t believe in the c-word. But I want to believe in better.

  “Ollie, you could be great.”

  “But . . . okay. But how?”

  That snaggletooth. “Let’s start here. Right now.”

  “What?” I looked at the Dairy Freeze sign. Smoggy cars in the parking lot outside. The blue light of the electric freezers. The purple of the shake machines.

  “Ice cream is too sacred to risk. Too precious for this world!”

  “See, there’s your first problem. You’re panicking at just the idea. What’s the worst thing that happens? There aren’t any buses here. If you seize, here’s a doctor. Don’t panic.”

  “You gonna give me a towel?”

  “Nope. Take a few breaths, hitchhiker.” Wharton being a nerd made it harder to hate him.

  “You’re making it worse. Building the suspense!”

  “Why are you so worried?”

  “Why do you think? Someone could die.” The bored girl behind the tiny ice-cream counter. “No biggie.”

  “Ollie, you didn’t kill your mother.”

  He kept trying to get me to talk about her, but I won’t, Moritz.

  “How’s this: When you’re worried, what soothes you?”

  “That’s . . .”

  Moritz.

  You know it’s you. Knowing that no matter what, you’ll be writing me. Someone out there can talk about all this with me. Even after all the sort of unfair things we do to each other, it’s always you. At the dance, where I could have died, you saved me. You’ve pulled me from lots of dark places, fellow hermit.

  “Whatever you’re thinking of, hold on to it. And close your eyes.”

  Very slowly, Wharton pulled my hat from my head.

  Tape peeled away.

  Rubber tubing slipped.

  I breathed in through my nose. Thought of your video to the masses. Thought of the womble you sent me. Thought of you calling me good. Thought of you, just you—

  I opened my eyes. Still sitting in the plastic chair at the plastic table.

  I hazarded a slow glance at the ice-cream machines and freezers. None of the electricities had reached for me. They kept drifting, like I wasn’t there.

  A massive convict of a laugh escaped me.

  Obviously, that shorted out the fluorescent bulbs, and the girl at the counter shrieked as the freezer gave a rattling sigh.

  But Wharton smiled even as darkness fell.

  “Told you so.”

  If he had hungry eyes then, so did I.

  Mo, it really wasn’t all that different from what Liz and I used to do with the book light. Wharton exposed me to increasing increments of electricity, told me to breathe long and deep, and then asked me to remove my hat.

  It began with flashlights and old pagers and digital watches and, later, when he wasn’t waiting for me to ruin his livelihood or whatever, he started picking me up in a car that wasn’t just a crappy beater from the junkyard-hell dimensions.

  Ms. Arana did tell me that if he tried any funny nonsense she’d be having words with his mother before he could say “But.”

  It was strange; it used to be that Ms. Arana never got up until late, but now she was cooking dinner before she even got ready for work. Brian came home from running laps around the neighborhood and I came home from electro-training one night and found a meat loaf on the table. People in books make a big stink about meat loaf. It’s actually dang good, if you ask me. If you eat it with prodigious ketchup, anyhow.

  After dinner, I dried the dishes she washed.

  “That was great, Ms. Arana.” I pulled a python out of a cupboard, shoved the loaf pan in.

  “You kids are making an effort to move on with things. It’s only right I do the same.” She dunked another plate and shook her head. “That asshole isn’t coming back. Enough is enough.”

  My heart missed a beat. But she didn’t mean Auburn-Stache.

  She poured an insane amount of dish soap onto her palms and began scrubbing her fingers half raw.

  “Out, out damned spot?”

  “Yeah, honey. I put on some puppies since my wedding day. Oh—there she goes!” I swear I heard the suction-y pop of release as her wedding band slipped from her finger and a clink when it hit the sink.

  Brian stood in the doorway behind us. Hoodied as ever. “Can I have that, Mom?”

  He held out his hand. She hesitated a second before she handed it over.

  We followed Brian into the living room and watched him drop the ring—ploop!—right into a fish tank. An angelfish inspected it and lost interest pretty fast.

  “It looks nice there,” said Ms. Arana, finally.

  After I managed to walk up and down a café, hatless, without a single bulb flickering, Wharton upped the game. We went to the back of a small old cemetery, behind a crypt, where there weren’t power lines around the graves. He brought a portable generator, the kind for campers who can’t handle rustic, and set it up in the grass.

  I shielded my eyes, Moritz. That thing was basically a bursting tiny sun.

  “You might want to call Doctor Octopus to handle this one, Wharton.”

  Wharton still had that annoying staring habit. “What color now?”

  “Hyperactive peach? I told you, most power lines and generators are
in the oranges.”

  “Maybe that has to do with voltage, or maybe not. Ollie, you say electricity takes on shapes? It flinches away, tries to grab you. Have you ever tried grabbing it back?”

  “Wharton, it’s not actually tangible. I mean, I know it’s just energy.”

  “Maybe. But you told me sometimes it feels like it has direction or even malicious intent.” My old power line nemesis. “Whether or not that’s just you projecting, anthropomorphizing something mindless, I want you to try manipulating what you see. That’s our next step.”

  “How will this help me drive an amphibicar to Kreiszig?”

  “Humor me.”

  “You want me to just . . . grab the ethereal light? Stick my hands out like the X-Men?”

  “Nobody here will laugh at you.” He gestured at the tombstones.

  “They’re a really deadpan crowd.”

  A gleam of snaggletooth. “That was a little funny.”

  “Fine.” I put my fingers to my hat and watched him dart around the tiny sun. He pulled something from his backpack. “What’s that thing?”

  “Don’t worry. Just something electric.” It was this little handheld black box, sort of like Arthur’s remote control. There was a meter near its center, and it made these sort of light crackling sounds as Wharton tucked it into one of his rubber pockets. (He’s got his own dopey suit now.)

  I frowned. “What something electric?”

  “Don’t worry! Just do your thing.”

  I pulled off my hat and breathed in through my nose. It’s becoming so much easier now, Moritz. There’s always going to be that slight pressure in my head. Maybe an itch to sneeze. But it doesn’t overwhelm me anymore. Even that generator wouldn’t get me if I didn’t panic. Nothing can get me if I don’t think about Mom.

  If I think about you razoring Styrofoam tables backstage, listening to the world from your apartment.

  Feeling like some kind of idiot, I moved my gloved hands toward the orange light. The arcs of electricity bowing out of the generator didn’t exactly snap to attention, but they did start inching my way. Slowly, surely, creepily, the tendrils of orange light unspooled from the sun and wound themselves around my rubber arms, poking, prickling. But I thought of you rapping, I thought of you playing metronome for Chloe-Bowie, I thought of you and gritted my teeth over the escalating pounding in my temples, and I let the electricity prod me—