Because You'll Never Meet Me (10 page)

“Is that why no one texts me back out here? I figured it was because everyone has more important things to do than text Liz Becker.”

She pulled a device out of one of her back pockets; it was black and rectangular, and there was a little charm of a Japanese lucky cat hanging from it. The phone was infused with enough of a tiny
turquoise glow that I almost winced my way right off the edge of the Ghettomobile.

“Whoa, Ollie. It's dead. The battery's dead. Look.”

She held it aloft again. Now that I looked at it properly, it really was only the lightest shadow of teal mist.

I inched back onto the roof.

Her forehead wrinkled. “Maybe you can try holding it? Come on. It's a dead battery. Bet it's hardly electric at all. It won't bite you.”

I shook my head.

She dangled it by its charm. “Face your fears, Oliver! How else will you get better?”

And she pushed it against my hand, and it nipped me.

“No!” I stood up. “It's not something I can get better from. If you want to be good at helping people like your parents are, you shouldn't be so—so domineering!”

“Oh.” She tucked the phone into her pocket again.

“Sorry. Please—I'm sorry. I don't really … I don't know how to talk to people.” I swallowed. “Sorry.”

She stood up suddenly and craned her neck as if looking over the horizon, into the trees. I couldn't see her face. “So you live at the end of the driveway, right? I've never been all the way down. Can I come visit you?”

“You really want to?”

“Yep.”

I couldn't stop myself from grinning like an idiot. “You'll be disappointed, though. It's not very horrific. We don't even have dead teddy bears.”

“You know, people have called me bossy before. People don't
always like me. I'm a know-it-all. But no one's ever called me domineering. That sounds way cooler.” She snickered. “You're pretty funny, Ollie Ollie UpandFree.”

“My last name is Paulot….”

“Don't you know the children's rhyme? ‘Olly Olly Oxen Free'?”

“No. What does it mean?”

“You know,” she said, “I don't know. It's just something kids say. When I was in elementary school we had all sorts of rhymes.”

“Do you have rhymes in, um … middling school?”

“
Middle
school.” She frowned. “Not really. None that anyone tells
me
about.” Her face brightened. “But we used to have all sorts on the playground. Like ‘Miss Susie's Tugboat' and the K-I-S-S-I-N-G rhyme.”

“I don't know those, either.”

She laughed again. “Well, maybe I can teach you all the basics. I'm here until Memorial Day weekend's over. No one would miss me if I stayed a little longer. I'll come by tomorrow afternoon to begin your education!”

She hopped down to the ground.

“I'm going in. See you tomorrow. Tell your mom I'm coming, okay?”

“Wh—oh—okay! I will!” I was trying hard not to bite my tongue.

And she, toting the fishbowl of berries inside with her, left me standing there.

A visitor. Someone wanted to
visit
me. What would Mom say?

Oh no. Mom
.

I dragged my bike back through the woods, stumbling through bracken as twilight arrived. It was almost too dark to ride my bike by
the time I got back to the driveway, so I dropped it there on the path and began sprinting as fast as my legs could carry me.

How many hours had I been gone for?

Four? Seven?

Oh no, oh no
.

The sky was heavy with dusk by the time the familiar silhouette of our triangular cabin appeared before me. There were no lanterns in the windows and when I ran into the breezeway, my footsteps echoed.

“Mom? I'm home!”

The lanterns hadn't been lit since the previous evening. It felt unusually cold in the hallway. I tiptoed into the kitchen to find it in disarray. All the bowls were torn from the shelves, cutlery was on the floor. In the living room all the couch cushions were scattered about as if a tornado had whipped them around. Books were splayed open all over the room, their spines abused. The hand-carved coffee table was overturned. I knew that my bedroom would be in a similar state of chaos, so I didn't bother going upstairs to check.

I used to wonder why she looks everywhere, even in all the places I could never be.

I went out the back door and into the long grass. The crickets were screeching something awful. I stood on the edge of the overgrown clearing that separates our house from the allergenic garage. Mom can't be the hermit that I am. Sometimes she needs to call for appointments. She needs somewhere to park her truck, and maybe to hide from me, Moritz.

Even though the garage is insulated, it glows softly crimson some evenings and at sunset the solar panels on the roof gleam silver. The generator near the rear is hidden by a hundred hues. This
evening I could see the silver blush of the fluorescent bulbs inside it through the sole window near the top of the concrete-block building, and I nearly collapsed with relief.

At least she wasn't driving around town this time, hollering my name in the neighborhoods. At least this time it wouldn't be the police bringing her home. At least she was here.

I waited outside for a long time for her to come out. Once or twice I tried to get closer to the garage, but the crimson light was strong enough that it made my skin feel prickly even from this far away. The closer I got, the more the long grass against my shins felt sharp enough to cut me.

I thought about calling for her. But what could I say when “sorry” couldn't be enough? It's not as though this was the first time. It's not as though I did not know better.

And something else, something small and sharp: I was afraid to see her face. Afraid of what her eyes might look like.

“I'm sorry,” I told my knees.

After the night started getting cold and the stars painted everything in white and the crickets' songs were accompanied by the rustling of night animals and the cooing of things in the dark, I was roused from uneasy sleep.

Dr. Auburn-Stache, crouched beside me, was nudging me with his elbow. His profile was cast in orange light and black shadows when he held the lantern up to get a good look at my face.

I wondered when she'd called him. How quickly did he drive to get here? Usually Auburn-Stache came by only every other weekend. Did he leave another patient waiting on a table just so he could tend to the woodland invalid again?

“Ollie, sometimes you are an idiot.”

“It was only a few hours.”

He sighed. “Ah. But try to think about it from her perspective, kiddo.”

I put my head on my arms. “Can you please go get her?”

“I can try. What the blazes happened to your nose?”

“I met a girl.”

“Mm. Sounds about right, actually.”

“She's coming over tomorrow.” I wiped my eyes on my forearm.

“Then you'd better get some beauty rest, Prince Charming. Up you get.” He prodded me with his red leather oxfords. “I'll talk to your mum.”

“What if she won't come out?”

He squeezed my shoulder. “Shush, you. Go inside and go to bed.”

I watched him scurry to the garage, the orange bobbing light of his lantern tracing the long grass of the field. A brief burst of red electricity and yellow light seeped out into the night before he closed the door behind him.

Those crickets just wouldn't shut up. I could still hear them even after hours of lying in the wreckage of my bedroom on the broken wings of a model airplane or four.

I hope you knock it out of the park when you go back to school. It's really crappy that the dinguses of Bernholdt-Regen suspended you when you were the one who got your face turned to potaters.

They can't expel you for being eyeless! Isn't that discrimination? Or are the rules different in Germany? I don't know what
Hauptschule
means, really, and Mom threw out what was left of my English-German dictionary last Wednesday after I, um, angrily tore it to pieces.

Please tell me about more of your superpowered shenanigans.

If my autobiography is starting to bore you, I'll stop before we get to the bad parts.

I can write about chromatic scales and what a pain it is to tune my glock on warm days when metal instruments go flat due to humidity.

~ Ollie

P.S. Heh—you're superpowered, I'm powerless. We're two ends of a freak magnet!

P.P.S. Apologies. I'm really sleepy, and I've started to speak fluent Stupid.

P.P.P.S. Hey, I just sat up in bed to write this, but what if it isn't a laboratory that connects us? What if we're actually related in a different way? I mean, aren't you a little curious?

I mean, wouldn't it be amazing if we were somehow brothers?

Ollie, I don't need a brother.

I can see why Liz is so alluring to you. Yet I stand by my previous deduction, Mr. Holmes. She sounds something like the girls who giggle in the cafeteria, who toss their hair in the hallways. Why do they want to be looked at?

Of course, you, too, wish to be seen. Perhaps two similarly poled magnets don't always push each other away. This isn't the same equation as Oliver Paulot versus the Driveway Power Line. Perhaps you and Liz make sense. Given your circumstances. She is not as confident as she seems. You have that in common also.

I wonder what happened to leave you lovesick and without her, Ollie. But I appreciate your attempts at linear storytelling. You've begun to hone your focus. It is not a laser beam yet. A wide laser ray. Small steps.

The state of affairs in Kreiszig: since I have returned to
Bernholdt-Regen, some aspects of my daily life have improved in ways I never hoped for.

Others leave me deeply uneasy.

After my suspension ended, I dared not step out of the
Strasse
into Bernholdt-Regen's open campus until I was certain no one was waiting in ambush inside the school gates. Lenz Monk might be just beyond the threshold, fists at the ready.

I listened with all my might through the open gates, trying to still my shaking hands and heart. Straightened my tie. Clenched my hands tightly around the cane. Father had handed it to me that morning. He does not say much, my father. His movements speak for him.

In the tiny kitchen, I could see the anxious tilt of his head. Could see/hear how his breath caught when he handed the stick to me. My breath caught as well.

My face is still swollen. Sometimes the bridge of my nose experiences twinges. Acupuncture inside my nostrils. The stick I had always refused to hold had more weight than ever before. I understood it to be my armor.

The cane was the stipulation that allowed me to attend public school once more.

My new mask, Oliver?

The morning my suspension began, I ate cereal by the crunchy handful. I focused on the noisy insides of my mouth and nothing more. But Father, home from the factory that day, ushered me away from the table and alongside him to Bernholdt-Regen. He strode me right into the headmaster's office. Most
of my “peers” were in the cafeteria. We stood in front of the glass wall. He stared at the headmaster, Herr Haydn, from between the blinds. They couldn't just leave my father there. Haydn and several loitering faculty members agreed to discuss my future studies.

Father spoke. He began by convincing the unsettled staff that I am legally blind. That I had refused to use my cane out of a misplaced sense of pride. I nodded in time with his words. I tried my hardest to look unfortunate. It was not very difficult.

You are correct to mention discrimination. If I was blind, they were on thin ice. They had been less than accommodating.

The wondrous thing? I wanted to return, Ollie. I wanted to speak to Owen Abend. To thank him.

When I strapped on my goggles this morning, I tried to smile.

You've made me reconsider my surroundings. You've made me hopeful.

If that means using the cane, so be it.

From the street, campus sounded as disorderly as ever. It overflowed with the cacophony of those idiotic
Jugendlichen
. They spoke as if they were Sirens hoping to drown out the sound of the school bell. There was a great deal of movement. Students pushed and jostled and smacked against one another. MBV informed me that no one was lurking by the wall. Somewhere on the right side of the courtyard, a boy was being lambasted for his choice of trainers. Near the front steps a
girl was getting her hair pulled from the roots by an envious friend. Hair-pulling and footwear-lambasting are standard fare at Bernholdt-Regen.

You asked about German schooling. In
Deutschland
, our futures are decided early. After
Grundschule
(elementary school), we are separated into three possible groups. The students who excel academically, who cross their
t
's and double-dot their umlauts, end up at a
Gymnasium. Gymnasium
is preparatory school for those who wish to attend university. Students who wish to become technicians—those who wish to be mechanics, say—must qualify for
Realschule
, but may join a
Gymnasium
later.

For everyone else—for those who don't excel, those who are indifferent, or those who are
problem students
—there are
Hauptschulen
.

Ollie, I am certainly problematic. Bernholdt-Regen is for the unwanted and unworthy. I deserve nothing better.

The boy in unpopular shoes was trying to claw his way out of a headlock by the time I stepped into the courtyard. I bit my tongue to keep from clicking. I crossed the campus threshold. The earth did not crack. Hellfire didn't bother raining from the sky. Nowhere was the bulky outline of Lenz Monk.

I let the air out of my lungs. Perhaps it was safe to enter after all. Perhaps I would not whimper today.

But as I made my way forward, students made a noticeable effort to step out of my path. I am often ignored. This was something worse. It was just as when I left the gym bloodied: the seas of body odor and cheap cologne and cigarette smoke parted before me.