Because You'll Never Meet Me (13 page)

“You'll be completing your
Literaturkurs
in the
Bibliothek
from now on.”

“My headphones are just as effective here.” I tapped them to demonstrate.

In the echoes of someone's snigger, I saw her show her teeth. Was that why she was always unhappy? Because she
could not smile properly? “There are more resources for the visually handicapped there.”

“How nice. But I am
not
handicapped.” Again, my impulses are too fast, Oliver. I did not mean to refute being blind. I meant to express my loathing of the term
handicapped
. “
Behindert
,” as it reads in German.

“There's no sense denying it, dear,” she said. Then I really was grateful to leave, Oliver. Before I succumbed to thwapping someone—this time, a teacher—with my cane.

I deposited my headphones in my satchel. Walked to the front of the classroom, dragging that useless stick behind me.

This story will become a happy one soon. At least by my low standards.

The
Bibliothek
, or library, of Bernholdt-Regen is a spacious room. A smattering of shelves in front of very large windows. The
Bibliothek
is forever in a state of disrepair. God only knows when anyone last checked out a book for leisure. Yet despite the decrepit state of the library's visitors, the library's contents are meticulously maintained.

“
Guten Morgen
, Frau Pruwitt,” I told her. She loomed behind the checkout counter. Standing as straight as you please. Watching me tap my way halfheartedly down the threadbare stairs into the main reading room. “I am here for the wondrous array of materials for
behindert
students.”

Frau Pruwitt raised an eyebrow. Exhaled loudly enough to illuminate her wrinkles. “Don't say ‘
behindert
.' It's a hideous word.”

She and your Liz are the ones who may be related, Ollie.

“You know that I am.” I tilted my head away. “You pulled me from Athletics. You saw what is beneath my goggles. Or rather, what isn't.”

Pruwitt the Impenetrable raised that eyebrow once more at the cane I was tapping against the foot of the checkout counter.

“You don't need this.” She tore it from my fingers.

You recall, Ollie, how MBV enables my reflexes? Even so, I doubt I could have stopped Frau Pruwitt from taking that cane from me. Even if I'd had hours to prepare. Titanium indeed.

“As far as I see it, Mr. Farber, this cane is no more than a toy. This isn't kindergarten. We don't bring toys to school. If you would like your plaything back in the future, and you would not like me to snap it in two over my knee, please take your seat.”

“My seat?”

She gestured to a revolving chair behind the counter. I sat cautiously. That eyebrow of hers was impressive. How could she hold it so high for so long?

“There will be no headphones permitted in here,” she told me as I yanked them free of my satchel.

“But—I truly can't read—”

“You're illiterate?”

I bristled. “Not in the least.”

“Then learn to learn more, Mr. Farber.”

Frau Pruwitt handed me a book from among the pile on her desk. Of course, it looked blank to me, apart from the embossed cover. I struggle to read even that sort of thing; letters become so jumbled inside my head.

“Read this.”

“I'm not illiterate. But I do have something of a learning, ah …”

That eyebrow derailed me once more.

“I mean to say, as much as I would like to, I can't.” I frowned. “Mock me if you must.”

She made a
tch!
sound, Oliver!

“Mock yourself. I don't tolerate laziness. I don't know how it's possible, but you see just fine. So click all you need to until you can read the book.”

I pursed my lips. “I can
attempt
to read the title because I can see the raised outline of the letters. It's embossed. But images on a flat surface …”

It was so strange to be talking about this with a severe old librarian, but even stranger that it did not feel strange. Perhaps this was similar to being scolded by a grandparent.

“Well, well! Whatever is the matter with your generation?
Try
harder!” Frau Pruwitt slapped her hand on the table. “What about the space between the ink and the paper? Surely printed font is slightly raised or indented on the pages! The font wasn't grown on the trees, now, was it? The printed letters are either thicker or thinner.”

“On a nearly microscopic level …”

“You're saying that isn't enough for you to work with? I drag you down the hallway, bleeding and mumbling about how bothersome the individual
dust motes
clogging your vision are—”

I had been mumbling?

“—but now, when you're in a completely reasonable state
of mind, you won't even
try
to read a damn book because it might possibly require the slightest bit of effort? Shame on you, son. Your mother should be ashamed!”

“You don't know anything about my mother.”

“Do. Not. Shout. In. My. Library.” With each word, she tapped her long-nailed fingers on my wrist. “I know your mother isn't here. Who is? I am.”

I swallowed. “Undeniably.”

“Start with the title, Mr. Farber.”

I leaned forward. Tried to focus my MBV on the letters. They shifted before my ears.

“Click if you need to. Don't be shy!” And she clicked her nails against the book, illuminating the letters for me.

“I'll be damned,” I said.

It was a copy of
Daredevil Visionaries, Volume 1
, by Frank Miller.

Her eyebrow was still up near her hairline.

“Sit yourself down and clickity-clack until you can read comics like any other boy.”

I picked up the book.

Oliver, what if people apart from you could see me as something, someone, deserving of happiness? Not as a hero, mind. Just as “any other boy.”

The idea frightens me. Coward that I am. Me, born of science and ambition gone wrong. I felt that wrongness every day, until you wrote to me. Until you infected me with wondrous, hopeful nonsense.

Frau Pruwitt has given me a book about a certain blind
superhero. And now I am feeling something other than despicable.

What have you done to me, Oliver Paulot?

Initially, nothing came of our exercises. Frau Pruwitt was right. There is the most microscopic layer of space between pages and the ink on them. Like you, I struggled with focus. I tried to narrow my MBV. Tried to aim the clicks precisely.

That was the only noise Frau Pruwitt would allow me to make in the library. Not that there were many students to disturb in the high-windowed room.

I gave myself headaches. A more violent person might have tossed that book down on the floor. Frau Pruwitt made no point of watching me work; she went about her business among the shelves, chasing out any pupils who dared giggle in the aisles. At the end of the day, she'd ask me to tell her what I'd read.

At first, I only shook my head.

“Tomorrow, Mr. Farber.”

After a week, I started to grasp how to see the panels. How to aim the sound so that the words and pictures appeared in my head. Just barely. I began to see shapes.
Letters
.

Ollie, if I could write like you do, I could describe how I felt when I read my first page. When I clearly saw those first images. It was only an introduction page, featuring little more than Daredevil's billy club–toting silhouette. But it was enough to make me proud.

Matt Murdock disguises his weapon as a cane. You must have known that. And he is blind but not blind, Ollie!

Of course I'd seen letters. I'd memorized the spellings of
things, just so no one could ever call me illiterate. But I'd never truly stared at words on a page and strung the shapes together within my head.

The librarian handed me another book when I read the first page to her. A book with intimidating heft.

“It's a start. Later, read this one.”

I focused. Clicked. “
Der Herr der Ringe
?” I said. “
The Lord of the Rings
?”

“I'm an old hippie. So sue me.”

Here is my grand news, Oliver.

I am learning to read. Frau Pruwitt is assisting me. Not in Braille, but in text. One day, perhaps even very soon, I'll be able to read your letters on my own. Without Father's accent. I'll see your abhorrent handwriting for myself and scrawl back at you in my own.

And here is one last bit of news. I unfolded the piercing girl's paper airplane at long last in the library, while the air turned warm outside.

Here is what it said:

If you're a decent fluffing human being, stay away from Owen. —Fieke

Could I actually be such a thing?

Mo

P.S. Send me an extensive booklist, please. I want to read all the books that made you, Ollie Ollie UpandFree.

That last letter was like staring at the sun, Moritz! Glorious burns on my corneas! I never thought I'd see you that happy, and now I feel like the blind one. I'll tell my keepers I got my dose of daylight. Don't worry about me being unhappy!

But which lady do you go for? There's Fieke the Goth Wonder (what kind of name is Fieke? I mean, maybe it's kind of awesome, but I don't think I'm pronouncing it right: “FEEEEEEEK”), Frau Pruwitt of “steel buns,” and sourpuss Frau Melmann, the underdog no one's rooting for.

Seriously, I keep teasing you about these dames (that's the polite way to address a group of women, right?), but I'm still waiting on your love story. If that sounds dolphin-wavy, so be it! But if we're such good friends, I don't see why you're so closemouthed. I mean, you don't think I'd be weird about it or something, right?

No matter what you said.

Anyhow, I would ask you to send some of that love my way, but
I think I'm finally coming around to the idea of perpetual hermit bachelorhood. Hermit Bachelors are gentlemen. I have to move on from Liz.

It's so cold here for spring. We've still got slush and snow beneath the low boughs of the pines. I spend most days under my comforter. Dorian Gray spends all day sleeping, too, and no one wonders if
he's
depressed. I mean, I can fold paper just fine without standing up. I can do calligraphy in bed. All my boring hobbies can be bed hobbies, so why bother?

Auburn-Stache wasn't too pleased during my last checkup. He was really gentle when he took my blood pressure, like he was worried he was going to crush my arm in the constricting sleeve.

“You need more sun.”

“I'm a vampire now. Didn't you hear?”

“You need to eat properly.”

“Haf thee blood for thif night creature?”

He grabbed my chin and made me meet his eyes. “Do you see me smiling, Oliver?”

“I can never tell with that mustache of yours, Major Armstrong.”

“Major—?”

“Alex Louis Armstrong? From
Fullmetal Alchemist
? Why does nobody read manga? Never mind.”

Dr. Auburn-Stache released my chin and the armband at the same time. “Maybe I need to move out here for a while. You aren't recovering well, or at all. And where do you think your mum is right now?”

“Over the moon?”

“Don't be cute. She's downstairs resting. Do you know why?”

“She had three Popsicles and now she's feeling a comedown from the sugar high.”

“She's
exhausted
. And you're lazing about like a dead boy.”

I scowled. “Hey, I didn't ask her to worry.”

“Everything she does is for your sake.”

“But I'm not the one who wants to marry her.”

His eyes flashed. For the first time in my life, I wondered if Auburn-Stache might hit me. It shut me up, at least.

“Oliver, I know you're still, ah,
recuperating
—”

“I'm just dandy, Doc.”

“I
know
you're still in pain, but your mum needs you. And you need her. You've only got each other.”

“She's got you, too.”

Auburn-Stache sighed, plied his goatee with his fingers. “She doesn't have me in the way you're implying. She never will.”

It sucked just hearing him say that. You know what I mean, Moritz? It sucked knowing that all of us Idiotic Lovesick Cabin People were romantically doomed. Even Auburn-Stache wasn't laughing anymore.

“I'll try harder,” I said. “Please don't leave your other patients high and dry or low and wet or anything else.”

He ruffled my hair. “Ollie. You don't really think I'm here because you're a
patient
? You're family. I could never be grateful enough, really, to have known the Paulots. You and your parents took me from a very dark place … to a better one.”

“Are you about to tell me about the laboratory? About my dad? I promise to eat like a king if you tell me something new. I'll get a
tan
. Honest.”

He paused. “What a
bribe
, Oliver. But it's not my place to tell you such things.”

“Wait. You
want
to, don't you?” I couldn't believe it. He looked
even twitchier than usual; his leg was shaking. “You think she's wrong to keep things from me?”

“Not exactly, Oliver. I understand your mum's perspective.”

“Well, that's one of us.” I coughed. “Is she really that sick?”

“She'll be better if you get out of
your
dark place. It's been months now, Ollie.”

“But who's counting.”

He sighed and leaned forward. “But you
must
know that it really wasn't your fau—”

“You should go check on her. This vampire needs some shut-eye.”

He opened his mouth and closed it again, eyes shining behind his glasses. I pretended to be fascinated by the loose threads in my sheets until he got the point.