Because You'll Never Meet Me (15 page)

She chewed her cheek. Didn't blink.

“I know it can be unsettling. Let me appease you.” I intentionally turned around in my seat. I mimed
looking
at the stage, as if I had not been able to hear its location since I'd stepped in. As if I were normal. “My, what is he doing?”

“Man, you're a freak.”

“Do not call me that.”

“I can call you anything I want. You owe me.”

“Why should I owe you anything?”

She sighed, rasping on smoke. “Owen is my little brother. I had to bandage his fluffing wounds after Lenz knocked his
head against the bleachers. I had to sit next to him when he got his stitches and he got two teeth pulled. After he helped you.”

The blood left my face. I had not realized the extent of Lenz's handiwork. “When was it?”

“Right after he handed you your goggles. Gebor turned his back to calm the masses—the idiot—and the moment he wasn't looking, Lenz went apeshit on Owen. He
always
goes apeshit on Owen. Why do you think he's still suspended?”

“Is Owen … is he all right?”

“What's it to you?” She watched me for a moment. Shrugged. “Well, his face isn't a fluffing purple blood cake anymore.” She nodded at the stage. “Shut up. This guy's about to perform.”

On the stage, the man stood up straight, nodded at his minuscule morning crowd, cleared his throat, and began reciting into the microphone. It was a torrent of melancholy sound, Oliver, and it carried across the room, illuminating every crevice until I was almost blinded by the pocks and scrapes in the bar.

“
Wir sind für nichts mehr erreichbar, nicht für Gutes noch Schlechtes. Wir stehen hoch, hoch über dem Irdischen—jeder für sich allein. Wir verkehren nicht miteinander, weil uns das zu langweilig ist. Keiner von uns hegt noch etwas, das ihm abhanden kommen könnte. Über Jammer oder Jubel sind wir gleich unermesslich erhaben. Wir sind mit uns zufrieden, und das ist alles!—Die Lebenden verachten wir unsagbar, kaum dass wir sie bemitleiden. Sie erheitern uns mit ihrem Getue. Wir lächeln bei ihren Tragödien
.”

Roughly:

“We are touched by nothing, no longer responsible for good and evil. We stand high, high above earthly concerns—every man for himself. We do not speak to each other, because that is boring. None of us cherishes anything, and so we have nothing to lose. We are as content to be miserable as we are to be happy. We are satisfied, and that is everything!—We pity the living, just as we despise them. Their fuss is amusing. We smile at their tragedies.”

“What is this?” I whispered.

“You're a fan of performance speaking?”

“I'm not.”

“Well, you suck. That monologue—it's from a Frank Wedekind play. Spoken originally by a character named—”

“Moritz.” I swallowed. “The ghost of a boy named Moritz, who took his own life earlier in the play. He was doing poorly in school. Because he could not sleep.” I stood. “I'm leaving.”

“Moritz, wait.”

“Oh, yes. My
cane
. I have to be distasteful.”

“No. Sit down. Look—”

“Do
not
ask me to look. I am
always
looking.”

She bit her lip.
Clink
. “I mean, come here. Sit. You want to meet up with Owen? Fine. I can arrange that. But not at school. Not where Lenz would hear about it.”

I sat back down. “Then where?”

She smiled. “First, why don't you go on up and perform. To show you're a dedicated little gerbil.”

“I would prefer not to.”

“Go on up, or I'll never let you see him. Ever.”

If I could scowl properly! “You can't be serious. You bring me here and—then you demand—You simply cannot be serious.”

She blinked. Clicked her piercings, so that I could see the smallest of sardonic dimples. “Can I not be?”

“Infuriating wretch.” I stood up once more.

“Get your cane.”

“No.” I pointed my finger in her face. “I am going to silence you, you rackety girl.”

She blinked in shock. Then broke into an enormous grin, the first I had ever seen on her face. It was a coiled thing. Not precisely pleasant.

I walked to the stage. Bowed. Took the microphone. And I “owned” the stage with my personal rendition of Dr. Dre's immortal masterpiece, “Nuthin' but a ‘G' Thang.”

I sat myself carefully in my chair. The morning crowd was still applauding. Beverages of an alcoholic nature appeared at our table. Old Swiss men slapped me on the back.

“Allow me to meet with Owen, please.”

“At this point I would let you impregnate me!” Fieke cackled.

“That would be unnecessary. And undesirable.”

“Hah! Fluffin' unreal! I thought you were taking the piss earlier, but what the hell? How does someone like you get into
rap
,
Brille
?”

(
Brille
translates as “glasses.” Or “goggles.”)

I folded my hands on my lap. “I suppose … I've often felt like a public enemy.”

After a beat, she laughed once again, grabbing my shoulder and shaking it. “Unreal. Fine.
Look
. Ten PM next Friday. He'll be looking for you in the
Partygänger Diskothek
.”

“I'm not one for the
Diskothek
.”

“Really,
Brille
? After what you just pulled?”

“A fit of passion.”

“Again—you're a freak. If you wanna see him, you've gotta meet him in a crowd. Lenz can't get into that club. It's a safe zone. And here's the good news: I'll be coming with you, looking sickening as always.”

“Perhaps we have opposing definitions of the phrase ‘good news'?”

“Shut up. Was that a joke? Shut up.”

“I can manage by myself.”

“As if. I'm coming. And don't bother bringing your cane.”

What on earth, Ollie. What on earth.

Tell me of your final happy memory. Next week I can tell you about meeting Owen Abend, another boy who is making me a decent human being.

Moritz

P.S. You've asked me not to needle. Don't fling a cat at my face (I would only dodge Mr. Gray), but know that I am worrying. That is all.

So I want to tell you about the best day of my life. Simply, without fuss or hoopla. Except that isn't really possible—because fuss and hoopla were both present on the day in question.

And this was the day when I realized what Liz was to me. I mean, really realized it (I know I've blabbed about being lovesick, but it wasn't always like that in my head). Liz and I were friends, and really good friends, but here was the day that upped the stakes.

Now it just sounds all dolphin-wavy up in here, but please have mercy again.

The party was for my thirteenth birthday. It wasn't actually on my thirteenth birthday, but a few days before it, because normal kids usually have to go to school on Tuesdays.

My birthdays were always nice enough before. Mom would usually give me some new model fossils or miniature-sarcophagi-making kits, and make me an awesome, multilayered cake (she went through a wedding-cake-hobbyist phase), and Auburn-Stache
would come over and join us for a night of stuffing our faces with almond chicken and playing board games (I kick royal ass at Clue, if you're wondering). Pretty tame, by all accounts.

But my thirteenth birthday became a bigger deal, maybe because I'd become a teenager. I don't think Mom was convinced I'd make it to adulthood, but I was getting closer and she was getting hopeful. In the weeks before October 11, she kept dropping all these fond little hints that she was bursting on the inside (and not with grand mal seizures). Like, sometimes she would let her face relax and she'd just drape her arms around my neck without warning.

“You've grown so much! Who's this man in the house?”

It was downright creepy. Like a very loving leech had possessed her. She meant well, I think. But it was like she was trying to sap the aging right out of me with statements like:

“What happened to my little kickstand?”

And:

“God, I can't believe how much you look like your father!”

Catchphrases, Moritz. She developed
catchphrases
. And she was mentioning Dad, which was even freakier.

I started hiding out in the woods more, clambering up into our old tree forts or visiting the pond and dipping my feet in for the hell of it. Mom was way more lenient nowadays, and had been ever since Liz started coming around. Over the past few years she'd only locked herself in the garage seven times or so. Another reason to be grateful for Liz.

(And another reason to miss her, now that Mom is locked inside the garage every other day.)

Anyhow, she and Liz plotted and schemed behind my back to throw me a party. I knew they were planning something on account
of all the obvious whispering and winking, so I was mentally prepared for them to jump out from behind trees and throw confetti in my eyes.

On that Saturday, I followed the deer trail to the junkyard not remotely at unawares. After all, Liz wasn't stopping to scope out things on the forest floor. She was way too eager to get to Joe's. She couldn't keep a secret without it basically leaking out her ears, and she dragged me right through the trees as if we were being chased.

They had constructed an enormous white tent—a pavilion of sorts—near the center of the yard, in an open space of thirty feet or so.

“You made me a circus! There had better be juggling bears. Juggling dead teddy bears.”

“It's not a circus.”

I grinned. “Of course not. It's a birthday tent!”

“You could have at least pretended to be surprised.”

“You like me because I don't pretend.”

“Ugh. Just come inside, doofus.”

“Nope. I hate to disappoint. Let me try again.” I blinked and rubbed my eyes with my fists. “Whoa! What could that be? Surely not a surprise party.”

“Shut up, doofus.”

“You don't have to finish every sentence with ‘doofus,' you know. A boy has feelings, you know.”

“You don't have to finish every sentence with ‘you know,' you know.”

“I know.”

She pulled me into the tent.

What I stepped into was a living room. Not like the living room in our cabin, which is full of lanterns and bookshelves and a fireplace and Mom's handmade furniture and paintings.

I stepped into a modern living room. A television, a stereo with speakers, phones on the coffee table, power sockets and plugs and wires, wires everywhere tucked behind couches. There were so many electronic devices in there that I jumped backward and trod on Liz's foot before I realized that not one of them was giving off seizure-inducing color. Before I realized that every object was an imitation or had been gutted.

I could never have hoped to see so many people in one place. I heard later that Liz, Mom, and Joe had checked the pockets of and patted down every person who arrived. If anyone resented that, they didn't tell me. Most of the guests were Liz's extended family: her muddy cousins, perfumed aunts, and baseball-capped uncles. I spotted the local state park guy who keeps an eye on wildlife and plays poker with Mom sometimes, too, and Lucy, Mom's pharmacist, whose glasses sparkled with rhinestones. But Liz had also persuaded two friends from school to stop by and meet me, friends I'd heard about in passing with increasing regularity over the past few months: a blond boy named Tommy, a red-haired girl named Mikayla. (I remember just staring at her, half convinced she was wearing a wig, just like Mom has started doing. I'd never seen curly hair in person before.)

“Surprise!” cried the crowd. Just like in a story. And it was a crowd. At least thirty people were gathered there in my mock living room, standing beside the television and a vacuum cleaner and a laptop and a—
oh my fluffing god a humidifier
.

“Welcome home,” said Liz.

I stared and stared and said nothing.

“Oliver,” said Mom. “Say something.”

“You remembered. I can't believe you remembered the
humidifier
.”

I almost burst into manly tears. (Of course they would have been manly; I was thirteen now.) I'm pretty sure the deformed face I made to fight back those manly tears convinced all the people at the party who didn't know me already that I was a nutjob, but that was okay. They didn't have to understand. Liz did, and she put her arm around me until I could stop sniffling, laughing her light laugh. Mom looked teary, too, so I smiled and said, “Give me a tour!”

“Eat your cake first.”

After we massacred the towering skyscraper of a cake (Mom had shaped it into a fondant-coated amplifier) and the other guests started meandering, beers in hand, Liz and her friends took me around the living room to show me how all the illusions were created. There was dry ice in the humidifier, emitting clouds of white fog. There was a windup music box inside the gutted boom box. The speakers were really strange because they were made of cardboard.