Because You'll Never Meet Me (18 page)

“So you brought an oil lantern, right?” Liz asked me.

“Yes, yes. It's tucked alongside my monocle and collapsible velocipede, Jekyll.”

“Oh, ha-ha, Hyde. I don't care if we're living in the past, so long as you don't expect me to manage without toilet paper. I'm a modern lady.”

For some reason, I did not laugh. I blushed and dragged my feet.

“You kids,” said Joe from behind us. “Wait up for your packhorse.”

“I can carry more—”

“Shut yer yap, Birthday Boy, and keep marching. Who wants to sing the first camp song?”

“Oh, man, we have to go back. You need glock accompaniment!”

Liz prodded me in the back. “Don't encourage him, Ollie.”

And balance was restored. Why was it suddenly hard to be ourselves?

After an hour of hiking, we arrived at the fence that surrounds Mom's property. I'd never actually seen the fence before, though I'd known it existed.

I stopped walking the moment I sensed it: a twinge in my temples, a blade in my nostrils.

“Pick it up, Slowpo—Ollie?!”

I blinked. “This …”

“Your nose is bleeding!”

“What
is
this?”

Up ahead I could see a band of tangerine light bulging and shrinking in orange humps, not dissimilar to the tendrils of the power line. But these strings of electricity were a bit narrower, and they rose and fell in pulses, like looping vines jutting from the ferns at waist level, almost like loose stitches in fabric. When they were present, they were downright intimidating: the orange strands outlined the entire length of the horizon, visible as far left and as far right as I could see, spitting and retreating between the branches and the trees. There was no way around it. I felt like I was reddening, like I was sunburnt from head to toe in an instant.

My head felt like two heads, three, splitting in all directions. I gritted my teeth before speaking: “There's something … I need to sit down. Mind if I … pop a squat?”

And my legs folded under me. Good thing I have experience with collapsing or I might have smacked my head.

“Ollie!” God, I hated seeing her look like that, like she didn't know what to do with me. Like I wasn't even a salamander she could study.

“Whoa there. What's up with your boy?”

“Did you bring your damn walkie-talkies, Uncle Joe?!”

“Heh. Walkies.” My speech was slurred, tongue heavy. “Walkies, talkies.”

I could feel the beginnings of the pre-seizure aura fogging up my vision. I thought I could smell cinnamon, which is something that sometimes happens beforehand. At least it isn't sulfur for me.

“Hell, he's havin' a reaction?”

I decided at that moment to put all my fingers in my mouth.

“No, he always tries to cannibalize himself! Yes, he's having a reaction! What's causing it?”

“Well, obviously it's the property line.”

Liz was pulling me to my feet, yanking me back the way we'd come. I was biting my lip, trying to stall the seizure that was creeping into me as she dragged me away.

“His family property line. It's an electric fence, like most folks put up to keep deer out of gardens. Didn't you know?”

The sudden chill in my chest helped clear my head. I tried to take some of my weight off Liz's shoulders.

“She put up an electric fence,” I said. “But she
promised
him.”

“What?”

I felt like something from a zoo, Mo.

“She promised my dad. She tries to keep me at home, but one day … let me leave … so why—?”

“Ollie … maybe we should go camping at the Ghettomobile after all.” That look was still on her face. I could see it clearly now that I had one head again. “Or a little ways back, even. I mean, the lake's just water, like you said.”

“Yeah, I s'pose s'mores would taste just as good there. I can check on the site next week instead,” Joe added.

“No. No, I want to see the water. The lake of water.” I shook off Liz's grasp. “I can ask Mom about it later. I can needle later.”

“But you can't cross it—”

“It's pulsing. I can try!” But even as I spoke, even as I strode forward, Moritz, my vision was getting cloudy. I know I told you that we should aim for superheroism, but maybe you're right. Maybe we have to aim for normalcy first. Too bad normalcy is an impossible thing.

“Sheesh, you kids are dramatic.” Joe was peeling his hiking boots and socks from his feet. He dumped his massive backpack into my arms, and I nearly fell over again. “Let me deal with this, eh? Hold my purse, Barbra Streisand.”

“Who?”

“An actress. I'm sayin' you're a dramatic woman.”

And here's what Junkyard Joe did: he strolled barefoot right up to the single electrified wire buried in the light—right into what I could only see as swooping arcs of orange, could feel as sizzling warmth on my neck and ears especially—and slammed a boot down on top of it, pinning it to the leafy ground. He wedged the other one beside it lengthwise, so that the electric current was entirely blocked.

The pressure lessened at my temples.

Half the fence went out. On the left, the pulses kept bursting
out, but beyond the boot to the right the fence was no more than a silver wire, suspended almost invisibly in the air at waist height. I wondered if that silver wire wound entirely around the property. I wondered whether she would have put one around our house if she thought that would keep me in better than the padlocks.

Placing a hand on the toe of one boot, Joe pressed the wire into the leaves on the muted side. “How's it looking, Oliver? Rubber boots. They don't conduct electricity.”

“It's genius, Joe. You made a gate for me.”

“Why does ever'one assume that all rednecks are idiots?”

“Maybe it's the inbreeding.” I tried to smile.

“Hey, I'm the one who makes the inbreeding jokes, Amish,” said Liz. But I didn't want to look at her.

“Don't thank me, Streisand.” Joe reclaimed his pack. “Just hurry up and get to leaping.”

I turned and eyed the tendrils still dancing on the left side of the boots.

“Ready or not, here I come.” I sprinted forward.

I leapt the wire near the low part where he had pinned it down. For the briefest moment while I was in the air, I thought I felt those tendrils bowing out sideways to net me, but I was already past them.

I landed in the leaves beyond the electric fence, and in doing so left my family property for the first time in a decade or longer.

The air was fine, but I wondered whether the air back home wasn't as fresh. I looked back. Joe was giving me a dorky thumbs-up and grin, but Liz …

Liz watched me from a distance.

Not far beyond the fence, the forest switched from new growth to old growth. Suddenly the trees were towering beasts, century-old pines and beeches that loomed overhead like dinosaurs. The forest paths below became clearer but darker; the foliage overhead was thick enough to block the light and discourage even ferns from growing at the foot of the trees.

“I can't believe I've never seen this before.” I was leaning back so far that I thought my head would scrape the ground. Joe was leading the way. Liz lagged behind us. I could feel her eyes on my back.

“Well, now you have. And wait till we get to the lake. You almost always see deer drinking along the east side, so long as fudgies haven't spooked them all.”

“Fudgies?”

“Tourists. Flatlanders. They come north for the trees and the chocolate fudge.”

I leapt a puddle in his wake. The ground was moister here, a bit colder.

“I've never had fudge.”

“How on earth d'you live?”

“I wonder about that, too,” said Liz quietly.

This wasn't nearly as fun as my last birthday, Mo.

Joe scratched his chin. “Well, it's October, so there shouldn't be too many tourists around, apart from a few prospective game hunters like meself. But they tend to stay near the plains on the east banks. Just how sensitive are you, Ollie? Will you start twitchin' and biting your toes if they've got their RVs parked along the opposite side of the lake?”

“Um, no. I don't think so. I'll be able to see the electricity from
pretty far away, and I should be able to tell how strong it is. Whether it's just a phone, or a mini-fridge or a car or whatever. Don't worry about me.”

“So—you're almost psychic? You can tell what sort of electrical object it is from far away? Get outta town!”

“I've never been to town. And I never … I mean, no. I don't think of it that way. It's really mostly useless.”

“Stop stuttering, you idiot. Nobody thinks you're weird anymore. You're old news.” I did not know whether Liz was joking with this little outburst, but at least she was talking, walking abreast with us.

“I'm old hat, huh?”

“The oldest hat.”

“Like bowler hats, Dickens.”

“Like Grecian diadems, Homer.”

“Like Egyptian headdresses … erm, Ra?”

“Whatever, dork.” But her lips curled upward, and before long she was far ahead of us, hopping over puddles, cheeks flushed pink.

When she was very nearly out of sight, Joe inched closer.

“Hey, I think this weekend's your shot, buddy. Go for it! I give you permission. Heh.”

I felt the blood rush to my face. “I don't know what you—”

“Oh, come on. You're a hermit, yes, but you're also a teenage boy and she's a beautiful girl, my niece. Some people don't 'preciate that, maybe. But don't tell me you ain't got your hopes up.”

“I wouldn't even—I don't even know—”

“You'll get your chance, Ollie. I'll be sure to wander off at the perfect moment. Probably sometime this evening, after we set up camp. I'll give you a signal, right? You'll know it when you see it!”

I waved my hands. “No, please don't—”

“What are you so afraid of, Oliver?”

I stopped walking. The wind blew the scent of pine up my nose, twigs against my ankles. I looked at the lantern dangling from the side of my backpack.

“Why would someone like Liz want anything like that from someone like me?”

“ 'Cause
you
have the decency to even wonder about that, you eejit. Now, let's catch up. She's probably halfway to China by now.”

But she was only several yards ahead, hiding behind low pine boughs.

“Boo!” she cried, leaping out in front of us, kicking up the leaves.

“Gorram, girl!” Joe clutched his chest. “How old are you?”

I worried she'd overheard us. I thought she was blushing, but that could have been the October air nipping her. She was laughing breezes.

And then I was, too, and so was he.

“I wanna get there before sunset. Come on.”

We spotted Marl Lake in the late afternoon. We could see it sparkling up ahead from between the trees. More than that, we could smell it, taste it in the way the air grew soggier. I was glad that it was autumn, or else the mosquitoes would have been sucking us something awful.

Finally we stepped out of the forest and almost right into the dark water. I could see pines lining the opposite bank a few hundred yards away. The sun was rippling along the soft black waves,
and skippers darted across the surface of the water by the shore. Frogs were rustling the long grass. We stepped onto moist ground that gave beneath our feet.

“Wow,” I said. “That is slightly better than your average puddle.”

“A little bigger,” said Liz. “Nice to know there are bigger things in the world.”

“You think it's purty now? Jist wait until sunset.”

And then he did something terrible, Junkyard Joe:

“Yeah,
sunset
!” he shouted, giving me two thumbs up and heartily winking. “That's when I'll be at the deer blind, don't you know. At.
Sunset
.”

“My uncle's a crackpot,” said Liz.

Before we made camp, Joe led us north along a thin trail through the cattails beside the lakeside and then into the woods a little ways to point out his deer blind. It was essentially a large green tree fort decked out in camouflage flock and layered in plastic tarps for the off-season. We clambered up the wooden ladder behind him—he had a cozy setup in there, with a couple of chairs and space for a sleeping bag, although he was right about needing to patch it up a bit. Water had been leaking through and rotting the plywood by the ladder, the floor was coated in pine needles and leaves, and a robin had left the debris of a nest in an upper corner of the wall. We got a good sense of why he was so proud of the blind: the vantage point from up there was vast. We could see the lakeshore, where deer were likely to drink, and the long grass, where they were likely to graze.

We set up the tents a little ways away from the water and the blind, on the most level ground we could find and not too close to
the lake; we didn't want to get flooded out if it rained. Joe had been right about other campers: I could see a faint electric haze—the smog made it look like three large vehicles at least—across the water, but we were far enough away that I wasn't worried.