Because You'll Never Meet Me (22 page)

Moritz, I don't know what's worse: that maybe you never got my last letter and I have to write it all over again, or that maybe you
did get it and you're so disgusted that you don't want to speak to me anymore. Has something happened to you?

Stop writing, Mom says. Maybe it was the wrong idea to write. Stop writing. It's not therapy. Stop needling, because maybe that's all we're doing to each other. Experiments of our own? Sorry, Moritz.

But I didn't finish it; we're not fully up to date yet. Please let me finish. Please listen to me, and I'll be quick and there won't be any fuss and hoopla.

See, Joe didn't die after all; it was touch and go for a while. He was comatose for a month, and with every day that he was sleeping, I was almost wishing he would die because he was dragging out my guilt, and yeah, you can say the fall wasn't actually my fault—I've heard that from everyone, even from Liz once, when she stopped by to tell me he'd woken up and the doctors, they told him he'd be paralyzed from the hips down probably for as long as he was living, that one doctor said he broke sections of his lower spine (
vertebrae lumbales
) and tore nerve clusters on impact and that getting a medical helicopter out there sooner probably wouldn't have helped, PROBABLY, and even during the early days when I was in my sickbed half comatose myself with stitches in my foot, and Mom was there telling me “Shush” and “It's not your fault.” And Auburn-Stache kept holding my hand and he wouldn't even smile his goofy smile and he said, too, “It's not your fault,” even then I heard “probably.”

We all heard about the doctor saying “probably.”
Probably
means maybe he could have been walking now. Maybe. Probably, maybe.

And then last week, while I was waiting for you to send me a letter, when I was waiting for
anything
, Dorian Gray died. He just
curled up on my bed and didn't get up again when I tried to shove him off my pillow as usual. My cat? That wasn't my fault, either, because that cat was really old, and he meowed whenever you touched his back or scratched him under the chin, didn't purr but meowed in pain when you stroked him because of arthritis, and he couldn't even really jump up on the sofa anymore, and things that are old die sometimes and there's nothing you can do about it but bury old things under a pine tree in your backyard.

Or things that are young die, too, especially when they do secretive work in laboratories and they really shouldn't, because that can ruin a family and a kid's life, I think. I'm starting to put the pieces together and maybe being a lab experiment is the
same
as being sick after all, because we don't live in colorful panels with speech bubbles and exciting noises.

Moritz, please. I don't know who else to talk to. I can't think straight. The house won't stop moaning, and my fingertips are raw from folding origami flowers because I don't know what to do or what to play or read to make this better. Maybe my fingertips will peel away, just rub away, and the bones will poke through, and then how will I hold the pen properly to write you because bones can't grip without skin, even phalange-bones, and I'd just end up bleeding all over the paper so you have to answer me soon.

To make it stop.

Moritz?

Please.

It's been so long since I last heard from you, and I'm happy to report that I haven't given up on you yet! I'm still writing you pointless letters every week, even though my autobiography is pretty much up to date. It's not like things have been all that eventful here, so I'll just keep telling you about the books I'm reading and about building bike ramps and about baking cheesecakes (German double-chocolate ones, strawberry ones, and blueberry ones, but not blackberry ones), which I've been getting into. But there aren't enough people to eat the cakes, so they end up moldering a bit in the icebox, but we try to eat them anyhow.

Mom is looking younger in the summer weather. She isn't prancing around sniffing daisies or anything, but she's been sitting on the porch and teaching me to knit lately. I think maybe we're both doing better. I mean, I've come to terms with losing things, and she must have done that ages ago. I never see that lab coat. I don't even bother needling her about my dad anymore.

Anyhow, I try not to worry about you. I try really hard, just like I try to focus. I really hope you aren't dead or something, or Lenz didn't beat the crap out of you again. But if you are lying in a hospital bed somewhere, I think I'll keep writing you anyway, because it does help me and it gives me a reason to write. I can pretend. If that's okay. I know Liz wasn't into pretending, except for when she was pretending I could have a living room like any other kid who maybe wouldn't let her uncle get paralyzed out in the cold woods.

Focus, Ollie. Focus.

Who'd have thought I could miss someone I've never actually met?
Me
. I've thought that. I miss tons of things I've never seen, and now you most of all.

Something kind of miraculous happened the other day, and I need to tell you about it.

Liz rode her bike up my driveway on a Wednesday afternoon.

I wasn't waiting for her. Mom and I were actually out back deadheading multicolored daylilies in the flower beds that border the house, so she ended up having to walk around over the uneven grass to find us.

She didn't shout “I'm here!” like she used to, but Mom still heard her coming.

“Ollie, don't freak out.” Mom squeezed my arm.

I turned around, squinting in the sun, and there she was. Like she'd never left, and for a moment, I wanted to just grin at her like
of course
we were fine, but then I could see ages between us, months of standing in the driveway by myself. My throat constricted and my ears burned and I couldn't say a damn thing, because what if it came out as screaming? I dropped the shriveled yellow flower head.

She put her hand over her mouth. Her hair was growing out, and it seemed darker against the bright blue sky. She hadn't bothered with braids. Not a speck of muck on her. I almost didn't recognize her.

“Hey.” More of a whisper than a scream. “How's it hangin'?”

“Oh, Ollie,” she said, kneeling down and wrapping her arms around me.

I'm not going to lie, Moritz. It felt really nice to feel her arms again, and she smelled awesome, like sugar or something, but in my head she was still standing in the forest clearing, looking at me with that face, so I gently pushed her away and stood up. It was weird—I was way taller than her now.

“I could play the xylophone on your rib cage!”

“Glockenspiel, please.”

“Have you both gone on a hunger strike? I want to stuff burgers down your throats. I mean … what happened?”

Mom smiled at her. “We're just going through some growth spurts, Elizabeth.”

“What, even you, Ms. Paulot?”

“
Tch
. I'm a late bloomer. And you never really grow up.” After seven seconds, she climbed to her feet. “I'll go get us some lemonade, hey? Like a good motherly stereotype.”

She left us there on the sunlit lawn.

“Ollie,” Liz said, “you look terrible.”

“What a lovely thing to tell me on a lovely summer's day. And speaking of lovely, you look lovely.”

“I mean it. You and your mom. If I'd known …”

“If you'd known, you could have stopped by every week to comment on how terrible we look.” I laughed and began trudging toward the porch.

Freak, freak, freak
.

“Oliver,” she said, “why won't you look at me?”

“The sun's in my eyes.”

But even when we reached the shade, I didn't really look at her.

“So, what brings you to our humble abode, Liz? Looking lovely, as already stated?”

She didn't smile. “Lovely, huh.”

“Yep. I guess high school still suits you, then.”

“Well. High school isn't actually that different from middle school, turns out.”

“I wouldn't know, of course.”

“Ollie …”

“Look, Liz—what do you want?”

And here I was trying for a sunny disposition, Moritz! I was trying, but it's hard. Because you told me to be honest with myself, and honestly I wasn't feeling very sunny inside. I felt like something small that was hiding in the dark until Liz lifted the log to see me squirm.

“I want to go to the junkyard, but not by myself. There are some things there in the trailer that I want to pick up. Some things Uncle Joe wants in his hospital room. I'm the only one who knows where he keeps things. I was the only one who visited him.”

“Oh.”

“But I wasn't really visiting
him
, you know.” Did her voice crack?

“You weren't, huh.”

She put her hand on her cheek and looked out at the lawn. “I wasn't. And that makes me feel worse about it. This was where I ran away to, I guess.”

I shrugged. “This is all a bit too grown-up for me. I just want to go inside and play with my Legos. Like a good little hermit.”

“Please, Ollie.” Funny how she isn't even fazed by my sarcasm anymore. I guess she shouldn't be, since I learned half of it from her. It probably bores her.

“Lemme get my shoes on.”

Liz shook her head. “No, not today. Next week, maybe.”

“Why wait? It sounds so very fun.”

“I have plans.”

“Plans?”

She blinked at me. “You want me to say it? I'm meeting friends. For friends things. For high school things and electronic music and electric lights and all sorts of power lines. Happy?”

“Oh, wicked.” This was all wrong, but I couldn't seem to stop it. “You can tell them all how terrible I look!”

She stood up. “Why are you being this way?”

“I'm Captain Tact.”

“Fine. Whatever. I'll see you next week.”

Maybe she used to run away to me, but now it wasn't
to
but
from
. One word, a whole world of difference, Moritz. Sometimes I don't appreciate language after all.

When I went back inside alone, Mom was standing just past the screen door in the hallway. There was no lemonade in sight, and she was looking just like she did on the day when Liz knocked on the door all caked in muck.

Well, almost like that.

You could play the glockenspiel on her rib cage now, after all.

It might have been the perfect time to needle her about Dad. A
breeze could bowl her over. Probably her walls would have crumbled if I mentioned the lab.

Seeing her like that, it didn't even cross my mind.

The following Wednesday, I met Liz at the power line and we trekked through the same old trails to get to Joe's place. But Liz didn't stop to pick up a single pudding stone, and the junkyard looked more like a graveyard than ever. The trailer at the center of it was just as abandoned as the rest of it now.

“Man, this is just awful.” My mutter rang against aluminum skeletons.

“You don't always have to
say
what you're thinking.”

Her lip trembled, and I thought for the briefest second that I didn't know who she was anymore, that she might be the type of girl to collapse in the leaves and then I could hold her or help her up and—

Liz walked toward the trailer. “Wait here.”

“Obviously.”

Soon she was up on the porch and inside the trailer. Hard not to think about the first time I'd stood here waiting, and how different that was. Déjà vu is pretty common when you never leave a square mile of land.

Why did she want me here? It could have been anyone else, right?

Again, I wasn't expecting her to come out so quickly.

“I never gave you this back.” She held the old fishbowl I'd worn to the power line.

I grinned. “Oh, wow! How thoughtful. You know I've been so lost without it! Wow!”

“Ollie.”

“I mean, I was really hoping you'd drag me out here to remind me about the uncle I almost killed and then regift me with the symbol of our friendship!” I laughed. “You know what? You should shatter it. That would be
really
symbolic.”

“I don't think you almost killed him,” she whispered.

“Oh, well, that's a relief! I'm a freak but not a murderer! Great! Well, let me do the honors! I'm more used to breaking spines and phones, you know, but I can do this! I can break this!”

Her eyes were welling. “Ollie!”

I snatched the bowl from her hands and threw it against the porch.

You may wonder why I was trying so hard to make the girl I'm lovesick over bawl her eyes out. Maybe I just wanted to know whether I could still make her feel things.

Of course the bowl failed to shatter. The glass was thick, and it bounced once and rolled away along the wooden boards. I reached for it, but pulled my hand back quickly.

Those tendrils of electricity were still itching their way up from under the porch and they nipped at me. I cringed and recoiled from the buzzing heat, but when Liz tried to pull me away, I shrugged her off.

“Enough, Ollie! I just can't worry about you on top of everything else.”

“You don't have to worry about me.”

“Look at yourself! You look like you've got cancer, or like you've forgotten how to hold a fork, or—”

“Or like I spent months alone in a cabin in the dark, huh. Maybe I've got scurvy, hey?”

“Never mind.” She was stomping away, maybe like Fieke does, arms flat against her sides, hands clenched into fists. She no longer looked remotely like she was going to cry. “We're just talking about you again.”

“Who else do I know?” I threw my hands up and followed her. “I don't have all your amazingly distracting high school friends!”

She spun around to confront me and part of that terrifying expression from the clearing was there on her face again and I almost swallowed my tongue (almost but not really because we've been through that).