Because You'll Never Meet Me (25 page)

But I am not so brave as you, Ollie.

How can I face you again? How can I face any soul on earth?

With all that I have seen and been.

I am no one's hero.

Moritz

Dear Mr. Farber,

Thank you for writing. I'm glad that Moritz isn't stuck in a parallel dimension or something, and annoyed he doesn't have that kind of excuse for not answering me. I mean, at least if he were trapped in a parallel world, he could say, like, “Oh, my deepest apologies, sir! The boggiest of swamp extraterrestrials is gnawing upon my foot. While I tap inane rap music into his skull. I cannot afford to write you. I must fend him off my beloved toes! Let him rot!” or something.

Man, I miss him. Please tell him that I can't wait to hear from him again. For now, I'll try writing knowing he's on the other end. I'm relieved to know he might be there pretty soon.

Please make sure he gets this letter. Even if he doesn't write back, I don't know how to think anymore if I don't write all my thoughts down for him.

~ Oliver

MR. FARBER STOP READING THIS NOW

Just testing. I guess it doesn't matter, really.

Moritz, don't talk like that. You aren't a monster. You were scared and your friend was hurt and
fick
me for telling you to be heroic. I don't think you meant to hurt him like that. It's like you lost control, and that's something I understand pretty well.

And maybe I'm terrible, because all I feel right now is relieved. No matter how terrible a situation you're in, you're alive. So maybe you're not a hero, but you're not a villain, either. You couldn't leave him bleeding when he's left you bleeding more than once. I don't care if you came from a petri dish or Frankenstein's table. I don't care where you came from anymore, because it's enough that you exist and you keep
trying
, Moritz. That's the most human thing.

Let me say what you said to me: Get out of bed. Stand up.

I hope you can find the motivation to see Lenz. I wish I could go see Joe. Then again, I'm grateful I have an excuse not to.

I don't have excuses for everything. Sometimes I really screw up. The party was a disaster, and I wish it didn't matter.

Relieved as I am to know you're somewhere, I wish you were here, Mo.

On the day of the party, I sat on the porch and stared down the driveway, twiddling my fingers and wiping sweat from my forehead and standing up and sitting down again while Mom watched me, sipping a mug of warm cider.

I was wearing a hand-sewn “Zombie of Roderick Usher” getup,
all coated in red food coloring and dirt with painted circles under my eyes, and she was dressed as an undead version of Miss Havisham. She'd agreed to act the part after I joked that she was always single anyhow, so why the hell not take advantage of it? (Miss Havisham is this old woman from Charles Dickens's
Great Expectations
. She got left at the altar on her wedding day and stopped all the clocks in her house and never changed out of her wedding gown, even when she turned into a scary old dinosaur.) Maybe she looked the part too much. When she came out of her bedroom having exchanged her wig for a tattered bridal veil and dress, looking like a jilted widow after all, I almost asked her to change.

The party was supposed to start at noon. It was already 1:00 PM, and the long brown line of the driveway stretched before us, vanishing into trees rustling in the wind, and not a soul had come down it. By 2:00 PM, I could have sworn the driveway was more obscured by overgrown bushes than ever. I was craning my neck to see and I thought there were suddenly more trees, like maybe they were growing on the driveway and maybe people were coming down the driveway, seeing the trees, and turning back because our cabin doesn't really exist—

“You're pulling your hair, Oliver,” said Mom.

“They won't come, will they? Not like it matters. It isn't a big deal. But they aren't coming.”

“Calm down. You're making me wish I
were
a zombie.”

“What, dead?”

“Just brain-dead, so I couldn't feel anxious. Sit down.”

I tried to sit back in the rocking chair and managed it for maybe four seconds before I heard a branch snap or an animal rustle in the woods, and I was up again, leaning on the railing.

“Maybe we should wait inside.”

“You used to be the one who couldn't sit still.”

“No sense wasting energy,” Mom said, easing her way to her feet.

“What, because they aren't coming and you knew they wouldn't and I shouldn't have bothered with this at all, because who would want to come out here anyway?”

She put her hand on my shoulder. “No, Ollie. Because I'm
tired
.”

I still haven't asked her about the fence, you know. At first it was because what happened to Joe was just so much bigger than that electric fence I hadn't known about. Later, I didn't ask, because I was scared she would lie to me, or lock me inside the house for good this time. But now seemed like an opportunity, like my chance to ask her why she'd never sent me to school in a hazmat suit, why she'd never let me roll around in a bubble or something. Why she wouldn't talk about Dad. Things that used to seem important.

But I saw the lines in her face. Her red eyes. She was just as sorry as I was that no one was going to come to my stupid party.

“You should go take a nap, Mom.”

She settled back into her chair. “In a bit.”

Three o'clock came and went, and none of them showed up. I slumped in my seat. At four, I rubbed my palms together and Mom caved.

“This Havisham's restarting the clocks, Ollie.”

“Maybe we've got the wrong day.”

“Never mind. I'll go make you some hot chocolate.”

“I'm not five, Mom. Chocolate won't make me forget all my woes.”

“I know. I've been eating it for years. But happy birthday.”

She pushed cobwebs away when she lifted her dead bride's veil to peck me on the forehead.

After she left, I put my hands over my eyes.

Of course they wouldn't want to come.

Who was I kidding?

It began to rain. I didn't consider puddle-hopping. The driveway was longer than ever and I couldn't stand looking at it anymore, so I went inside the haunted cabin to wait out the storm.

Mom stayed with me as afternoon became evening. She was overdoing it. I scowled when she came into my bedroom. I snapped anthologies closed and glared at her. Or I continued carving or folding origami until she left, as if she had no more presence in my room than any of the origami litter. All the same, every seven minutes she was in the doorway again.

I finally pushed the telescope against the pinewood door until it jammed shut.

“Oliver? It's … dinner. Sandwiches. Not tuna.”

I heard her set the plate down, but she was still standing there.

Thirty minutes later, her knocking became frenzied. “Damn it! You're scaring me! Just open up!” The door rattled. “Do I have to call Auburn-Stache?”

“Just leave me alone!” I said. “Go do something else!”

“Do
what
else?” she shouted, and her voice broke like it never had before.

“Mom?”

No reply.

I don't know how she came to be here, what exactly happened to Dad and whether she was guilty of bringing this on herself.
Maybe she wanted to start a rock band. Maybe she wanted to study astrophysics. I didn't know what she used to do on rainy days, what she used to dream about, who her friends had been. I didn't know.

I'd had one shitty day where no friends came to visit; she'd had a decade and a half. Maybe she didn't lock herself in the garage because I left her alone with a rotting brain. Maybe she really did lock herself in there to get away from me.

“Mom!”

I knocked the telescope away and opened the door.

She was on her knees on the floor. Tears streaked down her cheeks under her Havisham veil, and her shoulders shook when I held her.

“I'm sorry.”

“Aren't we both? The sorriest ever. If your father could see us now.”

I rested my head on her shoulder. “
Why
don't you ever talk about him? Really, Mom?”

“Needling.” She took a deep breath and exhaled into my hair. “You've always loved mysteries, Oliver.”

“Yeah, but …”

“As long as there are mysteries to solve here, you'll have a reason to stay.”

You had to hand it to her. The largest, most impenetrable lock in our house, and I'd never even seen it before.

Liz showed up alone after dark. I had gone back outside after Mom went to bed; I was sitting on the porch without a coat on, even though it was damn cold. I was fuming, so I didn't really feel it.

She seemed hesitant in her raincoat as she wheeled up on her bike, nothing like how she used to be. Maybe she could see the
black taffeta we'd hung in the windows, the spiders dangling from the banisters, the streamers, and the bats. Maybe she could see me sitting there. She certainly saw me when I stood up.

“Ollie,” she said, hiking her backpack up onto her shoulder. “Hey. Happy birthday. Sorry I'm so late. Driver's ed.”

I wanted to say something, but I really couldn't. When she stood beside me on the porch, I tried to meet her eyes.

“Can I come in?”

I just walked inside. She could follow if she wanted, I supposed. I wasn't going to tackle her to the ground or anything.

When we reached the living room, she screeched—one of the dangling plastic centipedes we'd hung from the ceiling had slapped against her face.

“What the hell!”

I watched her eyes widen by candlelight as she scanned the room. My anatomical skeleton looked horrific in the light of lanterns covered in green and blue film, jutting from a cardboard coffin, organs pulled out and draping down to the floor. Cobwebs coated every bookshelf and table. I was heading for my room, but Liz stopped as we passed through the kitchen to the dining room. We'd decked out this part of the cabin in a Poe and Dickens crossover party. The dinner table was laden with lace and a half-dilapidated cake Mom had spent hours stacking up just so we could smack it with a mallet, giggling like sadistic ghouls. There was a swinging foam pendulum in the entranceway, and we'd lifted some of the floorboards to shove a papier-mâché heart underneath, although, of course, it had no telltale beating.

“Wow, Ollie. You went all out.”

We'd spent so much time trying to make the table look as
though it hadn't been touched in decades, and now it would never be touched after all.

I walked up the stairs without a word. She followed me past black lace curtains into the chaos of my bedroom. I sat on the bed. I didn't bother moving the canvases and comics.

“I have a present for you.” She held out a pink package; when I didn't take it, she set it on my cluttered desk. “So say something, please.”

“So
everyone
had driver's training, right?”

I had never seen her so uncertain. She was wearing a lot of makeup, biting her lip.

“I didn't invite anyone. I didn't even tell anyone.” She sat down beside me, laying her bag at her feet. It was glowing softly; she couldn't come over without her phone anymore. “But your decorations are really something. You know, there's going to be a Halloween dance in a couple weeks, at school. And it won't look half as amazing as this. Your costume's great, too.”

“Yeah, zombies are easier to pull off when you're me,” I said. “So you can just come here instead, hey. We can leave the decorations up for a few weeks. No biggie.”

Liz sighed. “I'm going to the dance. With Martin Mulligan.”

“Because I know who that is.” My blood rang in my ears. This was it. She was finally done with the hopeless hermit.

“He's a senior. He's going to study computer engineering at State. You'd like him. He's really nice. Smart, like you.”

“I don't think I would like him, although I might like kicking him between the legs.”

First she was angry. Then she put her hand on mine. “If things were different …”

“If I were anyone else,” I said, trying to grin. “I can never listen to electronica. I can never study engineering.”

“It's not that. After all this time, you think—
Ollie!
It's not the fact that you're trapped in the woods—it's that you're trapped in yourself!”

I stood up. My face felt numb, but not because of electricity. Because of other charges in the air between us. Because I wanted to repel the truth of what she was saying. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Tell me, Ollie. How many siblings have I got?”

“I—”

“What's my favorite subject?”

“You—”

“Or my favorite color, even? My favorite food?”

“You never talk about those things!”

Or what she does on rainy days
. Something twisted in my stomach.

“You never ask about them, Ollie. You don't care about anything that goes on that you're not a part of. It's like you think the rest of the world doesn't matter!”

“That's not true. I care about other people. I care about Moritz.”

She threw her hands up in the air. “You mean the pen pal you never have to meet. The one you'll never have to deal with in person. The one who's only ever going to exist inside your head!”

“Shut up.”

“Tell me, Ollie. When's
my
birthday?”

I didn't know the answer, Moritz. I closed my mouth.

After a moment, Liz got up to go to the bathroom. Her tears were messing up all that mascara.

I had to do something. I was losing her. I was losing everything.

She'd left her backpack on the floor. It didn't take a lot of digging to find what I was looking for. It was one of the things that people seem to superglue to themselves, a little square of metal with earbuds dangling from it. I put the earbuds in my ears. My fingers hovered over the triangular button. When I heard the toilet flush, I pressed it.