Because You'll Never Meet Me (34 page)

At the Sickly Poet, I laid the folded coordinates before Fieke and Owen.

“What's this? You couldn't even throw it at me?” she said while Owen unfolded the paper airplane. I am only capable of the simplest origami, Ollie.

Owen's eyes widened. He signed a symbol similar to “hospital” to my untrained ears.

Fieke frowned in a clinking sound. “You mean the place where you were raised?”

Owen frowned at me as well. Or perhaps frowned at the obnoxious racket that the current performer was making on the evening stage. Wailing ineptly along to K-pop songs. Help, Ollie.

“Why the fluff would you wanna go back there? Are you looking for your sociopathic mother?”

“She wasn't sociopathic. And no.”

Fieke opened her mouth. Owen put his hand up to her face and nodded.

“I was hoping one of you could google how I can get there. If it isn't too much trouble.”

Owen held the unfolded plane close to his face. Set it down again. Moved his hands at Fieke.

“Owen can find anything online. So when are we going?”

I shook my head. “I don't expect you to accompany me.”

“God, you're a prat,” said Fieke.

Owen kicked her under the table. He looked frightened, but he pointed to himself.

Once this might have upset me. Their recklessness. Their
curiosity about the source of my childhood torment. As if this were a field trip. Once I might have been angry.

“I'll come,” grumbled Fieke, “if your next performance isn't shit,
Brille
.”

I looked at the two of them. Two people, Oliver, who are content to follow me into the dark. Fieke's cheeks twitching, despite her fixed scowl. Owen's eyes, wide but determined.

I made my way to the stage. Pushed past the quiet crowd of regulars. Climbed into the spotlight. Adjusted the microphone. Finally, I peeled off my goggles.

Perhaps someone gasped. Perhaps the bartender dropped a glass. But I was not listening for it. Such a hullabaloo was coming from the table in the corner. Such a large amount of whooping and foot-stamping and table-pounding. It ricocheted off all the walls of the
Kneipe
and shook my very soul.

Lenz met us at the train station. Standing on the platform, looming over Fieke's shoulder. He cracked his knuckles as Owen and I approached. Fieke showed her teeth and squeezed his forearm.

“I passed him by the good old bridge this morning. He offered to help me.”

I could see evidence that he had changed, at least physically: a dent at the back of his head. A dent I put there.

“Hallo,” he murmured.

Fieke grinned like a proud mother.

He nodded and set down her satchel and left us. As he turned I remembered once more the day I'd first seen him: the day the sight of me had set him to screaming.

Perhaps he'll head off and hurt someone again.

Perhaps he thinks the same thing when he looks at me.

For all I knew, there was a dead mouse in his pocket.

But I hope not.

Freiberg was once a small village, but with the excavation of its ore mines over the centuries, it grew to prominence. Now Freiberg is home to a technical university. It attracts additional tourists because of the ruins of Freudenstein Castle. There are old, crumbling walls scattered here and there among the town houses and shops. Scraps of an old world displaced in time. You live in America, where things are still new. In Germany, the old and the new exist side by side.

The area surrounding Freiberg is said to be “green” and scenic, due to its proximity to Tharandt Forest, an ancient sprawl of trees and sandstone caves. The forest is listed among the most beautiful places in Saxony.

We did not enter the national park there, but rather we climbed a fence along the lines of the forest. Owen led us through those aging woods. The air was cool beneath the canopy. Thick moss drooped from the trees, sweet-smelling. Peculiar in its familiarity. Had I smelled this from the car seat where I drowsed? While my mother drove me in dizzying silence to the laboratory?

We hit a dirt road somewhere amid the trees. I imagined we might have stumbled onto your driveway. Wish as I might, heart swelling as my companions stopped so that I might catch my breath, at the end of the driveway was no triangular cabin.

Hidden in the sandstone cliffs was the entrance to an underground car park. It was dark within. I asked the others to hold on to me. We formed a human chain, and I led them through the damp garage. They held their phones aloft for additional light. Grass had invaded even here, and the entire lot was empty. Devoid of machinery. Of any sign that once the place was the source of so much strangeness and pain.

We approached closed automatic doors. I hesitated. Fieke stepped forward and kicked in the glass with her boots. As if she did such things on a frequent basis. Of course she does, Ollie.

I stopped in the familiar reception area. No lights buzzed inside. The wallpaper was curling with water damage. Everything smelled cold. We could all sense it. The entire facility was vacant.

“Ghost town,” said Fieke.

We wandered the halls that used to house me, calling to what I used to be and hearing no reply. All the medical equipment was gone. Posters had been torn down. There was nothing. Not even paper litter. Just dampness and silence and empty counters. Even the clipboards were absent from the walls. Even the magazines were absent from their tables.

I half expected to see anxious women sitting in the waiting rooms after all this time.

“Yeah, I can believe you used to live here,” said Fieke, stopping outside the cafeteria across from the stairwell. “It explains why you're such a mopey bastard.” The fire was
gone from her voice. Everything sounded hollow in that hallway.

“I have been trying to smile more.”

Fieke let out a nervous bark of a laugh. “As if that isn't the saddest part of all.”

I cannot see darkness, but I could feel it gathering down those steps as I pushed open the door to the stairwell. The air was icier. Smelled fouler. I took a deep breath and a step forward.

Owen grabbed my arm. He shook his head and began to tap a message to me. I put my hand on his fingers to stop him.

“I'll return before you can even ponder missing me.”

He released my arm, finger by finger. Despite his silence, I knew all that he was saying and was stronger for it.

I descended alone.

The door to the anechoic chamber remained open. It remained a gaping vault of blackness. I forced myself forward and fell to my hands and knees. I crawled into the soundless void.

I could feel my heartbeat. Could feel the grate beneath my fingers as I listened. I shouted once, just to be certain. The foam pallets had moldered enough that the room was not so silent as I recalled. It was not so good at swallowing everything up.

She was not there, Ollie.

I put a hand over my mouth and breathed through my nose, again and again.

If I made any sound after that, the walls halfway absorbed it.

Upstairs, Owen and Fieke waited on benches in the cafeteria. Owen met me when I pushed the doors open. For once, Fieke did not speak.

“It's all gone.” The sound of my voice echoed in the halls. Halls that used to house me. “There's no one. Nothing's here.”

Fieke sighed. “So what are we meant to do now?”

Though no one could see me do it, I smiled.

“Anything we fluffing want,” I said.

Frau Pruwitt showed up on my doorstep to deliver the results of my transfer assessment. She came into the kitchen and nearly smiled when Father gave her a coffee. I could hear the creases in her face protesting the unfamiliarity.

My father smiled, too. Oliver, romance might not be impossible for
all
of us.

“You passed,” she said. “Not a big fuss. Here is a list of potential schools you may consider transferring to.”

“Not a big fuss. But worth hiking up five flights of stairs to inform me.”

She sniffed.

Father grabbed my hand. “I'm proud, Moritz.”

He didn't have to say it aloud. I felt it in his posture. But he's trying to speak more. We both are.

“You should also start considering universities. You're behind, Mr. Farber.”

“I'll leave that until I get back.”

“What do you mean, until you get back?”

“After
Gymnasium
I'm going to take advantage of the grace year. Postpone pursuing higher academia. Travel.”

It is traditional for German students to spend one year abroad before beginning university. A year to see the world or work and discover what it is they would like to do with their lives.

Frau Pruwitt clearly wanted to throw a book at me.

“Let me tell you something, Moritz. Going out looking for the woman who left you won't make any of us happier. You've found a good father here in Herr Farber.”

“And he has a son in me,” I said, “and he understands me well enough to know I'm serious.” I smiled. “I'm not looking for her. But if I meet my mother in my travels, well, I suppose I can finally accuse her of being the one who pooped.”

Even father looked shocked.

How uncouth you've made me, Ollie.

One day, I will meet you. I will meet you and neither of us will die for it. By then you'll have seen more than enough humidifiers to sicken you.

In one year, I hope to be where you are, Oliver Paulot. I am saving pennies. In the meantime, the handful of friends you've helped me gather will be enough to deal with.

Perhaps I'll surprise you even sooner.

Perhaps I am in your driveway. Not far from where you sit folding origami dragons. Tapping your fingers against the bones of your glock. Painting electricity.

Perhaps I am already at your door, arms and weak heart open.

Here is a children's rhyme you already know:

Ready or not, here I come.

All my love,

Moritz Farber

The funny thing about character arcs, Moritz, is how you can decide to see them in almost anyone if you look.

You could argue that Rochester starts off as an asshat in
Jane Eyre
and ends up as the same asshat but with worse eyesight, and that would be true. Or you could say that he grew as a person by falling in love and acknowledging his twisted past (namely, “Oops, maybe it was weird of me to lock my crazy wife in the attic for years”).

You could argue that Tess in
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
starts and ends her life in misery, and all the things that happen to her are awful and don't stop her from being an innocent fool for eternity. Or you could say she fought her crappy fate in quiet, ultimately futile ways that nevertheless proved her resilience.

You could argue that Harry Potter started off a brave little kid and ended up a brave young man and we never doubted for a second that he'd get there, or you could say you bit your nails the whole way and watched him grow with your heart in your throat.

You could argue that people change or don't change, and you could probably make a pretty damn convincing case for both sides.

You could argue that Mom didn't get a fair shot, stranded out in the woods with me for years.

Or you could argue that she made a lot of her time here. So much of the house is shaped by her presence: cross-stitched tapestries on the walls, knit blankets on the couches, furniture she whittled herself, and bowls and plates and spoons she made from porcelain, and flowers she planted that are perennials, which means they'll bloom for years and years and years even now that she's gone.

And so much of me is shaped by her presence, too.

It sounds a bit morbid, but we buried Mom in the backyard where I buried Dorian Gray. She didn't die the night of the dance, or even the day after. She died about two weeks after that, and during those last weeks Liz basically lived at the cabin with us. She and Auburn-Stache were there the whole time, and when I kissed Mom good-bye through the gas mask, they were standing behind me, ready to catch me. But I didn't fall. I didn't.

I have to live without a kickstand now.

We even had a funeral.

I wore a suit, and so did Auburn-Stache and the rest. A few people showed up, actually—from Liz's family to the local state park guy, who cried so hard that I wonder whether he and Mom did more than play poker, to the mailman and Lucy from the pharmacy. I didn't want to talk to anyone, and we didn't make people check their phones at the door. It gave me an excuse not to approach people.

That excuse might not always work.

Because Auburn-Stache talked to me about it, one day while we
were at her bedside and she couldn't open her eyes and her breathing was sharp and short. Auburn-Stache thinks what you do: that maybe there's a middle ground and I'll have to focus, focus harder than any sci-fi laser beam, but maybe with his help and in the hopes of meeting you, I can learn to put up with electricity. And all those electricities will learn to put up with me as well.

“So … I wouldn't have a seizure
or
blow things up?”

“Hopefully. And in the meantime we could find something less awkward for you to wear in public.”

“Forget that. You're saying I could watch a movie?”

“Yes.”

“And explore the Interwebz?”

“Y—”

“And use a humidifier?”

“All the humidifiers, Ollie.”

Snot ran down my face.

“Here I come, world,” I said.

As it is, I kind of just dart around the waves of color when I see them and make sure that if I start to sense a stronger aura—if I smell cinnamon or feel really dizzy or sneezy—I get the hell away.

We were in the open backyard, in the long grass, so there were plenty of places to run to if I needed to. But I didn't.

Junkyard Joe showed up in his wheelchair, but he couldn't go onto the grass. He waved at me from the porch. He could have been simulating ornithology again. I was scared to get close to him, what with his respirator, so perhaps that was for the best. He was a lot thinner than before. I didn't know what to say about it all, and maybe he felt the same way.