Nowhere Near You Read online

  “You only missed a signpost.”

  “I know! A signpost I’ve never seen!”

  He picked at a leaf on a broken cornstalk, stripping it to restless ribbons.

  “I can’t smell any pine.” It felt like losing a part of me, a pinkie maybe.

  “Places nearer cities smell like petrol. A mite more industrial. More like where I grew up.”

  “Really?”

  “Years before I was born, there were a lot of mines in Salford. The smell of coal hit your nostrils, permeated clothes. Perhaps that’s why so many kids took to smoking.”

  “No lakes? Or forests? Or anything?”

  “Dingy canals.” Strips of leaf fell to his shoes.

  Auburn-Stache’s upbringing is as much a mystery to me as social networks are. “You’ve never talked about this before, ’Stache.”

  “I suppose I’m picking and choosing my secrets.”

  Another innocent leaf met its demise.

  For once, I didn’t push for honesty. “So whose cornfield is this, Auburn-Stache?”

  He coughed. “I’ve no idea. An opportunity to leave the road and pull unseen into a field presented itself.”

  I laughed. “So you just drove crop circles out on some guy’s farm!”

  “Elkhart County is home to a small Amish population. I thought there might be fewer power lines here.”

  “Liz used to think I was Amish.” I rubbed my cramped legs. “How do people sit in cars without turning into mummies? I feel crusted over.”

  “More toilet humor?”

  “Auburn-Stache, I’m too classy for that kind of talk. I am not the one who pooped.”

  “I won’t try to fathom you today, Ollie. I’m exhausted.”

  “See, me and Moritz have this joke about people who worked at the laboratory being metaphorical poopers.”

  Naturally, he shut up when I mentioned you, Moritz.

  “You know. Moritz? That zany batboy you’ve known for years? Sort of mopey but in a sophisticated way? My best friend who you never talk about?”

  More torn leaves.

  His obnoxious vow of laboratory silence includes you, too. I never get to talk smack, Moritz! Yet another classic youth pastime denied the TLoG. Forsooth.

  “I swear it was funny.” But we both know it wasn’t really, because that was the kind of desperate stuff we talked about right before Mom—

  I clapped my hands, stood on my tiptoes. Cornstalks grow so tall! You wouldn’t believe it! But I could see stars overhead and I could hear crickets, and this wasn’t so unfamiliar after all. Impala aside, the only electricity in sight came from the power line near the road, orange tendrils. The circle Auburn-Stache had made was like twenty feet in diameter. I have no idea how I didn’t wake up while he was steamrollering corn. Now his car murmured brown on the opposite side. I could just stomach it.

  Moritz, I think it’s interesting (and not just embarrassing!) that your dad suggested puberty maybe triggered your emolocation, because I’ve read that some kids outgrow epilepsy during puberty. That hasn’t happened to me. I’m trying to build my tolerance, but now I’m not using just a little book light; I’m using the world. It’s always going to be a gamble which of us will cave: me or electricity. But I guess I’m in a gamblin’ mood.

  Guess I don’t want to die alone in the woods.

  I picked at the womble. “Maybe I can try sleeping without it. . . .”

  “Oliver, when you seize, where does the aura strike first? Where do you feel it?”

  Seizures hit me like cloudy bricks, numb tongue and cinnamon and garbled words and aching head, but pinpointing the first casualty? “I get pressure here.” I put my fingers on my temples. “Railroad spikes.”

  “I thought so.” Auburn-Stache twitch-walked to his car.

  “Digging for treasure?” I kept my distance when he popped open the trunk. Womble-less, I’m not as tough a cookie as you are, Moritz, and we didn’t need me stalling his car out in the middle of some pitchfork-wielding man’s cornfield.

  “It won’t stop your reactions entirely, but covering your temples and crown should prevent you from projecting electromagnetic pulses, at the very least. That suit is becoming inconvenient.”

  “Praise A’tuin the Star Turtle!” Mo, I’m glad you sent me the womble and sorry I blew chunks in it, but that thing made me feel like Joseph Merrick (a cool person, but not known for enjoying his teen years).

  Auburn-Stache kept scrounging, up to his armpits in his portable supply of medical equipment. He tossed my fishbowl and several of my books out onto the crushed cornstalks. I hurried to pick up my copies of Hard Times and Femme Felines from Frolix 8, but right then, Auburn-Stache cried “Aha!” and pulled something from the recesses of the trunk. “Catch!”

  I caught it, this bundle of scratchy gray clothing.

  “A beanie, Auburn-Stache? Couldn’t you give me a fedora? This thing is mayor of Uglytown. If I wear it, I’ll definitely become some sort of pariah!”

  “Ollie, it’s time I tell you something.”

  “No way are you going to tell me things!”

  “Fedoras are dreadfully uncool. This hat is knitted from rock wool. It’s a great insulator.”

  “I didn’t know rocks were anything like sheep. . . .” I trailed off, because there was something very familiar about the hat. The way it was put together, I mean. “Mom knitted this, didn’t she?”

  Wind rustled the cornstalks. “Yes, Ollie. She suspected the aura hit your temples first. Mothers sometimes notice things scientists overlook.”

  “Oh.” I ran my fingers along her knitting, so tightly woven virtually no space between the fibers for electricity to slip through. “She made this just in case I left home, huh?”

  “Most likely, yes.”

  “I never realized she actually meant it. I mean, about letting me leave.”

  He stepped forward, but I backed away. I pulled the hat down over my head and tucked my ears inside it.

  Before going to sleep, I pulled the old book light from my backpack and turned it on. The familiar buzzing set my teeth on edge, and the green puff of electricity did, too, but it didn’t exactly hurt. I pressed it to my head, pushing it into the hat. The light didn’t even flicker.

  It was an unseasonably warm night. Too warm for a wool hat, but I wasn’t taking it off.

  I had one angry motherfluffer of a crick in my back in the black early hours of the next morning. That’s what you get for sleeping in shoddy crop circles. We feasted on bottled water and granola bars. I blinked at the womble.

  “We meet again, my friend, my foe.”

  “It should be the last time,” said Auburn-Stache. “I’ve thought of an alternative.”

  “An entire jumpsuit made of rock wool!” God, that would be itchy.

  “Not far off, actually.”

  Uh-oh.

  I did my business between cornstalks. (Farmers of the world, forgive me. Other people don’t have to deal with this crap.) Then we skedaddled before the Amish could find us out. I felt bad about the ruined corn, so I left that copy of Femme Felines from Frolix 8 in the middle of the circle. Maybe it would blow some kid’s mind. There are some mighty-fine-lookin’ cat people on that cover.

  Auburn-Stache stared at billboards with all the intensity of a hunter.

  I can’t believe how quickly the novelty of face-planting car windows wore off, Moritz. It made me feel like a huge liar or something, since I’ve spent my whole life talking about how much I wanted to see the electric world, and now it lulled me to sleep. Liz would say “Told you so, doofus” and bop me on the nose, and you’d say “Did I not forewarn you of the underwhelming reality of society’s blanditude” and bop me on the nose. If Mom’s hat can prevent major car wrecks, maybe it can prevent your nefarious bops.

  Eventually, Auburn-Stache cried “Aha!” and took us down a winding exit ramp beside yet another field, where a green tractor puffed Dijon clouds of electric gunk. I waved. A hand emerged from the gunk, waving b
ack.

  We pulled into a dinky parking lot in front of a bizarrely pink building. At first I thought it just had a really weird brand of electricity suffused around it, from the wiring inside the walls or something, but no. The little shack was actually painted BRIGHT FREAKIN’ PINK. I squinted through the coiled light of the sign across the door frame to read “Adult Superstore” in huge red letters. A cartoon lady wearing rabbit ears and not much else was groping the letters pretty strangely. I guess she was really hot for the word store.

  “What does being an adult have to do with rabbit ears and leopard print?”

  “You’ll have to stay in the car.” I can see blushing. This was some prime blush-worthy material for our old doctor friend, Mo.

  Another sign in the shop window claimed it was a “pleasure” having customers. And pleasure was italicized.

  “Whoa. Wait. Is this a SEX SHOP?”

  “Yes, Ollie. Yes, it is. My apologies.”

  My mouth dropped open, and then I was grinning like you wouldn’t believe. “I don’t think I need this sort of male bonding. Gee, Auburn-Stache. You old perv.”

  “Please don’t.”

  I laughed a little. “Um, well. Happy birthday to me, I guess.”

  “You won’t be saying that in a moment.”

  And yeah, sitting there, waiting for him to come back, getting bored, and realizing that a car seat was never going to feel comfortable after all, I did get sorta nervous. By the time he emerged carrying a glittery plastic bag, I was cringing.

  “It’s not ideal, but preferable to the womble. You’ll need something less conspicuous, where we’re going.”

  I opened the bag and laid eyes upon a thing unholy: a full bodysuit made of black rubber.

  “Tch. I’m sure it’ll flatter my curves,” I said, dubious. “And look—complimentary handcuffs.”

  Auburn-Stache sighed. “All the questions you ask, and you haven’t asked the biggest one. You unfathomable pretzel of a child. You haven’t asked where we’re going.”

  “We’re fulfilling my life purpose. We’re going to see kids like Mo. We’re going to help them, and I’m going to write their stories and—”

  “Yes, yes. But where are they, Ollie? Growing on trees? Geographically. Where do you think we’re off to first?”

  “You’re not gonna let me ask and then go all cryptic on me, are you? Because I’m armed now. With fuzzy handcuffs.”

  “Ollie. Where?”

  “You said Ohio, right? Or was it Mordor? Does it matter?”

  His smile got sad. “I suppose, Ollie, you’re just impatient to go anywhere at all. Yes?”

  I shrugged. “Wherever my fellow weirdos are.”

  Moritz, if you’ve literally never gone anywhere, and you’ve never seen anywhere, how does it matter where you’re going? Until we hit the road, I never knew there are rows of candy at gas stations. I never knew about “Walk” signs at intersections. No one ever told me about the eerie, disembodied voices of drive-through speakers, or how every stranger you meet for two seconds at drive-through windows says “Have a nice day!” and how great is that? (It’s greater than the fast food itself; I’ll say that much!) When there’s that much world out there waiting for you, you’re not picky. Everywhere there be amazing monsters.

  Auburn-Stache could say the name of a place, and it wouldn’t matter. I can’t associate places with anything but books, maybe photos. What were the odds we were going anywhere I had read about? I’d ruled out Hogwarts. (I swear I didn’t really dream about it. Everyone knows Hogwarts is in Scotland. And even if Hogwarts is (a) completely electricity-free and (b) full of perfect weirdos, it’s fictional. Supposedly.)

  “I guess setting is important in storytelling, ’Stache.”

  He clapped his hands. “So ask the bloody question!”

  He looked like the kook he used to be—nothing like the tortured scientist stripping cornstalks to death—so I crowed, “Fine! Where are we going? Geographically?”

  He smiled, held his arms out. “The Windy City. Chicago, kiddo.”

  Okay. Jaw-drop, et cetera. I have read about Chicago. In DC Comics, Metropolis is actually based on Chicago. Moritz, we were headed to Superman’s hood.

  The idea of me having anything in common with Superman is impossible.

  Or it might not be. Because I have a sexy catsuit (meow, dude), and now I’m part of the same world you’re part of. Moritz, even if you don’t need a life purpose: I know you have strong feelings about Matt Murdock.

  Tell me you don’t want to read about my adventures with actual superheroes, the kids like us (but cooler), and I’ll tell you your pants are on fire.

  Sorry, let me translate the idiom: thine lederhosen are aflame.

  I can wear my coat on the outside, even if that glorious, shiny bodysuit pinches pretty awkwardly in my crevices and makes my fingers sweaty. I definitely won’t take the hat off.

  But I wasn’t off the hook yet.

  Auburn-Stache started sad-side-eyeing me. He reached over and flicked my overgrown bangs.

  At a hardware store not far from the, erm, sexier hardware store, Auburn-Stache picked up double-sided duct tape and a length of rubber tubing. From there, we went to a pharmacy for shaving cream and razors. Waiting in parking lots meant I couldn’t help noticing how empty and vast the world seemed. Fields surrounded this little town, but no trees.

  That seems kind of lonely, Moritz.

  My first-ever park was outlined by power lines (those things will always stalk me) but empty apart from the statue of a soldier. The lot next door was full of tombstones—my first-ever graveyard. And in the lot next to that, someone had posted a “For Sale” sign outside a beige house. Do signs like that work in the real world? Back home, I could have made “SOS” signs in the front yard and no one would’ve ever seen them.

  “Would people want to move in next to a little cemetery?” I asked, sitting on my first-ever park bench.

  “Maybe, if next door was a park.”

  America is weird.

  I eyeballed the swing set. It’s terrifying to think people push their kids on those things. What if those kids are anything like Liz, and they have springs on their feet? What if you push a kid on a swing and then that kid goes up, up into the sky and never comes back down? (Don’t get me started on the teeter-totter.)

  Shaving foam never dripped past the nape of my neck, and Auburn-Stache never nicked the skin of my ears. The rubber tubing taped to my temples never got dislodged. He might have been a great barber instead of a mad scientist, if he’d wanted to.

  I almost made a joke about that, but he was so quiet as he toweled away the last remnants of foam, and, gosh, was my naked head cold. I stared at my hair, stuck to my shoes. You’d think being bald would make me lighter, but that tubing weighed me down like a demented crown.

  “Now, there’s a clean seal, right, Auburn-Stache? Good riddance to the rooster cut of yore!”

  Auburn-Stache sniffled. I think it was only because the wind blew autumn-icy at last. Just in case, I didn’t look at him.

  Hitting the road was supposed to be an adventure, Moritz. But what if I left everything that was Ollie UpandFree back home? What if I got lost in these new woods?

  “Do you want to have a go on the swings?” Auburn-Stache tore off a final piece of duct tape, secured the beanie, and pulled the edges down over my ears.

  “Maybe not the swings.” I felt like an ass, so I turned and smiled and said, “But I am definitely gonna wreck that slide.”

  This time I saw the signs at the state line. One read, “The Land of Lincoln” (which is pretty great by name-dropping standards). Another one read, “The People of Illinois welcome you.” Would they welcome me if they knew I could kill their phones?

  Maybe, Mo. After all, we were two hours away from meeting my first fellow mutant. Maybe there really is room for all our emotional nonsense.

  And I can’t do subtle. Subtle takes patience! I’m saying it again—not ALL-CAPS-ING, but
saying it with entirely mature enthusiasm, because shouting doesn’t really work with you.

  If meeting these kids can help them like it’s helped us, what have we got to lose? If Auburn-Stache won’t talk smack, well, let’s let them do the talking. Join my quest, Moritz!

  Don’t give me the whole “let me/them rot” spiel, Moritz. You act like you resisted my charms for ages, but you started caving after two letters. (I counted!) It’s not betraying me, you know, meeting them. If you’re thinking something like that!

  There’s room in us for more friends. Moritz, there’s room in us for the world! And vice versa!

  ~ Ollie

  P.S. So! Send me Owen’s address, so I can write him about using the magical Internet!

  chapter four

  THE CURLS

  Oliver. Much as I find it, ah, adorable when you cheerlead me, your selective delicacy is disconcerting.

  Of course we’re allowed other friends. Trust you to be entirely fine with my eyeless horror of a face and somehow uneasy about my potential for hurt feelings. Once again you are not practicing what you preach. If I am not responsible for the feelings of others, how can you be responsible if I feel . . . what? Jealous of your friends?

  Oliver, if I am honest: I envy anyone who has heard your voice. Touched you.

  But.

  Surely you’ve read John Donne? I am not threatened by these dull sublunary anyones. Our relationship is not determined by proximity. We are boundless, Ollie.

  Leaving home is frightening. Beyond parks are often graveyards.

  Date or no, I would not go home. Frau Pruwitt might sit in the kitchen until the cusp of dawn. That eyebrow lost in the back reaches of her hair, waiting for me to finish filling out applications.

  I cannot read bus numbers on digital screens; I climbed aboard the fourth after the driver confirmed it went west. Nearly pulled the emergency-stop lever before the bus even began moving. Every horrid centimeter of that vehicle seemed to contain a body. No question of getting a seat.

  I clutched a dangling handle so tightly I felt my knuckles would burst. At least I am not tall. Bodies could hold me in place once the motion of the bus distorted all sound waves into an incomprehensible slurry.