Nowhere Near You Page 4

  The doors squeaked shut. The machine shifted into gear.

  The world dissolved in my ears.

  I breathed deep. Reminded myself that this was no anechoic chamber. I would soon be on solid ground once more. My pacemaker would not allow my heart to fail. I could survive disorientation for thirty minutes.

  Oliver, if I am incapable of conquering a simple bus ride across my city, surely I am incapable of meeting you.

  The bus had only stopped twice in a span of six minutes. Bodies pressed against either side of me, indifferent to my silent agony. Elbowed in the back, with nary an “excuse me.”

  How is it, Ollie, that the greatest trials in my recent memory include something so mundane as a bus ride?

  Had you only been aboard, smiling with Chiclets on your teeth.

  By the third stop, I must have been emolocating my misery. Someone prodded me in the chest. Through grainy feedback, I realized she had gestured me to take her seat. An elderly woman. I clicked in her smiling face. Counted enough wrinkles to shame me.

  I shook my head. Thanked her. Disembarked seven stops too soon.

  A sailor returning to land. I wanted to kiss the ground. I would walk.

  I will walk to you if need be.

  Will you ask where I was going? Or doesn’t it matter, as long as I arrived?

  Ollie, I have always enjoyed public radio. One program I’m fond of, Die Speiselokal, records local shows. Once while I wrote you at my desk above the city, the announcer proclaimed that, after a message from his sponsors, he would stream a live performance taking place at the Kulturmesse (culture fair).

  The tune itself was initially unremarkable: an up-tempo choral reimagining of Debussy’s “Clair de Lune.” No glockenspiel accompaniment. I imagined the shape of the cathedral. Halfway through, the choir fell silent. The pianist took command in a reprise. I thought the song lacked a well-timed rap solo—

  And that’s what happened.

  Rhythmic speaking. Free-form poetry. A gorgeous voice. Rapid, precise. Such an outburst should have been incongruous in a piece so delicate. But no. These performers saw a piece of music as I thought only I could.

  Students from Myriad Academy. Where such things are mundane.

  If we want to find room in the world for us, perhaps the where does matter, Ollie.

  Afternoon arrived shortly before I did. I paid the wind nipping at my earlobes little mind. Paid mind instead to the lawns stretching before me.

  Located on the city’s edge, Myriad’s campus is as much a park as anything else. On weekends, the gates are opened and the public may enjoy the trees and gardens. There are two auditoriums, an outdoor amphitheater. Myriad (ha) study halls. A large library. A famous Literatur department where, it is rumored, the students have no chairs. They gather on fireside beanbags during lessons.

  To sit on a beanbag at school would be to taste heaven, Ollie.

  Myriad’s tuition is essentially criminal, despite what Father pretends. It is especially beyond our means if I intend to save to come see you. I had decided. Even before Frau Pruwitt dropped off the applications. In the secret hours when I trudged through Myriad’s illustrious history, my computer’s digital voice ringing in my ears.

  I had decided I could not go.

  Yet here I was.

  It may be dolphin-wavy, Oliver. But verdammt! I want to go to art school.

  I wandered from the stone path. Sat down on a manicured lawn beneath a large willow tree. Permitted the reverberations of dancing and singing from two auditoriums to float past my auricles and illuminate the leafy whips draping above me. Illuminate the mites on the leaves and the veins in the leaves and the fluid in the leaves and the splendor in the leaves—

  Someone was looking at me.

  She stood near my feet. Posture stiff, guarded—I could almost taste her aggression. I fought the strangest urge to lift my goggles.

  “Do I . . . are we acquainted?” Knowing the answer.

  “Prince Moritz.” Her voice fell soft on my ears. She, dressed primly in a lace dress and a broad summer hat. A mane of curls hung loose on her shoulders. “It can’t be. It can’t be you.”

  I drew myself up. Clicked my tongue at her, once. She didn’t flinch. Only hitched her smile higher.

  One of her smiles.

  Not both of her smiles.

  The second mouth on the nape of her neck, currently hidden beneath her locks—hidden from almost everyone but not from my ears—did not smile. The corners of it turned downward. Her eyes widened. The smile on her face remained fixed.

  There stood the girl who once tried to drown me in my mother’s laboratory.

  “Molly,” I said. “What are the odds?”

  Molly’s eyes betrayed her, her perfect smile a sheen that existed on the surface of her like a layer of sweat. She wore it too closely, the girl who tried to drown me.

  “Did your mother send you?” She tiptoed near. No matter how docile she seemed, she bared her back teeth. Curls bounced; I smelled cherries. “Is that it?”

  “No,” I blubbered. “I’ve no idea where she is. Haven’t seen her in years.”

  Molly bit her lip. “Oh . . . ?”

  Understand, Ollie—for you, being an experiment once seemed better than being sick. For me, having been an experiment keeps me awake. Embracing the kids like us means bringing nightmares to my waking mind. Bringing me back to near-death experiences, Ollie. I have wanted to forget her second mouth. Along with the rest of her.

  “So what are you doing here, Moritz? Here, where I happen to be.”

  “It’s a lovely day. This is a lovely place,” I replied. Perhaps too quickly. Did I sting her with my unease?

  “Do you—have you enrolled here?”

  “I—I am considering it.” She need not know I couldn’t afford it. “I had no idea you—that you would be here. Beg pardon.”

  A group of students in choir robes passed by on the sidewalk. A girl called out to her. Molly didn’t take her eyes off me. I smelled cherry once more. Realized her second mouth sucked on a lozenge.

  “You weren’t stalking me, then?” Molly’s brow furrowed.

  “Gott in Himmel. Not at all! Why should I ever want to?”

  “Then you don’t have anything to apologize for.” She put out a gloved hand. I dodged it like a hit. “I can show you around campus, if you’d like.”

  What might you do in such unsettling circumstances? Was I to run from this girl in dance slippers? She was nothing I could solve with my reflexes. Nothing I could manage by being quick on my feet. I may as well be as clumsy as you are.

  “Beg pardon . . . I should go.”

  She put her smile back on. “Do you live nearby?”

  I began to nod. Halfway through, I shook my head.

  “You’re acting as if I’m going to dunk you underwater again!”

  The teeth in the back of her skull were all but grinding together.

  “Your second mouth is not smiling.”

  “It’s not smiling,” she whispered, “because it has a habit of betraying what I’m really feeling. Most people don’t know. But you can see it even now, right? I can’t hide from the prince.”

  “It reveals your subconscious? So you truly feel like baring teeth at me.”

  “Honestly?” She exhaled. “I’m frightened, Moritz. I’m scared to see you here.”

  My throat constricted. This is so like what others have suggested: I am the terrifying one. I am my mother’s son. This suggestion, even from the girl who once held my skull down in a heartfelt effort to fill my lungs with water.

  “I’ll frighten you no longer.” We are trying to stand, Oliver. I fall down easily. “I’m expected elsewhere.”

  “You have friends waiting for you? That’s nice, Moritz. I mean. It’s nice, how we can all get on with things. We Blunderkinder.”

  “We what?”

  “We’re more a blunder than a wonder.” Both mouths carried the same small smile.

  Did that make it genu
ine?

  “You’ve got friends as well? Here?”

  Two grins. “Yes. Would you care to meet them sometime?”

  Would you believe I nodded? “Yes. Yes, that would be lovely.”

  The distant slap of dancers’ footfalls. Wind in the branches.

  “You’re still here, Moritz.”

  “Yes. I may have, ah, exaggerated the urgency of leaving. I wish . . .”

  “What is it?”

  “I wish I could trust you.”

  “And I wish you’d take my arm, Prince Moritz, and let me show you the campus.”

  There were so many bystanders. Surely she could not drown me. I took her arm, precisely because it was so hard to do. You would have done it.

  The midmost theater smelled faintly of lemon polish. Of hair spray. Incomparable to the putrid sweat stench of Bernholdt-Regen’s stairwells. Music ignited wide hallways. I saw by laughter that had nothing to do with inflicting grievous injury. Were there no Lenz Monks here?

  Molly beamed with her front mouth. Her back teeth chattered. Nerves? Or hunger? I could no longer hear her lozenge clicking. She introduced me to students as we traversed the building. All of them greeted her with smiles.

  “Nice shades.” This from a jocular boy. He towered over me in costume. A trim 1890s preparatory school uniform. “Who’s the new fish, Molls?”

  “This is Moritz. And no. Come along, Moritz. If you do enroll, watch out for Max. He doesn’t even pretend to mean well.”

  Max smirked and squeezed both my shoulders. “Hey, you. Moritz.”

  I started. Such overfamiliarity!

  (Ollie, a brief lesson in tongues: upon meeting someone new, I’m accustomed to being addressed with the polite form of the word you. Sie rather than du. Call me antiquated, but months passed before I greeted Owen as du.)

  Max duzened me as if my name belonged to him.

  “Beg pardon?”

  Max released me. Nearly knocked me askew. Soon he spun around to watch us leave. Molly’s unseen hind mouth stuck out its tongue at him.

  From a grand hallway with high, echoing ceilings covered in ivy motifs, Molly led me down a narrower hallway and then backstage. Her arrival was met by raucous Hallo!s.

  To think one of my mother’s monsters is genuinely popular. No one smashed her face into anything. Not a soul seemed to bear her ill will. She held herself with grace.

  I lacked her presence. I waited for someone to shrink me down, Oliver. To inquire about my goggles. To mock my fringe. To shy away from my fears projected.

  But they greeted me with friendliness. Curiosity. If anything, I was underdressed: many students wore theatrical costumes and makeup. Those who did not clothed themselves in shawls and drainpipe pants. Peculiar art-school garb. An Aladdin Sane–era David Bowie lookalike named Chloe complimented my choice of wardrobe.

  “There’s a brand-new boy, but I don’t know his name. And he’s wearing four patterns at once? That’s bold, and I dig bold, son.”

  Several students in canvas coveralls carried hammers on their belts. “Not sure why there are stagecrafters building here on a Saturday,” tittered Molly. “It’ll interfere with Year Two dress rehearsals.”

  “When else were we supposed to finish all this work?” called a stocky, scraggly-haired boy from atop a particleboard staircase. Sharp eyes darted to Molly’s arm, looped around mine. I heard his grip tighten on the handle of his hammer. “Hey! Golf pants! Who are you supposed to be, anyhow?”

  “Beg pardon?” I clicked in surprise, snapping my ears his way.

  “Moritz is an old friend.” I jolted at the exaggeration. But her second mouth didn’t refute her words. “And you could actually meet your set deadlines during school and there wouldn’t be any trouble. As class representative, I am responsible for hounding you, Liebling. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof premieres on Friday. Where’s the tin roof, Klaus?”

  “If you paid any attention,” said Klaus, pointing with his hammer, “you’d know that there is no tin roof in the play.”

  “Liebling, I was being sarcastic.”

  “Perhaps he was, ah, waiting for that click.” My contribution.

  Plays aren’t your strongest suit, Oliver.

  Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof tells the story of Maggie and Brick, a dysfunctional couple. “Waiting for that click” is how Brick describes the uncertainty of existence: waiting for an indefinable moment. Some existential click to remedy his life.

  Klaus leapt from the summit. Sawdust took violent flight upon his landing. A mighty boom, not a click.

  “How gay are you, on a scale from one to rainbows?”

  “Ah. I can’t comprehend rainbows.”

  “What?”

  Molly sighed and began to lead me away; Klaus’s frown returned.

  “I’m no threat,” I blurted.

  He coughed into a muscled forearm. Not looking at Molly. Suddenly cowed.

  Her second mouth pinched.

  I’m no matchmaker, Oliver.

  My footsteps echoed up a wooden staircase. A flawless stage faced a gaping cavern of a room. Nearly perfect acoustics. I whistled a note, high and clear, toward rows of cushioned seats extending into the distance. In that whistle’s recall, I saw the curvature of the layered walls around the stage. Panels precisely placed overhead. Architecture made to exemplify a cappella singing. This was the opposite of a soundless room. This room celebrated sound.

  I sat on the edge of the stage and breathed. Even my sighs made music here.

  “Well, Prince?” Molly sat beside me, crossed her legs.

  “Thank you for showing me this place.”

  “It is wonderful, isn’t it?” Molly adjusted a pin in her hat. “Sometimes I forget. I’m glad to see you so pleased.”

  “The girl who drowned me, glad to see me. My.”

  “Well, I think I knew all along that it was a bit unfair.” She sighed from both sides. “You were a lonely boy, not a cruel one. You never would have tried to drown me.”

  “I might have. And my mother drowned us all.”

  “Maybe. But you aren’t your mother.”

  Could she feel my gratitude? “No, I’m not.”

  She bit her back lip. “So. Have you ever wanted to find her?”

  “Never.” My purpose in life, Ollie, isn’t to search for anyone.

  Molly, carefully: “You won’t find her here. And you’ll already have a friend.”

  I swallowed. “You say that word so easily.”

  “Or you don’t say it easily enough.” Her second set of lips revealed nothing. “Living in the lab, I never imagined having friends. But you know, Prince Moritz. Most people really do try to be good to each other.”

  A Blunderkind found me first. A reckoning, Oliver.

  Always I’ll greet newcomers with caution. Waiting to find out which of their organs exists in duplicate or not at all. Forever listening for evidence of my mother’s soulless workings.

  I don’t imagine you found a hero in Chicago, but someone more complicated.

  Meeting Molly reminds me that the improbable occurs. Impossible really is not so very far away. Our lives seem comprised of meeting strange people under strange circumstances. Perhaps that is what all lives are like. Your optimism remains infectious. Perhaps you are emolocating as well?

  When and never if, Ollie.

  P.S. I will never ask Owen whether my laughter feels like “ghostly ear kittens.” You insufferable, perfect idiot.

  chapter five

  THE FOG

  Drop the acoustic-to-electric transducer, Moritz.

  Because I did find a hero. Not in Chicago. In Kreiszig. You’re textbook sometimes!

  Embarking on a quest! Overcoming the fearsome Cyclops known as the city bus?

  (Stop it, man.)

  Journeying to a mighty hall and facing down the Medusa who haunted your childhood?

  (Moritz, I’m dying.)

  Befriending said Medusa?

  (I’m dead, Moritz, for you’ve
killed me with your panache.)

  Good thing you don’t have eyes, because when you open this letter, it’ll be blinding, reflecting the radioactive hugeness of my smile!

  How dare you be so awesome? What, MBV wasn’t enough of a superpower? Emolocation wasn’t, either? Now you’ve got to be pristine and mature? Also, holy crap. Turns out Molly really has two mouths? I’d find that harder to believe before this road trip. But now . . .

  The Blunderkids (I am stealing that punny nickname and ’MURICANizing it) are a wacky bunch. Soon we’ll have to start wearing uniforms. I don’t vote for the yellow spandex route. Then again, after wearing this damn bodysuit, it wouldn’t be such a bad transition. And then all the rest of y’all would know the agony of pinching.

  I’m kind of jealous. If we were fiction, you’d be halfway up Mount Doom and I’d still be picking my nose in the Shire. (Or lounging in Rivendell, because why the heck were the hobbits so eager to leave a land of beautiful people, waterfalls, and delectable foodstuffs?)

  Moritz. It’s HUGE that you took Molly’s arm. What are the odds? Auburn-Stache says there are only twenty-seven of us in the world. And you ran into one in your own city?

  Looks like you’re all aboard the Lebensziel train, like it or not!

  Even if she’s kind and flowery, you tell Molly something from me: she tries anything like that drowning bullshit on you again, I’m gonna swim over there and electroshock her ass.

  Fair warning.

  Moritz, can I take you to the city with me? As a storyteller? Not that I have words for the sensory overload known as Chicago. Good thing being lost for words has never stopped me from talking!

  As we approached the Windy City, so many more cars crowded so many more lanes, and electricities became so thick that squinting accomplished jack squat. Describing the car smog without saying brown (colors don’t help you, which makes this whole finding words thing even harder), I’d say this felt like bathing in a bowl of chunky oatmeal.

  Until a shimmering, multicolored fog crept up from the horizon.

  “How can you see where we’re going with all that fog in the way?”

  “Fog?” Auburn-Stache didn’t look my way, but he was itching to. I guess being surrounded by speeding vehicles is stressful even for people who don’t see ominous oatmeal where cars should be. “Ollie, there isn’t any fog. It’s a clear day, autumn gray.”