The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

Fahima looks at Ji Yeon, daring her to argue. Kimani opens the door into the basement room of the Rhees’ house, where Alyssa sleeps through the start of a war.

The service is an afterthought, a public screening of grief. They hold it at a megachurch in Cobble Hill. Former students, a contingent from the Commune, Resonants who never attended the Bishop Academy, who’d stayed out in the cold. They pack into the church. The service is Resonants only. Sarah thought this was exclusionary, but Patrick pointed out that it was practical. All those seats and there isn’t enough room. Shen works the door, Hivescanning mourners on their way in. Police block off Smith Street as a sea of allies and enemies stand in front of the church with candles and placards, tiki torches, and American flags. Since Revere, Fahima has developed a radar sense for violence. It’s not pinging as she and Alyssa wind their way through the crowd. They’ll let us put him in the ground, she thinks. They’ll at least give us that, if nothing more.

They stop at the doors. Shen gives Alyssa a pained expression, and Fahima nods. She kisses Alyssa on the cheek. “This is where I leave you,” she says. Alyssa looks shocked. Fahima told her this was coming, but she must not have believed it. There’s a case to be made for her inclusion: Bishop owed his last days to Alyssa as much as to anyone. Fahima hadn’t bothered to make the argument.

This is for us, she thinks. And I love you, but you’re not one of us.

Seeing Fahima’s resolve, Alyssa turns to go. “I’ll see you at home,” she says. She looks so hurt, Fahima nearly calls her back, but the motion of the crowd urges Fahima inside. There are more moments like this to come, Fahima thinks. From here out, there will be fewer places we can go together. It won’t be that different from before, when Fahima kept herself secret from Alyssa. But to get past that, to stay together through it, Fahima had to promise that things would never go back to that way.

Sarah and Patrick saved Fahima a seat. Craning her neck to the back of the nave, she sees Kimani, door perched in the wall above the balcony. She looks down on them the way you hope God would, a sad smile on her face, a beer in her hand.

Fahima doesn’t know the woman who performs the service but falls immediately in love with her. Everyone in the church does. Janine Coupland gives off a warmth that registers deeper than the skin. Sarah found her from a story Avi had written for Harper’s about her murder trial and acquittal, one of Kay Washington’s biggest legal victories since Bishop brought her on board. Janine Coupland’s a healer. Most of the healers Fahima has encountered have a cold practicality about their ability. Abby Burgess, the school nurse at Bishop, can weave sundered skin back together but has all the bedside manner of a dead trout. Janine Coupland exudes healing. Fahima’s lucky to be in the front row, soaking up more of it than the rest of the congregants, even if it’s less than she needs.

Janine Coupland begins with apologies. She’s not a preacher or even much of a public speaker. There’s not much to the words she says beyond platitudes. It’s her presence that does the work, leaving an impression on all that they’ve shared something important, a moment that changed them. It’s a failing on Fahima’s part that she’s too smart, too critical to be part of it. Alyssa once remarked on Fahima’s inability to turn her brain off long enough to watch a movie. “You don’t have to be so smart all the time,” she said, grinning playfully.

“Thing is, I do,” Fahima said. It’s difficult to explain how tightly you cling to your intellect when it’s all you are.

“Is there anyone who’d like to say a few words about Kevin Bishop?” asks Janine Coupland. Sarah, Patrick, and Fahima exchange looks. One of them should speak. A former student, older than any of them, comes to the dais and waxes on about her time at Bishop, saying plenty about the school and very little about the man. The next couple of speakers run the same course, talking about what Kevin Bishop built without addressing who he was. Fahima wonders what she could add.

The thing she knows most clearly about Bishop is how little she knew him. He kept his past a secret. He said it was important that it stay that way. “We can’t focus on who we’ve been or where we’ve come from,” he said. “We need to think of where we are and where we’re going.” Bishop’s past was tangled up with the beginnings of Resonance, the Hive, and the way their community had taken shape, but he drew a veil over that part of their story. Days when she was feeling charitable, Fahima thought it was about Bishop’s idea that mystery and unknowability had intrinsic value, the seeds of faith. Fahima grew up around people who valued faith for its own sake. Faith could keep you good. It could hold you together and hold you up when a more empirical mind might fall apart. She was evidence of that. The years in the mental institution were the price she paid for her lack of belief. She suspected that there were parts of Bishop’s story that would poison the well they all drew from. His secrecy may have been spiritual and benign, or it may have been adopted to protect himself from judgment.

By the time Fahima decides there’s nothing she can say about someone as complex as Kevin Bishop, the service is over, the congregants dismissed.

“That was nice,” says Sarah. Cortex huffs in agreement. Even Patrick nods. He’s hardly spoken since Bishop died. Fahima tries