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

the deaths of thirty thousand people on your conscience?” someone asks from behind them. Avi turns to see Patrick climbing out of a rental car. He puts on a pair of sunglasses before he approaches the glare of the crater.

“My wife was here,” Avi tells Patrick. “Emmeline’s mother.”

The stridency leaves Patrick’s face, as if he’s been replaced by another person, one with a functioning set of emotions. “Avi, I’m sorry,” he says. He puts a hand tentatively on Avi’s shoulder, and when Avi doesn’t swat it away, he rests it there.

“I haven’t told Emmeline,” Avi says. “I came here first. I should have gone to Emmeline. Tomorrow’s Wednesday. They have lunch together on Wednesdays.” It occurs to Avi that Emmeline already knows. Kay must have missed weeks’ worth of their lunches together. She told Emmeline where she was. If the news is out there already, if Emmeline has heard what’s happened here, she knows. Leaving all that aside, Emmeline has her own way of knowing things. She has since she was little, so pronouncedly so that Avi remains convinced it’s her ability. Since the beginning of all this, he’s had a question and an answer. He’s waited for someone, Emmeline, Fahima, any of them, to confirm that the two are a pair. Now he assumes that they are, that they always have been. Emmeline’s ability is knowing, even knowing something before it happens. Maybe she never told him because she’s known what would happen to Kay. Maybe she knows how Avi dies, too.

“Are you sure you want to be here?” Louis asks.

Avi shakes his head to clear it. Light glinting off the diamond veins burns on his eyelids. “I’m fine,” he says. “It’s fine.”

Patrick and Louis decide to continue as if Avi isn’t there. Avi returns his attention to the crater. He tries to imagine the spot above which Kay was standing when it happened. All points along the curve slide into one another. He pictures her floating over the center, the zero point. She’s reading her book, having a drink. He likes to think that she didn’t know what was happening. That she was there one second, gone the next.

“It’s amazing,” says Patrick, lowering his glasses.

“You sound impressed,” Louis says.

“I can be impressed and horrified,” says Patrick. “You think people who saw the atomic blasts weren’t impressed?”

“Scary analogy,” Louis says.

“Owen Curry is become death,” Avi mumbles. “Devourer of worlds.”

“Oppenheimer said that because he’d created the bomb,” Patrick says. “You didn’t create Owen Curry.”

Avi’s not sure this is true. He sees himself in the manager’s office of the Roseland Rest, about to call Louis and Homeland down on Owen Curry. Would they have gotten there before Patrick and Kimani and the others grabbed him? Would they have shot him down the way he deserved rather than throw him in a cell and forget to keep eyes on him? Owen Curry was a monster then. Now he was close to being a god. Avi had provided the time Owen Curry needed to blossom into a true horror.

“I can hold off press conferences another day,” Louis says. “There were people taking shots of the site before we got here. Photos are out there. People are going to assume one of you did this.”

Patrick nods. “There’s already been an incident near Bishop. One of the second-years was chased down an alley. They threw stones at her. I suppose the classics never go out of style.”

“Is she okay?” Avi asks.

“She’s a lithic,” Patrick says. Avi and Louis look at him, confused. “She controls rocks. She sent the stones flying back at them. If it’d been beer bottles or bullets, it would’ve been a different story.”

“I can have the New York office—” Louis begins, but Patrick cuts him off.

“We’ll take care of it,” he says.

“Working with Homeland could be seen as a sign of cooperation,” Avi offers. “Or it could get you disappeared. Anything ever come of that, Louis?”

Louis glares at him. “No comment,” he says.

“Working with Homeland would be a gesture of appeasement,” Patrick says. “A sign that our people need protection.” He sweeps his hand out toward the place Powder Basin used to be. “Which of our people need protection, Agent Hoffman?” There’s a dictatorial grandeur in the gesture that makes Louis shuffle his feet nervously. Look on our works, ye mighty, it says.

“I’ve got to get back to it,” Louis says. He puts his hands on Avi’s shoulders awkwardly, the prelude to a potential hug. “About Kay—”

“Thanks, Louis,” Avi says.

“I’ll call you,” Louis says, getting back into his SUV.

“Yeah.” Louis drives away, leaving clouds of pale dust in his wake. Avi and Patrick stand side by side at the edge, looking at the crater in respectful silence.

“You should call your daughter,” Patrick says without turning to him.

“I should tell her in person,” Avi says.

Patrick lowers his sunglasses and looks at Avi over the rims. “You’re not allowed at Bishop.”

“Don’t you think they’d make an exception?”

“I wouldn’t let any one of you people through the door,” Patrick says.

Avi sniffs, pinches dust out of his nose. “I’ll have her meet me somewhere else,” he says. “The bakery on Lexington.”

“You want her leaving the school?”

“Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do?” he snaps.

“I actually don’t care what you do, Avi,” Patrick says. “I never have. But I’d ask yourself if you’re helping Emmeline by staying in her life. Or if you’re blundering around, doing more harm than good because you can’t imagine the world as anything but a story with you as the main character.”

There’s no anger in Patrick’s voice as he says it, only calm disdain.

“I can’t leave her,” Avi says.

“Because it would hurt her or because it would hurt you?” Patrick asks. Avi doesn’t answer. “It seems impossible to cut yourself off from the people you love. But there are times it’s necessary. It can be done. I’m not sure it can be fixed after you’ve done what you need to do. After you’ve gotten yourself right. Once it’s done, it’s