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

after the Pulse. She spoke to them about the Bishop Academy, but they laughed her off. The youngest, close to Emmeline’s age, raises a mound out of the dirt like a skateboarder’s half ramp. The oldest runs up it, flying into the air. The middle boy tries to knock him down with a gust of wind. They talk trash to each other in Arabic and start it again. Parents herd their transfixed kids away as if it’s obscene, but it isn’t. It’s beautiful, a pure thing.

“Hey, al’ukht alkubraa,” the oldest one calls over to Fahima as he picks himself up from the ground. Fahima chafes at the boys’ Arabic nickname for her, older sister. They also call her the woman from that school. “I didn’t know you had a kid.”

“She’s not her kid,” says the young one. “She’s a student from that school.”

“Is that right, al’ukht alsaghira?” the oldest says to Emmeline. “You have magic powers?”

“How’s the food at that school?” the youngest asks. “They have fries?”

“Fries are okay,” Emmeline calls, cupping her hands to amplify her voice. “Burgers are pretty good. It’s no Shake Shack.”

“Can I come have lunch with you sometime?” asks the youngest.

“Shut up, Dirar,” the oldest says.

“What?” says the youngest.

“She doesn’t want you to come to lunch at her school,” the oldest says. “She said she likes Shake Shack.”

“So what?”

“So ask her to Shake Shack, dipshit.”

Dirar turns back toward Emmeline and Fahima as if they hadn’t heard the last five seconds of conversation. “So you want to?” he calls.

Emmeline smiles shyly. She looks down and gives a barely perceptible shake of her head. Dirar shrugs and returns to his game. Fahima is struck by the prevailing power of normality, how the everyday shines through in crisis. The world collapses, and kids flirt clumsily. Siblings rag on siblings. People like Fahima feel the weight of everything on their shoulders, and others don’t. Both ways are wrong. The best way to save the world may be to stay out of its way.

Behind the low mumble of the boys starting another round of their game, Fahima hears the water lap onto the shore. The park has gone too quiet. The students tanning and grab-assing on the lawn have vanished. There are no families on the path. Four men in blue suits appear on the ridge behind the Yemeni boys. Three carry bulky inhibitors. The long tubes that focus the devices’ signals rest on their shoulders like old-timey muskets.

“Emmeline, we have to go,” she says.

Emmeline follows her stare. “Are they here for us?”

“No,” says Fahima. The boys don’t see the Homeland agents even as the lead agent closes within twenty feet of the youngest’s back. They’re absorbed in their game. A ramp rises from the dirt. A boy launches into the air. Another gathers wind in a ball, ready to toss it when his brother hits his apex. The lead agent points at the middle boy, singling him out as the most immediate threat.

“No,” says Emmeline.

Fahima grabs her shoulder, but Emmeline is already moving toward the boys, down the hill to the grass.

“We have to go,” Fahima calls after her. The agents unshoulder the inhibitors, training them on the boy.

Emmeline strips the bracelet off her forearm.

A ripple moves through the air, spreading out from Emmeline. It isn’t only the air. It’s everything. The ground and the water tremble. Fahima’s insides quiver like a cage of birds. It passes over everything once and then is still. Two of the boys scramble backward in the grass, away from what’s happened. Away from what Emmeline’s done.

On the crest of the ridge, three agents unshoulder their weapons and aim. Their weapons rest again on their shoulders. They unshoulder them and aim. Their weapons rest on their shoulders.

The group leader points, raises his hand, clenches it into a fist. Points. Raises. Clenches. Points.

A seagull makes a low, lazy half circle overhead, then jumps back to the beginning of its arc.

The youngest boy, Dirar, cranes his neck to watch the path of his brother’s flight, although his brother is on the ground, backing away. Dirar grins. His lips part, about to say something. His face scoops upward again. Repeat. Loop.

Fahima runs down the hill and picks up the bracelet from where it’s fallen in the grass. “Em, fix it,” she says, holding it out to her.

“What did you do to him?” shouts the oldest boy.

“I can’t,” Emmeline says. She’s in shock, transfixed by the sight in front of her.

“It’s like before, with Viola,” Fahima says, trying to calm her. “It’s a loop. A little knot in time. You have to untie it.”

“Fix him!” yells the oldest boy.

“I can’t!” Emmeline screams, turning on Fahima. Fahima feels the tremor again. It’s smaller this time, a warning.

“Hold still, Em,” Fahima says. She slips the bracelet over Emmeline’s forearm and clicks it shut. She feels it buzz against her hand before she looks up.

The agents unshoulder and aim their weapons. Point. Raise. Clench. The bird arcs, begins again. Dirar grins, lips parting to speak.

“You have to fix him!” sobs the oldest boy.

Fahima taps at the bracelet. It’s working, but nothing is happening. Something has been permanently broken. Time is looped, a knot that can’t be untied or sliced through.

“I’ll come back,” Fahima tells the boys. “I’ll figure it out, and I’ll come back and fix this.” She knows she won’t. The boys are the least of her worries. But Emmeline will need the assurance that this is fixable, even if it isn’t.

The students and families that were hustled away from the conflict appear on the ridges and at the edge of the lawn. There is something about the scene that’s physically hard to watch. The brain refuses to process it and pushes the horror into the body, landing it in the stomach. Fahima knows because she’s seen it before. She turns to Emmeline.

“Em, we have to go.”

Fahima checks connections while Sarah sits on a table in the old teachers’ lounge,