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

a brass Deco elevator open. A teenage girl bounds out and past them, floating a few inches off the ground, a pale aura of purple around her.

“Marian,” Bishop says quietly. “No abilities below the second floor.”

“Why is that the rule?” the girl asks, hovering in the air, arms crossed defiantly.

“No abilities below the second floor,” Bishop repeats.

“This is bullshit,” the girl mutters. She settles to the ground, and her aura goes dim before she exits the building.

“It’s amazing we’ve kept this place a secret this long,” says Bishop. “Five hundred teenagers. It’s like herding magical cats.” They step into the elevator. “We’re having breakfast with some of the staff,” he says, “then a little tour of the facilities. Just something to start off, to give you a sense of the place.”

The doors close in front of them, leaving the normal world behind, and Avi is sure beyond any doubt that Bishop is talking to Emmeline and not to him.

Carrie Norris busts into the boys’ dorm room.

“Headmaster Bishop is a dick,” she proclaims.

Waylon Winans drops the lit joint Miquel Gray just passed him. The cherry fractures on the hard industrial carpet and dies in pieces. The boys sit cross-legged on the floor. Miquel holds the toilet paper tube capped with a dryer sheet Waylon thinks deadens the smell of smoke. He’s wrong: the eleventh-floor hallway is rank with the skunky odor.

“Shut the door, shut the door,” he says.

“What are you up in arms about?” Miquel asks.

“About she doesn’t get to talk to the reporter guy,” Waylon says, relighting the joint.

“Get out of my head, you creep,” Carrie says, shoving her thick, half-combed brown hair back from her face and snapping her fingers to call for the joint.

Waylon holds up his hands defensively. “It’s like a neon sign on your forebrain,” he says. “Miquel could see it if he wasn’t staring at your ass.”

“Fuck you,” says Miquel, taking the joint and passing it to Carrie along with a lighter.

“Why are you even here?” Waylon asks. “You have a room, right?”

“Hayden and Jonathan are practicing in there,” Carrie says. “They get to perform a special little concert for our guest.”

“Practicing,” says Waylon, putting annoying air quotes around the word. “Those two are totally fucking.”

“Shut up, Waylon,” Miquel says. He made out with Hayden at a party last summer while Carrie was back home in Deerfield. Both of them texted Carrie to apologize the next day. Neither made it explicit why it was necessary to apologize, although Carrie obviously knew. “Hayden’s a good choice,” Miquel says. “Nonthreatening.”

“I am nonthreatening,” says Carrie.

“You could sneak up behind somebody and kill them.”

“She could sneak up in front of somebody and kill them,” Waylon says.

“Hayden can look like anyone they want,” says Carrie.

“But they don’t,” Miquel says. “They look like Hayden.”

“Well, I haven’t snuck up behind anyone and killed them.”

“Yet,” says Miquel, smirking.

“What if you were fucking Hayden and she switched back into a guy?” Waylon asks. “You would be instantly gay.”

“You are instantly gay,” Miquel says.

“Hayden would never fuck you, Waylon,” Carrie says, not bothering to correct his pronouns and instantly feeling bad about it. “And they don’t switch. Ever.” She tokes hard, leaning back against the door. She holds the joint out to assess it. Waylon spends an inordinate amount of time worrying about becoming gay. Boys like Waylon have to put up a front of masculinity for some imagined audience all the time. It must be exhausting. But he is a deft roller. The joint looks like a chrysalis.

“Bryce grew this?” she asks.

“Mmm hmm,” says Waylon.

“So it grew, like, on him?” Carrie asks.

“It’s gross, right?” says Miquel.

“It’s amazing,” Waylon says. “You’re both such prudes. Why don’t you fuck already?”

“We’re essentially smoking his body hair,” Carrie says.

“His body hair that gets you completely fucked up,” says Waylon. “Give it back if you don’t want it.”

“No,” Carrie says, taking another hit.

“So why is Bishop a dick?” Miquel asks.

“I wrote that article last year for the paper about how we should go public,” she says. “And now it turns out I’m a hundred percent right, and they’re bringing in a reporter to write about us.”

“And they don’t want Carrie anywhere near him,” says Waylon.

“So what the actual fuck?” Carrie says.

“It’s not just you,” Waylon says. “No one’s supposed to talk to him. No one’s allowed to use their abilities all day. It’s basically like when the board of ed inspectors come.” He makes gimme-gimme gestures for the joint, which Carrie ignores. “We’re supposed to look like Juilliard. They want our best face forward.”

“I’m a great face!”

“You’re a volatile agitator.”

“I have opinions that could—”

“So go,” say Miquel.

“What?” Carrie says.

“You’re like a fucking superninja spy thief and you’re complaining you’re not on the guest list? Go. Get in there next to this guy and tell him what you think.”

“She doesn’t know what she thinks,” Waylon says.

“Get the fuck out of my head.”

“She’ll know once she says it,” Miquel says. Waylon snatches the joint from Carrie, taking one more mighty puff.

“Late for Ethics,” he says, chest puffed out. He exhales and grabs a stack of textbooks off the desk. “Light a candle when you two are done banging. I don’t want to come back and have it reek of fucking in here.”

“Dick,” Carrie mutters.

When the door closes behind him, Carrie climbs up and sprawls out on his upper bunk. The sheets have never been washed and hold the deep fug of concentrated teenage boy. Salt and earth. Goat stink and vegetables going to rot. Miquel says the reason he gave Waylon the top bunk is that smell rises. Miquel is meticulously clean; he smells like soap and a candle that’s been put out.

He plays music through the tiny speakers on his desk. Sleepy vocals fill the room, and Carrie starts laughing when she recognizes the song.

“Please tell me you don’t always listen to Pink Floyd when you smoke,” she says.

“It’s good,” says Miquel.

“It’s a stereotype,” she says. “You’re like the cartoon