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

everything,” she says. This stabs at Avi. He’s hoped Bishop Academy might teach her to repair the broken marriage, the broken trust. The last manifestation of her ability could be to let itself go, a djinn freed by a generous third wish, leaving only their daughter, never normal but not special like she is. Special to them, not to the whole world.

Avi hugs his daughter tightly because it’s a way to hide his face from her as it trembles and falls apart.

—

Kay suggests they spend the morning in Central Park. Avi can’t help thinking that proposing a long walk is a move on her part: a way to physically hurt him. Kay’s mind doesn’t work that way, but the idea is there, thrown on the pile of awful things between them. Before Kay and her mother moved to Chicago, they lived in New York, and Kay loves Central Park. She wants to be somewhere she feels safe now as all possibility of safety falls away.

By the time they get to the entrance on Fifth and 79th, the low friction of the prosthetic’s cup chafes against his leg. Despite his best intentions, he thinks of it as Kay’s fault. She links arms with Avi, leans into him a little. Emmeline runs ahead to investigate a yellow drift of ginkgo leaves. She approaches a klatch of geese. All of this feels scripted. They’re putting on a play for Emmeline. Tomorrow they strike the sets. They abandon the roles of people they used to be. The performance is important. They don’t have the classic divorcing parent line to fall back on. They can’t tell Emmeline it’s not about her when it so obviously is. The ossification of their marriage was gradual: it took time to reach the point where it could shatter under one hard strike. But there’s no question what the blow was. Kay won’t allow this. She won’t let Emmeline know it’s her fault.

Kay’s phone buzzes in the pocket between them. She frees her arm and checks the screen too quickly for him to read the caller’s name.

“I have to take this,” she says. She walks down the path. Her shoulders relax as she starts talking. The burden of faking affection for him drops away. Avi wonders if she’s having an affair. Or if the possibility of an affair is becoming actual as a result of all of this. After the hospital, in the worst depths of his depression, he told her she should. “It would make me feel better,” he said. “I’d know you’re getting what you need even if you’re not getting it from me.” He could see how badly the offer hurt her even if, in his emotional state, he couldn’t bring himself to care. It was an attempt to push her away, no different from swatting her hands as she helped ease his stump into the cup of his prosthesis. He felt like a terrible person, and her refusal to see him as terrible made him angry, determined to convince her how awful he was. If he could have left, he would have for Kay’s own good. Maybe it would have made things better. What of their last year was worth having him around? Who benefited except for him?

Emmeline buys feed from a coin op dispenser by the lake. It pours pellets into her cupped hands, and the geese take a sudden interest. They’re as big as she is, Avi thinks as they encircle Emmeline. He is ready to step in, battle them off to protect her. When she was born, he started seeing the whole world as a threat. Emmeline throws the handful of pellets into the air so they rain down on her and the geese. Avi expects a melee, Emmeline pecked and nipped bloody by creatures with brains the size of a spun dime. They froth and fight around her in a perfect circle, a hurricane with Emmeline at its eye. Avi wonders if Emmeline holds them back, keeping herself safe with her ability. Or if luck cast the pellets up in exact arcs so not a single one lands on her coat to tempt their lizard brains. Emmeline spins at the center of them, laughing. Kay rejoins Avi, slips her arm back into his. For a moment they are exactly who they’re pretending to be: two parents walking in the park, desperate in their love for their daughter.

Emmeline stops, looking across the lake at the city. The geese pause, leaving a slew of pellets on the ground. Avi thinks they’re following Emmeline’s gaze, but then they scatter. She shakes her head, her hand raising up to point to something on the skyline. Avi and Kay rush to her. Avi reaches her a second late and ends up holding on to Kay, who is holding Emmeline.

“Why is it here now?” Emmeline says. “How did they build it already?”

Avi and Kay look where Emmeline is pointing. Blocks away, rising over all the other buildings, is a shining tower, an obsidian spire stabbing into the sky.

“Can you hear it?” Emmeline asks. “It’s talking to all of them at once. It’s sending out hurt.”

Avi looks at Kay, and the horror on her face tells him she can see it, too. He thinks about newspaper photos of the New York skyline after the attacks. The absence of the World Trade Center buildings made it feel like they’d never been there, like he’d been remembering the city wrong the entire time. This tower has the same effect: it threatens to become a permanent part of the way he sees New York. He tries to orient himself within a map of the city to understand where the tower is. It’s where we’re going, he thinks. It’s the Bishop Academy.

Then it’s gone.

Emmeline’s breathing returns to normal. He can feel it slowing through Kay’s body, which rises and falls with every breath. The image of the tower becomes vague in his mind until he can summon only the words he attached