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

to it, not the image itself. Shining tower. Obsidian spire. The fear, too, fades quickly with nothing to hold it in place.

“What the fuck happened?” Kay asks Avi. She’s stiff with panic. Until this moment, she hasn’t believed any of this. She may have let herself understand that what Avi told her, what he wrote, was true. That there were people in the world who had these abilities. But she hadn’t believed their daughter was one of them.

Kay lets go of Emmeline as if the girl is red hot.

Avi’s relieved there isn’t a throng of reporters in front of the academy. They’ll be here soon, but they respected the details in the press release. They’ll wait to be let in. If they rush the doors, they’ll be locked out forever.

Sarah is there to meet them in the lobby. Emmeline runs to Cortex the second she sees him, nuzzling into the deep fur of the dog’s neck. Avi introduces Sarah to Kay. He wishes it were Bishop or Patrick meeting them rather than an attractive young white woman. The optics of who he’s been spending his time with are bad. Kay’s beyond caring.

“I’m sorry everything’s so disorganized,” Sarah says. “It’s a weird day here.”

“You get normal days?” Kay says flatly.

Sarah smiles patiently at her. “I was thinking you’d want to see the place.”

“I want to get Emmeline set up,” Kay says. Her hand rests on Emmeline’s head, fingers lost, twined into her curls. “Get her all squared away.”

“Of course,” Sarah says. “First-year residences are up on the eighth floor. Follow me.” Shen nods at Avi and smiles broadly at Emmeline as they head to the elevator.

Emmeline’s room is in a hallway of identical rooms. Her soon-to-be roommate’s bed is overpopulated with stuffed animals that spill onto the floor. She’s papered her side with pictures of movie stars and boy bands. This decoration ends abruptly at the room’s midline, where it gives way to bare cream-colored walls. There’s a desk for Emmeline and a twin bed made up with crisp hospital corners and a thick comforter folded at the foot.

“We’ll have to get pictures for you to hang up,” Avi says. “Some of your drawings, maybe.”

“You can send some from the old house,” Kay says, then winces. “The house,” she corrects.

“It’s okay,” Emmeline says. She presses down on the edge of the bed with her hand. She opens and closes the empty drawers of the desk. “I like it like this.”

“Is this her?” asks someone in the doorway. She’s older than Emmeline, with straight mouse-brown hair and a spatter of freckles across her chubby face. “I know I’m supposed to let her get settled, but I had a break between classes and I couldn’t wait!” The girl bounds across the room and hugs Emmeline, who stands and suffers it awkwardly before softening, placing her arms delicately around the girl’s waist.

“Emmeline,” says Sarah, “this is Viola Wilkerson. She’ll be your roommate.”

Viola releases Emmeline and turns to Avi and Kay. “Hi, I’m Viola,” she says. “I’m a thermic.” She says this the way someone might give her astrological sign. She holds out her hand to Kay, who recoils. The girl is crestfallen for a second, then shifts her attention to Avi. He takes her hand. It’s as warm as freshly baked bread. “Can I steal her?” she asks. She pivots back to Emmeline. “There are a ton of people waiting to meet you in the common room.”

“Why do they want to meet me?” Emmeline asks.

“Because you’re new, silly,” Viola says.

“You going to be okay?” Avi asks Emmeline. It’s been half an hour since whatever they saw in Central Park, but she’s fine now, or she’s remembered to look like she’s fine. Avi wonders if the brave face is for him or for Kay. He and Emmeline have been protecting each other from how scared they are, how much they’re each worried about what the other one is becoming. There was comfort thinking they had time to work it out, to find new selves and fit them together into something that could hold. It was a silly thought. Emmeline realized it sooner than Avi.

“I’ll be fine, Dad,” she says as Viola drags her away by the hand. It’s the first time she’s called him Dad rather than Daddy, and the lack of the last syllable feels like a dropped note, a skipped heartbeat.

Sarah is called away to deal with two students involved in some kind of psychic tussle, leaving Avi and Kay hovering awkwardly outside Emmeline’s room. Kay folds her arms around herself, pulled into a knot. The last time they visited Emmeline’s school for a teacher conference, standing in a hallway like this one, Kay’s hand twitched up every time a kid passed by, as if she wanted to touch them, pat them on the head, and reassure them they would be okay. She said she wanted more kids, then said the time was never right. The problem was that Avi was never right for it. He never committed enough to being the father of one child for her to make him the father of two.

“I’m supposed to meet my photographer,” he says, looking down the hall toward the elevators. “Carol sent someone from—”

“Go,” Kay says. “I’m going to find Emmeline and say good-bye.”

“You’re leaving?” Avi asks.

“I’m meeting someone about an apartment in an hour.”

“An apartment here?” Avi asks.

“I’m taking the job,” says Kay.

“What job?”

“The one Bishop offered,” she says. “There are already cases being brought against people who’ve come out as Resonant. Since your article.” Her look says this is all his fault. “He’s paying me to take them on.”

“This is what the comic books were about?”

“I gave my notice at work,” she says. “There’s a couple of stays of deportation I’m in the middle of, then I’m done.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Kay shrugs to tell him it isn’t important. He isn’t. This is what the phone call in the park was about.