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

and has to sort them back. What he hears initially is be my dog. What he hears is who holds the leash.

“I’m sorry about the church,” Owen says, sounding like a whiny child even to his own ears. “I know you told me First Corinthians. But there was a girl there who’s like us. And I thought, He wouldn’t want me to kill our own. But I was so hungry.”

“I know what you thought, Owen,” says his friend. “But I need you to trust. Do you trust me?”

“Of course,” Owen says. I love you, he thinks. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop sniveling,” says his friend. “We don’t have time. There’s an opportunity to get you out, and we have to take it. They’re distracted. It’s a big day for them. For you, too. Today everyone walks in the light. But Owen.” He grabs Owen by the chin, his grip strong but fluid. “Disobey me again and I’m going to hurt you.”

“How am I going to get out?” Owen asks. He assumes there is security, armed guards ready to shoot him dead.

“Up the elevator and out the front door,” says his friend. He holds the outer door open. “Fall in with the other children. Speak to no one. When you get the chance, peel off from the crowd. I’ll be with you. To guide you.” He steps to the side to let Owen pass. As Owen squeezes by him, out into a cluttered lab, he tries to make out his friend’s face in the shaft of light coming through the door. It’s a mask of flat skin over the front of his head, churning like the surface of a liquid, beneath which something swims in slow, irregular circles.

In the immediate aftermath of the articles in the Chicago Tribune and The Atlantic and the resulting television coverage, the whole of Bishop’s student body gathered in the Hive to decide whether the school should stay hidden. Headmaster Bishop had strong-armed into all of their heads to advise caution, and the faculty had already made their feelings known. But they all insisted the decision fell to the students, who they knew would do the right thing. There was suspicion that if the will of the students didn’t align with the wishes of the teachers, the latter would win out. Democracy suspended, martial law imposed. It was a classic adult move to give the illusion of choice. Still, the students went forward as if it were all in good faith. They milled about, an informal meeting, waiting to be called to order. This was all new to them. They understood democracy as a concept, but no one had given any thought to the dull mechanisms it required.

Carrie was the first to speak up.

“This is happening,” she said, “and we should be part of it. The school can be the face of Resonants to the whole world. We can show them this is who we are. We’re people learning to be better, to be the best we can.”

Ruby Wallace, a fifth-year lithic and, Waylon later told Carrie, undiagnosed agoraphobic, argued against it, saying it would make Bishop unsafe, especially for the younger kids who hadn’t mastered their abilities. Ruby came by her fears honestly; she had arrived at Bishop bloodied and bruised. Her left eye pulled slightly downward, a permanent mark of how the outside world had greeted the revelation of her abilities. She imagined mobs at the front doors. Daily bomb threats.

“How do you think it’s going to go?” she asked Carrie, tears welling in her eyes. Carrie didn’t have an answer. All she knew was that everything had to change. She looked at Ruby, whose Hivebody was a collection of flat surfaces like tectonic plates. She felt sad that Ruby had been born too early, that she’d had to suffer through this process. She wanted to tell her the world on the other side of this would be unimaginably different, but she was struck silent by the hurt on Ruby’s face, damage Ruby would carry with her into whatever new world emerged.

Others rushed to fill the space. The upperclassmen, who were allowed to leave campus, had been using their abilities regularly in public, although they made a point of never doing so near the academy. Tired of the insular dating scene at Bishop, they hung around city high schools or even Cooper Union and swore the baseliner kids flocked to them. There were some skirmishes, most notably a ten-on-ten brawl outside a school in Brooklyn that had been broken up by the cops. But as Darren Helms pointed out, “It’s not like we can’t fuck them up.” His Hivebody was hulking. Black smoke poured off him like steam off dry ice; he was sublimating, becoming gas. Carrie could see him shrinking and puffing back up to full size in a cycle, like breathing. She worried about this logic, not least because it came from Darren Helms. It assumed a fair fight. If something happened, it wouldn’t be fair.

“We’re better coming out than being outed,” Hayden said. Hayden’s Hivebody was unstable, although not as volatile as Darren’s. They rotated through aspects of themselves, like turning a gem to admire its facets. Hayden said that was what it felt like to be inside their ability all the time. They’d never bothered putting enough effort into their Hivebody to stabilize it. Carrie and Hayden had this in common. If Carrie wasn’t concentrating, her Hivebody was a dotted line around an empty space in the shape of a girl.

Isidra Gonzalez made the point that students and all Resonants of color were most likely to bear the brunt of violence. A dozen boys white-knighted in to say they’d stand by her, and Isidra laughed them off.

“How’s the room?” Carrie asked Miquel.

“Light blue,” said Miquel, as if that held clear meaning.

What swayed things finally was the underclassmen. Prohibited from leaving campus without chaperones, they’d never used their abilities in public. They didn’t take