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

of pride fizzles in a cool pond of panic. Emmeline struggles against her grip, and Carrie hears the kid’s father calling out for her, but she holds Emmeline tight. Nolan Emerson, Shane’s roommate since first year, rushes to the body, shaking Shane as if he can wake him, but Shane is clearly dead. A memory comes to Carrie of their field trip to the Museum of Natural History, Shane making a translucent penguin dance across the tundrascape of the Inuit diorama. She starts to laugh, the nervous tittering of a much younger girl. It’s only the hitching breath of Emmeline’s body against her, small and fragile like a bird’s, that steadies Carrie and returns her to the horror of the moment.

The crowds bolt, running for cross-streets. The students and faculty are paralyzed, caught in a kill zone. A fourth shot shatters the window of a bank. Sarah, calm in the middle of the chaos, closes her eyes. When she opens them again, she points to the top of a building at the northwest corner of 57th and Lexington.

“There,” she shouts.

Michaela Michelinie, who teaches first-years and who Carrie thinks of as a kindly grandma, jumps into the air. Five fliers follow, falling into formation like fighter jets. They rush toward the rooftop. Shots worry their approach, a slow, cruel drumbeat. One bullet passes close enough to Carrie and Emmeline that Carrie feels the hem of her shirt flutter. Another hits Pamela Briggs, ten feet away from them, in the gut. She staggers into the arms of Leticia Hartman. The air ripples with a ring of heavy gravity that Leticia puts up around them for protection. Carrie wishes she was within that circle instead of here, invisible but exposed.

Marian Scholl, a third-year flier, reaches the shooter first because she doesn’t waver and dodge. She, too, is a bullet. She snatches him up like a hawk catching a mouse. The rifle falls onto the rooftop. Marian swoops back toward the crowd and drops him. As he plummets, Eli Herrington snatches him from the air. The fliers continue like this, catching and dropping like a malicious trapeze act, and each time Carrie hopes the shooter will fall. She wants to hear the crunch of him against the ground so badly that it’s a hunger. Rufina Dahl, who started at the academy the same month as Shane, tosses the shooter onto an open patch of pavement in front of Nolan, who cradles Shane’s body. In the still moment, they see the shooter in a heap, a fetal ball that births itself. He’s a kid, no older than they.

Nolan comes up off his knees. His right fist is clenched and begins to spark. He approaches the shooter, fist wrapped in a cloud of angry blue flecks of electricity, like wasps around a stirred nest.

“Fucking do it,” screams the shooter. He’s out of breath from the fall and from sobbing. He holds his face forward to Nolan, as if waiting for a kiss. “You’re just a fucking animal, so fucking do it!”

Nolan’s face writhes with pain and rage. Do it, Carrie thinks. Do it and no one will try to hurt us again. Nolan raises his hand. Carrie hears the buzz his ability makes, the hum and crackle. She smells ozone drifting off him. His whole body courses with current searching for ground, sparks visible around his hand.

Nolan towers over the shooter, a god with unknowable power, a human victim at his whim. Nolan is crying. The tears glint like sapphires. Avi’s photographer trains his lens over Carrie’s invisible shoulder, over Emmeline’s concealed head, catching the moment exactly as the two of them see it. Every breath is held.

Nolan lowers his hand. The charge in him dissipates, spreading out into the asphalt with a crackle like cellophane crushed inside a fist. He stands at the center of a web of scorch marks as police rush in from the sidelines and tackle the shooter. When he’s upended, Carrie sees that the knees of his pants have been burned away, the skin beneath angry red. As the other cops drag the shooter away, one goes to pat Nolan on the arm but stops, worried that Nolan is carrying current.

Carrie leans down next to Emmeline. “You okay?” she asks.

“I’m okay. Go take care of him.” Carrie steps away from the girl and puts her arm around Nolan. She cloaks them both, this newfound ability second nature now. She leads him back toward the academy.

“He just fucking killed him,” Nolan says. “Why is this happening?”

“I don’t know,” Carrie says as Shen shepherds them back inside.

The next day, the image is all over the papers and the Internet. When people see it, they imagine themselves as the shooter. On their knees. They hear the crackle of sparks next to their ears and know this punishment is just. It’s due for what they’ve done or would have done given the chance. Out of fear or jealousy. To protect their children. To deny there are people like Carrie and Nolan in the world. Dozens of newspapers and websites run an article by Avi Hirsch. They all run the picture with the same headline, one word in type huge enough to bear its meaning:

MERCY.

Avi’s apartment in New York is on the cheap side because it’s small and inconvenient to everywhere. Gowanus is one of those neighborhoods people end up in because it’s more affordable than where they want to be. They tell their friends in more desirable neighborhoods how great Gowanus is. Everyone here is ten years younger than Avi. Most have jobs that don’t require them to be anywhere specific. The neighborhood is studded with coffee shops where young people work diligently at whatever young people work diligently at. Avi gets his coffee to go and comes back to his studio apartment, where he can control the noise except the clanking of pipes in the morning and the boys next door