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

the end. She erases the stick figure Emmeline. The arc hangs above the empty space. “It’s a paradox.”

“Pair of—”

“We’re going to try something closer, temporally,” Fahima says. “And insignificant. The lo mein makes no difference to you. You’ll be here regardless of what happens to the lo mein.”

“You like saying ‘lo mein,’ ” says Emmeline.

“I do like saying ‘lo mein,’ ” Fahima says. “Are you ready?”

“I can’t time travel,” Emmeline says.

“Humor me. Go steal my lo mein.”

Emmeline scrunches up like she’s wishing for something with all her might. Fahima watches her face, her concentration. Something on the screen catches Fahima’s eye. A flare-up: the parahippocampal gyrus, burning bright for a blip. She looks back at Emmeline, who’s holding a Tupperware container and grinning.

“Here,” she says, handing it to Fahima. Fahima looks at the Tupperware, then at the empty takeout container in the trash can, chopsticks jutting out of its mouth.

“This isn’t my lo mein.”

“It’s your lunch from tomorrow,” Emmeline says. She bends down to look through the clear plastic bottom of the container. “I think it’s a sandwich.”

“How did you get it?”

“Sometimes I’m already there,” Emmeline says. “I’m here now, and I’m there then. Like the way in the Hive you can be in two places or all the places?”

“Most of us can’t do that,” Fahima says.

“I can,” says Emmeline. “I think I could do anything I want in there.” Emmeline shrugs. The impossible is no big deal.

The casualness of the gesture scares the shit out of Fahima.

—

Fahima performs isha’a while Alyssa sits at the kitchen counter sipping a beer. The night prayer is the only one Alyssa watches her do. Fahima’s considered asking her to stop. Being watched changes the nature of the prayer. It cancels it out, forces Fahima’s mind outward instead of in, and she never makes dua while Alyssa is watching, as if there’s a small piece of her faith she needs to keep secret. But it’s Alyssa’s one bit of white girl fascination with the mystical other. When Fahima was growing up, the Polish ladies asked her mother to show them how to wrap a hijab, buffeted her with questions about stonings in the square or some bullshit, and her mother suffered through it with grace. You make allowances to keep people in your life.

She finishes her rakats the same time Alyssa finishes her beer. Alyssa goes to the fridge for another. Fahima catches a glimpse of a Tupperware bowl full of chicken salad.

“Something’s on your mind,” Alyssa says. “You aren’t as fluid as you usually are.”

“Are you critiquing my rakats, infidel?” says Fahima.

“How’s it going with Emmeline?” Alyssa asks.

“Scary,” Fahima says. Alyssa comes over and leans against her. “What do you think would happen if I ate a sandwich from the future?”

“What kind of sandwich?” she asks.

“Chicken salad.”

“I made some chicken salad this afternoon,” says Alyssa.

“I know,” Fahima says. “Tomorrow, you’ll make me a sandwich. Except that sandwich is already in my fridge at work. Emmeline has served me a paradoxical sandwich, and I’m not sure what to do with it.”

“You think she can time travel,” Alyssa says.

Fahima can’t resist. She grabs a Sharpie and the Bed Bath & Beyond ad that came in the mail yesterday. She uncaps the marker. The acrid scent is like brain fuel. “You and I move along two axes,” she says, drawing a cross. “Forward to back, left to right. We can jump or go up and down stairs and elevators.” She draws a third line through the center of the cross. “So three.” She looks up at Alyssa. “I think Emmeline can move along a fourth.”

“Time,” Alyssa says.

Fahima opens the fridge. The bowl of chicken salad, the stuff of potential future sandwiches, sits on the middle shelf. She shuts the door. “This sandwich is fucking me up.”

“Are you worried about the sandwich?”

“I’m thinking about what it means to be able to move in three directions across a two-dimensional plane,” Fahima says.

“I can see where that would be concerning,” Alyssa says, mocking her.

“No, you don’t,” says Fahima. She picks up the Bed Bath & Beyond ad. “The way I drew this is a drawing,” she says. “Like when you draw a hexagon with some lines in the middle and say it’s a cube but it’s a representation of a cube in two dimensions.”

“Does this end with origami?” Alyssa asks.

“It ends with this,” says Fahima. She takes the Sharpie and stabs a hole through the ad. “That’s what it looks like to move in three dimensions across a two-dimensional plane.”

“And if Emmeline can move in four directions through a three-dimensional plane—”

“Three-dimensional space,” says Fahima.

“You think this nine-year-old is poking holes in space?” Alyssa asks.

“I think she’s poking holes in time. I mean, think about the sandwich.”

Alyssa smiles at her. “I am taking this beer to bed,” she says. “You should join me when you’re done worrying about a tween Swiss-cheesing the space-time continuum.”

She kisses Fahima on the neck and goes to their bedroom, throwing a come-hither look over her shoulder as she goes. Fahima misses it, contemplating the Bed Bath & Beyond ad skewered on a Sharpie. By the time she comes back from her wandering thoughts and goes to bed, Alyssa is already asleep, her body propped alluringly on a pillow, tee shirt pulled and stretched to expose one shoulder, head lolled onto the other. Fahima kisses the bare shoulder as she turns out the light and goes to sleep.

Carrie can’t miss the note in her mother’s voice when she calls to say she’s coming home. She plays that Oh over and over in her head for weeks; each time she hears something different. Surprise. Challenge. Fear. Missing from that list: joy at the prodigal’s impending return.

“Was it a question or an exclamation?” Miquel asks. “Like ‘oh, wow!’ or ‘oh, you think so’?”

“Both at once,” Carrie says.

“It’s messing you up,” he says. “You’re upset that you’re upset. It’s a knot.”

Miquel’s working on his empathic ability, seeing emotions in shapes