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

“Will it hurt?” Emmeline asks.

“It might,” says Fahima. “I tried it on myself, and it didn’t. But my ability isn’t like yours.”

“Will it help Viola?”

“I think so,” says Fahima.

“Okay,” Emmeline says. Fahima takes her hand, examining her skinny wrists.

“I have to put it around your bicep,” she says. “Can you roll your sleeve all the way up?”

Emmeline hesitates, then obeys, pushing her long sleeve up until her whole arm is exposed. Her forearm is a swirl of shiny keloid tissue, a map of the ocean in flesh. Fahima stares long enough that Emmeline notices. She places the Shackle around Emmeline’s arm. It’s still too big. It slides down and rests at the crook of her elbow. She clicks it into place and secures the clasp.

“I’m going to turn it on, okay?” says Fahima. Emmeline nods. Fahima slides a panel open and flips a switch inside. Emmeline’s body tenses, and Viola drops the glass of milk. It shatters, spraying its contents across the tile floor. Viola looks down, flustered.

“I dropped it again,” she says to Emmeline, sounding full of regret. “After you saved it for me.”

“It’s not your fault,” Fahima says, rolling Emmeline’s sleeve down over the Shackle, over her scars. She reaches out, taking Viola by the arm and pulling her away from the desk. She feels a strange resistance as she does it, as if the air is thicker. As if time is moving more slowly within the affected space. “It’s not anybody’s fault.”

“Hi, Professor Deeb,” says Viola. She sounds like she’s waking from a dream. “I thought you and Emmeline had special class on Wednesdays.”

“I got my days wrong,” says Fahima.

Viola nods. “My dad’s a scientist, and he forgets things all the time,” she says. “I’m going to go find a mop.”

“I’ll get one,” Emmeline says, looking at the door. All their classmates are in the hall, waiting to see what happened. The moment Viola steps out, she’ll know what Emmeline did.

“I’ll show you where they are,” Fahima says. She opens the door and ushers Emmeline out. She puts her finger to her lips, shushing Sarah, then shoos the kids to their rooms. None listen. Sarah makes the same motion, and they flutter off like sparrows.

Fahima kneels down by Emmeline outside the door. “How does it feel?”

“It hurts my teeth,” Emmeline says.

“It’s temporary,” says Fahima. “We’ll figure out something better soon, I promise.”

“Is Viola going to be okay?” Emmeline says.

Fahima doesn’t answer. She thinks of a trick Sarah pulled once at a beach party at Sarah’s parents’ house when they were kids. Steven Huff was being a drunken asshole to Fahima. Tugging at her hijab. Asking if the Koran said it was okay to eat pussy. Sarah tapped him on the forehead and implanted a loop command in his brain. Every time he opened a beer, he’d drop it on the ground and sprint into the freezing cold water. Then he’d trudge out of the surf, unaware that he was soaked, and go find another beer. As soon as he opened it, he’d drop it in the sand and sprint back into the ocean. It was fun to watch until Steven started to turn blue. April Carroll, a fourth-year thermic who wasn’t all that skilled with her abilities, had to warm him up. She left scorch marks on his biceps and thighs, bright red handprints. There was enough culpability involved that no one reported it to Bishop. Sarah felt awful, and Fahima loved her for it.

What Fahima had seen upstairs wasn’t Viola performing a loop task. Time around her was looping. Thinking about it in terms of Steven Huff and the ocean, it would be as if Steven ran in only once but his running in happened over and over again. From the outside, it looked repeated, but Steven would experience it once. There would be no hypothermia, no blue flush to his lips. When he exited the loop, he’d be aware only of one idiot rush into the surf, like Viola thinking she’d dropped the glass and nothing more.

So the question isn’t whether Viola would be okay. Nothing happened to Viola. The question is whether the world around Viola has been harmed. If it has, is it a wound that will heal?

Avi waits in the Five of Cups on Fifth for an hour. Long enough to know what’s coming. The decision to meet back at the same bar where they got drunk after the taping was ridiculous, trying to make a meet-cute out of a one-night stand. This is what he’s supposed to be good at, making narrative out of wreckage. The problem isn’t the time it’s taken to get a response from Lakshmi. Since the NightTalk footage leaked, a half dozen interviews and appearances have been canceled. The book’s been out a week, and there’s complete media silence surrounding it. At least it feels that way. Avi’s on his third drink when the text comes.

“I’m sorry,” it says. “I should have shown up in person. But the optics are bad. The network isn’t happy.”

He puts the phone back in his pocket without bothering to text her back. He looks at the television behind the bar, and there she is, interviewing Kevin Bishop. He understands it was taped earlier, but there’s a visceral response as if she texted him from that seat a second before starting the interview. They’ve caked Bishop in makeup, filling the age lines of his face, making him flat and bland. Harmless, Avi thinks. Maybe that’s the idea.

“Can you turn the sound on?” he asks the bartender.

She reaches for the remote, but another patron stops her. He’s wearing a navy Brooks Brothers suit, tie loosened. He’s surrounded by guys dressed exactly the same. It reminds Avi of one of the Bishop students he met who could create perfect duplicates of himself. “Leave it off,” he says. “No one needs to hear anything that