Because You'll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas Page A

so vivid after the silence, Ollie.
    What she was wearing was against dress code. She had a skirt hiked up very high, her socks yanked past her knees. Her sleeveless shirt untucked and spiked chains hanging across her chest. But I wouldn’t begrudge any teacher for choosing not to confront that awful glare.
    She shared it with me the entire time I clacked up the stairs. I wanted to retreat, even into the static behind me. Doubtless she was plotting to twist her cigarette into my ear. When I was level with her, I fought the urge to sprint beyond her reach.
    I stepped inside the school. Unharmed.
    And then my heart all but stopped:
    â€œHey,” she said, turning as I passed. “You.”
    She tossed a paper airplane at me. I clicked my tongue and caught it at face level.
    â€œRead it.”
    I tucked the plane into my satchel. I did not tell her I could not read.
    â€œFffrt.” She narrowed her eyes. Leapt off the banister and stomped away in her boots. The echoes around her feet made waves of clarity wherever she laid her heels down, Ollie. I could see the dust in the air wherever she stepped. Could see the fibers of her tights and the way they hardly seemed to contain the strength of the legs beneath them.

    Herr Haydn had suggested I drop out of the athletics course to avoid further entanglements with Lenz and the others. I was tempted. I am not brave.
    But Athletics is the only course I share with Owen Abend, who is one year my junior. I could have sought him out at other times. Perhaps in the cafeteria or in the courtyard in the morning. But that would require a lot more gall. In the past, whenever I wandered away from the eyes of teachers I was inevitably taunted. I could not recall the last time I spoke to any of my peers outside a classroom.
    When I entered the sour-smelling locker room, another hush fell. There was enough noise from the water running down from showerheads, from lockers slamming, for me to see everyone avert their gazes. I pulled my gym clothes from my bag. Changed as quickly as possible. Waited for Lenz Monk to appear behind me and shove my head against the tiles.
    But neither Owen nor Lenz appeared.
    I traipsed into the gymnasium with my head down. I could hear the smack of basketballs lessen for a beat as I entered. Herr Gebor, standing on the sidelines, spared a moment to bench me before telling the others to get back to their dribbling drills.
    I had barely settled into the bench when Gebor approached me.
    â€œI hope you appreciate all we’re doing for you,” he told me. “All the allowances we’re making. If you’d told us sooner, this might have been sorted sooner. You need to
talk
to us, Farber. So that we can help you.”
    â€œBeg pardon,” I said. “What allowances?”
    â€œWe had an assembly while you were … recovering. Every student here has been told about your circumstances, lectured about bullying. So don’t you worry, Farber.”
    I clenched my fists. This explained the silence. The non-looking. “Tell me—have all my classmates been told that I am disabled?”
    â€œThat’s … just know that you’re safe. You’re safe and you can talk to us. Understood?”
    â€œOf course. Thank you.”
    In my absence, there’d been an assembly about bullying “disabled” students. In my absence, I’d become a label. Less than wondrous, Ollie.
    I watched my peers bounce basketballs back and forth to one another. Watched how their faces creased when they laughed or grimaced in the echoes of the smacking. I experienced a dark moment there on the bench. A dark moment where I realized that I never leave the sidelines. Perhaps I never would.
    The door at the back of the gymnasium creaked open. The volume of the room’s activity revealed the face that peered through the doorway.
    Owen Abend, all but tiptoeing into the gymnasium. Willing himself invisible. He was so quiet. He nearly