Read Because You'll Never Meet Me for Free Online

But there are, surprisingly, no dolphins in it. (Why couldn’t I be a hermit at a beach house? I’ll never see the ocean….)
    Here’s what I’ve learned about echolocation: dolphins can click at frequencies so high that most people can’t hear them. Most humans can hear sounds as low as 20 hertz, which doesn’t sound like anything but feels a bit like being underwater with pressure on your ears, and as high as 20,000 hertz, which is probably like ALL CAPS, if ALL CAPS were a seriously pissed-off teakettle. But there have been a few documented cases where scuba divers swimming with dolphins could feel vibrations in the water. And here’s the weird part:
    Some people felt some emotion in the vibrations. They could sense if the dolphins were happy, or sad, or scared that a boat was gonna come and make tuna of them. These dolphins were sending their feelings into the world. What if I could see sound waves instead of electricity? What color would dolphin feelings be?
    (Liz said this was the “girliest” question I’ve ever asked. I know that cowboys are manly, but why? And somehow dolphin noises are … girly? Who writes these rules?)
    Anyhow, maybe the reason people avoid you is because the emotions your brain sends out when you click are kind of … negative emotions? Clicking is a nervous habit. And you do it more when you’re worried about this kid who follows you home. Is he what folks call a “bully”? Is there a German word for that? I checked the German dictionary, and it said
Tyrann
, which sounds like
tyrannosaurus
. But he sounds less like an awesome tyrannosaurus and more like a loser. Maybe you’re clicking unhappiness at people, and they’re sending it right back in echoes.
    I hope this doesn’t sound dumb. What I’m getting at is some people can be really terrible. But you have to work harder not to let it faze you, because if you let them make you feel that way, you’re just adding to the mess of unhappiness in the air.
    I don’t understand why you’re so self-conscious. You seem pretty cool to me, even if you are kind of stuffy. I’m wondering what could have happened to make you despise Moritz Farber. Moritz Farber is not even a little boring.
    Like I said, you’ve got all the makings of a comic book superhero! If people give you shit for being pretty cool, stand up and peel your goggles off and scare them away. Laugh maniacally and send happy dolphin-waves—
    Actually, I mean it. I think you
should
try pulling the goggles off sometime. Have you ever done that? If you’re so ugly (shut up and hit yourself over the head with the rolled-up pages again), you can send them running for the hills! Maybe then you won’t have to whimper anymore. Lenz won’t stop if you don’t stop him.
    What are you so afraid of? I can’t even ride a bike down my driveway, but you can do anything. Anything you want, wherever you want!
    In fact, your Magic Brain Vision (henceforth called MBV) makes my allergies look pathetic on all fronts. So I’ll try to get to the good parts of my story. I’ll try to hurry and get to Liz, to stop you from “talking smack,” as kids say.
    I’m going to rush my earliest years. I want to get to when I was old enough to read, old enough to wonder why the heck I couldn’t handle batteries, old enough to stop peeing on household pets. Since you trust my storytelling so much (which is one of the coolest compliments—stories are everything to me), I think I’ll tell you three stories from when I was a little kid. Three memories of three accidents that really stick out in my mind. Three’s okay, but I kind of wish it were five. Because you know who really
was
a good storyteller? Shakespeare. He wrote plays in five acts.
    Focus, Ollie.
    The Linear Autobiography of
Oliver Paulot, the Powerless Boy
PART TWO: EARLY DAYS, IN THREE ACCIDENTS
    1. The Fire
    Mom used