Why We Took the Car (25 page)

“Oh!” said Wagenbach, picking up the note. André made no effort to keep it from him.

“Top secret dispatches!” Wagenbach said, holding it up. The class laughed. They were laughing because they knew what was coming next, and I knew too. I wished I had Horst Fricke's rifle in that instant.

Wagenbach got out his reading glasses and read aloud: “Mike — Tatiana. Tatiana — Mike.” He looked up first at Tatiana and then at me.

“I value your active participation in class. But if you had questions about the details of Bismarck's foreign policy, you should have just asked,” he said. “There's no need to write your questions on tiny slips of paper in the hope that I accidentally find them.”

This wasn't the first time he'd made this joke. He made it every time. But the class didn't care. They loved the whole charade.

There was no hope that he would stop there. There were teachers who just tore up notes, teachers who threw them in the trash or tucked them into their pockets, and then there was Wagenbach. Wagenbach was an asshole. He was the only teacher in the whole school who would read an entire text-message history when he confiscated a cell phone. It didn't matter if you begged or cried, Wagenbach read
the whole thing
aloud.

He unfolded the note solemnly, and I hoped for a miracle — like a meteorite falling from the sky and squishing Wagenbach. Or at least the bell ringing for the end of class. That would have done the trick. But of course the bell didn't ring, and of course no meteorite fell from the sky. Wagenbach's gaze swept over the class and he straightened his posture. I think he would have loved to have been an actor or cabaret performer. But he only managed to become an asshole. I mean, if only it had just been a normal old note about the usual crap. But this note contained the first meaningful words I'd ever exchanged with Tatiana — and perhaps the last — and Wagenbach had no right to read them aloud for all the world to hear.

“So, Miss Cosic writes” — and here Wagenbach paused and nodded his chin at Tatiana as if we didn't know who she was — “the budding literary talent Miss Cosic writes:
My God!
” He said these words in a high-pitched squeak.

“My God,”
Wagenbach squeaked,
“what in the world happened to you?”

“Jackass,” I said, but it went unheard as everyone yucked it up. Tatiana stared at her desk. Her gaze never shifted. Wagenbach turned to me.

“And what did Mr. Klingenberg answer?”

He put his chin to his chest and spoke in a voice like a stupid cartoon bear.
“Ah, nothing special.”

The class was howling. Even Olaf, who had screwed the whole thing up, was laughing now. I could hardly stand it.

“What polished repartee,” said Wagenbach. “But will the intellectually curious Miss Cosic be satisfied with this answer? Or will she crave more?”

Squeaking again:
“Come on, tell me! I really want to know.”

Stupid cartoon bear:
“Well, it was like this.”

Behind his glasses, Wagenbach squinted his eyes. He could hardly believe what he was about to read. Tatiana raised her head a little because she didn't know my answer yet either. I stared out the window and wondered what Tschick would do in this situation. Probably put a completely blank look on his face. He was better at that than I was.

Wagenbach was getting into his cartoon bear act so much that he must not have even realized what he was reading.
“Tschick and I drove around with the Lada. We were planning to drive to Wallachia, but then we flipped the car after somebody shot at us.”
Wagenbach paused and then continued in a normal voice.
“Then there was a police chase, a trip to the hospital. Then I crashed into an eighteen-wheeler full of pigs and my leg got all cut up . . . but anyway, no big deal.”

A few people were still laughing. Especially the three people who hadn't been at Tatiana's party. The ones who had seen me and Tschick in the Lada were more or less silent.

“Well, what do you know,” said Wagenbach. “Mr. Klingenberg, the magician! Accidents, chases, gunfights. What, no murder? I guess you can't have it all.”

He obviously didn't believe a word of what he had read. I guess it didn't sound very believable. And I wasn't too hot to enlighten him.

“The thing I like best about Mr. Klingenberg's exciting life isn't the cops and robbers material or that he included a chase involving — if I'm not mistaken — an
automobile
and Mr. Tschichatschow. No, no, my favorite part of this is the artful language. How concise and descriptive! How does he wrap up the whole escapade again?” He looked at me, then at the class, and then said,
“No big deal.”

Wagenbach brandished the note in front of Jennifer and Luisa, who were unlucky enough to be sitting in the front row.

“No big deal!” he repeated, starting to laugh. He probably hadn't had so much fun in a long time. Someone who was not enjoying herself at all was Tatiana. You could see it on her face. And not just because she had written me the note. She had probably figured out that my story was no made-up tall tale.

Up to this point, Wagenbach had just had fun at our expense. What we still had to look forward to was the humiliation portion of the program. The sermon. The idiotic shouting. Everyone knew it was coming, everyone was waiting for it. And when Wagenbach held up his hand, signaling for everyone to quiet down — for some reason there was no shouting, no sermon, no punishment. Instead, a meteorite really did fall from the sky. There was a knock at the door.

“Yes!” said Wagenbach.

Voormann, the principal, opened the door.

“Sorry to have to interrupt,” he said. He scanned the room with a serious look on his face. “Are the students Klingenberg and Tschichatschow here?”

“Just Klingenberg,” said Wagenbach.

Everyone had turned to the door, and Voormann was standing in the door frame. But you could see two uniformed officers behind him in the hall. Broad-shouldered cops in full gear, with handcuffs and pistols and all.

“Then Mr. Klingenberg needs to come with me,” said Voormann.

I stood up as casually as I could — as casually as you can when your legs are shaking — and gave Wagenbach a last look. His stupid grin was gone. He actually looked a bit like a dim-witted cartoon bear, though if this were really a cartoon they would have to give him crosses for eyes and a squiggly line for a mouth now. I felt awesome despite the wobbly knees. And the shaking stopped as soon as I was outside facing the police officers.

CHAPTER 48

Voormann apparently didn't know what to say. Both policemen had blank looks on their faces. One was chewing gum.

“Do you want to speak to him alone?” asked Voormann. The one chewing gum looked with surprise at Voormann, stopped chewing for a second, and shrugged. As if to say, “We don't care.”

“Do you want a room where you won't be disturbed?” said Voormann.

“It won't take long,” said policeman number two. “It's not a summons. We just stopped by.”

Silence. Blinking. I scratched my head.

“I was in the middle of a call,” Voormann finally said, tentatively. And as he walked off, “I hope everything gets cleared up.”

Then it began. Number one asked, “Mike Klingenberg?”

“Yeah.”

“45 Nauen Street?”

“Yeah.”

“You know Andrej Tschichatschow?”

“Yes, he's a friend of mine.”

“Where is he?”

“In Bleyen — the facility there.”

“The juvenile detention center?”

“Yeah.”

“I told you,” said number two.

“How long has he been there?” asked number one, looking at me.

“Since the trial — actually before the trial.”

“Have you had contact with him?”

“Has something happened to him?”

“The question was, have you had contact with him?”

“No.”

“I thought he was your friend?”

“Yes.”

“So?”

What on earth were they getting at? “It's a facility where you're not allowed to have any outside contact for several weeks. You're cut off from the world. You guys should know better than me.”

Number one was chewing with his mouth open. This was a great relief after dealing with Wagenbach.

“What's happened?” I asked.

“A Lada,” said number two. He let it sink in. A Lada. “A Lada disappeared from Annen Street.”

“Kersting Street,” I said.

“What?”

“We took it from Kersting Street.”

“Annen Street,” said the cop. “Day before yesterday. Old pile of junk. Hotwired. Found again last night near the end of one of the subway lines. Totaled.”

“Yesterday,” said number one. He chomped down on his gum twice. “Found it yesterday. Stolen the day before.”

“So you're not talking about our Lada?”

“What do you mean by
our
Lada?”

“You know what I mean.”

The gum smacked in his mouth. “We're talking about the one from Annen Street.”

“What do I have to do with it?”

“That is the question.”

And that's when it dawned on me that Tschick and I would be on the hook for every damn car hotwired in northeastern Berlin for the next hundred years.

But I couldn't have been the one who stole the car on Annen Street because I'd spent the day looking after old people and the evening at soccer practice. It also wasn't hard to convince the cops that Tschick couldn't have done it from a secure facility. Oddly enough, it seemed as if they had already sensed we had nothing to do with it. Especially number two, who kept saying they just wanted to spare themselves the trouble of a summons by popping by. They weren't even taking notes. I was almost disappointed. Because right at that moment, the bell rang and the door to our classroom opened. Thirty sets of eyes, including the cartoon bear's, peeked out, and it would have been somehow cooler if they'd been choking me with a nightstick. Mike Klingenberg, dangerous criminal. But unfortunately the two cops just wanted to say good-bye and be on their way.

“Shall I walk you to your car?” I asked.

Number two exploded immediately. “You trying to show off in front of your schoolmates? You want us to cuff you too?”

That grown-up thing again. They see through you so quickly. I figured it was cooler not to try to deny it. But there was nothing more to do. I didn't want to be too pushy. After all, they'd already done plenty for me.

CHAPTER 49

One day, a while later, I had to go to the principal's office to pick up a letter. An actual letter. I think in my whole life I'd gotten maybe three letters. One I'd written to myself as part of an elementary school project — we were supposed to learn about the post office or whatever. And the other two were from my grandmother before she had an Internet connection. The principal had the letter in his hand, and I could see that there was a funny sketch of a car with two stick figures in it and beams surrounding the car as if it were the sun. Under that was written:

Mike Klingenburg

Student at Hagecius Junior High School

Ninth grade (approximately)

Berlin

It was a wonder it ever reached me. But since my name was actually spelled Klingenberg and there was a Mike Klinger in fifth grade, the principal wanted to know if I knew the sender of the letter.

“Andrej Tschichatschow,” I said, because the only person who could have sent it was Tschick — he must have figured out a way to get it out of the detention center despite the no-contact rule. I was really excited.

“Anselm,” said the principal.

“Anselm,” I said. I didn't know anyone by that name. The principal dropped his head in dismay, but after a minute I said, “Anselm Wail?”

He handed me the letter.

Crazy. Anselm Wail, high up on the mountain. I ripped it open immediately to see who had sent it. But I was too excited to read it, so I put it back in the envelope and pulled it out again an hour later when I got home.

Because of course it was from Isa. I was so excited to read it. As excited as I was when I thought it was from Tschick. I lay on my bed the entire afternoon with it, thinking about whether I was more in love with Tatiana or Isa. I wasn't sure. Seriously, I didn't know.

Hi, idiot. Did you make it to Wallachia? I'm betting you didn't. I visited my half-sister and can give you the money back now. I punched a truck driver and lost my wooden box. I had fun with you guys. It's a shame that we didn't hook up. My favorite part was eating blackberries. Next week I'm coming to Berlin. If you don't want to wait fifty years, let's meet Sunday the 29th at 5
P.M.
in front of the big clock on Alexanderplatz. Kisses, Isa