Boy from the Woods (9781311684776) (5 page)

That
afternoon, Julia’s song filled the rooms of the cozy house in
Eichet for the first time. In her mind, she had always called
this
Michael’s
Song
, but no longer. She’d made up her
mind: it was time to push away all the dreams she’d had of him and
her, and make room for new things.

“Come on
Jules, it’s going to be
awesome
,” Gaby’s tinny voice
piped up on speakerphone.

The weekend
was over. Julia was
busy trawling job ads
in the local newspaper. She reckoned that having a summer job might
be a good idea after all – she’d be able to save up some money to
go on vacation with Gaby. So far, she was feeling sort of
blah
about
the classifieds page, though. All the jobs advertized in the
Salzburger Fenster
were lame – the highlight of today’s sorry
selection being a modeling agency looking for size-zero girls with
blonde hair. With a frustrated grunt, Julia crossed out the ad with
her red marker.

“So,
how much are the tickets?” she asked, trying to
sound more eager than she felt. Gaby was suddenly convinced they
all needed to go see a
Siouxsie and the Banshees
cover
band playing at the Shamrock pub that night.

“Nothing, you
silly,” Gaby blared through the phone.
“It’s a cover
band. And they’re doing a Monday night show.
Need I say more? Who in his right mind would pay for
that?”

Julia snickered.
“Okay. Stupid question, I guess. But I thought
you wanted to go out for dinner with the gang tonight?”

“Still do. We can do
both.
The band won’t start until ten. So
you can’t say no.”

“I’m
beginning to get that, yes. Are Axel and Florian coming
too?”

“Oh, I’ll
convince them to join us when I see them this afternoon.” They’d
agreed to meet at Florian’s place. He lived in a mansion along the
river Salzach, and his roof terrace was almost as big as his
spacious second-floor bedroom. In summer, their circle of friends
often sat outside on the terrace, playing old records, drinking
beer and sneaking in a joint every now and then. Florian always put
a ladder against the façade of the house so people could climb up
without going through the house and bothering his parents. This
morning, Julia had bought cans of beer and bottles of herbal soda
so Florian could make
Radler
drinks for all of
them.

“All
right,
Gab, count me in. See you
later!”

As she was
putting her phone in her handbag, her eye fell on a small ad
for the bookstore in the city center. Höllrigl
was looking for sales assistants. That sounded like something she
might enjoy. Who knows – she might even be entitled to an employee
discount on books if she worked there. She was a total bookworm,
just like Axel. He’d probably dance with joy if she took up a job
there and sold him books at a lower price.

When
Julia stepped out of her bedroom, Anne was lying
on the couch in the hallway reading the all-too-familiar storybook.
Obviously, her sister was turning into family bookworm number
three.

“Don’t you
want to
be outside?” she asked Anne, who
started and sat up. “You can read that out in the yard too,
right?”

“Oh, I’ll go
outside in a minute. I’m meeting Sabine so we can go to the woods.
We want to build a tree house.”

Julia raised
a doubtful eyebrow. “
Hmm. Sabine has a
handy brother or something?” Anne’s new neighborhood friend was
only nine. Surely the two little girls couldn’t build a tree house
without any help?

Anne
giggled. “No, he’s sort of ham-handed, actually.
But he’s cute! Shall I introduce him to you?”

“No, never
mind, you little matchmaker.” Julia whipped around and hurtled down
the stairs. Cute or not, she really didn’t need boys in her life at
the moment, even though Gaby insisted she needed the
distraction.

Ten minutes
later, she was on the bus with her iPod on, Loreena McKennitt
playing a soothing harp song during the ride to town. Loreena was
her antidote for the abundance of loud punk music she’d be
subjected to later in the evening. Admittedly, she had never heard
anything by Siouxsie and the Banshees before, but if Gaby’s
full-size posters of the band were anything to go by, she was
pretty sure her eardrums would have a painful experience
tonight.

After a
thirty-minute ride, Julia got off the bus and walked
the last bit to Flo’s house. The weather was
lovely, and the white castle of Salzburg on the mountain
overlooking the city shone in the bright sunlight. She looked up at
the fortress longingly. Maybe she should take the long walk uphill
sometime again and buy herself a generous slice of cake in the
castle lunchroom. She hadn’t done that in a while. The last time
was when Gaby had joined her – and her friend had suffered from
muscle ache in her calves for days after their adventure together,
the wuss.

Julia
kept a brisk pace and soon reached the old,
pastel-green house on the Imbergstrasse that belonged to Florian’s
family. The ladder was waiting for her, leaning against the façade.
She could hear Bob Dylan talk-singing through old speakers on the
second-floor roof terrace. A few years ago, Florian had discovered
the sixties and gone on to plunder his parents’ entire vinyl
collection.

“Peace,
man,” Axel greeted her
when Julia’s head popped up above the roof terrace railing. He put
up two fingers in a peace sign and smiled at her, his eyes partly
hidden by a green pair of star-shaped shades.

“Give it a
chance,” Julia shouted back, walking up to the sitting area where
Axel, Florian and Tamara were sprawled on the big lounge sofa,
sipping drinks and singing along to Dylan’s ‘I Want You’.
“Where’s Gaby?”

“
She’s
picking up some flyers from the pub where that cover band is
performing tonight,” Tamara replied. “If we hand those in, we’ll
each be entitled to one free drink.”

“That band is
beginning to sound desperate for attention.” Julia chuckled and set
down her bag of bottles next to Florian. “Here, look what I
brought. Now you can make me a
Radler
.”

“I would be
honored, Lady Julia,” Florian
said with
an ingratiating smile.

Axel
scrambled up to put the next record on the
turntable and allow Marc Bolan’s frail, unearthly voice to flood
the terrace. Julia let out a satisfied sigh, leaning back on the
sofa to look up at the bright, blue sky.
Not a cloud
in sight. This afternoon was heaven.

“Halli-hallo
!”
Gaby
shouted as she suddenly appeared at the top of the ladder,
enthusiastically waving a hand full of Shamrock flyers. “Look what
I got. Free pints of Guinness for everyone tonight.” She plunked
down on the couch next to Julia and gave her a broad smile.
“How was your weekend, babe?”

“It was fine.
I visited my gran in Eichet yesterday.” She glanced at the flyers
Gaby had spread out on the table. “I’m glad the show is at
Shamrock,” she added under her breath. Michael played darts with
his friends in O’Malley’s, the other Irish pub in town, every
Monday evening.

Gaby nodded,
a sympathetic smile on her lips.
“So,
when are you guys finally going to London?” she addressed the boys
while pouring a beer for herself.

“Actually, I
have no idea.”
Florian shrugged. “We have to book all
over again.
I guess it’ll be more
expensive this time. The tickets we had were booked months in
advance.”

“Oh, come on.” Axel arched
an eyebrow.
“Ryanair flies almost for
free. Hey, why don’t the girls join us on our trip too?”

Gaby
looked from Tamara to Julia, nodding slowly.
“Yeah, why not indeed?” she repeated. “We have all the time in the
world. And it won’t break the bank either, if we get a cheap
flight.”

“We were
planning on staying in a youth hostel,” Florian said.
“That isn’t too expensive.”

“Well, I think it sounds
like a great idea!”
Julia exclaimed. “I
was just going to arrange a job interview at the bookstore so I can
earn some extra cash. If that works out, I’ll have enough money to
go to London mid-August.”

Everyone
beamed at each other.
“Well, that’s settled then,” Tamara decided. “I say we propose a
toast to our travel plans!”

When Florian
got up to flip the record, he came back with a small bag of pot.
“It’s time to relax,” he announced.

“What… you’re
going to hit the Chinese all-you-can-eat joint
stoned
?” Tamara
blurted out in shock. “Just so you know, I’m not sitting with you
if you act like an idiot.”

“He act like
an idiot no matter what,” Axel remarked, easily dodging the punch
Florian aimed at him.

Axel went
inside and got the leaflets and guidebooks about London that were
still sitting on Florian’s desk. Soon, everybody was absorbed in
the information
, making plans for a
four-day trip to the English capital.

“It’s
pretty cool we’re all going to London,” Julia
mumbled to Gaby. “And I can just focus on work in the weeks leading
up to the trip. If I get the job, of course.”

Gaby put her
arms around her in a sweet hug.
“You will. It was made
for you, you bookworm.
Plus, it will keep
you off the streets so you won’t run the risk of bumping
into
some people
anymore.”

Julia nodded.
Today, she had felt empty when she’d passed the Old Town – a
certain meaninglessness that couldn’t be filled. It was as if she
were walking the streets of an unfamiliar town in a blur, keeping
up the same appearances but feeling hollow and cold on the inside.
No longer could she hold out hopes of running into Michael. Gaby
was right: she should go and hide for a while. And where to find a
better hiding spot than in her personal Valhalla, the
bookstore?

That evening,
they all walked together through the narrow streets and alleys of
Salzburg to the Rudolfskai along the river. The
door to Shamrock was wide open, a rocker-style crowd
gathering outside holding beers and smoking cigarettes.

“W
hy don’t you give me the
flyers,” Axel told Gaby. “I’ll get drinks for everyone.”

“Hey, thanks,” Gaby
replied.
“Guess I’ll be the selfish Goth
and smoke a cigarette just for me.”

Axel laughed
and tried to give her a friendly pat on the head, but she nimbly
danced away.

They
decided to wait outside. The band was clearly
doing a sound check – every now and then, the loudspeakers
sputtered some acoustic feedback when one of the band members
pushed up the fader on a mixer channel too much.

Julia checked out the crowd and felt her
heart skip a beat when she spotted two of Michael’s friends
stepping out of the front door.

Tamara nudged her. “You
okay?
You look like you’ve seen a
ghost.”

Gaby followed
Julia’s stare and rolled her eyes. “Just your luck. Oh well, for
all we know
those two came here without
him. Michael is probably throwing darts all by his lonesome in
O’Malley’s. He’s, like, the
last
person I would expect to
show up at a concert like this.”

Julia let
out
a shaky breath. Gaby was most likely
right, but she couldn’t relax. When Axel showed up with a tray of
beers announcing that the band was ready to start, they all
shuffled inside. The room was chock-full and dark, which was a
blessing. Even
if
Michael had decided to come here, he wouldn’t be
able to see her anyway.

When the
spotlights lit up and flooded the stage with bright, colored
beams,
loud music immediately exploded
from the speakers. Julia flinched – she was standing close to the
loudspeaker on the left.

“Holy hell,”
Gaby shouted in her right ear, “they’re playing ‘Cities in
Dust’!
I
love
this song.”

Meanwhile
, Florian was staring at
the stage with glassy eyes. Julia looked over at the bass player he
was clearly checking out. The guy had on a black wife-beater shirt
and sporting a black-and-purple dyed Mohawk.

“Holy hell,”
he
repeated Gaby’s words. “Who is that? I
think I’m in love.”

Julia snickered.
This was typically Florian – he said whatever he
was thinking. She shambled a bit away from the speaker. Even though
the music was played at earsplitting volume, it wasn’t too bad. In
fact, she was kind of enjoying it. She’d only wanted to humor Gaby
by tagging along, but the band was better than expected. “This is
pretty cool,” she told Gaby when the next song turned out to be
less loud.