Cloud and Wallfish
Read Cloud and Wallfish Online
Authors: Anne Nesbet
Chapter One: Going, Going, Gone
Chapter Three: Think of It This Way
Chapter Five: A City Behind a Wall
Chapter Seven: The Party Party
Chapter Eight: The Second Test; Also the Third
Chapter Nine: A Voice in the Night
Chapter Ten: Cloud and Changeling
Chapter Twelve: The Mere Ghost of Cloud-Claudia
Chapter Thirteen: Brave New World
Chapter Fourteen: Other Towers
Chapter Fifteen: The Wall Goes Horizontal
Chapter Sixteen: Cloud in the Window
Chapter Seventeen: A Bad Case of Farsickness
Chapter Eighteen: Pretending to Be What You Are
Chapter Nineteen: The Pan-European Picnic
Chapter Twenty: The Telltale Tiara
Chapter Twenty-One: New Places on the Map
Chapter Twenty-Two: World Peace Day
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Boy from Over There
Chapter Twenty-Four: It Could All Explode
Chapter Twenty-Five: Field Trip
Chapter Twenty-Six:
“Be Prepared! Always Prepared!”
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Out into the Dark
Chapter Twenty-Eight: And Then Bad Things Happened
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Doing the Right Thing
Chapter Thirty-One: Cloud and Wallfish
Chapter Thirty-Three: A Walk in the Woods
Chapter Thirty-Four: Crazy Kid with a Cloud
Chapter Thirty-Five: Crumbling Walls
Noah knew something was up the moment he saw his mother that May afternoon in fifth grade. She swooped up in a car he didn’t recognize — that was the first thing. And, secondly, his father was sitting in the other front seat, and in Noah’s family, picking up kids at school was a one-parent activity.
There in the back was his raggedy brown duffel, the one with the duct tape hiding a rip, perched on top of a pile of suitcases. He had to sidle in carefully if he didn’t want to topple any bags.
There wasn’t even an extra inch left on that whole seat for his backpack — he just swung it around and balanced it on his knees.
“Um, hi,” he said to his parents. “What happened to our car? What’s all the luggage about?”
“Shut that door,” said his mother. “Rental car. We have to hurry. It’s a sudden adventure. And hand that backpack up to your father.”
The car pulled away from the curb so quickly that the tires let out a hint of a squeal (which was cool).
Noah’s father turned around and gave him a reassuring smile.
“You’re going to do just fine,” he said as he hauled Noah’s backpack into the front seat. (
Do fine?
thought Noah.) “Of course, we meant to give you a little more notice. What’ve you got in here, anyway?”
Apparently that wasn’t a question that could wait for an answer. Before Noah could go peep, his father had given the backpack’s searchlight-yellow zipper a tug, and everything inside tumbled out in a heap of pencils, erasers, and crumpled papers. Plus two books and a banana.
“Hey!” said Noah, leaning as far forward as the seat belt would allow. His mouth almost failed to make any sound at all, he was so surprised. His parents were tidy people, usually.
“Only what’s essential. That’s all we can take,” said his dad, while his hands went picking through the debris so speedily his fingers turned into an efficient blur. He had a trash bag at his feet, it turned out, and all the papers were going right in there. Then he turned back with a wink. “What do you think — is this banana essential?”
“What are you doing?” said Noah. He didn’t care about the banana. It was everything else that mattered. “Take where? Wait, don’t throw
that
out — that’s my math homework.”
“Not anymore!” said Noah’s mother. “We’re getting on a plane — can’t take any extra junk.”
“We’re getting on a
plane
?” said Noah. “Right now?”
“Yep!” said his mother. “It’s that trip we’ve been talking about taking. Did you think those language tapes were just for fun? Hey, come on now,
German
! It’s your superpower, remember?
Der-die-das-die.
”
She sang the last bit. It was true that they had been listening to language tapes at home. There was a German grammar book that came with the tapes, and they had made up songs for some of the charts. The only way Noah could get through those charts was by singing them. German has way too many consonants — and way too much grammar, his mother liked to say.
Actually, however, Noah sort of liked all that grammar. His brain was very good at patterns, and learning to understand a language is all about recognizing patterns. His mother was almost not kidding about it being Noah’s superpower.
As superpowers go, though, it was a more or less invisible one: Noah was a whole lot better at understanding than he was at speaking.
“But we can’t go anywhere
now,
” said Noah. “This isn’t vacation time. Vacations happen in the
summer.
”
Because it was supposed to be a vacation. That was the whole idea: they were going to go to Germany —
on vacation —
to go to the Black Forest, eat cake, poke at cuckoo clocks, and tour at least one castle.
“Plus anyway I have soccer tomorrow. I can’t miss soccer. And Zach’s birthday is Saturday!”
“Change of plans,” said his mother. “Sorry. Couldn’t be helped. And it turns out it’s going to be a different Germany. Not the
usual
Germany. The other one. We have a few hours for organizing and getting our stories straight, and then we fly.”
Flabbergasted.
That was the word that filled Noah’s head, though he kept it safely inside. Flab-ber-gas-ted.
And for the birthday party, Zach’s mom was going to rent the first
Indiana Jones
movie on video. Indiana Jones! Noah opened his mouth, but before he could say one single useful, coherent thing, his father interrupted. Sometimes parents don’t notice when a kid has vital things to say. Sometimes they’re too busy sorting through that kid’s books, papers, and candy wrappers.
“Hey, look at this!” said Noah’s father. He had Noah’s current book in his hands — an old edition of
Alice in Wonderland & Through the
Looking-Glass
that used to be his mother’s. Noah had picked it off the shelf that very morning, because he always had to have something to read in his bag, just in case. This particular book looked battered but cheerful. It had lost its dust jacket years ago; rows of red-ink and black-ink rabbits trotted away on the cover in a diamond pattern.
Noah’s father was staring at those rabbits; he looked doubtful.
“What do you think, Lisa? This okay?”
“That’s not extra junk. That’s my book I’m reading,” said Noah, holding out his hand. He had only gotten through the first chapter or so in school today, but it was turning out to be a very weird story. Old-fashioned but weird. Noah liked it.
“No name written in it, yes? Then it’s all right, I’d say,” said his mother.
But as his father tossed the book back to Noah, it hit the side of the seat, and a card fell out of it, dislodged from all those pages where it must have been wedged in pretty tightly before.
“What’s that?” said Noah’s mother, and the car swerved a little to the right as she swung her head around to take a look.
“Don’t worry,” said Noah’s father. “Eyes on the road. I’ve got this. Noah —”
But Noah was staring at the square in his hand.
“A photograph!” he said. A tiny girl stared out at him, standing very straight and upright by the knees of a large, wide-smiling man in an armchair. “Hey! Who’s this kid? Who’s that man?”
“Oh dear!”
said his mother, and she swerved so abruptly off the highway into a rest area that Noah had to hang on to the seat in front of him.
“Oh dear!”
she said again.
“I
shall
be too late!”
And the car screeched to a halt. There wasn’t much to see at this rest stop. The kind of gravelly asphalt that just sits there dreaming of taking the skin off some poor kid’s knees, a few sorry trees, a building with restrooms in it, and a couple of picnic tables covered with bird poop and future splinters.
Noah’s hands were trembling.
“Too late for what?” he said.
“It’s a quote,” she said, and at that very moment Noah remembered where he had heard those words before: that’s what the White Rabbit says at the beginning of
Alice in Wonderland.
Right as he leads Alice down the rabbit hole and into the world where everything’s weird.
That gave Noah the strangest feeling. What were his parents up to?
“Look,” said his mother cheerfully. “It’s all a surprise, I know, but the good part is, we’re going somewhere where almost nobody gets to go.”
“Think of it as an expedition,” said his dad. His smile was conspiratorial. “If someone invites you to the South Pole, what do you do? You say yes. Right? This is like that, only not the South Pole.”