Cloud and Wallfish (33 page)

“Why are you asking such wild questions?” said his mother with a quick lightning bolt of a smile. “Come on, notice how cold it’s gotten? It’s time to go home.”

“But if you won’t tell me whose names those are, then how do I know whether it was the right thing to do, writing them down?”

It was truly like an itch he couldn’t keep from scratching. His mother was looking at him in surprise, and he was almost as surprised by himself as she was.

“Of course it’s right. What else could it be?” said Noah’s mother, tilting her head to one side before pulling Noah back onto the path that led out of the wood and back into ordinary life. “Anyway, it’s cold out here, and I promise you those people have been doing bad things.”

“But do they have kids?”

“Oh, now, really!” said his mother, but her voice was quieter.

“It’s just — What if your names were on somebody’s list? Yours and Dad’s? What if someone arrested
you
?
What would I do then?
”

It was Cloud-Claudia he was thinking of, of course. Someone had thought her parents were bad people — and look what had happened to them and to her!

“I need to know what the right thing is.”

His mother studied his face and shook her head.

“Sorry, but we never get to know everything,” she said. “Not even us grown-ups. We just do the best we can.”

Noah held out his hand.

“Then maybe you should give it back to me, that page with the names.”

His mother shook her head with a smile that was just the slightest bit rueful around the edges.

“Can’t do that, sorry!” she said.

“Then it’s like what that man said,” said Noah.

Noah could feel his mother go instantly and completely still, studying him; she had a real talent for sudden focus.

“What?” she asked. “What man? Said what?”

This next part was especially hard:

“The East German officer, the one who spoke English, he told me you and Dad were just using me. To get into the GDR. He said I was your disguise. A kid with a bad, bad stutter. Like a mustache or a wig!”

“Oh, now. What a dumb thing to say.”

“I don’t want to be somebody’s
wig
!” said Noah. He really was mad about it.

“Shh, shh,” said his mother. “That stupid man must not have kids, that’s for sure. Not ones he loves, anyway. A wig is something you could wear or not wear. You could leave a wig in a drawer and put on a hat instead or decide to have red hair instead of brown hair for a while, am I right?”

Noah was surprised to find he was holding his breath. He looked up at his mom and nodded once, very tightly, just hanging on hard to see what was coming next.

“So that’s ridiculous. That’s got nothing to do with the way I feel about you,” said his mother. “Wherever we are, whatever our names happen to be, you aren’t something I could take off or set aside. Ever. You, Jonah-Noah Keller-Brown, are the center of the known universe as far as I’m concerned. And that’s true no matter what side of the Wall we happen to be on, and no matter what you do or don’t do. That’s always and everywhere true.”

She was smiling. Noah couldn’t find the words to speak. It was like the curtains in her eyes had opened for a moment, and he could see all the way in, to where all the walls were turning out to be windows, and where his mother’s heart turned out to echo his own.

His mother gave him a hug. “You’ve been amazing. Really, you have. No one would ever believe you could do all that. Keeping pictures of lists in your head! Eating secrets!”

Then all of a sudden she straightened back up and grinned at him.

“Here’s something I can say for sure: it would have been bad if those East Germans had seen that paper. So you’re a hero as far as I’m concerned, for eating that list. And then you’re my hero a second time for writing it down. And finally, here’s a secret.”

She bent down, gave him another hug, and murmured very quietly, secret-like, into his ear: “All those questions you like to ask? Just because I can’t answer them doesn’t mean they’re not good questions. You keep asking them. It takes courage to ask why! And now, hero-times-three, it’s time to go home, don’t you think?”

Time to go home, yes. But to tell the truth, Noah had never felt as much at
home
as he was feeling right at that moment, out there in the chilly Berlin woods. It turns out that
home
is not mostly a place.
Home
is someone putting her arms around you and saying the words your heart longs to hear:
always and everywhere.

It was November 8, a Wednesday. Noah had been given one more week by his parents, and this was nearly the end of that week.

The cardboard clouds did not do well in bad weather, and sometimes got banged up on their way to the Wall, so Noah was on his fourth cloud. Fourth and probably last.

“It’s amazing that you’re still doing this,” said his father. “It’s not just making the disappointment worse for you, is it?”

“No,” said Noah. How did you measure such things, anyway?

He lugged his cloud up the steps. He was telling himself that someday someone would notice — perhaps already had noticed. A rumor might start.
Crazy guy with a cloud . . .
And someday, maybe, she would hear about it, right? Even if it was years and years from now, and they were both all grown up.

In other words, he was grasping at straws that day, because when time is running out, grasping at straws is the best we can do.

Once again he hoisted the cloud, up as high above his head as he could reach. And he looked out over that so-completely-familiar street and tried not to feel impatient or disappointed or even cold and tired. He had said he wouldn’t forget her. And he needed her to know he had not forgotten.

That was when the miraculous thing happened.

One of those little figures walking across the street turned and waved at him. Sometimes a brave person did wave. That wasn’t entirely unheard of, especially these days. But this one waved and waved and waved, and even jumped up and down a little. And when it took off its hat to wave harder, it turned out to have what looked like short, misbehaving blond hair on the top of its head.

Noah pointed and shouted and made his cloud bounce up and down some, and before he knew it, one of the other on lookers was handing him a pair of binoculars and holding his cloud up for a moment so that he could focus.

“Hey, kid, is that her? Is that your friend over there?”

Some of these people had been up here with Noah and his cloud before.

The image was blurry. The image kept jumping up and down. But the image was absolutely certainly and amazingly Cloud-Claudia.

He cheered! And you know what? Everyone on that platform cheered with him! Everyone cheered and waved. Noah’s father came up the steps to see what was happening.

And Noah made the cloud go up and down, back and forth, sending its message over the Wall as surely as if it had been spelled out in great big ordinary words:

I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN YOU, CLOUD!!

They waved at each other for a very long time, seemed like, before some larger person appeared — some grandmother-like person — and took her away from that street.

“Wow,” said Noah. His arms were more tired now than they’d ever been in his whole life. He felt completely and abruptly worn out, and all the cheering and handshaking that was still going on around him on the platform suddenly felt like too much, somehow.

Fortunately his dad was there to help haul the cloud back down the stairs.

“Well, how about that, kiddo?” said his dad. His voice tripped up in the middle of the last word, almost as if he had caught a very tiny case of the stutters. “You did it. You had more faith than the rest of us.”

“I hope she’s not in terrible trouble now,” said Noah.

“I don’t think so,” said his father. “All she did was wave at you! What’s so terrible about that?”

Noah just looked at him.

“No, really,” said his father. “Even that grandmother of hers must feel that things are changing. Anyway, there’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you, Noah.”

Noah!

Noah’s eyes caught him by surprise by filling with tears. He had been like a stretched rubber band forever, and now suddenly the tension had evaporated, and that was a kind of shock, too.

“Do I get to be Noah again?” he said, keeping his voice very quiet, as if saying it out loud might frighten his old name away.

“Soon you do,” said his father. “Very soon. And you know what? The truth is, you’ve always been who you are. You’re better than the rest of us that way. You’ve stayed Noah on the inside, deep down, haven’t you?”

Noah thought about it.

He had.

It was true.

Though he had learned a lot from being the Wallfish, too.

“So here’s our promise to you: When we go home, which is going to be very soon, you’ll go back to being Noah. All the Jonah stuff will be put away.”

Noah thought about that for a moment.

“When I was born — was Jonah the name I had then? I mean, for real. Or Noah?”

“For real?” said his father. “For real, your name was Baby Boy.”

He was laughing now.

“What?” said Noah.

“We couldn’t choose a name. We had too many good ideas. So your first birth certificate just says Baby Boy —”

“Baby Boy
what
?” said Noah. “What was my last name?”

“That would be telling,” said his father, as if he were making a joke. “But it wasn’t Brown. Think of it this way: you’ve been Jonah Brown for a while; it was the disguise you needed to wear. Maybe you’ll want to dress up in another name someday, who knows? Or maybe you’ll go back to your Oasis name and never want that to change ever again.”

“Can I have my birthday back, too?”

“Yep. Everything can go back to the way it was. There’ll be some very boring story about where we all went to, some small boring town in the middle of boring nowhere for boring business reasons.”

“Without any boring Wall,” said Noah, rubbing his eyes with his mittens. “Mom will make a picture album about all the boring things we did there.”

“Right,” said his dad.

They were silent for a moment.

“Now Cloud knows I didn’t forget her,” said Noah.

“You certainly didn’t. You are the truest of the true,” said his father.

“And I won’t forget. I won’t ever forget. Can I write her letters?”

His father didn’t say anything. The bus was coming, anyway.

“Because I’d like to write her letters sometimes. I bet she’d like getting a letter.”

“Now you’re getting carried away!” said his father. It was supposed to sound cheerful, but mostly it sounded sad. “A letter! How would you sign it? What address would you give? Not to mention that it would never get through.”