“Do you know how to shoot a gun?” Anna asked without any introduction.
“What? No,” Abel said. “Do you need to find someone who does?”
“No. You’re sure you don’t know?” she asked. “And that you don’t have a weapon, either?”
“No!” he repeated. She thought he would step back to let her in. He didn’t. He stepped forward and almost pulled the door closed behind him. He was shivering in his thin T-shirt, she could see. “Why are you asking me this?” he said.
“If you’re telling the truth, you’re safe,” Anna said. “He was shot. Rainer was shot. My mother knows someone in the forensics department. He was shot in the neck; he wasn’t beaten to death.”
Slowly, very slowly, a smile started to broaden on his face.
“Thank God,” he said. “I’ve never been so glad that somebody was shot.”
For a while they were standing there in the cold staircase. Then his smile disappeared. “But I can’t really prove that I don’t know how to shoot a gun,” he said. “Can I? I mean, it’s hard to prove that you can’t do something.”
“Why would you have to prove that?” She nearly started to laugh.
“They will think it was me,” he said in a low voice. “Despite everything.” He glanced back at the apartment.
“Micha?” she asked. “Is she not supposed to hear what we’re talking about? Haven’t you told her …?”
“Micha’s on a field trip with her school.” He folded his arms across his chest, as if this would protect him from the cold. Or possibly, from something else. On his upper-left arm she saw a shiny round red spot, like a burn. It looked new. It looked like a cigarette burn. He saw what she was looking at and put his hand over the wound.
“Abel …” she began, “do we have to stay out here on the landing?”
He shook his head. “No. You have to go home. You don’t belong here. You’ll catch cold.”
“It’s warmer in your apartment.”
“Anna,” he said, his voice even lower than before, and very insistent. “I don’t have time now.” He seemed to be listening for something, straining his ears in the direction of the apartment.
“You’ve got a visitor,” she said.
“Someone I owe money to.”
“I could lend you …”
“Please,” he said. “Go.”
For a moment, he hesitated. As if he would prefer to stay on the landing, forever. But finally, he smoothed back his hair and turned to go. He closed the door behind him, with a click.
Anna kicked the tires of her bike because there wasn’t anything else to kick. The voices of children shouting abuse at one another came from the first floor. Anna was pretty sure Mrs. Ketow was watching her again, but she didn’t care. Who was with Abel? It’s none of my business, she told herself. It definitely isn’t. I’m interfering, and he was right. I don’t belong here.
But why, when they were alone in the classroom, had he hugged her? She walked back to Wolgaster Street, dragging her bike, in the event she found anything suitable for kicking. Only at the traffic lights, where she had to cross Wolgaster Street to reach the path on the other side, did she get on her bike. She was sitting there, holding onto a lamppost with one hand, waiting for the light to turn green, staring at the cars with hostility, when a hand landed on top of her own. She started.
“Bertil!” He was next to her, sitting on his own bike, his feet on the pedals, keeping his balance by resting his hand over hers. She smiled. His glasses were halfway down his nose again. “What a small world,” he said. “Have you been at your flute lesson?”
She narrowed her eyes. “And where are you coming from?”
He didn’t give her any more of an answer than she had given him.
“If I asked you something that’s none of my business …,” he began.
“I wouldn’t reply,” Anna said, pulling away her hand so that he nearly lost his balance. The light turned green, and they crossed together.
“You’re spying on me,” Anna said. “Aren’t you?”
“Is there anything worth spying on? Maybe I’m just making sure you don’t do anything stupid.”
“Bertil Hagemann, leave me alone,” Anna said. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Oh yes, you do,” Bertil said. “More than you realize.” Then he pedaled away, leaving her behind. He was more athletic than she had realized.
The sword of Damocles hovered. Anna tried to stay angry, to sustain the anger that had compelled her to kick the wheel of her bike. It didn’t work. Abel’s fear was too palpable. She felt the sword hanging over him from a thin, fragile thread; he looked at her now in class—that was new—and in his eyes she saw fear. They will think it was me. It’s impossible to prove that you cannot do something. He no longer slept in class. Maybe he wasn’t working nights anymore. Or, maybe he just couldn’t sleep, not even in class, because he was no longer safe—anywhere. When the classroom door opened because someone was late, he started as if he expected the police. The sword was lowering. Its tip was the bullet that had pierced Rainer Lierski’s neck like the long teeth of a wolf.
On Wednesday, Anna stood at the window of the student lounge, which was humming with excitement before the physics exam. She didn’t have to take it—she’d completed physics last semester. She realized that Abel was standing beside her.
“I’d be relieved if they’d come for me,” he said in a low voice. “If they’d show up at our front door and demand an explanation. Where I was that Saturday night … so I could tell them … So I could tell them that I wasn’t there, I don’t own a gun, I don’t know how to use one, I didn’t kill him … But they don’t come; they don’t give me a chance to defend myself …”
She felt his hand on hers as he gave her something. A piece of paper.
“Good luck with physics,” she said.
“I’m not taking the exam.”
She looked at him. He looked away. No one could take an exam with a sword hanging over his head. Anna felt rage build inside her. Lierski had really managed to mess life up for Abel. Now he was keeping him from passing the classes he needed to graduate.
She looked at the paper during her next class. It was folded to form an envelope and closed with pieces of scotch tape. It was even decorated with a not-really-round red circle, which might have been meant to be a seal. In one corner, someone had written “ANNA” in pencil. She opened the envelope, carefully smoothed the paper, and saw little hearts drawn with an orange magic marker. The letter was from Micha; Abel hadn’t opened it.
Deer ANNA
,
You hav to com agan soon so the farytal can go on
.
Love MiCHA
.
Deer ANNA 2
kwestions that I do not no
:
1
were dus a persun go when he dies?
2
is the red hunter gon now or will he com bak?
3
kan you help Abel not be afrad any moor deer anna
Love micha
.
Anna took a pen to write an answer on the paper. “Dear Micha,” she wrote. But she didn’t know what to say after that. She couldn’t answer a single one of Micha’s questions.
On Friday after school, Anna rode her bike into town and wandered aimlessly down the main shopping street. Her legs wanted to carry her to the student dining hall, but she didn’t let them; instead, she forced them to walk in the opposite direction, to take her window shopping … as if she wanted to buy something, as if she had a reason for being there. She didn’t. She just didn’t want to go home. At the beach in Eldena, where she usually went if she felt this way, there were too many thoughts strewn in the sand near the frozen sea; it was too lonely there. And besides, maybe her stupid legs would win and carry her to the dining hall, where she’d find Abel and Micha, sitting at one of the tables, eating dead dog and drinking hot chocolate with five straws each.