Why We Took the Car (4 page)

CHAPTER 7

After that I was called Psycho. For almost a year, everyone called me that. Even in class. Even when the teacher was there. “Come on, Psycho, pass the ball! You can do it, Psycho! Chill out, Psycho!” And it only stopped when André landed in our class. André Langin. Handsome André.

André had been held back. He had a girlfriend by the end of his first day in our class. And he had a new one every week after that. These days he's with a Turkish girl who looks like Salma Hayek. He was sniffing around Tatiana for a little while too, and it drove me nuts. For a few days they were talking to each other constantly — in the hall, in front of school, in the schoolyard. But in the end they didn't get together, I don't think. That would have killed me. At some point they stopped talking to each other, and shortly afterward I heard André explain to Patrick why men and women don't get along — crazy scientific theories about the Stone Age, saber-toothed tigers, and childbirth and all that. I hated him for that too. I hated him from the very first moment, though it wasn't easy for me. For one thing, even though André's not the brightest bulb, he's not a complete waste of space. He can be nice too, and he's pretty laid-back. And, like I mentioned, he's decent looking. But he's still an asshole. And just to make it worse, he lives only a block away from me, at 15 Wald Street. The house is full of assholes, by the way. The Langins have a giant place. His father's a politician, city councilman or something. Of course. And my father says, “Langin thinks he's Mr. Big Man!”

But to get back to the story I meant to tell, when André was brand-new in our class, we took a field trip to go hiking somewhere south of Berlin. Just a standard nature walk in the woods. I trailed way behind the others and actually tried to take in the nature. This was around the time we had planted an herb garden, and I was genuinely interested in nature for a while there. Interested in
trees
. I was thinking of becoming a scientist or something. But not for long, and it probably had something to do with that field trip, where I hung back so I could examine the leaf patterns and growth forms in peace. That's when it suddenly occurred to me that I didn't give the slightest crap about leaf patterns and growth forms. Ahead of me everyone was laughing and having fun, and I could make out Tatiana Cosic's laugh from the rest; two hundred meters behind, Mike Klingenberg was traipsing through the forest looking at fucking leaf patterns in nature. Which wasn't even really nature. It was just some crappy woods with educational plaques posted every ten meters. Hell.

At some stage we stopped at a three-hundred-year-old white beech tree that had been planted there by Frederick the Great. The teacher asked who knew what kind of tree it was. Nobody knew. Except me, of course. But I wasn't so crazy as to admit in front of the whole class that I knew it was a white beech. I might as well have said, “My name is Psycho and I have a problem.” It was depressing that we were all standing around the tree and not a single person knew what it was. I'm getting to the point now. Beneath this white beech tree Frederick the Great had also put a few tables and benches so people could sit and picnic. Which is exactly what we did. By coincidence I ended up at a table with Tatiana Cosic. Opposite me was André, handsome André, with his arms stretched out right and left around the shoulders of Laura and Marie. As if he were best friends with them. Except that he wasn't friends with them at all. He'd been in our class for maybe a week at that stage. But the two of them didn't object. On the contrary, they seemed to be frozen with excitement and didn't move a muscle. It was as if they were afraid his arms would, like skittish birds, get spooked if they moved their shoulders. André didn't say anything at all. He just looked around with his bedroom eyes. And then he glanced at me and, after thinking for a while, said to nobody in particular but definitely not to me, “Why is this guy called Psycho anyway? He's totally boring.” Laura and Marie laughed themselves silly over this top-quality joke, and since it had been such a success, André repeated it: “Seriously, why is this walking sleeping pill named Psycho?” And ever since then, I've been Mike again. And it's even worse than before.

CHAPTER 8

There are a lot of things I'm no good at. But if there's one thing I can do, it's the high jump. I mean, okay, I'm not an Olympic athlete, but I'm still pretty close to unbeatable at high jump and long jump. Even though I'm one of the shortest kids, I get as high as Olaf, the tallest kid in our class. Early in the year I set a record for our age group, and I was really proud. We were standing at the high jump bar, and the girls were all sitting around on the grass nearby, where Frau Bielcke was giving them a lecture. Frau Bielcke blathers on and the girls just sit there scratching their ankles. They don't constantly run around the track like we have to with Mr. Wolkow.

Wolkow is our gym teacher, and he loves to give us lectures too. Every gym teacher I've ever had has let the words fly. With Wolkow, Mondays are reserved for the soccer results, pretty much the same on Tuesdays, Wednesdays he talks about the Champions League, and by Friday he's already looking forward to that weekend's soccer matches and all the analysis surrounding them. In summer he airs his opinions on the Tour de France, but once he starts talking about doping he quickly comes back around to the much more important topic of soccer and the happy fact that there's no doping in that sport. Because it's of
no use
in soccer. That is Wolkow's honest opinion. But nobody cares anyway because of one basic problem: Wolkow talks only while we're running. He's in insane shape. He must be seventy, and yet he's always out in front of us, loping comfortably and gabbing on and on. And then he always says, “Men!” Then he's silent for about ten meters. Then, “Dortmund.” Another ten meters. “Haven't got a chance.” Ten more meters. “Home field advantage. Am I right or am I right?” Twenty meters. “And that old fox who coaches Bayern Munich. It's not going to be a walk in the park.” Giddyup, giddyup. “What do you all think?” Thirty seconds of silence. Obviously nobody says anything because we've already run like a million loops around the track. Once in a while Hans, the Nazi, who's a knuckle-dragging soccer fan and who is always lagging behind the rest of us, sweating his ass off, yells, “Hey, ho, let's go, Hertha Berlin!” And that's too much even for Wolkow, the old windbag, and he slows down so Hans can catch up, then lifts his pointer finger and yells in a voice quivering with rage, “Joe Simunic! The cardinal sin!” And Hans yells back, “I know, I know.” Then Wolkow speeds up again and mumbles to himself, “Simunic, my God! The foundation of the franchise! Never trade the franchise player! And now they've tanked.”

Just the fact that we're not forced to listen to him blather is reason enough to get excited about the high jump. Maybe we did the high jump only on days when Wolkow had such a heavy chest cold that he couldn't run and talk at the same time. When he's fighting a normal cold, he still manages to babble, just a bit less than usual. When he's dead, class is canceled. But when he's really sick, he runs silently around the track.

During the high jump he jotted down our results in his black notebook and croaked about how we had managed to clear a few centimeters more the previous year. The girls, like I said, were sitting next to the high jump setup listening to Frau Bielcke. In reality, none of them were listening, of course, and were actually looking over at us.

Tatiana was with her best friend, Natalie, at the outer edge of the group of girls. They crouched down and whispered to each other. It was as if I were sitting on hot coals. I desperately wanted to jump before Frau Bielcke finished her sermon. Luckily Wolkow suddenly made it a contest: The bar was put at one meter and twenty centimeters and anyone who couldn't clear it was out. Then it would be raised in five centimeter increments for each new round. At one meter twenty only Heckel failed. Heckel has a fat gut, has had it since he was in fifth grade. And he has toothpicks for legs. It's no great surprise that he can't get far off the ground. He's not very good in any school subject, but he's particularly crap at sports. He's dyslexic too, which means his spelling doesn't count against him in German class. He can make as many mistakes as he wants. All that counts is the content and the style because dyslexia's like a disease and he can't do anything about it. But I keep thinking that the same is true for his matchstick legs — there's nothing he can do about them. His father is a bus driver and looks exactly the same: a tub on stilts. So really Heckel is high-jump dyslexic too, and how high he gets shouldn't be counted, only his style. But it's not a recognized disease, so he fails gym and all the girls giggle when the tub of lard shields himself from the bar with both hands and falls with a whimper on his face. Poor bastard. Though I have to admit it does look funny. Because even if height were discounted for Heckel, his style is still an F.

By the time we reached one meter forty centimeters, the field began to dwindle. At one meter fifty, the only ones left were Kevin and Patrick, and, with great effort, André. And me, of course. Olaf was sick. When André squeaked over the bar, the girls cheered and celebrated, and Frau Bielcke looked at them sternly. At one meter fifty-five, Natalie shouted, “You can do it, André!” Such a stupid way to cheer him on, since there was no way he could do it. On the contrary, he actually went
under
the bar, which often happens in the high jump when you bite off more than you can chew. He crawled off the back of the cushion and tried to compensate by making a joke as if he was going to throw the bar like a spear. But it's an old joke. Nobody laughed. Next they cheered on Kevin. Kevin the math genius. But he couldn't clear one meter sixty. Then I was the only one left. Wolkow set the bar at one meter sixty-five, and even as I approached it I could just feel that today was my day. It was Mike Klingenberg Day. I could feel a rush of triumph even as I leapt. I didn't jump so much as sail over the bar like an airplane. I hung in the air, I floated. Mike Klingenberg, star of track and field. I think that if I could have given myself a nickname just then, it would have been something like Aeroflot. Or Air Klingenberg. Or the Condor. But unfortunately you can't give yourself nicknames. As my back sank into the soft landing pad, I could hear restrained applause from the side where all the boys were gathered. But from the side where the girls were I heard nothing. As the mat rebounded and I bounced back up, I immediately looked over at Tatiana. And Tatiana was looking at Frau Bielcke. Natalie was looking at Frau Bielcke too. They hadn't even seen my jump, the stupid cows. None of the girls had seen my jump. They had no interest in what the psychotic sleeping pill had managed to clear. Aeroflot my ass.

It really pissed me off the entire day. Though to be fair it hadn't interested me either. As if the fucking high jump would interest me for even a second! But if André had managed to clear one meter sixty-five — or even if he had managed to get to the point where he could have
attempted
one sixty-five — the girls would have run around the track with pom-poms. For me, on the other hand, not a single one even watched. I'm of no interest. And I just can't help wondering: Why doesn't anyone watch when Air Klingenberg flies over the bar to set a new school record, while everyone watches when some airhead submarines his way under the bar? But that's the way it was. That was what the whole crappy school was like, that was what the girls were like, and there was no way around it. At least that's what I always thought before I met Tschick. That's when things started to change.

CHAPTER 9

Right from the start, Tschick rubbed me the wrong way. I couldn't stand him. Nobody could stand him. Tschick was trash, and that's exactly what he looked like. Mr. Wagenbach dragged him into class after Easter break, and when I say he dragged him into class, I really mean it. It was the first period after the break — history. The students were sitting in their chairs as if stapled in place, because if anyone is an authoritarian asshole, it's Wagenbach. Although asshole is a bit of an overstatement. Wagenbach's okay, actually. He lectures okay and he's not as stupid as most of the rest of them — like Wolkow. At least with Wagenbach it doesn't take a lot of effort to pay attention to what he's saying. And it's a good thing to pay attention, too, because Wagenbach can really rip you to shreds. Everybody knows it. Even kids who've never had him for a class. Before fifth graders even enter Hagecius Junior High they know: Watch out for Wagenbach! You can hear a pin drop in his class. In Schuermann's class, you hear cell phones ring about five times a day. Patrick even managed to change his ringtone during Schuermann's class — he tried out six, seven, eight different ringtones one after the next until finally Schuermann asked for
a little quiet
. And even then he didn't have the nerve to glare at Patrick. If somebody's phone were to ring in Wagenbach's class, whoever it belonged to would definitely not live to see recess. There's even a rumor that Wagenbach used to keep a hammer on his desk to smash cell phones that went off in his class. But I don't know if that's true.

Anyway, as usual, Wagenbach came in wearing a bad suit and carrying his shit-brown briefcase, and behind him he was dragging this kid who looked half-comatose. Wagenbach slammed his briefcase down on his desk and turned around. He waited with a scowl on his face until the boy was standing next to him and said, “We have a new classmate. His name is Andrej . . .”

Then he looked down at a notepad, and at the kid again. Apparently, he wanted the new student to pronounce his own name. But the boy just stood there with his eyes half-closed and stared into the distance without saying anything.