Girl from Mars (4 page)

Laura unlocks the door and Phillip goes past her into the house. I stand there with my bike, still looking like an idiot. Miriam, the one “in your class” who has just pushed her bike all the way across town. No, don't bother inviting Miriam into the house with —

“Stick your bike over there by the tree. That's where I usually chain mine up,” Laura says, holding the door open.

Slowly I wheel my bike over to the tree and chain it up where it's safe, where you can't see it from the street, even though no one would steal a bike around here anyway.

When I turn around, Laura is still standing in the doorway.

“Come on in! It's cold!”

Every house has its own smell, but maybe I'm the only one who notices. Whenever I visit Ines or Suse, the
strange smell puts me off a bit. It smells different. It smells like other food, other soap, carpet and drapes, like dogs or canaries, maybe.

Here it smells like wood and wax.

Laura takes my jacket, half pulling it off my back, and hangs it in a corner with the others. I hear music.

We go into the kitchen. Something's bubbling. It's the coffee machine. Laura pulls the rest of the gumballs out of her bag and puts them on the table. She opens a cupboard and pulls out three mugs.

The kitchen isn't very big. There's a table by the window — an old wooden table full of dents. Everything in here seems to be made of wood — the floor, the kitchen cabinets, the doors — all brown and waxed. Scattered around are little pots filled with herbs.

Phillip is sitting at the kitchen counter ignoring me. Laura smiles at me. She fetches sugar, and milk from the refrigerator. She pours the milk into a little pot and puts it on the stove.

“This is the first single from their new CD,” Phillip says. “I can burn it for you.”

“Is it worth it?” asks Laura, stirring the milk with a whisk.

“Of course. But you really have to listen to it. I'm going to their concert in June.”

“I don't have the money,” says Laura.

“Really? Come on, you've got to be able to manage thirty Euros. Man, they're coming right to our area, you've got to go.”

“We'll see. There's lots of time until June,” Laura says.

The milk is getting hot. Laura stirs faster and takes the pot off the stove. Phillip takes the coffee pot off the machine and hands it to Laura. She fills a cup, adds a splash of milk and hands the mug to Phillip. Then she pours coffee into the other two mugs and fills them with milk. I sit down at the table, feeling like wood myself, because I don't know how to move, whether I should, whether I should say something or not.

Laura sits down at the table across from me and pushes the mug and the sugar bowl toward me. She smiles, and then she looks right at me and says, “Holy shit, do you even like coffee?” Then she starts laughing and can't stop. And somehow it's nice. It means Phillip finally shuts up, I have a coffee sitting in front of me and enough sugar to cover the Alps. While Laura is laughing, I put five spoonfuls in my mug. Stir it. Pull the chair closer to the table.

And then I sit there and listen to Phillip ramble on. Laura listens and smiles at me every once in awhile and at some point she gets out some cookies.

It's a little coffee party. I just sit there and warm up again, my hands thaw out. Laura rolls herself a cigarette and one for me, too, and I get a bit tired, even though coffee is supposed to keep you awake. But it's so sweet, and what with the cookies, and the cigarettes that wrap me up in smoke, and another new song on the radio, it's just so comfortable. One of those moments that just fits, that just feels right. You've eaten and drunk, you're not
cold or sick. Those are moments that feel like fluffy fat cats sitting on the windowsill with their eyes closed. Listening to U2.

Laura is asking me little questions that she nudges over just like the cookies. Whether I've seen a certain movie. Whether I've ever played tennis. Whether my grandparents are still alive. Funny questions, but I answer them — sometimes yes, sometimes no, not much more than that.

And then it happens. Just like it always does, and just like always, I notice it far too late.

I start to hum. I don't know why I do it. It just happens, when I'm listening, or thinking about something, or writing. It's kind of like people who unconsciously let their tongues hang out of their mouths, except without the drooling.

Phillip is going on about how stupid some book was that he read “...and I struggled through three hundred and twenty-five pages and at the end all I could think was, so that's it? That's the whole thing? Three hundred and twenty-five pages.” Then he shakes his head and Laura grins into her coffee cup.

Phillip suddenly looks over at me like he's angry, and I think, what an idiot. Then I realize that I'm doing it again. I'm humming.

Shit. I stop immediately. Maybe Laura didn't notice.

But she looks at me and says, “Can you sing, too?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“No.” Have never sung. Don't sing. Can't sing.

“What can you do, then?”

“Pardon?”

“Well, everyone can do something, can't they?”

“Yeah?” I ask. Right. I can spell my own name. I can still recite the poem “Erlking.”

“I can recite ‘Erlking.'” Terrific. Now I have really made a bad impression.

“I used to know ‘The Bell,'” Phillip says.

“That's a really long one, isn't it?” Laura asks.

“Maybe,” he says. “I don't know it any more.”

“You see?” Laura says. “You still know ‘Erlking' off by heart. I don't.”

“You don't want me to say it now, though, do you?” I can just see myself standing on the table reciting ‘Erlking,' and tomorrow the whole school will hear about it and I'll be disgraced forever, and here I wanted to graduate, or at least try to.

“Only if you want to,” says Phillip, grinning.

“Another time, maybe.”

Maybe? Never!

***

And before I know it, it's nine o'clock.

“I have to go now.”

And then I do. I ride home and wake up a bit, ask myself whether I've been sleeping, wonder what I was actually doing there in her kitchen for all those hours.

7

Mum is still up.

“Where were you?”

“Out.”

“Where?”

“At a friend's house. Someone in my class.”

“Do I know her?”

“No.” (I hardly know her myself.)

“Have you been smoking?”

“No, but the others were.”

“You're not starting up with that shit, are you?”

“No.”

“So whose house were you at?”

“Laura's.”

“Laura. Ah. Have you done your homework?”

“Yes.”

“How was school?”

“Same as always.”

“Nothing new?”

“No. How about you?”

“No.”

“Okay, then. Good night.” I go to my room, get undressed, wash, brush my teeth like a good girl. Turn out the light and fall asleep.

***

Today is another day. And tomorrow will be another one. And then there will be others. But then again I could step out the front door and a huge rain could come down and sweep everything away. Or a big asteroid could hit BOOM. It happened to the dinosaurs. Could happen again.

I stay in bed.

Then I get up and go to school. I'm just putting my bike in the rack as the first bell goes and Suse has one more smoke and Ines and Laura go to our classroom, and as they're going in the door I'm still fidgeting with my bike lock. I go to another washroom, make a face at myself in the mirror and arrive in the classroom at the same time as Suse.

Quickly, quickly. Don't look anyone in the eye. I'm in a very bad mood. I'm tired. Yes, I overslept. I just don't want to talk about it. So? The whole world can just leave me alone. I don't need you.

Maybe the asteroid or the flood will come today, and I'll be the only one who's ready for it. The only one who will smile when it happens, because I predicted it.

I'm cool and calm. And very bored.

I don't want to look at Laura.

What is it about her that makes me feel so odd? Why does everything run so fast inside my head when she's around, so fast that I can't even grasp my own thoughts?

That I'm feeling so stupid. That I'm thinking that the first thing she told the others this morning was the story about me and “Erlking.” Or about me doing the humming thing.

I don't want to look at Laura. And then I do. She is draped over her book scribbling something. She looks back, her green eyes flashing. She smiles, turns back to her book.

Suse leans over to me.

“Hey, I called you yesterday. Where were you?”

Didn't Laura tell her?

“Went for a ride on my bike. When did you call?”

“Around six.”

“I must have got home right after that.”

I'm really being silly. Who cares whether I was at Laura's place yesterday? And the thing with “Erlking,” too. Who cares?

Sometimes it's like I say something and at the same time I am standing next to this Miriam, thinking, it's bullshit. Everthing you say is one big pile of bullshit.

But I don't want to tell Suse that I was at Laura's. I don't want Suse to ask me what we did, or why I was there. I don't want her to imagine what Laura's place looks like, or what it was like sitting in her kitchen drinking coffee.

She'll point out that I don't even drink coffee. She'll
want to know why I'm suddenly a coffee drinker. And what we were doing. And I'll say we were just sitting around talking and she'll say about what? And I'll say this and that, and Suse will say what kind of this and that?

Instead she'll just think of me as plain old Miriam who rode around town on her bike a bit and then went home when it got dark. Because that fits better. Because she can imagine that.

Today is Friday and that means the weekend.

“What are you doing this weekend?” she asks.

What am I doing this weekend? I am fifteen now. At fifteen you can't do much of anything. I can maybe stay out until ten o'clock on my own, without a babysitter. I can't drink alcohol. I can't smoke. And I can't have sex.

So what do we do on the weekends?

Suse's going to be with her boyfriend. Ines is telling her parents she's going to a girlfriend's house, but she's also going to be with her boyfriend.

Sometimes there's a concert in the gym, and if we're lucky, we get to go, and if we're really lucky, it's even good. Maybe someone will have a party. In some bars like the Erdbeereis you can get them to serve you alcohol if you're fifteen. There are possibilities.

At least I don't live in one of the villages around here, because they're even smaller than this small town I live in. At least here there are ways to get out of town. There's a small train station, there are buses, I have my bike.

Sometimes I just hope something will happen. Something that will take my breath away. Something
more than “Ina made out with Patrick,” or “Simone slept with what's his name” or “Matthias was so out of it that he puked for three hours.” That's what people around here usually mean when they talk about “something happening.”

And I'm there, too, hanging around, wherever — in the bar, drinking illegally, at a party, or maybe even at a concert, on a good weekend. The others get drunk, I get drunk, we argue, make out, dance. I'm there, too. Someone's the first to puke, someone's the last. I'm not saying that I'm better or different. It's just that when we wake up the next day, when I wake up, everything's the same and nothing has happened — nothing — even though they're all talking about it. Nothing has happened. Everything has just stayed the way it was. Everything's the same as always, except maybe I have a headache.

Every Friday I feel like I did the other day up at the chapel. I recognize, I feel and I know there is more to it than this. I believe in it and hope. It hurts a bit, but in a good way.

What are we doing this weekend?

Nothing. Nobody's doing anything. A few kids might know someone with a car. Then they can drive somewhere. To the beach, up to the mountains. Maybe someone has their own apartment. A couple will go to the movies and get a pizza. Or drink. Watch a video. A lot of kids will do nothing. Nothing at all. They'll sit around with Mum and Dad all weekend in front of the television.
Mum will bring out some snacks and Dad will get himself a beer and they'll all watch some movie or other. Then Mum and Dad will get tired and first one will go up to bed and then the other, and the last one left doesn't dare turn off the TV. Maybe you'll finish off the dregs of Dad's beer. Or maybe you'll sit in your room with the door locked and turn up the music and think how nice it would be to know someone with a car who could drive you to the beach or the mountains. You can go just about anywhere in a car.

And then you turn up the music just a tad, until Mum or Dad yells that it's too loud.

This town is so small it makes me wish I could grow long legs and run away, grow wings and fly. Something like that.

On Friday afternoon Suse has gone home sick, and Ines has to look after her little sister on the weekend, so see you around — maybe in the bar, or at the supermarket on Saturday when we're out shopping with Mummy.

What am I doing here? If I was a bird and had wings, I would fly away.

But I can't. I'm Miriam, I'm here, I'm fucked, I'm stuck. Loser.

So, what are we doing this weekend?

“What are you doing this weekend?” It's Laura standing at the door.

“Don't know.” I'm walking toward the door, down the hall with the stone floor with snail shells embedded in it.

“What are Suse and Ines doing?”

“Suse is sick and Ines has to babysit.” I say. I open the door to the schoolyard. Walk to the bike rack. “What about you?”