The Secret Room (12 page)

“Shallots!” she cried and held it up triumphantly. “It says shallots!”

My nose got colder as we went from stand to stand. It was happy to smell all the herbs and spices, but I could feel it starting to turn red.

“It's almost winter here,” I said. “But it hasn't even been fall yet.”

Ines laughed. “Maybe tomorrow it'll suddenly be spring again.”

We drank hot apple cider and bought roasted chestnuts from a very old man.

The man suddenly reminded me of the Nut Bird. Here I was at the market, drinking apple cider and peeling chestnuts—and Arnim was sitting on his iron bed, waiting for me to come back!

“Look!” said Ines. “Tom and Anna are over there with their mom! I've been meaning to go by their place this week to thank them for looking after you. The telephone was always busy when I tried to call...”

“Yeah,” I said, “they talk on the phone a lot, those people.”

Thank heavens that the phone had been busy
, I thought. Because there was no doubt about it: Tom and Anna had to be the neighbors' kids.

The neighbors' kids, who I was supposed to have spent the last few days with ...

Ines stood on her tiptoes and waved over the crowd of people.

“Andrea!” she called. I suddenly felt cold with fear. Because now, now Tom and Anna would come over with their mother and Ines would find out that I hadn't gone to see them even once. It brought tears to my eyes.

Everything had almost been working out! The fireplace and the feeling that Ines needed me to carry the basket and read her list out loud ... and now it was all going to shatter into a thousand pieces.

A plump woman with curly blond hair waved back and pushed her two children through the vegetable displays and sacks of spices directly towards us.

“Hello!” she cried. “Ines! I haven't seen you in ages!”

The kids both had curly blond hair like their mother. They just stood there staring at me.

“What a great coincidence to run into you here,” said Ines. “I've been meaning to thank you for looking after Achim a little. Your phone's been busy the whole time ...”

The woman looked at Ines blankly. “We had the telephone disconnected,” she explained, frowning. “Because we were on vacation. Didn't I tell you?”

I thought it would have been really convenient to have an asthma attack right then. But I didn't have one. I looked from Ines to the other woman and back again. The smile faded from Ines's face, and I made myself as small as possible. Now the cat was out of the bag.

“You—you were—oh God, I remember,” she said very quietly. “Yes, of course. You told me. Greece, right? You were in Greece?”

Tom and Anna nodded proudly, and Tom quickly stuck his tongue out at me.

“We got really tan,” said Anna and stretched out her arms.

“We always are after vacation,” said Tom—more to me than to Ines. “We go away somewhere every year. You're really pale. You've definitely never been overseas.”

I wanted to say something back, but I couldn't because I had to pay attention to the conversation that was happening over our heads.
Maybe
, I thought,
I should plunge into the crowd of people and run away and just never come back. Now that Ines knew what a liar I was
.

“I'm such an idiot!” I heard her say. “I'm such a complete idiot! Andrea, you know what I did? I sent Achim over to you so that he wouldn't be alone all day while we were at work.” She dropped her voice to a whisper, but of course I could hear her anyway.

“And he didn't say anything,” she continued. “He was alone the whole time and didn't say anything!” She dropped to her knees so that her eyes were right at the height of mine and looked at me very earnestly.

“You didn't want us to be worried,” she said. “Is that right? That's why you pretended that Tom and Anna and their parents were there?”

“Well yeah, kind of,” I answered pitifully.

Tom and Anna kept staring at me like an alien insect.

I felt awful. Actually, I should have been relieved that Ines wasn't mad. But instead I was ashamed. Ines thought I had lied to be polite, when really I hadn't had the slightest idea that the neighbors hadn't been there!

“Achim lives with us now,” Ines said to the two blond kids.

“Really?” said Tom, but you could see that he would have rather said something else, something mean.

“Maybe you'll be in the same class soon,” Ines said as she stood up again.

While the two women chatted above us, Tom looked me up and down with contempt. Now I saw that he was a lot taller than me. He also looked a lot stronger—not quite like Karl, but close.

“You're going into sixth grade?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Funny” he said thoughtfully. “You look so small and thin. Is there something wrong with you?”

The girl pulled at his sleeve. “Leave him alone, Tom,” she whispered.

“Nothing's wrong with me,” I said and, suddenly remembering the lion, took my inhaler out of my pocket. “I just have asthma.” And I held the small container up to Tom like a weapon. I didn't press down on it.

Tom wasn't a lion.

But he still looked impressed.

“Asthma,” he repeated.

“That's right,” I said. “And you don't have it.”

I tried to sound as proud as I could. Maybe it would work and Tom would think that asthma was something great-like a cell phone or a mountain bike.

“Is Ines your mom now?” asked Anna.

I shook my head. “Of course not! That doesn't just happen overnight!”

And Tom nodded—somehow satisfied, I thought.

Then Ines decided that we had to go home and pulled me away.

“I'm incredibly sorry, Achim,” she said on the way home. “Would you like to go over and play with them tomorrow?”

“I think I actually like playing by myself better,” I answered quietly.

“Whatever you like,” said Ines.

I think we were both very relieved. She was happy that I liked playing by myself; I was happy she wasn't angry.

At home, Ines asked cautiously if I wanted to take a nap since I was still getting better after having been sick. And though I actually didn't want to take a nap, I nodded and slipped into bed.

By the time I had woken up again, she had already gone to the flower shop.

I wanted to go look at the apple trees before I went back to see Arnim in the secret room. Maybe the trees would help me think.

Because I had no idea what to do next.

I hadn't gotten any smarter since I started, but I had done so much already...

Someone was already sitting on the swing in the yard.

It was Paul, and he was swinging back and forth and looked like he was thinking about something too.

“Hello, Achim,” he said. “You were sleeping when I came home, and I didn't want to wake you up.” He moved over. “Do you want to swing too? It's great for clearing your head.”

“Hm, maybe,” I said.

We swung together for a while in the blue afternoon and didn't have to talk at all. We both knew that the other was mulling over important thoughts.

“We're both just lost in thought,” said Paul suddenly, and I nodded, and it felt really nice.

In my head the birds were singing the old song:

Then listen, listen: There's a key you'll have to find only then will you manage to cut the line and break the shackles from the stone..
.

“Where would you look for a key?” I asked Paul. “If you had lost one?”

“You mean when it's not hanging on the key rack? Or somewhere else you might expect to find it?”

“Hm.”

“I'd ask Ines,” he answered. “Ines puts keys in the strangest places. By mistake, it seems. Once I found the car keys in the butter dish in the refrigerator.”

I giggled.

“Paul,” I asked a little later. “What are you thinking about?”

He sighed. “About a bunch of things. One of them is yard work. I came home early today to deal with it finally. But I just don't know where to start. Look at this plant, for example.”

He pointed to the wall of the house between the two hallway windows on the second floor.

“I water it when the sun is out, and in winter I cover it with fir sprigs, I fertilize it—I really do everything that it could possibly want. But it still loses its flowers constantly. It blooms, white and dark violet, but every time I think that I've done everything right, all its flowers fall off again.”

“It's the wind,” I said. “Its flowers are especially fragile.”

Then Paul shook his head. “They're actually incredibly hard,” he objected. “And besides … maybe I should buy a different fertilizer. Even though ...”

He fell silent and shook his head.

“Hm?” I asked.

“Well—it blooms even in the winter. A totally exotic creature. It's just the flowers don't stay.”

I looked at the flowers, alternately white and dark.

I looked at them, and we kept swinging a little, and then—all of a sudden ...

I realized what it was.

I felt cold and hot, and something tingled through my body like an army of ants. Because of what I realized.

“Paul,” I whispered. “Paul, how long have you had that vine?”

“Oh—a long time,” he answered. “Four years, five? No, longer.” He wrinkled his forehead and thought about it. “Right, it was in the summer, after... when Arnim... when he was no longer with us. So seven years.”

“Did you plant it for him? For Arnim?”

“No,” answered Paul. “Honestly, I didn't plant it at all. One day, it was just suddenly there. The seeds must have blown over here from somewhere ...”

“That's what I thought,” I muttered.

And I looked up into the cold blue sky, where a flock of geese was flying overhead.

The plant.

The plant was the single connection between the world behind the door with the silver handle and the world where Ines and Paul lived.

Arnim had absentmindedly played with its tendrils, and Paul watered and fertilized it.

And it was always losing all its petals before they faded—summer and winter alike.

What did it all mean?

“I'm going to start doing something,” said Paul. He jumped up from the swing. “Raking leaves together would be nice. That's one thing that doesn't require thinking.”

Oh, how I wished that I didn't have to think anymore either!

Not to have to rack my brain thinking about what would happen next!

“Can I rake leaves too?” I asked.

But Paul said sternly, “It's out of the question. Then you'll sweat and then you'll start shivering and Ines will wring my neck because you'll get sick again. You go inside where it's warm and do something un-dangerous.”

I grinned and nodded.

But, a little later, as I walked up the narrow staircase, I was no longer grinning.

Something un-dangerous.

Paul had no idea.

“Arnim,” I said. “Have you ever thought about the plant?”

“About what plant?” asked Arnim.

His voice came from under the bed. I knelt down and stuck my head under it.

“What are you doing?”

Arnim was crouching in a corner with his legs drawn up, and in the darkness there, his green eyes had no color at all. His red hair suddenly looked stringy and tired.

“Nothing,” he said. “I just didn't want to see them gathering.”

“Gathering?”

“The birds. They've been flying across the sky all day, practicing their formations for the long trip. Turning to the left and to the right without losing each other...”

I looked out the window. “None of them are there now. Come out.”

And I gave him my hand.

When he was standing in front of me, he hung his head.

“You'll be with them when they go, Arnim,” I said insistently. “Just be a little patient, just a tiny bit longer.”

“I've been patient for seven years,” he replied. “And I can't really do anything else except be patient. All day and all night I'm patient. It makes me so tired, Achim. So incredibly tired. My longing is growing and growing, and eventually it might just devour me completely.”

“You can't think about that right now. Because you have to help me.”

I pulled him to the window.

Outside the top tendrils of the vine were swaying back and forth in the autumn wind like a large insects antennae.

On one of them, two new, fragrant blossoms had opened: a white one and a violet one—so dark that it almost looked black.

“Look closely now, Arnim,” I said. “And try to remember: Was this plant always here?”