Why We Took the Car (10 page)

CHAPTER 17

“Seriously, you have to do something. If you don't, you're crazy. Let's drive there. Who cares if you think it's embarrassing? Nothing is embarrassing in a stolen Lada. Put on your awesome jacket, grab your drawing, and get your ass into the car.”

“Never.”

“We'll wait until it's getting dark, and then you get your ass into the car.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I'm not invited.”

“You're not invited! So what? I'm not invited either. And you know why? Because of course the Russian idiot doesn't get invited. But do you know why
you
weren't invited? See — you don't even know. But I do.”

“Then say it, oh, Wise One: because I'm boring and ugly.”

Tschick shook his head. “You're not ugly. Or maybe you are, I don't know. But that's got nothing to do with it. The reason is because there's no reason to invite you. You don't stand out. You have to get noticed, man.”

“How am I supposed to stand out? Come to school drunk every day?”

“No. My God. But if I were you and looked like you and lived here and had clothes like yours, I'd have gotten a hundred invitations.”

“Do you need clothes?”

“Don't change the subject. As soon as it gets dark, we're driving down there.”

“No way.”

“We're not going to go to the party. We're just going to drive past.”

What an idiotic idea. Or, to be more precise, there were three ideas, and every single one of them was idiotic: show up without an invitation, drive a stolen Lada all the way across Berlin, and — craziest of all — take the drawing with us. Because one thing was clear: Tatiana would surely figure out the score when she saw the drawing. There was no way I was going.

While Tschick was driving me to Werder, the town where the party was, I kept muttering that I didn't want to go. At first I said that he should turn around, that I'd had a change of heart. Then I said that we didn't have the exact address. Then I swore that there was no way I would get out of the car when we arrived.

I kept my hands folded under my arms for the entire trip. This time it wasn't because I was afraid of leaving fingerprints but because I was shaking. Beyoncé was sitting on the dashboard in front of me and shaking too.

Despite my anxiety, I realized that Tschick was driving more carefully than he had earlier in the day. He avoided roads with multiple lanes and eased his foot off the gas as we approached red traffic lights so we wouldn't be sitting at any intersections letting people look into the car. At one point we had to pull over to the side of the road because there was a brief rain shower and the windshield wipers didn't work. But we were nearly out of the city by then. It poured, but only for five minutes. A passing thunderstorm. Afterward the air smelled fantastic.

As we started off again, I peered through the windshield and watched as the wind pushed the water droplets apart. It suddenly occurred to me how strange it was to be cruising in a car that didn't belong to us through the evening streets of the city, then along the tree-lined boulevards of West Berlin, past a lonely gas station, and then on little roads outside the city toward Werder. Eventually the red sun disappeared completely behind dark clouds. I didn't say another word, and Tschick was silent as well. And I was happy that he was so determined to get to the party that I supposedly didn't want to go to. I hadn't thought of anything else for three months — and now here it was and I was about to come across as the biggest loser ever, right in front of Tatiana.

It turned out the house wasn't hard to find. We probably could have found it if we'd just driven on the streets along the lake, but instead, as we passed the sign announcing we'd entered Werder, we spotted two kids on mountain bikes with sleeping bags strapped onto them — it was André and some other idiot. Tschick followed them but drove far enough behind them that they didn't notice. And then we saw the house. Redbrick, with a front yard full of bikes, and lots of noise coming from the backyard, which faced the lake. A hundred meters ahead of us. I slid down from my seat into the footwell as Tschick rolled down his window and hung his arm casually out of the car and drove past the scene at a snail's pace. There were about a dozen people in front of the house, standing around in the yard and in the open doorway — people with glasses and bottles in their hands, talking on phones, smoking cigarettes. There were loads more in the back. Familiar and unfamiliar faces, girls all tarted up. And like the sun, right in the middle, Tatiana. She may not have invited the biggest losers or the Russian, but she seemed to have invited everyone else with a pulse. We slowly passed the house. Nobody had seen us, and it occurred to me that I didn't have any idea how I was going to give the drawing to Tatiana. I began to think seriously about the idea of just tossing it out the window. Somebody would find it and take it to her. But before I could do something stupid, Tschick had stopped the car and hopped out. I watched him, horrified. I don't know if it's always so embarrassing to have a crush on somebody. Apparently I'm not very good at it. As I was debating whether to remain in the footwell and pull my jacket over my head or to get back into my seat and put an it-wasn't-my-idea look on my face, fireworks started going off behind the redbrick house, exploding red and yellow in the sky, and almost everyone ran into the backyard. The only people left out front were André and Tatiana, who'd come to say hi to him.

And Tschick.

Tschick was standing directly in front of them. They stared at him as if they didn't recognize him — and it's entirely possible they didn't recognize him. Because Tschick had my sunglasses on. And he was also wearing a pair of my jeans and my gray jacket. We'd spent the day going through my closet and I'd given Tschick three pairs of pants, a couple of shirts, a sweater, and a few other things. As a result he no longer looked like some hopeless Russian hardship case, but more like a soap opera star. And that's not meant to sound like an insult. But he just didn't look like himself anymore — he'd even put gel in his hair. I saw him start talking to Tatiana and saw her answer. She looked pissed. Tschick motioned to me behind his back. As if in a trance, I got out of the car and as for what happened next, don't ask me. I have no idea. I was suddenly next to Tatiana with the drawing in my hand and I think she looked at me with the same pissed-off look she'd glared at Tschick with. But I didn't notice.

I said, “Here.”

I said, “Beyoncé.”

I said, “A drawing.”

I said, “For you.”

Tatiana stared at the drawing, and before she had looked up from it I heard Tschick say to André, “Nah, no time. We have something to take care of.” He nudged me and went back to the car. I followed. Then the engine fired up. I pounded my fist on the dashboard as Tschick shifted into second gear and crept toward the end of the cul-de-sac.

“Want to see something cool?” he asked.

I didn't answer. I couldn't.

“Want to see something cool?” Tschick asked again.

“Do whatever you want!” I yelled. It felt as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, such a feeling of relief.

Tschick revved the engine and raced toward the end of the cul-de-sac. Then he yanked the steering wheel first to the right and then the left and pulled the emergency brake at the same time. The car did a 180 right in the middle of the street and I nearly flew out the window.

“That doesn't always work,” Tschick said proudly. “Doesn't always work.”

He accelerated past the redbrick house and I saw out of the corner of my eye the people on the sidewalk. Time seemed to be standing still. Tatiana stood there with the drawing in her hand, André with his mountain bike, and Natalie had just run around from the side of the house.

The Lada sped into the curve in the road and I pounded on the dashboard.

“Step on it!” I shouted.

“I am.”

“Faster!” I yelled, watching my fists pound the dash. Relief does not begin to express the way I felt.

CHAPTER 18

I walked down the dark, narrow corridor. I could hardly make out a thing. Then I went left into the tunnel where the rails ran and pressed my back to the wall. I could see the two barrels and an open door. I saw Tschick looking around a corner. I was right on his heels now and even from behind I could tell that he had no idea what he was doing. But he kept walking around like an idiot for another couple minutes, never realizing I was there. Then he stopped right out in the open. I raised my shotgun and blasted him in the back. A fountain of blood sprayed out of him. He dropped to the ground and didn't move. “Shit,” he said, “where do you keep coming from? I never see you.” I switched to the chain gun, obliterated his corpse, and hopped around.

“Okay, okay, that'll do. You don't have to rub it in, man.” Tschick pressed
START AGAIN
, but it was hopeless. He just couldn't figure out the lay of the land. You could follow him for hours and he never noticed. And I just destroyed him every time. I was like a world champion at
Doom
, and he didn't have a clue.

He went and got himself another beer.

“What if we just took off?” he asked.

“What?”

“Go on vacation. We don't have anything else to do. We could just go on vacation like normal people.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Hop in the Lada and go.”

“That's not exactly how
normal
people do it.”

“But we could.”

“Nah. Push
START
.”

“Why not?”

“Nah.”

“If I kill you,” said Tschick. “Let's say, if I kill you once in the next five games. Or, no, make it ten.”

“You couldn't kill me if I gave you a hundred chances.”

“Ten.”

He was concentrating hard. I shoved a handful of chips in my mouth and waited until he had picked up a chain saw. Then I let him chop me to bits.

“Seriously,” I said. “Suppose we did.”

We'd pissed away almost the entire day. We'd gone swimming twice. Tschick had told me about his brother. And then he'd discovered the beer in the fridge and helped himself to three bottles. I tried to drink one too. I've tasted beer lots of times, but I never like it. It didn't taste any better this time. I managed to choke down three quarters of the bottle anyway, but it didn't have any effect on me.

“What if they tell on us?”

“They're not going to tell on us. If they were going to, they would have done it by now and the police would have been here already. They have no idea that the Lada was stolen. They only saw us for ten seconds. They probably just thought it belonged to my brother or whatever.”

“Where do you want to go, anyway?”

“I don't care.”

“You know, if you go somewhere, it's helpful to know where you're going.”

“We could go visit my relatives. I have a grandfather in Wallachia.”

“Where does he actually live?”

“What do you mean? In Wallachia.”

“Does he live near here?”

“What?”

“Or somewhere far away, in the middle of nowhere?”

“Not somewhere, man. In Wallachia.”

“It's the same thing.”

“What's the same thing?”

“The middle of nowhere and Wallachia is the same thing.”

“I don't understand.”

“Wallachia is just a word, man,” I said, polishing off my beer. “It's just an expression! Like East Bumfuck or the sticks.”

“It's where my family is from.”

“I thought you were from Russia?”

“Yeah, but part of my family is from Wallachia. My grandfather. And my great-aunt and great-grandfather and . . . what's so funny?”

“It's like having a grandfather in Hickville or BFE.”

“And what's the joke?”

“There's no such place as Hickville! BFE means Bumfuck, Egypt. And Wallachia doesn't exist either. When you say somebody lives in Wallachia it means they live in the boondocks.”

“And the boondocks don't exist either?”

“Nope.”

“But my grandfather lives there.”

“In the boondocks?”

“You're getting on my nerves. My grandfather lives in some dipshit town in a place called Wallachia. And we're going to drive there tomorrow.”

He'd gotten serious again, and so had I. “I know a hundred and fifty countries in the world and the names of all their capital cities,” I said, grabbing Tschick's beer and taking a swig. “There's no such place as Wallachia.”

“My grandfather's cool. He always has a cigarette tucked behind each ear. And only one tooth. I was there when I was five or something.”