I have to go out. I have to do something, right now. My room is too small. It’s afternoon again, and it’s always the same. Too much the same, too small. Not just my room but this whole house, this town. I can’t breathe here any more.
I get on my bike and ride — away from our house, fast, down the streets, away, faster, right out to the country roads. I ride and the cold rips my skin off with its claws. I get a cramp in my side. That’s good. I’m freezing my ass off. That’s good, too, because I can feel it all. I’m not hibernating like the other marmots any more. My heart is beating faster as I pump my way up the hill.
At the chapel I get off my bike. Tomorrow I’m going to be really stiff, but I don’t care.
I look down. There’s our school, our house and everything, but that’s not all, there’s more. All around are fields and forest. And beyond them the world keeps going.
The town looks so small; I’m so far away.
I stay until I get too cold. Then I get on my bike and coast back down the hill.
I’ve never been the new kid. Everyone here knows me. We’ve always all played together, or not. Evelyn was my sandbox friend. Then we made friends with Katrin and when they didn’t like me any more, I played with Christian and Maja. And then I didn’t, but somehow that didn’t matter. Everyone knows me; probably nothing I do would surprise them.
I imagine what it would be like if I were from Mars, and I accidentally landed on this planet in this small town in the middle of nowhere. What would it be like not to know these streets?
I’m pushing my bike now. The trees are bare and a pale winter sun is shining. The sky is shimmering with cold. I’m wearing gloves, a hat, a scarf, layer upon layer...and I’m freezing. The cold is biting my face. I can feel it in my nose, on my cheeks, on my chin. I’m freezing, my face is freezing.
It’s the end of February. I walk along and look at everything around me. I look at the houses. At the old lady who sits by her window staring up at the sky every day. A cat running along the fence. A lost glove that someone has stuck on a fencepost.
There’s my old kindergarten. When I was in a bad mood I would wait there for my brother, clinging to the iron gate, holding onto the bars and swinging the gate back and forth every time someone came to pick up their kid.
I keep walking. There’s the spot where I fell when we were playing some war game. I was wearing a new pair of shoes that Grandma had bought me the day before — shoes with smooth soles. When we all had to run, I slipped and broke a tooth. And my nose was bleeding.
Sometimes people move here, and they are the new people. They know people we’ve never met, streets we’ve never played in.
Once I sent my penpal in Berlin a few pictures to show her what it looks like here.
When you’re new, no one expects anything from you, no one expects you to be the same as you’ve always been. Because they don’t know you and don’t know what you’re like. You are the new person, so they don’t know that when you were eight you laughed so hard that strawberry milk came out your nose. They don’t know that you didn’t get along with a certain teacher and have hated chemistry ever since. Or the way you looked when you were twelve.
At some point I stopped writing to that penpal.
When I go home now no one will be there. I’ll make something to eat and then eat it and...
Someone is standing at the corner waving at me. When I get closer, I see that it’s Laura and some guy. They’re standing in front of a gumball machine.
“Do you have any change?” she asks me.
I dig a few coins out of my bag.
Laura says a quick thank-you and immediately throws a coin into the machine. Then she turns the handle and out roll a couple of gumballs.
“Shit!” She grabs the balls and sticks them in my hand. Then she puts in more money.
“Laura,” the guy says, “it’s bloody cold out here!”
But Laura is staring at the little trap door like a hypnotized rabbit, as more gumballs roll out.
“Fucking shit! It’s not happening! I want the bloody thing. And now!”
She throws in the rest of the money, but again only gumballs come out.
I’m standing there with a hand full of red, blue and green gumballs. Laura turns the handle again desperately, but nothing happens.
“Are you sure you don’t have any more change?” she asks the guy.
He shakes his head. He’s wearing a necklace just like hers, with little red beads.
“You neither?” she says, turning to me.
“No, sorry.” I’m standing here like an idiot holding these bloody gumballs that probably don’t even taste any good.
“Laura, I’m freezing!” he says.
Laura doesn’t say anything.
“The machine will still be here tomorrow!”
Laura smacks her hand against the machine, takes another look behind the trap door, and suddenly sticks out her lower lip.
“Man, it isn’t fair! I must have put five Euros in that thing!”
“Life isn’t fair, Laura.” The guy takes her hand and pulls her away and they run off down the street, while I just stand there holding the gumballs and getting mad. I look around for a trash can, and then Laura turns around.
“Hey, where did you go?”
What does she mean, where did I go?
“Or do you have other plans?” she says. Then she comes up to me, takes one of the gumballs, sticks it in her mouth and bites into it. It cracks.
“Shit, it’s frozen.” But she keeps chewing. She grabs me by the hand holding the gumballs and pulls me toward the guy.
He takes a gumball, too, looks at me and says coolly, “And who are you?”
“Miriam.”
Idiot. If only I wasn’t standing here with my hand full of these cruddy gumballs that I can’t just throw away any more because Laura came back.
Wait a minute. I can still leave. I can say that I do have plans and then just hand over the gumballs or toss them in the garbage.
“This is Phillip. Phil,” says Laura, and she takes the gumballs out of my hand and puts them in her bag, except for one, which she sticks in my mouth. “Miriam is in my class.” Laura takes his hand, sticks it in my free one and shakes them both.
I feel the cold, round candy on my tongue. It tastes red.
“In your class, how nice,” says Phillip. He lets go of my hand and shoves his in his jacket pocket.
Crack.
It’s definitely red.