Free The Storyteller by Antonia Michaelis Page A

put out her hand. “I’m not telling ‘that friend of mine’ anything. Give me the key.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Give me the key. I’ll go. I’ll only miss a regular music class. No test.”
    He laughed, shaking his head. “Anna Leemann, do you really think I would give you the key to our place?”
    “I believe,” she said, “that you’ve got seven minutes before the French test starts. And that you need all the time you can get to pass it. I don’t eat little children. Or at least, not often. Give me the key.”
    It wouldn’t work. He’d just tell her that she was completely crazy. Of course, he would. She knew it. He said, “You’re completely crazy.” Then he got off his bike.
    “Six minutes until the test,” Anna said. “Run.”
    Abel gave her the ring with the key. She closed her fingers around it.
    “Take my bike. Do you know the Aldi supermarket in the Seaside District? We live on Amundsen Street. It’s just behind it. Number 18. The entrance is in a huge backyard; you have to walk between the concrete blocks, behind the parking lot.”
    “I think I can manage to read the numbers on the doors.” Anna smiled. “Which school does she go to?” she asked slyly. “I mean … what if she realized she hasn’t got the key and is waiting at school, because she thinks maybe you’ll come get her or …”
    He frowned. “Maybe you’re right. You know that school near the old stadium? Behind the Netto market? You have to make the turn across from the gas station on Wolgaster Street. She’ll be somewhere between her school and number 18 Amundsen Street. Just give her the key; she’ll manage the rest by herself.”
    “Hurry up,” Anna said. She saw him walk across the white layer of snow that had fallen on the schoolyard. When she was already perched on the too-high seat of his bike, he turned. He shouted something she didn’t understand. Maybe it was “Thank you.”
    Neither Anna nor Abel saw Bertil. He was standing at the window of the student lounge, watching them.
    Anna went to Micha’s school first. She wondered how she’d explain her absence from music class. Magnus would write something for her. I mean, he was a doctor, wasn’t he? But how would she explain to Magnus why she had to miss class?
    The supermarket parking lot and the elementary school looked different in the snow—cleaner, friendlier, and more peaceful somehow. A lot of small children were running around in theschoolyard, throwing snowballs at each other. Nobody was in a hurry to go home. Anna looked around, searching for a pink down jacket with an artificial fur collar, but she didn’t see one. She spotted a young woman with curly blond hair, who looked as if she might be a teacher, and made her way toward her, through the screaming, laughing, snowball-throwing children in their bright-colored winter clothes.
    “Excuse me,” she began. “I’m looking for Micha … Micha Tannatek. Her brother sent me to pick her up. She forgot her key.”
    “Oh, Micha,” the young woman said. “Yeah, Micha’s in my class. Does she have to walk home alone?”
    That’s none of your business, Anna wanted to say. Abel would have said that. She didn’t.
    “Most days,” she answered. “Except Fridays.”
    The young woman nodded. “Are you her sister?”
    “No,” said Anna. “Her cousin. Has she left already?”
    “Yeah. Yeah, she has,” the woman said thoughtfully, and Anna felt that the teacher had as many questions as she did. “She said she has to go out to the village of Wieck,” the teacher said. “To where the Ryck flows into the sea and all the ships are moored.
Has to
. So serious. She told me that she has to look at the ships. Today she was going on and on about ships in class … there was a green ship with yellow sails that she talked about.”
    “Rudder,” Anna corrected. “With a yellow rudder. Thank you. Then I’d better go and see if I can find her in Wieck.”
    “Well, you might meet her uncle out