Not Her

by Noah Fitz

  Marc followed the horde. Many spread out on the wide stairs. The bravest and the fastest disappeared from view.

  He turned to the left and saw bicycles.

  Again, he heard screams, but this time they sounded different somehow. Final. He avoided two students who were vomiting close behind him.

  “Oh God! She’s dead!” said one of the boys. His voice swelled up, became lower, and suddenly got very high.

  Marc grabbed him by the collar. “What’s wrong?”

  The teenager looked up in horror. His nose, covered with pus-filled pimples, was bleeding.

  “S-sarah,” he stammered. “I think she’s dead.”

  The chief inspector let go of the boy and threw himself into the turmoil, evading two screaming girls and stumbling over a bicycle that crashed to the side.

  “She’s dead!” the kids were shouting. “Sarah’s dead!”

  “So is Dustin!” another kid shouted.

  How many children died this time? Marc asked himself, shocked. Nobody knew about Steve Dixon’s tragic death, and he had gone to school here. And for the time being, Yara’s death was thought to have been an accident.

  Marc pushed himself between the tumbling bodies. Panic turned the children into puppets who had no control over themselves.

  “Make way!” he said. “Police!”

  Deeper into the parking lot, he stopped.

  On one of the pillars hung a child’s flaccid body. The face was wrapped in plastic, so Marc could not tell whether it was a boy or a girl. The bizarre scene reminded him of an insect killed by a spider.

  “Dustin!” A teenager with a red cap and a poison-green hoodie knelt next to a second body, which lay in the lot near the pillar. The boy patted the fallen kid’s cheek. “Dustin, wake up!”

  Marc reached into his trouser pocket and took out a small Swiss Army knife, which he always carried with him. With quick movements he cut through the plastic that secured the kid to the pillar. He caught the limp body and felt for a pulse.

  “What’s her name?” he said, looking at the crowd that had gathered. The children avoided his gaze. Marc pulled out a clean cotton handkerchief and wiped the vomit from the girl’s face. “Does anyone have any water?” While he waited for an answer, he put his ear to the girl’s lips, which had already turned dark. No breath, no pulse.

  He grabbed a dark-haired girl by the cold hand. “What’s her name?”

  “Sarah,” the brunette said, handing over a half-empty water bottle.

  Marc washed the gooey mass out of Sarah’s mouth and nose. He shone the light of his cell phone into her oral cavity, checking for blockages. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was not an option. Everything was clogged with half-digested food.

  A tall young man approached Marc. “I’m an EMT,” he said. “I’m not at this school, but maybe I can help.”

  Wulf made room.

  Dustin, the boy on the floor, shifted and groaned softly. Marc moved over to him and lifted his slender upper body a little. “What happened here?”

  “Courage is shit!” someone yelled from the dwindling crowd.

  For a moment Marc thought he saw a familiar face, but then lost it in the crowd. “Has anyone called an ambulance yet?”

  “We don’t know the number,” one of the kids said, a chubby boy standing nearby with his hands in his trouser pockets.

  Marc looked at him in astonishment.

  “Yeah, man, that’s right. We don’t have the number,” the boy said before stepping away from the light.

  “You can order any crap on the internet, but you’re too stupid to dial the emergency number?”

  “It’s 112. Right?” A freckled girl with curly hair and small dimples on her cheeks looked at him fleetingly. “Is Sarah… ?” She didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Yeah,” Marc said, “that number works, too.”

  “I had break yard supervision. I help the teachers keep watch,” said the girl in apparent shame. “But then a fifth grader fell off the climbing frame. They’re playing a dangerous game here. ‘Courage is your Life’ or something.”

  “Do these ribbons have anything to do with it?”

  “Yes. Most of them, anyway. Everybody wants to belong, but nobody knows the exact rules.”

  “Is Sarah dead?!” Dustin said, spitting blood from his distorted mouth. “I didn’t want that! I didn’t mean it.” His fingers clawed into Marc’s forearms. “It was just some stupid challenge. I thought everything was just a game!”

  His eyes were bloodshot, and a red thread of saliva hung from his chin. “T-that carpet knife… Where is the knife?” Dustin felt the ground with his hands like a madman. “It was b-broken… The blade was stuck.” He crawled around on all fours and collapsed again. Fresh blood oozed from the wound on his temple.

  Marc supported him and straightened him into a sitting position.

  Dustin cried. His lips trembled. “I-I-I didn’t mean to.”

  Marc noticed that the teenager was missing a canine tooth. “Who knocked your tooth out?”

  “I pulled it. I did it myself.”

  “Is that why you’re wearing that bracelet?”

  “Y-yes. The tooth was a… like a tribute. A kind of ferry money.” Dustin pronounced every word carefully, mechanically. He seemed on the verge of mental collapse.

  “Who?” Marc said. “Who’s forcing you?”

  “We don’t know his name. He’s God.”

  “Dustin! Look at me, please!”

  The teenager licked his lips as if he wanted to get rid of a bad taste. “It really wasn’t me. I was only supposed to take the plastic…” His mouth opened and closed again. He looked like a suffocating fish. “I can’t breathe! I… can’t breathe!”

  Two paramedics rushed over. Marc was pushed to the side. “Her first!” He pointed to Sarah, but the young EMT was still giving her chest compressions.

  “You can stop CPR,” a woman said. “We have no vital signs.” A second later, Marc heard the high electrical hum of a defibrillator. “Clear!” the woman shouted.

  Sarah’s body twitched. Marc stared at the exposed chest. The bra lay on her stomach, and he saw that the cups were filled with silicone pads. So Sarah was not a girl, he recognized. Did you know that, too? he asked the killer. Why do you kill children? Why?

  “It’s no use,” the woman said, pulling the paddles away from Sarah’s body. “The boy’s dead.” She switched off the device.

  “Boy?” said someone in the crowd. “But Sarah’s a girl.”

  Whispers rustled in the darkness.

  You don’t kill with your own hands, Marc thought. He jumped to his feet and staggered out of the covered area. He, too, drew in less and less air. The fear of failing seemed to eat him up. The longer he thought about it, the uglier the images in his head became.

  He reached for his phone and called his boss to tell her the terrible news.

  Chapter 25

  Marktheide | October Street

  Peer lay in his room. He and most of the other students had been picked up by their parents.

  “Honey?” His mother stuck her head into his room. “Please come into the kitchen.”

  “I don’t want anything,” he said. “Not hungry.” He rubbed his burned thumb and index finger together. The bulging, poorly healing areas on his fingertips still burned.

  “May I join you? Do you want to talk about what happened at school today?”

  Peer shook his head.

  “I usually stay out of such things. But this concerns both of us.” She came in, but instead of sitting on the edge of the bed, she stopped next to the door with her back against the wall. “The police called,” she said after a period of silence.

  Peer remained motionless.

  “They asked me questions I didn’t know how to answer. They’re going to ask you, too.”

  The smell of fried potatoes rose into Peer’s nose. His stomach cramped painfully. “Are you coo
king something sensible again?” He pushed himself up onto his elbows.

  She shrugged her shoulders and smiled sadly. “I want to return to normal life. You should too, my darling. Two years have passed since the accident.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t an accident!” Peer almost told her. Instead, he scurried out from under the blanket and stamped toward his desk.

  “We should finally let go,” he heard his mother say. She was still standing there, kneading her narrow lower lip.

  Peer rummaged through the top drawer and took out a pair of scissors. “You’re right,” he agreed. He cut the ribbons and threw them into the trash. With his eyes lowered, he returned to the bed, kicked off the rumpled blanket, found the cell phone, deleted the game, took out the SIM card, and cut it into tiny pieces with the scissors.

  His mother watched him and raised her eyebrows thoughtfully. “What’re you doing?”

  “I want to come back to life with you,” he lied.

  She watched him indecisively.

  “Come on, let’s eat.” Peer rubbed his fingers together again.

  “It only takes ten minutes,” she said. “You can shower before then. You had gym class today and you smell like sweat.” That sounded like the euphoric babble of a happy person.

  “Is he coming to dinner?” Peer asked. “You don’t even know him. Maybe he’s behind this! Maybe he wants to—”

  “What? Who?”

  “The guy who stalks you and buys you chocolate,” Peer said. “That Immanuel guy! Is he the reason you… ?” Peer stumbled over his own words and clenched his fists. He still held the scissors in his right hand.

  “What’re you talking about, Peer? I had a coffee with him once, and only because we met by chance. We didn’t even have a proper conversation. He mentioned that he lived here once. Like I said, we just happened to run into each other.”

  “Pia was also accidentally hit by a car. The driver fled. And this Immanuel guy just happened to run away after the funeral of my twin sister.”

  “What’re you talking about? He got a new job somewhere. You’re making up something that can’t be true. Pia had alcohol in her blood. The police found a half-empty vodka bottle in her room…” She burst into tears but kept going. “Pia had a secret she didn’t want to talk to me about. I even think… your sister… Pia might have provoked the accident. She was partly responsible for what happened. I read and signed the police report.”

  Peer came toward his mother, the scissors tight in his fist. “My sister was run over,” he said. “And now…” His lower jaw moved as he struggled for words. “Now…” Tears left burning tracks down his cheeks.

  “What’s going on, Peer?” His mother got down on her knees and pulled him close. He put his head on her shoulder and began to sob.

  “I want it to stop,” he whispered.

  His mother nodded. “We’re going to the police. Does what happened at school today have anything to do with Pia’s accident? Did the police hide something from me back then?”

  He tore himself away from her. “Don’t you get it? This was no accident! Now I know who ran over Pia!”

  With those words he stormed into the hallway. He threw on his winter jacket, shoved his feet into warm shoes, and pushed the scissors into his waistband before running out into the cold autumnal dark.

  Chapter 26

  Berlin | Eichwalde

  “Grandma! Daddy’s here!” Luck ran over and jumped into Marc’s arms. “I’m sick and can stay over at your place!”

  “You don’t look that sick,” Marc said. “Man, you’ve grown.” He lifted his son into the air and then put him back on the ground with a strained expression. “What did you eat today? Rocks?”

  “Ha ha, you’re just saying that. Me and Grandma—”

  “Me and Grandma?” Marc asked. “You know what they say. The donkey—”

  “… calls himself first, I know,” Luck said. “But it really was like that. I went down to the basement first when Grandma was in the kitchen. It was only when I almost peed my pants that Grandma dared to come down too.” Luck bit his lower lip because he realized that in his exuberant joy, he had revealed too much about his adventure.

  “What were you doing down there?” Marc asked.

  “Oh, just getting a piece of wire,” his mother said, cutting the boy off. “Look what I made for Lucky. He thinks the ribbons look like fuck, but I ironed them.”

  Marc’s happy face became pale and serious. “What?”

  “Fuck,” his mother said and moved her mouth like a grouchy teacher. “That means—”

  “I know what that word means, Mother. Why do you keep swearing in front of your grandchild?”

  “I said fake, not fuck,” Luck said.

  “You don’t have to parrot everything your grandma says.”

  “I wanted to see where Grandpa hung himself.”

  “Child!” Marc’s mother put her hands to her chest. “Why did you carry up the whole roll?” In the corner next to the door was a large drum around which a thin cable was wound.

  Luck’s forehead turned pink, as did his skinny neck. The blush crept across his cheeks.

  “Luck,” Marc said sternly and gripped his son’s narrow shoulders.

  “I want to be like Peer. But not yet.”

  “Peer?” echoed Marc, uncomprehending. “Peer who?”

  “He lasted five seconds, Tarek said.”

  “Five seconds of what?”

  “I can’t tell you. Traitors do not get a badge.”

  “What are you talking about, Luck?” Marc had to restrain himself from shaking the boy. He looked scared. Marc relaxed, trying to give himself, and his son, a second to compose themselves.

  In the end, it was his mother who spoke up. “He was looking for combination pliers. He wanted to cut off a piece of the wire, but then we both heard something and ran back upstairs.” She smiled crookedly, and her gnarled fingers brushed through Luck’s frizzy hair. She seemed to have a guilty conscience.

  “Mother?” Marc said. “What happened?”

  She was pushing the tablecloth around and couldn’t look him in the eye.

  Luck looked down at the ground.

  “Earlier, I caught him trying to… plug the wire into the socket,” she confessed. “He was filming himself.”

  “Grandma! You’re confusing things again,” Luck said. His eyes sparkled. “I just wanted to build an antenna for my phone.”

  He was lying. Marc knew that immediately, because he knew his son.

  “Oh, child, I may be old, but I didn’t swim in a wash tub.” She turned back to Marc. “I put the pliers and the two pieces of wire in the kitchen. You can do this experiment with your son yourself. The old saying still applies to me: knives, forks, scissors, and flames are not for small children. After all, you are his father. And a policeman. Shall I warm up the meat and cabbage for you? The potatoes need another ten minutes.” With that, she disappeared back into the kitchen.

  “So once again, Luck,” Marc said. “What did Tarek tell you?”

  The boy lowered his eyes.

  “Luck. What you said there is very important. If what I suspect is true, I might have more time for you very soon. We can go to the pool. Just you and me…”

  “Can Tarek come? He has already jumped from the high dive! So did I, but he jumped backwards. I want to learn that.” Suddenly Luck talked like a waterfall, gushing words.

  “Yes. But only if you tell the truth,” said Marc.

  “Peer lives in a house like this. They have a yard and that’s where the coolest guys meet. Girls, too.” At first, Luck’s words came hesitantly, then faster the more excited he got. “They do stunts with rollerblades and skateboards. Tarek lives there, too, but he can’t do any tricks. He can only ride a waveboard.”

  Marc listened patiently. His left knee was burning, but he suppressed the pain without moving. He concentrated completely on Luck’s story without interrupting,
just waiting for the right moment.

  “Tarek was also there…” Luck paused.

  Come on, Luck, catch your breath, Marc thought.

  When the boy didn’t continue, Marc said, “So he was there when Peer stuck a piece of wire into the socket?” He waited and hoped fervently that his assumption was correct.

  Luck shook his head. Then, whispering as if he were revealing a closely guarded secret, the boy said, “Peer held out for a whole ten seconds, but there was no one else around.”

  Marc rubbed his temple thoughtfully. “Did this Peer touch the wires?”

  “Yes. He held them in his hand without letting go. And another boy filmed him doing it.”

  “Do you know this other boy’s name?”

  Luck shook his head with a disappointed expression.

  “Can you call Tarek?”

  “He got grounded from his cell phone because his mom caught him watching the video.”

  “What video?”

  “Of the girl who jumped off the bridge. I think she’s dead now, because Tarek thinks so, too. He has a real ribbon. A white one, not fake. He’s on the waiting list! But he’s afraid to pull his tooth.” Luck tapped his canine.

  Slowly, the fragments of information in Marc’s head began to assemble into a picture.

  “Is that why you wanted the combination pliers?”

  Luck chewed hesitantly on his lower lip. Blonde curls fell and hung over his forehead.

  “Luck? You promised me. You’re going to tell me the truth, and then the three of us are going to the pool. For a whole day.”

  “Yeah,” Luck finally said. “When I go to the big school, I don’t want to be a loser anymore.”

  “You’re not a loser.”

  “Yes, I am. My father is a… shitty cop and my mother’s a… a slut.”

  The hairs on Marc’s neck stood on end. He forced himself to make no sound. The mental torment his nine-year-old son had to endure broke his heart.

  “They say I’m a wimp,” Luck said. Tears gleamed in the boy’s eyes, and he looked right through his father without really seeing him.