by Minkman, Jen
“You’re so funny, ha-ha,” Julia grumbled, but still got up to give her mother a quick hug. “I’ll take things easy today. Have fun at Aunt Verena’s.”
After her mom left, Julia rooted around in her wardrobe to dig up a light summer dress and flip-flops. Still in her PJs, she made her way to the bathroom to take a fresh shower. Anne was in her room, loudly playing the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. She was probably drawing or writing again.
Just as Julia stepped out of the shower cabin with a towel around her body, she heard Anne’s phone ring in the room next door. Her sister turned off the music and answered her cell phone in a hushed voice. Strange.
“Was that Mom calling you?” she asked when she bumped into Anne in the hallway.
“No, one of my classmates. She asked if I wanted to come along to the pool.”
“I thought you had a playdate with Sabine today?”
Anne stared at the floor. “I don’t know if I’m going to the pool yet.”
“Oh well, you don’t have to choose, do you? You can also go to the pool with Sabine and the other girl.”
“I don’t know,” Anne repeated, looking subdued.
Julia impulsively flung an arm around her sister’s slender shoulders. “What’s up, Annie? You feeling down?”
Anne shrugged. “Yes and no.”
Again with the evasiveness. Julia sighed. “You know, why don’t we have breakfast together? Maybe you’ll want to talk about it over a nice, big plate of breadrolls. Okay?”
“All right.”
In silence, they walked down the stairs. It wasn’t until Julia put down two plates of food on the kitchen table that Anne opened her mouth again.
“Who’s that boy who’s coming over for dinner tonight?” she asked softly.
“Michael? He’s a colleague of mine.”
Anne looked at her attentively. “Are you in love with him?”
Julia blushed. “Busted,” she joked. “Yeah, I really like him.”
“How do you know when you’re in love with someone? Or when someone is in love with you?” Anne continued.
Julia thought over her answer. “When you’re in love with someone, you think about that person all day. You long to spend every last minute of the day with him or her. And when someone is in love with you, they often try and be around you as much as possible. And they’ll say nice, sweet things to you, of course,” she replied with a smile.
Her sister bit her lip. “That’s the reason I like going to the forest so much, lately,” she mumbled quietly.
“You’re in love?”
“When I go into the woods… to that place I don’t want to tell you about… the Prince of the Forest is there, too.”
Julia smiled indulgently. “You mean the prince who’s helping you build your tree house?” Just Thorsten’s luck – the wrong neighbor girl had fallen for him.
Anne shook her head. “I help him, he doesn’t help me. And it’s not really a tree house, but an entrance to his palace.”
“Uhm... like a gate of sorts?” Julia frowned. This story was getting stranger by the minute, Anne apparently using elements of her fairytale to talk about everyday life.
Suddenly, this all felt wrong – it didn’t sound like innocent make-believe anymore. Grandma was right: something serious was going on if Anne felt the need to escape into fairytales like this.
Anne shook her head once more. “No, not a gate. A tunnel. But I can’t tell you where it is.” Her voice dropped. “No one is supposed to know where it is.”
They both kept quiet for a moment, a shiver running down Julia’s spine as she held her sister’s gaze. There was something profoundly wrong with the look in Anne’s eyes – she didn’t look as if she was enjoying the mystery of her story. Anne was deeply afraid. It hit her like a punch to the stomach.
“Why can’t you?” Julia continued carefully. She didn’t want Anne to clamp up again, so that meant taking it easy and not firing off all the questions going through her mind at once.
“Because… it’s a mystery. Just like the prince remains a mystery to the adults in the real world. They don’t see him for what he truly is.”
“And you do?”
Anne turned red. “Yes, but he told me I wasn’t supposed to talk about him. Or about that place where he’s building stuff. He’d get mad.”
Julia’s stomach turned. She had no idea what was going on, but every nerve in her body told her something was seriously wrong with Anne. It was almost as though she couldn’t separate truth from fiction anymore. How was she supposed to handle this? She couldn’t do this alone. It was best to call her mom straight away.
She pushed her chair back and stood up. “Anne, I would really like to discuss this with Mom. You look scared and I want to help you, but I don’t know how. Why don’t you wait here while I give her a call?”
Julia rushed out of the kitchen and ran up the stairs to get her phone and call her mom.
Fortunately, her mom answered on the second ring. “Hey, honey. What’s up?”
“Mom.” Hearing her mom’s voice suddenly made her eyes water up. “Something weird is going on with Anne.”
“What do you mean?” her mom cried out in alarm. “Is she sick?”
“No, it’s not that. At least, I don’t think so. It’s just that she’s telling all kinds of absurd stories about what she’s been doing in the woods lately. You know she’s building a tree house with Sabine, right? And she didn’t want to tell us where they were building it? I know she’s also working on a fairytale of her own. It’s her version of the Prince of the Forest, and now she’s telling me the prince told her to keep her mouth shut about the location of the tree house. She’s suffering from a case of puppy love for Thorsten and she probably cast him in the role of heroic prince in her mind, but this is seriously giving me the creeps. It’s so bizarre – I don’t know what to think.”
“Well, didn’t she simply make up a story to entertain you? You girls tell each other fairytales all the time, don’t you?”
“No, Mom.” Julia swallowed hard. “She’s afraid. Like, really scared. I could see it in her eyes. She said something terrible would happen if she talked about it. She said the prince would be angry with her if she did.”
Her mother stayed quiet on the other end of the line. “I know Anne for her flights of fancy, but you’re right: this doesn’t make sense,” she admitted at last. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she’s used drugs, triggering some kind of psychosis.”
Julia laughed nervously. “I think she’s a bit too young for that.”
“Well, it’s just a shot in the dark.” Her mom paused for a few seconds. “How well do you know this Thorsten guy?”
“Not that well, but he seems nice enough.”
“Do you know whether he smokes pot?”
Julia’s mouth turned dry. She had no idea, but it wasn’t completely unlikely. Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine Thorsten holding a joint while playing guitar at some deserted spot in the forest, watching the two girls at work.
“Are you implying Thorsten offered a joint to my little sister while they were building their hut in the woods?” she asked, her head spinning.
“I’m just thinking out loud,” Ms. Gunther replied. “Maybe he has no idea what kind of effect that stuff has on young brains. And who knows, he might have actually told Anne and Sabine to keep the location a secret for now. If Anne is drugged up on something, those words may have morphed into a threat in her mind.”
On shaky legs, Julia stumbled backward, sagging down in the easy chair in the corner of her bedroom. “I can’t believe it. I can’t conceive of it. What the hell was he thinking?” Her mom was right: this had to be what was going on. Thorsten had unwittingly scared her sister by saying the tree house should be a secret, and he might even have let her take a puff of his cannabis while they’d been at work in the woods. He probably hadn’t meant any harm, but sadly he had harmed Anne nonetheless.
“Do you want
me to come home?” her mom asked.
“No, I don’t think that’s necessary. Anne is probably going to the pool with Sabine in a minute, so she’ll be fine. But rest assured I’ll talk to Thorsten today. He’s in big trouble.”
Julia ended the call and stomped out of her room with a grim face. No matter how sweet and nice the boy next door was, he had managed to really piss her off now. He should have stayed away from her little sister.
“Anne?” She popped her head round the kitchen door. “I’m cycling down to Eichet to run some errands. Are you going to the neighbors?”
Anne got up and flung both arms around Julia’s waist. “What did Mommy say?” she whispered.
“She said you don’t have to be scared. The prince can’t harm you,” Julia said soothingly, deciding to play along for now. “And if you really think he’s scary, you should tell him you don’t want to see him anymore when you run into him again.”
“Okay.” Anne pressed her cheek against Julia’s shoulder. “I will.”
A few minutes later, Julia rolled her bike out of the yard and dropped Anne off at the neighbors’ door across the street. Sabine and her mother were home and welcomed Anne with beaming faces, so her sister would undoubtedly have a good time today.
Meanwhile, Thorsten would have a hard time today if it were up to her. Julia was hell-bent on talking to him, and if that meant she had to disturb the peace in the local supermarket, she wouldn’t shy away from it. So what if he was working and he had no time for her? She was simmering with anger, and her frantic bike trip to Eichet didn’t make it any better. When she finally propped up her bike against the wall and ran into the store, she almost knocked over a cart partially blocking the entrance. Her face flushed red with fury, she cornered the first store assistant she encountered, demanding to know where Thorsten was.
“Oh, he just went to the back to get something from the warehouse,” the girl replied.
“Thanks.” Julia stalked toward the double doors leading to the warehouse. Fortunately, she knew her way around the supermarket because her mom worked here too. It didn’t take long for her to spot Thorsten. Without breaking stride, she approached him and stopped right in front of him, her arms crossed. “I need to speak to you,” she said coolly.
He shot her a puzzled look. “Uhm, sure,” he said, putting down the box he was carrying. “What’s up?”
“You have to stop saying weird things to Anne,” Julia exploded. “You can’t say things like you’ll get angry if she reveals the spot where you guys are building that tree hut. She’s really scared, okay? And my mom and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn you were smoking dope in the woods out there while working on the damn thing. Anne is dishing up the most unbelievable, psychotic stories about it.”
Thorsten’s eyes widened, a look of deep incomprehension crossing his face. “I’m sorry, but what the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Anne.”
“Yeah, I got that. I just don’t get the rest. To be honest, I think you sound psychotic.”
Julia drew breath and peered at Thorsten. He seemed to be genuinely perplexed. He probably couldn’t have fathomed he’d have such a big impact on Anne and her wild imagination.
“Okay. I can see how my story sounds cluttered, but what I mean to say is that my sister has a very soft spot for you and whatever you say to her influences her more than you realize.”
Thorsten heaved a sigh, shaking his head. “Look, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree here. I didn’t help Anne and Sabine in the woods at all. Well, I made a few sketches for them so they’d have blueprints and I helped them haul some timber, but that’s about it. How am I supposed to help those kids every day? I’m working, right? I’ve been putting in shifts here four days a week.”
In the silence that ensued, Julia took a few hesitant steps backward as Thorsten’s words slowly sunk in.
He hadn’t helped the girls. He hadn’t even joined them on their trips to the woods. So how on earth had Anne come up with that uncanny story of hers?
“Are you sure you’ve never used drugs in Anne’s presence?” she pressed on, but she could hear her voice falter.
“Okay, that’s it,” Thorsten snapped. “What kind of a person do you think I am, huh? I don’t use drugs, and even if I did, surely it would never occur to me to smoke pot right in front of my baby sister and her best friend! What gives you the right to barge in here and accuse me of all kinds of horrible things?”
“I’m sorry,” Julia whispered, her face red with shame. Thorsten was absolutely right. She’d been prepared to peg him as an irresponsible pothead just so she’d have an explanation for Anne’s odd story. Julia wiped at the sudden tears in her eyes, letting out a shaky breath. Now that it turned out Thorsten wasn’t the dope-smoking loser she’d accused him of being, she had no ideas left – except the thought that Anne was losing her mind. Was her sister going crazy?
“Hey, don’t cry,” Thorsten said, looking startled. He put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry I yelled at you; I didn’t mean to upset you. What exactly is Anne afraid of, then?”
“I… I don’t know,” Julia stuttered in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
Thorsten pulled her closer, his arm encircling her waist. “I think you should go home and talk with Anne one more time,” he said earnestly. “Kids at that age can have vivid imaginations. Maybe a bit too vivid. If you really think something is wrong with her, I bet your mom could ask a specialist to look into it.”
“I will,” Julia replied timidly. “I’m truly sorry.”
“Apology accepted,” he said softly. “You’re just worried about Anne, so let’s forget this ever happened.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead and let go of her. “Why don’t you drop by my mom and ask her if she knows what they’re up to in the woods these days? She might know. Hey, I finish at three today, so I’ll come round and see if you’re any better this afternoon, okay?”
Julia nodded. “Thanks. I’d appreciate that.”
Still feeling mystified, she found herself dazedly standing next to her bike after leaving the supermarket. When she moved at last, Julia got on and rode to her grandmother’s house on automatic pilot. Her grandma was in the front yard watering the plants. She waved when she saw her granddaughter coming up the drive.
“How nice of you to come visit me today before Michael demands all your attention tonight,” she said with a cheeky smile, but her face fell when she looked at Julia more closely. “What’s the matter? You look worried.”
When her grandma came toward her and pulled her into a hug, Julia broke down in tears. Without asking anything else, Gran took her inside and walked her to the kitchen, where she silently and calmly poured the two of them a cup of tea. She pushed the cookie jar across the table and Julia dug up a chocolate cookie, eating it without really tasting anything. Her whole body felt weak and she slurped some of her tea to get warm and fight her dizziness.
“Grandma,” she started in a small voice. “Didn’t you say you thought something was going on with Anne the other day?”
The old woman looked at her searchingly. “I had a certain feeling something was off, yes. Has something happened?”
Julia nodded and softly related to her grandmother what Anne had told her that morning – how she seemed to really believe in the fairytale she’d made up by herself. How scared she had been.
“Oh dear.” Gran looked shocked. “You’re right to worry about this. I know Anne loves fairytales, just like you, but it doesn’t make sense for her to escape into a story she’s actually afraid of.”
“Could it be she’s come up with that fairytale to protect herself from something she’s afraid of?”
Gran fell silent for a moment. “You said she mentioned she wasn’t allowed to talk about it? She said it was a secret?”
“Yes?” Julia held her breath.
“It reminds me of the peculiar behavior of a friend I used to have when I was a young girl.” Gran s
tared at the cup of tea in her hands. “She used to love making up all kinds of fantastical stories, but I always found her to be a bit anxious and guarded in her behavior. Sometimes she would mention a secret she wasn’t allowed to share with anyone. At some point, we found out her father beat her up regularly. He might have done other things to her, too. I always felt as if she was harboring a great sadness.”
A shiver ran down Julia’s spine. “You think Anne is being abused by someone close to her? Someone we know?”
“I don’t know. It is a possibility.”
“But who? Who could it be?” Frantically, she ran off a mental list of people Anne dealt with on a daily basis: people in their neighborhood, at school, during music lessons...
Gran put a hand on her arm. “If I were you, I’d discuss it with your mother this afternoon and involve Anne too. She could talk to the doctor, or maybe to someone in Child Care. There’s no point implicating each and every person who comes to mind. After all, you don’t want to make any false accusations. Certainly not in a case like this.”
The confrontation with Thorsten came back to her in a flash, and Julia cringed. Her grandmother was right – she didn’t want to go down that road again.
“I’m going home,” she decided. “And I’ll call Mom to ask her to come back a bit early so we can talk to Anne together.”
“Good luck,” Gran said. “I’ll call the two of you tonight.”
Deep in thought, Julia cycled home. The sun was shining and the birds were singing, but it was as if a troubled shadow hovered over her. Thinking about Michael’s visit tonight didn’t even help – she was worried sick about Anne. She’d never been so scared in all of her life.
After putting her bike back in the shed, Julia crossed the street to visit the neighbors. Thorsten had suggested talking to his mother, so that’s what she’d do first. It was possible Mrs. Ebner had noticed something peculiar about Anne’s behavior too.
Sabine and her mother were sitting on the lawn playing a card game. Julia froze, a bud of panic blossoming in her chest. Where was her sister?
