Echoes

by Alice Reeds

  After straying off to a side road, we finally found a small bakery nestled between two other buildings that both seemed to be closed tax offices. It wasn’t anything special, but their prices seemed much more fair than any of the other ones we’d seen, so we walked inside. A few tables and armchairs stood around the space, with the counter and display at the other end of the room, where two middle-aged women took orders and handled the cash register. There were a few people standing in line, but compared to the numbers we’d seen before, this was nothing.

  Since I couldn’t understand any of the signs—honestly, what the hell was a Schrippe, Käsestulle, or Napfkuchen supposed to be?—I let Miles take over ordering something while I found us a place to sit near the windows. A group of elderly women watched me from a few tables over, their expressions curious but almost a little scandalized, like they’d never seen someone who looked like me before. Or maybe they had, just not with someone like Miles. I’d tried to dress as inconspicuously as possible, but considering my general aesthetic, I still didn’t blend in nearly as well as Miles did.

  Ignoring them, I sat down and placed the tote we’d taken along with us, containing Miles’s laptop, some notebook, one of my shirts, and a few other small things, on the windowsill next to me. Considering everything that happened so far, it seemed like a wise idea to take the most important and valuable things with us, just in case. At that point, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find that the cleaning staff had gone through our stuff or something like that, though I hoped that wouldn’t happen. Out of habit I pulled out my phone and checked if the bakery offered free wifi—it didn’t—and then checked if my parents had called or texted, but they hadn’t. The messages I’d sent out were sitting there unread, a fact I still couldn’t get over. Usually at least my mom, or Melany, answered my texts within minutes, but now, nothing.

  Once Miles came around with our food, I attentively listened to him explaining what all those names I could barely even decipher, let alone pronounce, were, along with how strange and odd the names themselves were. A Berliner Pfannkuchen, which he claimed translated to “Berlin pancake,” wasn’t actually a pancake but a type of German jelly doughnut with typically a plum or rose jam filling, while a Schrippe was a small bread roll, and a Käsestulle, which I thought sounded like something extravagant or unusual, was nothing more than a slice of bread, or bread roll, with cheese.

  “Do you think it’ll work?” I asked once we’d eaten almost all of our food.

  “It has to,” he said and leaned back in his chair. “I refuse to believe that they are smarter than us. We’ll find out who they are, if they are really following us and will buy the act. We’re just two teens having a look around Berlin’s tourist hot spots, nothing to see here. I’m still not quite sure your plan to separate them and knock one of them out will work, but I guess time will tell.”

  I huffed a half laugh at his words. If only we could really just be there to go sightseeing instead of going through this hell. So far, those men had managed to follow us to a few places. Who knew if they’d do it again, or if they’d be good enough to not lose us in the crowds. All we could do was hope that they would believe that we were unaware of their presence, even though it definitely wasn’t so.

  The second part of the plan would be much harder, but I’d worry about it once the time came. For now, it was time to go see some stuff.

  When they told me I’d been chosen for the internship in Berlin, I’d looked forward to seeing all these historical places I’d so far only heard or seen pictures of. I wanted to see this city that used to be literally divided by a wall, see what made it special, so different than our cities back home. Everything had a history here—buildings with centuries-old architecture, cobblestone paths that looked just the way they had a hundred or more years prior, the differences between East and West. All my excitement seemed so far away now, like it had never even been there in the first place, replaced by dread and worry.

  Leaving the bakery behind, we walked along Unter den Linden once again, this time toward the Pariser Platz and the Brandenburg Gate. Even from afar it was imposing and captivating with its six columns and the greenish chariot pulled by four horses sitting on top of it, even more so with the clear sky as its backdrop, the sun shining brightly, an otherwise beautiful day despite how bleak our reality was. The space in front of the Gate was crowded with people taking pictures in groups or with selfie sticks, a boy walking along talking to his camera probably recording a vlog, a group of Japanese tourists trying to not lose each other. Their tour guide explained the history behind the Gate—it’d been built on the orders of some eighteenth-century king to represent peace, the citizens at the time only allowed to walk through the outermost passageways—so quickly I could barely keep up, his voice practically drowning in all the noises.

  I watched as Miles pulled out his phone and snapped a picture of it like a proper tourist would, while a woman came up to me and asked if I could take a picture of her with her family. I nodded and did as she asked, waited for them to move together with the Gate behind them, then snapped a series of pictures in case any turned out blurry.

  “We should take a picture together,” Miles said after I handed the camera back to the woman and she walked off. His request surprised me. The Miles from a week or two ago would’ve never wanted to be in a picture with me.

  “Fine,” I said, mostly because it would only add more to our act, and it would be nice to have this moment caught on camera should we ever make it home. I doubted we’d still be something like friends once we left Berlin behind, but at least I’d have this picture as proof for Melany that I’d actually managed to get along with Miles without ripping off his head.

  Looking at the picture, it wasn’t half bad. Our faces blocked about half of the Gate, and Miles had one of his signature smiles on, charming and nice. He was one hell of a photogenic bastard, because of course he was. I wondered just how shocked our classmates would be if he were to post that picture on Instagram—not that it was an option, since both our apps decided to just not work anymore, like what the fuck—how many of them would wonder what it had taken for Miles to willingly do it, and how many of his thirsty followers would come for me, telling me to get away from him and other pretty things anonymous idiots usually say online.

  “You have a pretty smile,” Miles commented, his tone light, as though his statement was no big deal, before he put his phone away again.

  “Are you sick?” I asked, because honestly, he had to be. Miles Echo, of all people, giving me a compliment? I was sure there was a joke hidden in there somewhere.

  He shrugged. “Just saying the truth.”

  I wasn’t sure if I believed him but forced myself to not poke any further and just accept his words. It felt nice to hear something like that from him, especially because it was him.

  “Thanks.”

  We walked through the Gate, on to the other side, looked at the Reichstag and its glass dome from afar, and saw the Victory Column in the distance, with its glittering golden angel perched on top, but that was everything we managed to see before I noticed them in the crowd.

  They stood just off to the side next to some kind of hot dog stand, pretending to look at the prices, but I could see them turn and look toward us again and again. They wore different clothes than before, looked like everyone else with their gray and light brown shirts and khaki pants, but I knew it was them without a doubt. I recognized the taller one’s combed-back blond hair and the other one’s buzz cut with some kind of line shaved in behind his ear—a scar, maybe, or a strange style choice. They were the same guys I’d seen in the lobby at our first hotel, then at Siemensstadt, and finally at the airport.

  “They’re here,” I said to Miles, and watched as his expression soured immediately. It’d been nice to just pretend to spend a normal, even fun, day in Berlin. Until I’d spotted them, I’d almost forgotten they were probably around, that they watched and followed us, but that was no more.

&n
bsp; My skin began to crawl under their watchful eyes, my heart beating quicker. I hated everything about this, the fact that we couldn’t just have a nice time in Berlin, have our internship, collect memories, and go home. Instead we had to deal with all of this. Even getting beaten bloody and bruised and losing during a competition would’ve been a less bitter pill to swallow.

  But now wasn’t the time for me to get angry and contemplate just how unfair our situation was. I had to focus, continue following our plan.

  Miles quietly cursed next to me but didn’t turn. It was enough that I’d seen them. I hoped that maybe they thought I was looking at the building behind them, or the U.S. flag waving in the wind on top of the U.S. Embassy located at the end of the street to the right of the Brandenburg Gate.

  “Let’s go into the park,” Miles said, the next part of our plan starting. I nodded.

  We crossed the street and entered the park on the left, which according to a sign at the entrance was called Großer Tiergarten, which Miles said literally translated to “Big Animal Garden.” It didn’t really make any sense to me. This was a park and not a zoo, so why was it called that?

  We went along the dirt and gravel paths leading through the park, walking past a statue showing a family of lions that reminded me just a bit too much of that scene in The Lion King. We passed a field of rock formations I didn’t quite understand the purpose of and then crossed a small bridge over a creek that stretched through the park then flowed into a few lakes dotted with tiny islands.

  At some point we came to a square with an artificial lake with little fountains along its middle and a monument on the other end. Groups of people sat on the benches spread out around the lake, kids ran around playing games, and a young woman tried to keep her dog from running after some bicycle. Curious, continuing our act, we walked over to the monument to see what it was. It was hexagonal with three larger sides that had statues of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven standing in shallow alcoves, golden swirls and shapes accentuating the effect, with three small angels at the top, holding up some kind of wreath. It was beautiful and kind of pompous. It was mainly made of white marble, after all, though I guessed that only seemed fitting.

  While Miles took a picture of it, I tried to look around and see if our stalkers were still after us, or if maybe I’d been wrong. But of course I hadn’t been. They were still there pretending to look at something, having a conversation. To everyone else around us they probably looked like two normal people taking a walk.

  We continued on toward an area of the park that was a bit more dense with trees and shrubbery, and less with people, which would become the stage for the next part of our plan. Somehow, we wanted to catch one of them. How we’d go about it I wasn’t sure, so we had to simply wing it.

  Slowing down, we let them come closer, pretended to look at something and take some more pictures, luring them in. The two were of slightly different heights, though both still seemed shorter than Miles, and neither was so bulky or heavy looking that I’d have trouble with them. My preference was that the skinnier one would be the one to involuntarily stay while the other ran, but I doubted I’d get my wish granted.

  It was now or never.

  “Go,” I said and nodded at Miles. And just like that, we took off in opposite directions, the only way I thought we’d be able to split the guys, force them to each follow one of us.

  I tried my best to keep to denser areas, slip through between bushes, across paths that seemed basically deserted. Every once in a while, I turned my head just enough to check if the dude was following me, the chase was still on, and he was. I’d been lucky—the skinnier one had decided to follow me just like I wished he would. They likely assumed it would take a bigger guy to catch Miles, or whatever it was they planned. But if Miles stuck to our plan, the guy following him wouldn’t get him.

  Finally, I saw my chance, a place to hide and wait for the guy to run past me. It was an old, thick-barked tree surrounded by bushes and slightly taller unkempt grass. If I was fast enough, I could hide behind it without the guy seeing it happen. I only had one chance to get this right.

  Controlling my breathing so I could hear what was around me, I stood with my back pressed against the tree and listened to the dude’s approaching footsteps and wheezing. Just as he ran past, I stepped back out onto the path behind him.

  “Hey, asshole,” I called out to him, watched as he skidded to a halt and began to turn around. Quickly I closed the distance between us and, using the element of surprise, struck his jaw with a mad uppercut I hoped would be hard enough to knock him out just the way I planned it. I’d seen it happen enough in instructional videos that actually advised against this, but in that moment, I didn’t care about the dude’s health much.

  My plan didn’t quite work out like I hoped it would. The guy looked back at me a little shocked, maybe mad, I wasn’t sure. Either way, he advanced at me, and before I knew it, I was full-on fighting him. That wasn’t how it was supposed to go, but what had to be done had to be done. So I fought, gave the guy my best, made him work for this. In the end, using a moment of distraction when he looked off toward where some kid laughed, I struck him again with another uppercut, even stronger this time.

  The guy fell to the ground onto his back, his head luckily landing on a softer patch of mossy grass, his eyes closed. I’d certainly have some bruises to show for this, and my fists hurt like a bitch, but I’d done it. I could only hope that Miles managed to make his part of the plan happen.

  I pulled out my phone and called him, surprised that he actually picked up after just two beeps, and told him where I was, more or less. I didn’t have much to go by, but it didn’t take too long until he came around the corner out of breath.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Should’ve seen his face when he realized that we know, that they weren’t as sneaky as they thought. I lost him in some seriously huge group of tourists slowly moving toward that Victory thing,” he said instead of answering my question. “Doesn’t mean we should waste any time.”

  Miles was right, the longer we were around him, the more likely it was that someone could notice. Taking a deep breath, I crouched down next to the guy. I worried that the dude would come to while I looked through his pockets but pushed that feeling aside and away from me. There was nothing he could do to me, so there was nothing to be remotely afraid of. I also tried not to think about how this entire scene was a crime, but then again, so was stalking minors, or anyone really, and it wasn’t like we actually planned on stealing anything.

  Of course, the dude had to have what I assumed would be his wallet in the right front pocket of his pants since that was just my luck. Awkwardly, and just wanting to get it over with, I pulled it out and handed it to Miles, since he’d be actually able to understand the documents that’d be in there. I knew that a German ID couldn’t look much different than a U.S. one, but still.

  I watched as he opened the relatively thin black leather wallet, and his face turned a shade paler within a heartbeat. Mine immediately skipped one, my mouth turning dry. That reaction couldn’t mean anything good. Was he with Briola? Was his ID stolen? Did he not have one, and the wallet was simply empty, which would explain why it was so light?

  “What is it?” I finally asked, simultaneously impatient and dreading his answer.

  “Zivilpolizei,” Miles said, and I just looked at him blankly, the word not sounding like any I knew and definitely German. Miles turned the wallet around so I could see it, and then repeated in English this time: “Non-uniformed police officer.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Island

  “Have you noticed the clouds?” Miles asked the next day.

  I frowned. The clouds? No, I definitely hadn’t, at least not beyond noticing that there were more compared to the previous days, which had been mostly cloud free. The clouds seemed higher than usual today. They were wispy, some of them similar to the traces that planes left behind, but not quite, a bit more feather
y, maybe.

  “What about them?”

  “Those clouds mean that the weather will change soon,” he explained while I just looked at him. Where was he taking this knowledge from? Were cloud studies somehow something rich kids learned, or had I just really not paid proper attention at school and completely forgotten all about this? “We have, like, a day or two until rain will come, or even a storm. I’m not quite sure.”

  “Either you’re really good at making up crap as you go along, or this is something that’s actually true. I’m not sure which I think is more likely.”

  “Didn’t you learn about clouds and cloud formation at whatever school you were at before you came to us?” I shook my head. As far as I remembered, I certainly hadn’t. “If I remember correctly, those are cirrus clouds, or something like that. Anyway, basically, if a storm of any kind is supposed to come, I don’t think staying at the beach is a good idea. The plane has been fine to hide in so far, but I think we need something different, and away from the beach. Who knows how harsh and high the waves might become, you know. Plus, whoever put us on the island could come back whenever, and we’d be way too easily found in the plane, so seeking shelter elsewhere seems like the right thing to do, no?”

  I was impressed, there was no other way of calling it. I knew he was smart, but I always just thought it was a question of studying well for a test and then he’d forget it all, the same way all of us did. It seemed like I was wrong. Maybe our skills did complement each other surprisingly well. I could run and fight, he could play weather forecaster.

  “So, the plan is what, now? Walking around and hoping we’ll find something?”

  “Basically, yeah,” he said with a shrug. As much as I appreciated that he thought ahead, he hadn’t thought quite far enough, it seemed. Walking around aimlessly and hoping for the best wasn’t necessarily a bad idea, but it could take hours and possibly bring no result whatsoever. But, now that I thought about it, I remembered something. He wasn’t the only smart one around.