A rickety car came limping down the street. It was a Lada, a small Russian car shaped a little like a jeep. It slowed in front of our house and pulled into the driveway. For a minute, the light blue Lada stood in front of our garage with the engine still running. Then it shut off. The driver’s side door opened and Tschick got out. He put his elbows on the roof and watched me spraying the lawn.
“Huh,” he said. Then he was silent for a while. “Is that fun?”
CHAPTER 16
I kept waiting for his father or his brother or somebody else to get out of the car, but nobody else appeared. And the reason was that nobody else was in the car. It was just tough to see that through the dirty windows.
“You look like some kind of queer, or like you just discovered that somebody shat in your garden last night. You want me to drive you somewhere, or would you prefer to just keep sprinkling water around?” He smiled his broad Russian grin. “Hop in, man.”
Obviously I didn’t get in. I wasn’t completely crazy. I went over and sat down in the passenger seat, with my feet still out of the car. I didn’t want to stand there all conspicuously in the driveway.
The Lada looked even worse inside than it did outside. There were a bunch of wires hanging out beneath the steering wheel, and a screwdriver was jammed up under the dashboard.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“I just borrowed it. It’s not stolen,” said Tschick. “I’ll take it back. We’ve done it a million times.”
“Who is we?”
“Me and my brother. He found it. It just sits on the street like garbage. You can borrow it. The owner never notices.”
“What about all that?” I pointed to the jumble of wires.
“You can shove it back in.”
“You’re crazy. What about fingerprints?”
“Fingerprints? Is that why you’re sitting so funny?” He pulled at my arm, which I had scrunched up against my chest. “Don’t wet your pants. That’s just police show bullshit. Fingerprints. Look, you can touch anything. Go ahead, touch whatever you want. Come on, let’s take a spin.”
“Not me.” I looked at him and didn’t say anything more at first. He really was crazy.
“Didn’t you say yesterday that you wanted to get out and experience things?”
“By that I didn’t mean prison.”
“Prison? You’re not criminally accountable — you’re a minor.”
“Do whatever you want. But I’m not going.” To be honest, I had no idea how old you had to be to get charged as an adult. And I wasn’t sure what “criminally accountable” meant. I mean, sort of. Basically. But not really.
“Nothing can happen to you. My brother always says to me that if he were my age, he’d rob a bank. They can’t do anything to you until you’re fifteen. My brother’s thirty. In Russia, they beat the shit out of you anyway. But here! Nothing. And besides, nobody gives a crap about this car. Seriously. Not even the owner will miss it.”
“No way.”
“Just once around the block.”
“No.”
Tschick let up the emergency brake, and I can’t really say why I didn’t hop out. Normally I’m a scaredy-cat. Maybe for that reason I wanted not to be a scaredy-cat just once. With his left foot he stepped on the far left pedal, and the Lada rolled silently backward down the driveway. Then he stepped on the middle pedal with his right foot and the car stopped. Then he grabbed the wires hanging from the base of the steering wheel and the engine started. I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, we were gliding down Ketschendorf Way, and then we turned right into Rotraud Street.
“You didn’t use your blinker,” I said meekly, my arms still pressed to my chest. I was so nervous I thought I was going to keel over. Then I started grabbing for the seat belt.
“There’s no reason to be scared. I drive like a champ.”
“Put your blinker on like a champ.”
“I’ve never blinked.”
“Please.”
“Why? Anyone can see where I’m turning. And there’s nobody around anyway.”
That was true. The street was empty. It remained true for about another minute. By then Tschick had turned twice more and we were on the Avenue of Cosmonauts. There are four lanes on the Avenue of Cosmonauts. I started to panic.
“Okay, okay. Let’s go back now.”
“I make Formula One drivers look like chumps.”
“Yeah, you said that already.”
“Isn’t it true?”
“No.”
“Seriously. Don’t I drive well?” asked Tschick.
“Super,” I said. And when it struck me that this was my mother’s standard answer to my father’s standard question, I added, “Just super, dear.”
“Don’t blow a gasket.”
Tschick didn’t drive like a Formula One champion, but he didn’t drive too badly either. Not much better or worse than my father. And he had now started to head back in the direction of our neighborhood.
“Can’t you follow the rules of the road? That’s a double line you just crossed.”
“Are you gay?”
“What?”
“I asked if you were gay.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“You called me dear.”
“I called you . . . what? That’s called irony.”
“Okay, so are you gay?”
“Because of my use of irony?”
“And because you’re not interested in girls.” He looked me directly in the eyes.
“Keep your eyes on the road!” I screamed. I have to admit I was getting a bit hysterical at this point. He was driving without even looking where he was going. My father did the same thing sometimes, but my father was my father and he had a driver’s license.
“Everybody in the class is nuts for Tatiana. Absolutely nuts.”
“Who?”
“Tatiana. There’s a girl in our class named Tatiana. You never noticed her? Tatiana Superstar. You’re the only one who never checks her out. So are you gay? I’m just asking.”
I thought I was going to fall over and die.
“I don’t have a problem with it,” said Tschick. “I have an uncle in Moscow who runs around in leather pants with the ass cut out of them. He’s totally cool otherwise. Works for the government. And he can’t do anything about the fact that he’s gay. There’s really nothing wrong with it.”
Holy crap. I mean, I don’t have a problem with it if somebody’s gay either. Though that’s not how I pictured things in Russia — people running around in ass-less chaps. But that I acted like Tatiana Cosic didn’t exist — that had to be a joke, right? Because of course I acted as if she didn’t exist. How else could I act around her? For a complete nobody, a walking sleeping pill, that was the only way not to make a fool of myself in front of her.
“You’re an idiot,” I said.
“I’m cool with it. As long as you don’t try to mess with my asshole.”
“Cut it out. That’s disgusting.”
“My uncle . . .”
“Screw your uncle! I’m not gay, man. Can’t you see I’m in a shitty mood?”
“Because I’m not putting my blinker on?”
“No, you idiot, because I’m not gay!”
Tschick looked at me, totally confused. He was silent. I didn’t want to explain it. I hadn’t meant to say a word about it, but it had slipped out. I’d never talked to anyone about something like this before, and I didn’t want to start now.
“I don’t understand,” said Tschick. “Am I supposed to understand? You’re in a shitty mood because you’re not gay? Huh?”
I looked out the window, wounded. At least I didn’t care when two old people stared at us through the dirty windows when we st
opped next to them at a red light — they’d probably call the police. But at that point I hoped the police would pull us over. At least then there’d be some action.
“Okay, shitty mood . . . but why?”
“Because today is the day, man.”
“What is today?”
“The party, idiot. Tatiana’s party.”
“You don’t have to pretend now just because you’re sexually disoriented. Yesterday you said you didn’t want to go.”
“As if I could.”
“I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with it,” said Tschick, putting a hand on my knee. “I don’t give a crap about your sexuality problems, and I won’t tell anyone, I swear.”
“I can prove it,” I said. “Shall I show you?”
“You want to show me that you’re not gay? Oooo-kay,” he said, swatting away invisible flies.
We were already close to home. This time Tschick didn’t park in front of our house. He parked on a little side street, an alley where nobody would see us get out of the car. When we got upstairs and Tschick was still looking at me as if he’d found who knows what out about me, I said, “Don’t blame me for what I’m about to show you. And don’t laugh. If you laugh . . .”
“I won’t laugh.”
“You know Tatiana is crazy about Beyoncé, right?”
“Yeah, of course. I would have stolen a CD for her if she’d invited me to her party.”
“Yeah. Anyway. Check this out.”
I pulled the drawing out of a drawer. Tschick took it and held it up with his arms stretched out in front of him. At first he didn’t pay as much attention to the drawing itself as to the backside, where I’d repaired the rip with clear tape so that you could barely see the rip from the front. He studied the rip and then looked at the drawing again. Then he said, “You have feelings for her.”
He said it very seriously, without any crap. It was really strange. And it was the first time that I thought this guy wasn’t so stupid after all. Tschick took one look at the rip and knew exactly what the story was. I don’t know many people who could figure it out so quickly. Tschick looked at me with a solemn expression on his face. I liked that about him. He was somebody who could definitely play the fool. But when the chips were down, he didn’t play around. He took things seriously.
“How long did this take you? Three months? It looks like a photo. What are you going to do with it now?”
“Nothing.”
“You have to do something with it.”
“What am I supposed to do with it? Am I supposed to go to Tatiana’s and say, ‘Hey, happy birthday, I have a little something for you here — and, oh, it doesn’t bother me a bit that you didn’t invite me even though you invited every other idiot, it’s no problem, really. And it’s actually just a coincidence that I was passing by. Anyway, hope you enjoy the drawing that I worked my ass off on for three months!’ ”
Tschick scratched his neck. He put the drawing on my desk, looked at it, shaking his head, then looked at me again and said, “That’s exactly what I would do.”
CHAPTER 17
“Seriously, you have to do something. If you don’t, you’re crazy. Let’s drive there. Who cares if you think it’s embarrassing? Nothing is embarrassing in a stolen Lada. Put on your awesome jacket, grab your drawing, and get your ass into the car.”
“Never.”
“We’ll wait until it’s getting dark, and then you get your ass into the car.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not invited.”
“You’re not invited! So what? I’m not invited either. And you know why? Because of course the Russian idiot doesn’t get invited. But do you know why you weren’t invited? See — you don’t even know. But I do.”
“Then say it, oh, Wise One: because I’m boring and ugly.”
Tschick shook his head. “You’re not ugly. Or maybe you are, I don’t know. But that’s got nothing to do with it. The reason is because there’s no reason to invite you. You don’t stand out. You have to get noticed, man.”
“How am I supposed to stand out? Come to school drunk every day?”
“No. My God. But if I were you and looked like you and lived here and had clothes like yours, I’d have gotten a hundred invitations.”
“Do you need clothes?”
“Don’t change the subject. As soon as it gets dark, we’re driving down there.”
“No way.”
“We’re not going to go to the party. We’re just going to drive past.”
What an idiotic idea. Or, to be more precise, there were three ideas, and every single one of them was idiotic: show up without an invitation, drive a stolen Lada all the way across Berlin, and — craziest of all — take the drawing with us. Because one thing was clear: Tatiana would surely figure out the score when she saw the drawing. There was no way I was going.
While Tschick was driving me to Werder, the town where the party was, I kept muttering that I didn’t want to go. At first I said that he should turn around, that I’d had a change of heart. Then I said that we didn’t have the exact address. Then I swore that there was no way I would get out of the car when we arrived.
I kept my hands folded under my arms for the entire trip. This time it wasn’t because I was afraid of leaving fingerprints but because I was shaking. Beyoncé was sitting on the dashboard in front of me and shaking too.
Despite my anxiety, I realized that Tschick was driving more carefully than he had earlier in the day. He avoided roads with multiple lanes and eased his foot off the gas as we approached red traffic lights so we wouldn’t be sitting at any intersections letting people look into the car. At one point we had to pull over to the side of the road because there was a brief rain shower and the windshield wipers didn’t work. But we were nearly out of the city by then. It poured, but only for five minutes. A passing thunderstorm. Afterward the air smelled fantastic.
As we started off again, I peered through the windshield and watched as the wind pushed the water droplets apart. It suddenly occurred to me how strange it was to be cruising in a car that didn’t belong to us through the evening streets of the city, then along the tree-lined boulevards of West Berlin, past a lonely gas station, and then on little roads outside the city toward Werder. Eventually the red sun disappeared completely behind dark clouds. I didn’t say another word, and Tschick was silent as well. And I was happy that he was so determined to get to the party that I supposedly didn’t want to go to. I hadn’t thought of anything else for three months — and now here it was and I was about to come across as the biggest loser ever, right in front of Tatiana.
It turned out the house wasn’t hard to find. We probably could have found it if we’d just driven on the streets along the lake, but instead, as we passed the sign announcing we’d entered Werder, we spotted two kids on mountain bikes with sleeping bags strapped onto them — it was André and some other idiot. Tschick followed them but drove far enough behind them that they didn’t notice. And then we saw the house. Redbrick, with a front yard full of bikes, and lots of noise coming from the backyard, which faced the lake. A hundred meters ahead of us. I slid down from my seat into the footwell as Tschick rolled down his window and hung his arm casually out of the car and drove past the scene at a snail’s pace. There were about a dozen people in front of the house, standing around in the yard and in the open doorway — people with glasses and bottles in their hands, talking on phones, smoking cigarettes. There were loads more in the back. Familiar and unfamiliar faces, girls all tarted up. And like the sun, right in the middle, Tatiana. She may not have invited the biggest losers or the Russian, but she seemed to have invited everyone else with a pulse. We slowly passed the house. Nobody had seen us, and it occurred to me that I didn’t have any idea how I was going to give the drawing to Tatia
na. I began to think seriously about the idea of just tossing it out the window. Somebody would find it and take it to her. But before I could do something stupid, Tschick had stopped the car and hopped out. I watched him, horrified. I don’t know if it’s always so embarrassing to have a crush on somebody. Apparently I’m not very good at it. As I was debating whether to remain in the footwell and pull my jacket over my head or to get back into my seat and put an it-wasn’t-my-idea look on my face, fireworks started going off behind the redbrick house, exploding red and yellow in the sky, and almost everyone ran into the backyard. The only people left out front were André and Tatiana, who’d come to say hi to him.
And Tschick.
Tschick was standing directly in front of them. They stared at him as if they didn’t recognize him — and it’s entirely possible they didn’t recognize him. Because Tschick had my sunglasses on. And he was also wearing a pair of my jeans and my gray jacket. We’d spent the day going through my closet and I’d given Tschick three pairs of pants, a couple of shirts, a sweater, and a few other things. As a result he no longer looked like some hopeless Russian hardship case, but more like a soap opera star. And that’s not meant to sound like an insult. But he just didn’t look like himself anymore — he’d even put gel in his hair. I saw him start talking to Tatiana and saw her answer. She looked pissed. Tschick motioned to me behind his back. As if in a trance, I got out of the car and as for what happened next, don’t ask me. I have no idea. I was suddenly next to Tatiana with the drawing in my hand and I think she looked at me with the same pissed-off look she’d glared at Tschick with. But I didn’t notice.
I said, “Here.”
I said, “Beyoncé.”
I said, “A drawing.”
I said, “For you.”
Tatiana stared at the drawing, and before she had looked up from it I heard Tschick say to André, “Nah, no time. We have something to take care of.” He nudged me and went back to the car. I followed. Then the engine fired up. I pounded my fist on the dashboard as Tschick shifted into second gear and crept toward the end of the cul-de-sac.
Why We Took the Car Page 7