Girl with the Red Balloon (The Balloonmakers)

by Katherine Locke

  People catcalled us. His eyes were wild and golden. “Pretend nothing’s changing, Ellie. Like everything’s going to stay like this forever.”

  I wanted to take that word and press it into every crevice in his body, every nick in his skin, every bruise he’s ever gotten in his life. Stay. It lingered in the air between us and on the end of his tongue. I wanted to kiss him but sensed that he didn’t want to be kissed. He wanted a reply. A promise. This promise I could make.

  I ran my finger across his lips. “Yes.”

  When he kissed me again, I thought I’d combust there on the sticky streets of Berlin. It’d be worth it.

  “Sponge,” he whispered, and I smiled. “Soak this up. Keep it forever.”

  I wanted to stay soaked in his sweat and his love and the beat of this city so I made promises I couldn’t hope to keep, and our clothing stuck together.

  It didn’t matter if we wanted to say anything to each other. The wild and loud crowd drowned out our voices. All three hundred thousand of us sang along to “Born in the USA” and over people’s heads, giant white flags waved. Sabina and Mitzi joined a bunch of girls dancing. I leaned against Kai, watching them and swaying, entranced by Springsteen’s voice, even all the way at the back. I couldn’t see him, but it was enough to hear him.

  When Springsteen sang “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” Kai pulled me into his arms and buried his face in my tangled curls, and we rocked back and forth in a sea of waving lighters. I didn’t close my eyes. I didn’t want to forget this ever. Sabina and Mitzi came back, whooping and laughing, spinning around us. We all fell against each other, laughing, and hot, and sweaty, and madly in love. In love with everything. With forgiveness. With the cusp of freedom within sight. With music. With a crowd of people fearless and in awe.

  Chapter Thirty–Five

  A WAY HOME

  East Berlin, German Democratic Republic, July 1988

  Kai

  They repaired the workshop because the remaining Schöpfers needed somewhere to work. The work of using balloons to send people to safety in West Berlin continued because Aurora hadn’t taken away with her the reality of East Berlin—that dissent was dangerous. Dissent continued to build, wild and free, and the government was fighting to hold on to control.

  The city hummed with a frenetic sort of energy, the kind that came when people saw the light at the end of the tunnel and realized it wasn’t the oncoming train. It was hope. The world was changing. We were along for the ride.

  I raised my eyebrows at Ellie and found milk in the fridge, pouring it into my tea, which made her shake her head in disgust. “You’re sure you want to come to this party? It’s in the workshop. You know. The one you set on fire.”

  “Yes, I’m aware. And you should ask Sabina too. It’d probably be helpful for both of us,” Ellie said.

  I tried to kiss her, but she put her hand on my mouth and pushed me away. “Gross. The tea always tastes like ass when you put milk in it. It should be illegal.”

  “How do you know what ass tastes like?” I called after her when she ran up the stairs.

  “Mature, Kai!” she yelled back at me.

  I didn’t mind. It meant that things were approaching normal between us again. Just in time for us to leave. Mitzi came downstairs and made the same face at my tea. “Gross. Is that what that was about? Girl has good taste. Except in men.”

  I stuck my tongue out at her. “You’re going to watch over her for me, right?”

  Mitzi washed her hands and dried them on the towel. “No, I thought I’d let her run over the city lighting things on fire.”

  “You’re funny sometimes,” I said, and added more milk to my tea, just to spite her.

  * * *

  The workshop looked brand new. They’d changed the entrance to be brighter and wider. No more yellow-covered metal. Everything was made of gorgeous wood and well lit. The books were all replaced, and unless you remembered it, like I did, you’d never know the room had been on fire. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling with tiny paper airplanes, Ellie’s doves, and dozens of red balloons, and people milled around—Zerberus, Schöpfers, Runners, and Ellie, drinks in hand, laughing and talking.

  Ellie stuck close to my side for most of it, until Sabina tugged at my sleeve. Mitzi took Ellie’s hand instead and dragged her across the room to meet a few Runners. Part of me wondered if Ellie was going to become a Runner herself. A Runner, or a Schöpfer, though there wasn’t much time left for a Schöpfer to be needed here in East Berlin. There’d always be somewhere that balloons were needed though, and while it made my chest tight, wherever that was, Mitzi would be there. And maybe Ellie too.

  Sabina led me back out into the tunnel, the dark swallowing us. She cleared her throat. “Don’t be mad.”

  Warily, I said, “Okay.”

  “It’s really important that you aren’t mad.”

  Spoken like someone who had done something really aggravating. All thoughts of what would happen after the wall came down slipped away from my mind. “Just tell me what happened, Sabina.”

  “I can write Ellie a balloon back to her time,” she whispered. In the tunnels, the words echoed around me. They cut right through me and whispered something that felt a lot like hope into my veins.

  I shook my head. “No. She won’t do it. She’s not going to kill someone just to get home. I know her.”

  Sabina paused, and then said, “No. I fixed the equation. I’ve been thinking about it, and I know how to do it, Kai.”

  “Don’t,” I said. “Don’t you say that unless you mean it, Sabina.”

  “I do. I mean it. Felix will be so mad. It’s against the rules even with the modification, but I know. I know I can. I figured out how to go forward in time without pulling anyone back.”

  Who was this hopeful, helpful, optimistic, rational girl? How long had I been missing out on her because Aurora was drugging her so I thought she was getting worse here and not better?

  I said, “Why are you asking me?”

  “Because,” she said, her voice soft, “if you don’t want me to say anything, I can keep a secret.”

  Worse than Aurora giving my sister drugs to make her seem fuzzier than ever was this. We kept tripping over these mental blocks, where Sabina looked at the world and saw it full of walls and gates, and gatekeepers and border guards. We stood in a tunnel by a ghost station, next to a magical workshop, and she wanted to know if I’d keep a secret, keep a possible way home from Ellie just because I loved her.

  I tried to keep my voice gentle without patronizing her. “No, Bean. I’m not keeping this from Ellie. She deserves to know if there’s a way home for her.”

  “Should I tell her?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll tell her. Don’t tell Felix. I’ll talk to him.”

  Her arms were around my neck in an instant. “I know I can write the balloon, Kai. Trust me.”

  I wanted to tell her I did, but I didn’t. I just hugged her back, and we walked back into the workshop together. The brightness and the sound overwhelmed me for a second, and I had to orient myself in the new space before I saw Ellie by Mitzi, listening to some story Nicki was telling in the corner. I slipped up behind her and touched the small of her back with my hand. She turned immediately, looking worried.

  “Hey,” I whispered. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

  She handed off her drink to Mitzi without a word and followed me through the party, weaving through the crowd and heading toward the door. I stepped into the tunnel, holding open the door for her. I checked my watch in the light, making sure we were safe from trains. We had a few minutes. I was cheating a bit, standing in the dark with her, but as soon as the door shut behind us, I immediately regretted it. I couldn’t always read Ellie’s voice. But I was getting better at reading her face. Now I couldn’t see her.

  “Kai?” she asked, her voice hesitant. “What’s going on?”

  Best to get this all out in one breath. “Sabina thinks she can write you a balloo
n home. She fixed the equation. She says no one will die.”

  For a few heartbeats, neither of us said anything. And then Ellie exhaled hard and said, “Do you think she can? For real?”

  She said that a lot. For real. Like there was something for fake worth talking about. I reached for her wrist. Her pulse pounded against my fingers. She stepped toward me in the dark. “If she says she can, I think she can. She’s…She’s a prodigy. I wish she hadn’t been Aurora’s prodigy, but if it works out in your favor this once, is it so bad?”

  Ellie trembled a little bit. “I…Oh my G-d. I don’t even know what to say. I can’t…I didn’t think I’d go home.”

  “Do you want me to talk to Felix?”

  It took a moment, but then Ellie said softly, “Yeah. I do.”

  In the dark, I didn’t see her coming. But her mouth brushed against mine, like she was trying to find me in the dark, and kissing her seemed like an infinitely better idea than crying in the tunnels because this was much different than me moving to London and her staying here. She was leaving. She’d leave. And this time, I’d be the one staying.

  But she kissed me like she did in the tunnels for the first time, with the quiet confidence that had carried her all these months in the wrong time.

  I kissed her back like that confidence was contagious.

  I wished it was. I wished we always absorbed the best traits of everyone around us. I wished that was possible. Maybe this world would be less miserable.

  We didn’t talk to Felix that night, or even the next morning. We were too busy trying to remember all of the curves of each other and imprint them in our memories. She asked me again whether she’d remember any of this when she went home. She asked me late at night in bed whether going home was worth losing all of these memories. Worth losing me. I splayed my fingers over her stomach.

  “You said home was a fantasy,” she reminded me, her stomach moving as she spoke.

  “I lied,” I said, kissing her smile. “I wish I had a home. I was jealous. I’m still jealous.”

  “You have a home,” she whispered back, her fingers walking across my chest, across my heart. “Sabina.”

  I stilled and Ellie propped herself up on her elbow, leaning over me. Her hair spilled around her bare shoulders and brushed against my face, my shoulders, my chest. I imagined her face to be as still as it became when she was very serious, her eyes very dark blue.

  “Maybe we’re not always looking for home, but only how to make our home fit us better. Sometimes, Kai, I think you don’t know how big your heart is. Maybe your home right now can’t hold all of you.”

  I kissed her and then murmured, “It’s killing me, Ellie. Not to ask you to stay.”

  “I know,” she said, her voice just a hush in the dark. “But I don’t think I’d be able to say no.”

  In the morning, I woke alone. Downstairs, Ellie and Sabina were bent over equations as Sabina explained the magic to Ellie. I made breakfast, the hum of their voices keeping me company, and I tried not to think of a world without that soft, American-lilted laugh. I tried, I tried, I tried.

  Chapter Thirty–Six

  GOING HOME

  East Berlin, German Democratic Republic, August 1988

  Ellie

  I read once, and I wished I could remember where, that Brave was a place. You could just go there if you wanted. There were dozens of Braves, everywhere, all over the world, where ordinary people stood up to tyranny and oppression.

  People marching on streets, or standing in squares, or camping out in the public eye. People standing in front of tanks, people laying garlands of flowers around the muzzles of automatic weapons, people linking arms. People who sat down when told to stand up. People who stood up when told to kneel. People who sang songs, people who asked questions, people who wrote, people who created art. People who played a cello in a city under siege. People who had done brave things before the time I was in, and people who had done brave things after I was there, and all of the people yet to come. Injustices are countered by acts of courage. We create Brave wherever we are brave.

  You. Me. Kai. Mitzi. Felix. Ashasher. Sabina, doing the right thing.

  What could change if we started to measure society’s successes not in wars won but in moments in which we countered injustice? When good did win out over evil.

  Kai and Sabina delayed their move to London so she could write the balloon with strict supervision from Felix and Ashasher. Our house turned into a makeshift workshop, and I loved it. The house was alive and busy all through August, full of theory and discussions about time and physics and magic. The debate about how much time had passed in my time came up again and again. Felix thought less time. Sabina thought time might have been frozen—I liked this theory—while Ashasher thought more time might have passed. They all wanted me to be prepared for any of those possibilities. Either way, Sabina regularly went on tangents about crisscrossing the lines of time and causing paradoxes. Only Mitzi and Ashasher could soothe her when she spun herself up, her eyes glazing over as if she could see the lines of time right there in the safe-house kitchen.

  I overheard Ashasher telling Kai that paradoxes and something about the rules of changing futures and time and history were exactly why he couldn’t seek me out in my time. Kai had stalked out of the room and slammed the bedroom door. He refused to talk about it, and for a few days, it was like the Kai I had first met in a dark alley. Distrustful and glowering.

  But the night Sabina brought in a balloon and began to write on it at the kitchen table with blood she’d pulled from my arm that morning, he was quiet. We both watched from the doorway as Felix sat next to Sabina, peering over her shoulder. He’d make sure that her magic was true and untainted, not like Aurora’s magic.

  Kai’s head ducked, his mouth pressed lightly to my shoulder as he slipped his hand into mine. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He, Mitzi, and I went north to the rooftop. I hadn’t been on it since that night when Mitzi and I had painted our nails up there. We climbed to the top and stared over the wall. None of us said anything, but we didn’t have to. It was our last night together. Kai leaned on me from one side, and Mitzi from the other. I closed my eyes. I didn’t need the lights of West Berlin tonight. Everything inside me was lit up, alive with love and regret. I wished there was a way to live in every time all at once, so I never had to lose anyone. So I never had to choose between people who loved me.

  In the morning, I woke slowly, drowsily, surprised by how cold I felt tangled up in Kai. He always slept late, but lightly. I brushed my hands over his bare chest and he stirred, eyes flickering open and closing. He smiled a bit, then stilled, as if he remembered what morning this was. That it was not like any other morning when we lay there whispering to each other before joining the Space-Time Continuum Party downstairs. His arms forced their way around me on the warm sheets, and he dragged me tighter against him.

  I murmured, “We should do something drastic, like cut off all my hair, just to find out if things stay the same when I cross back over.”

  Kai let go of me so suddenly I thought I’d said something wrong. He pushed himself upright on the bed, staring at me. “Six months here, and you think that cutting your hair is the most drastic thing you can do? Where have I failed you?”

  I laughed and half-heartedly swatted at him. “Shut up.”

  “You’re just distracted, thinking about getting your portable telephone back,” he teased me. And then his face turned somber and he caught my hand, pressing it against his chest. “Do you want to remember this?”

  I hadn’t actually thought he’d want to talk about what would happen when I left, if it worked, if I returned to my own time. I scooted upright in the bed. “You know I do.”

  He watched me. “Even the terrible parts?”

  “Even the terrible parts,” I affirmed, thinking of the bodies in the street, the balloons, the fire.

  He ran a finger across the skin between my underwear and my T-shirt. I shi
vered and my stomach tightened. He could barely keep the smile off his face. “And the not-terrible parts.”

  I rocked forward onto my knees and kissed him. “Especially the not-terrible parts.”

  I wanted everyone who had ever told me I was too young to fall in love to see the way he looked at me now, like he was committing me to memory. I wondered how I could ever explain this to anyone.

  One time, I spent six months back in time. I fell in love with a boy who had no obligation to love a world that only gave him gray skies and loneliness. I fell in love with a girl who loves so fiercely that she holds the world together. I fell in love with a few good people who used their magic for good, and I fell in love with a few more people who used it questionably but whose hearts meant well. I fell in love with believing in magic.

  If you give a girl a red balloon, she’ll believe in magic and memory.

  If you give a girl a red balloon, she’ll never want to let go.

  Kai murmured, his eyes never stilling anywhere on my face. “I shouldn’t ask this of you, but I need to, Ellie. Forgive me.”

  Don’t ask me to stay, Kai. Please.

  He whispered into my cheek, “I can’t be there. When you go. I want my last memory of you to be here. Like this.”

  I wondered if I would have been able to see him off, if I had stayed when he was going to London. I understood then. I nodded, and then kissed him again. Because I loved him. Because I had to leave him.

  I celebrated Shabbat for what I hoped was the last time in this time, in this safe house. The candles sat in the same candlesticks Kai had brought me that first week, and this time, Felix said the prayer along with me. We said the same words that all of the generations before me had said, that my grandfather had taught me all those years after a magic balloon took him out of Chełmno. L’dor vador. Generation to generation. When the candles flickered out, dousing us into the dark of the kitchen, Kai pressed his lips to my temple.