Girl from Mars (3 page)

“Yes, it would be great, but I'm so busy right now — with school and everything...” Blah, blah. I can't hear any sounds coming from upstairs.

“Things going well at school, Miriam?”

“Mmmm.” (Means yes.)

“Good. But call again. And don't do anything to disgrace the family.”

Ha, ha. Very funny.

And he laughs a little, too.

“Okay. Bye.” Hang up. I hate her.

Mum still hasn't come down, so I stomp upstairs. She's still standing in my room.

“Do you have to stomp around like that?” she says.

“Now what?” The door is still on its hinges.

“Did you call her?”

“YES!!!” She gives me this suspicious look, as if I might be lying.

“Good. You could at least dust and tidy a little more often.” She rubs her finger along the top of the bookcase. “It's disgusting in here, Miriam.”

“Doesn't bother me.” Unlike you. If only she would just leave me alone —

“It will when the mice and cockroaches start moving in.”

I want to tell her to just piss off. But instead I lean lightly against the desk, fold my arms and give her a crooked grin.

“Fine, do what you want, then,” she says. “After all, it's
your
room.” Then she leaves and slams the door behind her.

I win.

4

When I open the washroom door at school the next morning, Laura is in there rolling a cigarette.

“Hi,” she says without looking up.

“Hi.”

“You're the one who sits in the back row, aren't you?” Laura rolls up the paper, licks the edge, smooths it down.

What does that mean, the one who sits in the back row?

She looks up.

“Yes,” I say.

Laura is sitting right on the sink. I can't just stand in front of her, so I sit down beside the toilet.

“What's your name?” She sticks a cigarette between her lips and lights a match.

“Miriam.”

“Miriam.” She inhales deeply, and her throat makes this little crackling sound. “Pretty name.”

The door opens and it's Suse.

“Hi,” she says when she sees me. “Why are you sitting —” Then she sees Laura. “Oh, hi!” And she shakes
Laura's hand (she shakes her hand!?). “I'm Suse.” She sits down on the toilet and I have to shift over a bit.

Suse pulls a pack of Marlboro Lights out of her bag and lights one. She crosses her legs and rests one arm on her knee with her other elbow on top. She looks perfect. Between drags she achieves the perfect distance between her cigarette and her mouth. Graceful yet relaxed. Perfect.

I've never smoked a roll-your-own.

“And how do you like our class so far?” Suse asks Laura, looking at her with interest. A coffee in her other hand would complete the picture.

Why is Suse asking her this? We're new in the class ourselves.

“It's okay. All classes are the same, aren't they?”

Suse nods. Ines comes in.

“Here's your coffee.” She hands Suse a cup.

“Thanks.”

With Ines in here now it's really crowded. I have to slide over even closer to Laura. It's funny.

Laura crushes her butt on the floor and pulls out her pouch of tobacco again.

“You roll your own?” asks Ines.

“Yes. It's better. There's a lot of shit in those filters.”

“And you think they're healthy without them?”

Laura looks up. “No, but it's cheaper.” She finishes rolling the cigarette and hands it to me.

“Thanks.” Did I ask her for one? I don't know.

Laura rolls another for herself, then gives us both a light.

It tastes totally different. Like country and hay. Maybe like leather. Mmmmh.

“Which class were you in before?”

“B.”

“Katharina was in there, too, right?”

“Oh, yeah. Katharina was there.” Laura gives her a crooked grin.

I'm feeling a bit dizzy. I don't usually smoke in the mornings. I'm staring at my cigarette, listening to Suse asking questions, Ines interrupting. I don't look at them. I hear Laura's voice beside me — soft, deep, louder than the others, closer.

I focus on the cigarette between my fingers and let Laura's voice wrap around me like smoke. I let her words seep deep inside me.

What time is it?

Laura used to live in Cologne. Her father still lives there, but she came here three years ago with her mother. Her mother works at home, freelance, Laura says. She has a little sister. She doesn't have a boyfriend.

She has three small rings in her ear and she's wearing a silver bracelet that she fiddles with when she talks. Her dark red bag is lying on the floor in front of her. She has a necklace of tiny red beads around her neck. When she smokes, I can hear that crackling inside her throat.

And then the bell goes.

Suse: “I'm just going to smoke one more first.”

Ines: “I'm going to the bathroom.”

Laura and I walk to class together. Take a step, breathe
in, take two steps, breathe out. Am I going too fast? Say something. Silence. Breathe. Maybe say something anyway? And then what?

It's hard. The door's straight ahead and I can't do anything except keep going, keep breathing. And I can't look at her.

I wish I could say something clever. Thanks for the cigarette. No, too lame. I wish I could say something that doesn't sound too much like I'm only fifteen. Something that sounds like the big city — Cologne, Berlin, Hamburg, New York, Tokyo.

But I can't think of anything.

“Hey, Miriam.” Laura grins at me. She has her hand on the classroom door. Suddenly she lifts her arms in the air and nudges me with her hip.

“Samba!”

What?!

Laura opens the door and goes to her desk. And she doesn't look at me any more.

5

I have to go out. I have to do something, right now. My room is too small. It's afternoon again, and it's always the same. Too much the same, too small. Not just my room but this whole house, this town. I can't breathe here any more.

I get on my bike and ride — away from our house, fast, down the streets, away, faster, right out to the country roads. I ride and the cold rips my skin off with its claws. I get a cramp in my side. That's good. I'm freezing my ass off. That's good, too, because I can feel it all. I'm not hibernating like the other marmots any more. My heart is beating faster as I pump my way up the hill.

At the chapel I get off my bike. Tomorrow I'm going to be really stiff, but I don't care.

I look down. There's our school, our house and everything, but that's not all, there's more. All around are fields and forest. And beyond them the world keeps going.

The town looks so small; I'm so far away.

I stay until I get too cold. Then I get on my bike and coast back down the hill.

I've never been the new kid. Everyone here knows me. We've always all played together, or not. Evelyn was my sandbox friend. Then we made friends with Katrin and when they didn't like me any more, I played with Christian and Maja. And then I didn't, but somehow that didn't matter. Everyone knows me; probably nothing I do would surprise them.

I imagine what it would be like if I were from Mars, and I accidentally landed on this planet in this small town in the middle of nowhere. What would it be like not to know these streets?

I'm pushing my bike now. The trees are bare and a pale winter sun is shining. The sky is shimmering with cold. I'm wearing gloves, a hat, a scarf, layer upon layer...and I'm freezing. The cold is biting my face. I can feel it in my nose, on my cheeks, on my chin. I'm freezing, my face is freezing.

It's the end of February. I walk along and look at everything around me. I look at the houses. At the old lady who sits by her window staring up at the sky every day. A cat running along the fence. A lost glove that someone has stuck on a fencepost.

There's my old kindergarten. When I was in a bad mood I would wait there for my brother, clinging to the iron gate, holding onto the bars and swinging the gate back and forth every time someone came to pick up their kid.

I keep walking. There's the spot where I fell when we were playing some war game. I was wearing a new
pair of shoes that Grandma had bought me the day before — shoes with smooth soles. When we all had to run, I slipped and broke a tooth. And my nose was bleeding.

Sometimes people move here, and they are the new people. They know people we've never met, streets we've never played in.

Once I sent my penpal in Berlin a few pictures to show her what it looks like here.

When you're new, no one expects anything from you, no one expects you to be the same as you've always been. Because they don't know you and don't know what you're like. You are the new person, so they don't know that when you were eight you laughed so hard that strawberry milk came out your nose. They don't know that you didn't get along with a certain teacher and have hated chemistry ever since. Or the way you looked when you were twelve.

At some point I stopped writing to that penpal.

When I go home now no one will be there. I'll make something to eat and then eat it and...

Someone is standing at the corner waving at me. When I get closer, I see that it's Laura and some guy. They're standing in front of a gumball machine.

“Do you have any change?” she asks me.

I dig a few coins out of my bag.

Laura says a quick thank-you and immediately throws a coin into the machine. Then she turns the handle and out roll a couple of gumballs.

“Shit!” She grabs the balls and sticks them in my hand. Then she puts in more money.

“Laura,” the guy says, “it's bloody cold out here!”

But Laura is staring at the little trap door like a hypnotized rabbit, as more gumballs roll out.

“Fucking shit! It's not happening! I want the bloody thing. And now!”

She throws in the rest of the money, but again only gumballs come out.

I'm standing there with a hand full of red, blue and green gumballs. Laura turns the handle again desperately, but nothing happens.

“Are you sure you don't have any more change?” she asks the guy.

He shakes his head. He's wearing a necklace just like hers, with little red beads.

“You neither?” she says, turning to me.

“No, sorry.” I'm standing here like an idiot holding these bloody gumballs that probably don't even taste any good.

“Laura, I'm freezing!” he says.

Laura doesn't say anything.

“The machine will still be here tomorrow!”

Laura smacks her hand against the machine, takes another look behind the trap door, and suddenly sticks out her lower lip.

“Man, it isn't fair! I must have put five Euros in that thing!”

“Life isn't fair, Laura.” The guy takes her hand and
pulls her away and they run off down the street, while I just stand there holding the gumballs and getting mad. I look around for a trash can, and then Laura turns around.

“Hey, where did you go?”

What does she mean, where did I go?

“Or do you have other plans?” she says. Then she comes up to me, takes one of the gumballs, sticks it in her mouth and bites into it. It cracks.

“Shit, it's frozen.” But she keeps chewing. She grabs me by the hand holding the gumballs and pulls me toward the guy.

He takes a gumball, too, looks at me and says coolly, “And who are you?”

“Miriam.”

Idiot. If only I wasn't standing here with my hand full of these cruddy gumballs that I can't just throw away any more because Laura came back.

Wait a minute. I can still leave. I can say that I do have plans and then just hand over the gumballs or toss them in the garbage.

“This is Phillip. Phil,” says Laura, and she takes the gumballs out of my hand and puts them in her bag, except for one, which she sticks in my mouth. “Miriam is in my class.” Laura takes his hand, sticks it in my free one and shakes them both.

I feel the cold, round candy on my tongue. It tastes red.

“In your class, how nice,” says Phillip. He lets go of my hand and shoves his in his jacket pocket.

I bite down on the gumball.

Crack
.

It's definitely red.

6

I push my bike, which is glued to my hands, and follow them like a zombie, watching their backs. I feel pretty stupid. The sidewalk is far too narrow for three people and a bicycle. I can't hear what they're saying, not that I care what they're talking about.

I would like to know, though, what Laura wanted so badly out of the gumball machine.

I didn't even look to see what else was in there.

The farther we walk, the angrier I get. I'm mad at myself for running after them like a bloody dog. I'm mad at Laura for not telling me what we're doing and why I have to go with them. And I'm mad at this Phillip guy, because he's acting like an arrogant pig. Thinks he's so cool.

Laura is wearing a parka that's way too long for her. Now and then she runs her fingers through her hair and scrunches it up. She has short black hair that sticks out all over. You want to grab hold of it and scrunch it up yourself, just to see what it feels like.

Now and then Laura looks back and winks at me. Are they making fun of me?

Maybe I should just stop. The gumball doesn't even taste good any more. It's stale and getting tough. Gumballs from the machines are always shit.

I imagine them just leaving me behind or...or...I don't know. What does she want from me, anyway?

“We're here,” Laura says.

We're standing in front of a house on the other side of town. I don't come over this way very often. We're practically in the country. A lot of the houses are only half finished, owned by young families who have planted small trees in the gardens and are waiting for them to grow big. Swing sets. Lawns that still haven't sprouted.