On Monday morning, she suffered through two long hours of history class in a suffocating, lightless room in the school’s basement, in which Abel Tannatek should have been sitting, too, at the very back of the room, where he would have been asleep … had he been there. But he wasn’t there. Anna wondered if something was wrong with Micha. She whispered an invented story to Gitta about a student she had met in the dining hall, and Gitta seemed to believe her. “There’s just one thing,” she said, “that I don’t quite get. Why were you at the dining hall all by yourself?”

Anna nearly lied. “I was waiting for you.” But then she put her fingers to her lips and gestured toward their indignant history teacher, who treated her students like little kids who would not get cookies at break if they kept whispering.

Abel turned up later, during lit class, looking like he hadn’t slept much the night before. He put his head on his arms and fell asleep instantly; Mr. Knaake noticed but didn’t say anything. In fact, he never said anything to Abel, as if they had an unspoken agreement not to disturb each other. They hadn’t exchanged a word for a year and a half. Anna wondered why Abel showed up for this class just to sleep, but maybe he craved the words, maybe the readings and discussion found their way into his head while he slept … Only toward the end of class did it occur to her that he was safe here, without anyone to bother him or anyone to look after. When the bell rang, Abel woke. He didn’t once look at Anna.

He stayed back after class, as if waiting for something. Anna took her time in the hallway outside the room, pretending to look for something in her backpack and then untangling a jacket sleeve that hadn’t been tangled in the first place. But Abel didn’t come out. Then she heard his voice inside the classroom, talking to Knaake. So did their mutually agreed silence apply only in class?

“No,” Abel said. “No way.”

“You could pay me back later,” the deeper voice of Knaake said.

“I don’t wanna be like that,” Abel replied. “My mother did … does things like that, and I’m not going to. Do you understand? I just want your help, not your money. If you could help me find a job … anything. You know people … people at the university … maybe … I can do something there … in the evenings … anything that starts after seven.”

“After seven?” Knaake asked. “What’s that about?”

“That’s my business,” Abel answered, and Anna thought, at seven little girls go to bed.

“You’re working nights already,” Knaake said. “That’s why you’re sleeping in class. It’s okay with me; you can go ahead and sleep. It’s fine. But it won’t work with the other teachers. And somehow, you’ve got to get the grades you need in your other classes. You can’t make up for everything by doing well in literature.”

“I know,” Abel replied. “That’s why I want to stop working nights and in the evenings instead. At the university … aren’t there assistant jobs a student can do? Like … paperwork … copying things … you can do that in the evening …”

“For those kinds of job, you have to be enrolled.”

“I do have a student ID.”

“I didn’t hear that,” Knaake said. “All right, I’ll ask around. I promise. But I can’t do more than ask. You need to be more flexible. It would be a lot easier to find something in the afternoons.” The voices were moving toward the door now, so Anna bent over her backpack again. “I know,” she heard Abel say. “If it was possible to work afternoons, I’d have …” He fell silent.

“Anna!” Knaake stroked his graying beard in surprise. He looked a bit like an aging walrus in a knitted sweater. “What are you still doing here?”

“I wanted to … to discuss the reading list with you,” Anna lied. “I …” She talked about the reading list for almost fifteen minutes, about which books she might not need to read for the final exams and those she absolutely had to read. As she spoke, she didn’t even listen to herself; she didn’t care which books she’d read or not before the final exams. There was only one story that really interested her. And it was a fairy tale.

And it wasn’t on any list.

During lunch break, it began to snow. It snowed in soft, heavy flakes that fell for a while before anybody noticed them. The sky was full of white snow clouds that pushed cold air down onto the city. Anna sat on the radiator in the student lounge, her hands wrapped around a paper cup full of coffee, trying to warm up. Behind her, the majority of the French class was desperately cramming for a test at two thirty—one of the last before the end of the semester, and before final exams. An oppressive silence filled the room.

Life seemed to consist of collecting points, points that were tallied into your final grade, like dollar bills in a strange game of Monopoly. Anna imagined the points, like snowflakes, falling gently, slowly—yet still so hard to catch.

Out the window, she caught sight of someone padding through the new snow, someone in a military parka and a black knit cap. It was Abel walking over to his bike. Abel took French, just like Gitta. Anna took music instead.. She glanced at her watch. It was two minutes past two. Abel unlocked his bicycle. She put the paper cup down, grabbed her backpack, and slid into her jacket. In seconds she was outside. The snow was slippery under her feet. Nevertheless, she started running.

When she reached him, he was already sitting on his bike and shaking the earplugs of his old Walkman out to untangle the wires—she wanted to snatch those damn earplugs out of his hands. “Where …” She had to catch her breath after running. “Where … are you planning to go?”

Abel looked at her. “That’s my business.”

“Sure, right,” Anna said, angry. “Everything is your business. But you’re supposed to be taking a French test in fifteen minutes.” She narrowed her eyes. “Are you running away? From the test?”

“Crap,” he said, putting the earplugs into his ears, laying his hands on the handlebars of his bike.

“If you don’t take this test, you’ll get a zero, and you know it.”

“Have you ever thought that maybe there are more important things in life than a checkmark next to your name?”

“Yes,” Anna said. “A smiley face. But …”

He grinned, though she saw he didn’t mean to. “A smiley face, huh.”

“What’s the matter?”

He took his hands from the handlebars. “I’m not running away from the test. I’ll be back. I’ll be late, but I’ll come back. I’ll take half of it.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Micha,” Abel said. “She forgot her key. I just realized it. I found it in my backpack. She put it in there or it just found its way in somehow. She usually walks home from school by herself. I don’t want her to wait outside all afternoon … people have seen her father around lately, and I don’t want … do you understand? And now just forget about it. Tell that friend of yours that I’m sick.”

Anna put out her hand. “I’m not telling ‘that friend of mine’ anything. Give me the key.”

“Excuse me?”

“Give me the key. I’ll go. I’ll only miss a regular music class. No test.”

He laughed, shaking his head. “Anna Leemann, do you really think I would give you the key to our place?”

“I believe,” she said, “that you’ve got seven minutes before the French test starts. And that you need all the time you can get to pass it. I don’t eat little children. Or at least, not often. Give me the key.”

It wouldn’t work. He’d just tell her that she was completely crazy. Of course, he would. She knew it. He said, “You’re completely crazy.” Then he got off his bike.

“Six minutes until the test,” Anna said. “Run.”

Abel gave her the ring with the key. She closed her fingers around it.

“Take my bike. Do you know the Aldi supermarket in the Seaside District? We live on Amundsen Street. It’s just behind it. Number 18. The entrance is in a huge backyard; you have to walk between the concrete blocks, behind the parking lot.”