This was originally an opening for something larger which will never be finished, but it reads perfectly well on its own.
Oskar had meant for the rock to kill Hans when he threw it. He had not wanted the other boy dead — not consciously — but they had been arguing, and Hans had insulted Oskar’s father, saying he had raised Oskar as a delinquent. A flush of anger had taken over him, and Oskar had flung the chunk of flint as hard as he could. It had missed his classmate’s head by a scant three inches… and sailed over the low wall to strike the Schoolmaster’s greenhouse, where he cultivated his prize orchids. The glass broke and fell, and Oskar knew that he was in a great deal of trouble.
What was worse, two other boys from school had witnessed the incident and they were sure to tell on him. Oskar had almost run away back to Sieben Eichen, but he clung — illogically — to the hope that he might somehow wriggle out of the punishment.
(In his mind, the destruction of the orchids was a much more serious crime than the maybe-attempted murder of Hans. And anyway, he had missed, so maybe he had not meant to hit him. Oskar was very good at throwing rocks, after all.)
By lunchtime Oskar had made himself so sick with worry that he was unable to eat, even though the lunchlady had made his favorite Kartoffeltaschen. Oskar approached Hans, who was sitting with a few other boys, including Fritz, Oskar’s older cousin.
“Grüß Gott, Verdammter.” Fritz said to him. Greetings, reprobate.
Oskar sneered at his God-fearing cousin. “I am speaking to Hans.”
He put his tray down upon the table across from the boy he had most definitely not attempted to kill this morning.
“Would you like one of my potato cakes?”
Hans eyed him skeptically. “What is wrong with you?”
Oskar shrugged. “What is wrong with you, Barbräfelden?” He bit back his temper. “I would like to… not hear you speak.”
Oskar tried to communicate his meaning with his eyes, not wishing to discuss the matter in front of the others — to say nothing of his goody-good cousin. “Perhaps I could… fill your mouth?”
His cousin was taking a bite as he said this, and Fritz began to cough violently, a wild smile on his face and his eyes sparkling as he waved his friend Heinrich off.
“Oskar —” he coughed, “I did not think —”
“Schnauze, du Hund!” Oskar snapped.
His cousin’s wit was not appreciated, and Oskar felt his face reddening.
Hans asked, “Did you lick this cake?”
“Nein.”
Julius spoke up from the end of the table. “Did you touch it with your penis?”
“No!” Oskar shouted, nearly grabbing the cake and hurling it at the insulting boy. But he grabbed the edge of the table instead and held himself in place. Julius was one of the two boys who had witnessed him throwing the rock at the greenhouse.
Hans licked his lips as he considered Oskar’s offer — a potato cake for his silence.
These Kartoffeltaschen were a sought-after commodity in the lunchroom. The cakes were the specialty of Madame Göre, the new lunchlady. All of her food was superior to that of the old bat she had replaced, but the Kartoffeltaschen were transcendent. Savory cakes stuffed with cheese and vegetables and lightly fried, they were an instant favorite of all the boys at school, including thirteen-year-olds Oskar and Hans.
But she only gave each student three tiny cakes, served with parsimonious portions of sour cream and spicy sauce, so barter for them was common practice. One cake might buy you a copy of someone’s homework. Two, a volume of scandalous manga. And for three…?
Well, Cousin Fritz’s lewd comment was not without precedent among the older boys. But one did not discuss this.
Oskar waited for Hans’s reply, aching amid the sounds of the lunchroom — murmured conversations spiked by adolescent expletives and the clank of metal silverware on trays.
With a sigh, Hans relented and accepted his bribe. He slid one of the Kartoffeltaschen off Oskar’s tray and onto his own. Oskar breathed a sigh of relief, and his stomach unknotted.
Julius, several seats down, cleared his throat.
Of course. Oskar walked over to Julius, and the older boy gleefully took the second Kartoffeltasche from his tray.
Cousin Fritz eyed the exchange. “ Oskar, what have you done?”
Dulya. Oskar left his cousin and his friends and went to seek out Franz.
There was one more witness to be bribed.
Oskar was feeling better after lunch (if still a bit hungry) and by the time of their Maths class he was becoming convinced that he had indeed Gotten Away With the accidental vandalism of the greenhouse. His mood further improved when their maths test was canceled because Dolph Kleitzen, a boy with notoriously low marks in Maths, vomited shortly after entering the classroom. There was an awful ruckus and when the custodian sprinkled Vo-Ban on the mess several of the other boys claimed the smell was making them ill as well until the flustered teacher, resigned to the fact that her test would not be completed this period, simply let her students go.
So now Oskar had a partial free period! His feet fairly flew out of the school building where he would finally be able to remove the smartphone from his bag (their use was strictly prohibited in school, punishable by suspension) and play games as he wandered over to the playground equipment. He was too old for the equipment of course, but there were students at the school as young as ten years old, and what else was Oskar to do during his free time, homework? Absurd.
Oskar twirled on the roundabout while playing games on his phone until another boy, Sebastian, came out to join him. Sebastian was twelve, a year younger than Oskar, and this actually was a free period for him. He wanted them to push one another on the playground toy, but Oskar refused, even though he had been quite happily pushing himself before. Instead they both moved to the slide, an old open-top slide with gravel at its bottom and deliciously low sides. They took turns going up and down it, enjoying a solitary amusement together.
Oskar did not have any friends at his cousin’s school. His unpleasant personality drove away any who came too close. Not like he cared. In a pause between his games he had a vivid fantasy of returning to California and reclaiming his original governess, whom his pious aunt and uncle had sent away. He thought often of how to win her back, aching with the need to see her again.
Sebastian was hesitating at the top of the slide for far too long and Oskar was about to reprimand him when the younger boy heaved forward and vomited down the slide.
Oskar shrieked in mock-horror. “You’re disgusting, Sebs!” The boy looked frightened as Oskar rounded the front of the slide to see him better — and he soon discovered why.
The vomit dripping down the slide was a vivid scarlet. And not beets or cranberry juice, the oily red of blood. Sebastian was vomiting blood.
His cruelty forgotten, Oskar shouted, “You stay here, I will fetch someone!” and then rapidly turned and ran towards the schoolhouse, his heart pounding. A look back showed that Sebastian had fallen off the side of the slide and was now heaving his guts out — bright and red like fast-flowing honey. Surely he could not have that much blood inside him. Or if he did, it must remain inside.
He reached the schoolhouse with a cry, not bothering to put his mobile phone away. And when he got there he discovered Julius, his cousin’s friend. He was slumped against the lockers and vomiting. The nasty slurry was coming out orange, like the yellow of vomit mixed with some blood, less than Seb’s. There was a growing slick of vomit around the fifteen-year-old’s feet and —
Oskar knew that the orange bits in vomit that looked like carrots were not carrots. They were chunks of your stomach lining. When you sicked, some bits broke off and came up with the sick. But those were little chunks, like a piece of macaroni or a slice of carrot. There were three chunks in the vomit slick the size of playing cards. Julius coughed and gagged and another section, easily 8 centimeters on a side, fell from his lips. The boy’s stomach was coming apart and he was literally choking on it. Julius stared at Oskar with pleading eyes. “Help.”
Oskar ran. There was another slick of the stuff down the hall which he ignored, and more seen in the classrooms where, falscher Gott, two students were slumped over their desks, not moving!
He skidded around the corner and discovered the schoolmaster, the very one he had been so afraid of earlier, crumpled in the hallway amid his own bloody sick. The schoolmaster was not breathing.
Oskar took out his phone and dialed 112 Emergency.
Later, after a breathless conversation with a shaken-sounding Emergency Operator, Oskar was just wandering the halls while the man on the phone wittered, surveying the carnage that had once been his school. There were a few other students who had survived, crying and not knowing what to do. He handed the phone to one of them numbly and continued to wander until he found what he knew he inevitably must.
His cousin Fritz’s eyes fluttered, fixing blearily upon him. There was blood and stomach parts all down the front of his school shirt and he could not speak. He reached out an imploring hand to him.
Oskar watched his cousin die until the flashing police lights came.
—