The Vanishing of Katharina Linden Read Free Page B

room and pulled the chair out from under the table where I usually sat. Frau Eichen had not yet arrived; she had to drive down from Bonn and quite frequently turned up only just before the bell rang.
    As I slid into my seat, the silence about me was palpable, the other children standing and staring at me like cattle, keeping a safe distance. When I pulled a library book out of my bag and banged it down on the tabletop, you could feel them flinch away. I noticed then that nobody else had put their things down on my table. Someone had left a
Ranzen
patterned with pink flowers on the chair opposite me; with a sudden dash, Marla Frisch retrieved it and retreated again.
    Before I could think how to react, the bell was ringing and Frau Eichen came into the classroom, looking slightly harassed, her chestnut hair escaping from its silver barrette, and her cardigan sliding off one shoulder.
    “Sit down, class,” she barked at us, trying to cover up her own lateness with a touch of acerbity. There was a sudden flurry of movement. I looked down at my hands, not wanting to catch my classmates’ eyes, but all the same I was aware that no one was taking their seat at my table. Space seemed to yawn endlessly on all sides of me.
    There was a slight altercation at another table as Thilo Koch and another boy both tried to sit on one chair at the same time. Frau Eichen, who until then had been preoccupied with unloading her armful of files and books onto her desk, suddenly looked up and found that the entire class except for me was trying to fit at four of the five tables, and that I—Pia Kolvenbach—was sitting in solitary state at the remaining table, with my head down and the back of my neck crimson with embarrassment. As she took this in, there was a loud
thump
as Thilo Koch finally managed to shove the other boy off the chair and onto the floor. Then there was a moment’s silence.
    “What,” asked Frau Eichen in a voice that positively crackled with frost, “is the meaning of this?”
    Absolute silence reigned as Frau Eichen looked in exasperation from one face to another.
    “Who normally sits at Pia’s table?” she demanded. This was met with some nudging and whispering, but it seemed no one was prepared to own up. Frau Eichen picked out a face from the gaggle squashed up together at the table by the window.
    “Maximilian Klein.”
    But Maximilian showed no signs of moving; he seemed to shrink back into his place crushed between two other children, looking anywhere but at Frau Eichen or myself.
    “Marla Frisch.”
    At that I raised my head; Marla and I were supposed to be friends. I caught her eye and shot her a pleading glance. She looked away.
    Frau Eichen was becoming a little pink in the face; she was unused to such flagrant disobedience.
    “Will someone kindly explain what is going on?” she demanded. “Why is Pia sitting on her own?”
    Eventually it was Daniella Brandt who spoke, never one to resist an opportunity of getting into the limelight.
    “Please, Frau Eichen, we don’t think we should have to sit with her.”
    “What do you mean, you don’t think you should have to sit with her?” snapped Frau Eichen.
    “In case it’s catching, Frau Eichen,” said Daniella with a smirk. One of the other girls let out a stifled giggle. Frau Eichen’s eyes flickered over me momentarily, as though trying to discern symptoms of some unpleasant affliction. Then she gave a heavy sigh.
    “In case
what
is catching?” she asked in a weary tone.
    “The exploding,” said Daniella, and let out a little shriek like a hyena laughing.
    That was enough; the class erupted. Some of the girls were making a play of trying to move their chairs a little farther back, out of range of Pia Kolvenbach, the Potentially Explosive Schoolgirl, but mostly they all just clutched their sides and howled with laughter. Just as the first wave of mirth had broken, Thilo Koch made an exploding gesture with his arms, accompanied by a ripe farting