CHAPTER 1 In which a collision takes place and a door is discovered I should have known My name is Achim I’m eleven years old and on that summer day when Karl was chasing me around with a piece of soggy bread I should have known that my life would never be the same But I didn’t know I woke up and didn’t know I looked out the window onto the yard where fog was rising from the field and I didn’t know I still didn’t know when I pulled the blankets off Karl so that he wouldn’t stay in bed till next Christmas If this was a story that I had made up I would tell it differently I would say that the night before I had had a strange dream But I hadn’t I wasn’t expecting anything I didn’t feel any differently than usual not even for a split second Instead I rushed down the stairs just as quickly as ever so that I’d beat Karl 1
to the breakfast room The breakfast room was part of the orphanage where Karl and I lived It was a totally normal orphanage or well I don’t really know what an abnormal orphanage looks like Anyway ours was just fine There was a big yard with apple trees a television room a basement where we had parties sometimes and lots of nice little rooms with two or four beds in them And of course there were a bunch of grown-ups who made sure that we didn’t make campfires in the nice little rooms and that we brushed our teeth and got on the bus to school every morning Some of the grown-ups like Maria for instance were really nice But they weren’t parents That’s what we all wanted big strong parents A father who was a pilot a train engineer or a Nobel Prize winner and a mother who baked hot rolls and who could eat any teacher alive Siblings weren’t so necessary That morning Karl shaped a small piece of bread into a little boat with jam portholes and everything and set it into his cup to float in his hot cocoa Achim he announced I’ve decided I’m going to be a sailor A sailor I asked skeptically and watched as the bread boat soaked up cocoa and slowly began to sink Yeah that’s right said Karl And then I’m going to dis cover the twelfth continent All by myself You don’t need parents to do that 2
What are the other eleven continents I asked suspi ciously There aren’t that many of them By then there will be He grinned By then someone will have definitely discovered another couple You’re crazy I replied smiling Really I am Karl was leisurely fishing the half-sunken boat out of his cup so he could throw it at me but I didn’t wait around for him to do it I had already jumped up dove under the table come out on the other side and started running Just you wait I heard Karl call out from behind me Some grown-up tried to stop us but we slipped under his arms and in a fit of giggling dashed back and forth through the aisles 3
