Eberwald Gymnasium received me as though the ten years had never happened: wrought-iron gates, wet stone steps, ivy over the old brick and a banner above the entrance promising excellence in the tone people usually keep for threats. Pupils crossed the courtyard in little flocks, and the navy blazers stood out sharply against the grey morning.
I walked more slowly than usual, picking up details that ten years of adult tiredness had buried. I saw again the fountain with the angel missing a wing and the tower clock, forever two minutes fast. I recognised the side path Julian used to slip away from teachers and the windows of the reading room, under which I had waited for him through so many evenings that the librarian began keeping our table free without being asked.
I did not go to the library. That was my first public crime.
In the classroom Julian was already in his seat by the radiator, his long legs stretched out under the desk. Black hair fell into his eyes, one sleeve rolled up: he never wore the uniform the way it was meant to be worn. At seventeen he still had that unfinished beauty that makes people want to write the rest of him. Too thin, too pale, too quiet, right up to the moment he opened his mouth and everyone understood that this was a voice that could turn hardship into music.
His bag lay open on the floor, and the packet of selection-exam paperwork sat untouched on the desk. When he saw me he let out a breath of such relief that old habit nearly carried me a step towards him. Then his expression changed – apparently he remembered that I had blocked him. The relief went out. He stood up so sharply that his chair squealed.
"Klara."
He said my name quietly and without anger, but with the impatience of a man kept waiting for his change. In my first life that sound could rearrange a whole day. Today I walked past him to the front row and sat down beside a girl I barely knew, Hanna Berger. Hanna smelled of mint, and the dates in her notes were underlined twice.
Julian looked at the empty chair beside him. That seat had been mine for three years. He came over without waiting for the bell.
"Is your phone broken?"
"No. I blocked you."
The classroom went very quiet. Even Hanna stopped arranging her pens. Julian lowered his voice.
"Why?"
"I texted you: I'm not tutoring you any more."
That was not an explanation, it was a statement. He narrowed his eyes. No hurt, no anger, only honest bewilderment so far. In his world I was a constant, and constants do not change by themselves: an outside force has to act on them. He was looking for the force.
"This is about Charlotte."
The name came into the room like the smell of perfume. Charlotte von Ahlenberg had transferred to Eberwald two weeks earlier. In my first life her arrival moved everything: the teachers started smiling differently, the class rearranged itself around her like iron filings round a magnet, and even Julian, who distrusted the rich on principle, let her sit next to him within three days. In my first life I pretended to be glad for him. In this one I smiled.
"No. It's about me."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"That I want my evenings back. You do know the selection exam is today?"
"Yes."
"Then sit it. On your own."
His voice dropped.
"Klara, I need help."
My heart contracted, not out of love, out of habit. "I need help" had been the password to every boundary I owned for ten years. I looked at his hands: the fingers were trembling faintly. In my first life I would have noticed that tremor before he did and would already have been slipping him a sheet with an outline under the desk. Now I folded my hands on top of the desk.
"Go to student support. Second floor, opposite the staff room."
He flinched as though he had been slapped.
"I'm not one of the people they fix in little offices."
"No. You're a candidate who needs support."
"I need you."
There it was, the chain, polished to a shine with sincerity. The Klara I used to be rose inside me – seventeen years old and frightened to death of being unwanted. I let her stand there for a second. Then I sat her back down.
"No. You need a tutor. And I'm not available."
The door opened before he could answer. Charlotte came in, and the class hushed the way it always hushed for girls like her. The same navy blazer as everyone else, but on her it sat as though a quiet elderly seamstress somewhere in Paris had cut it to measure. She wore a cream ribbon in her hair and carried a leather bag with gold initials instead of a rucksack. Charlotte's gaze slid from Julian to me, and in that short pause I read recognition: not of me as a person, but of me as the girl occupying the seat beside her investment.
"Everything all right?" she asked gently.
Julian stepped back from my desk like someone caught out.
"Fine."
Charlotte smiled at him, then at me.
"I hear you're wonderful at helping Julian prepare."
"I was," I said.
"That sounds final."
"It is."
She tilted her head slightly.
"Brave. Most people would love to have a share in his success."
The poison was measured out so neatly that half the class missed it.
"I'm not one of them," I said. "Let them fight for a success of their own."
Her gaze sharpened, the way a jeweller's does. The bell rang.
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