Mr Hartmann carried in the exam packets with the weariness of a man who had taught gifted teenagers for too long to believe in the word "potential."
"Sit," he said. "No dramatic standing up. Save your emotional crises for the literature lesson."
Somebody giggled nervously. Julian went back to his seat. For the next hour we sat the selection exam, whose results would determine who received the school's nomination for the Arnsberg scholarship. The nomination meant everything. Without it a candidate could only apply independently, with no coaching, no mock interviews and no priority references.
In my first life Julian very nearly came unstuck that day: he froze halfway through the analytical essay. I saw it from two rows away, finished mine early, asked to be excused and on my way back dropped a card with an outline on his desk. He came second. I came ninth: twelve minutes lost, a crumpled ending. Nobody found out. That evening he thanked me between the library shelves with his forehead against my shoulder, whispering, "I don't deserve you." I thought it was a confession. It was a diagnosis.
Today the title of the analytical essay looked up at me from the page almost mockingly: "To what extent do personal achievements belong to the person, and to what extent to those who supported them?" I nearly laughed out loud. In my first life I had helped Julian answer that question while being, myself, the answer he never gave.
I wrote about invisible supports. About how talent is treated as an individual achievement because the names of the people who help it develop are inconvenient to print. About how schools profit from stories of lone geniuses: a myth is cheaper than a network of care. About how recognition without gratitude is called appropriation. My hand did not shake.
Forty minutes in, Julian stopped writing. I knew it without turning round: the air in the room changed the way it changes before a storm; my body scented his panic the way an old soldier scents distant gunfire. His pencil knocked against the desk once, twice, and went quiet. Hartmann walked between the rows. Charlotte glanced back at Julian, then at me, and the expectation was plain in her gaze: any moment now that one will get up and do something. I turned the page.
When Hartmann called time, Julian had filled half a page. I had filled six.
The results went up the same day, not online but on heavy cream paper behind glass outside the scholarship office: Eberwald liked its teenagers to suffer against a handsome backdrop. People crowded in front of the board and whispered.
First place, Klara Mohr. Second, Hanna Berger. Third, Charlotte von Ahlenberg. Eleventh, Julian Wolf.
Eleventh place was not a failure. For Julian it was a catastrophe: only the top ten received the nomination automatically. I stood at the back of the crowd and read my own name over until it became real. In that life I had been ninth. In this one I was first. The whole difference between devotion and victory fitted into six honest pages.
Hanna grabbed my sleeve.
"You're first!"
"I know."
"First!" she repeated, as though saying it twice made it true faster.
Then Julian came. The crowd parted for him out of habit; it had always parted, long before any titles. He read the list from the top down, then again from the bottom up. When his name failed to appear in the top ten a second time, his face set. Charlotte stood beside him.
"It's only an internal sift," she said quickly. "My father could…"
She stopped half a word later than she should have. Julian turned slowly towards her. The Julian from my first life hated being reduced to his poverty, and he hated help that looked like help. He accepted my unpaid labour because I wrapped it in friendship. The Ahlenbergs' patronage came wrapped in silk that was far too obvious.
"Your father could – what?"
Charlotte's smile wavered.
"I only mean that there is more than one road."
I should have walked away. Not watched. But for the first time I could stay and witness consequences that were not mine. Julian's gaze moved from her to the list, then to me.
"You knew."
The crowd went quiet, like a single animal.
"Knew what?"
"That I'd freeze."
I almost laughed, not from amusement but from the accuracy of it: even now his first instinct was to lay more blame on my inaction than on his own lack of preparation.
"Julian, I didn't sit your exam for you."
"You knew I needed the card with the outline."
Hanna turned sharply to me. Charlotte's eyes darted between us: the cards were news to her. I spoke loudly and evenly, so that everyone would hear.
"If your result rests on me feeding you answers in exams, then perhaps the rankings have finally shown what they were always meant to show."
The colour flooded his face. At the edge of the crowd a teacher turned round. Julian took a step towards me.
"That's not what I meant."
"It's exactly what you meant. Until now I was the only one who understood it."
For a second something like betrayal flickered in his eyes, and that was what truly made me angry. Betrayal presupposes obligation. He had no right to feel robbed simply because I had stopped letting him rob me.
Hartmann loomed up behind us. His face was unreadable, like a blank form.
"Wolf. Mohr. My office."
The crowd let out its breath as one. Charlotte stayed where she was by the list: third line from the top, and the first person everyone had forgotten.
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