Read Why We Took the Car for Free Online

Klingenberg flies over the bar to set a new school record, while everyone watches when some airhead submarines his way under the bar? But that’s the way it was. That was what the whole crappy school was like, that was what the girls were like, and there was no way around it. At least that’s what I always thought before I met Tschick. That’s when things started to change.

CHAPTER 9
    Right from the start, Tschick rubbed me the wrong way. I couldn’t stand him. Nobody could stand him. Tschick was trash, and that’s exactly what he looked like. Mr. Wagenbach dragged him into class after Easter break, and when I say he dragged him into class, I really mean it. It was the first period after the break — history. The students were sitting in their chairs as if stapled in place, because if anyone is an authoritarian asshole, it’s Wagenbach. Although asshole is a bit of an overstatement. Wagenbach’s okay, actually. He lectures okay and he’s not as stupid as most of the rest of them — like Wolkow. At least with Wagenbach it doesn’t take a lot of effort to pay attention to what he’s saying. And it’s a good thing to pay attention, too, because Wagenbach can really rip you to shreds. Everybody knows it. Even kids who’ve never had him for a class. Before fifth graders even enter Hagecius Junior High they know: Watch out for Wagenbach! You can hear a pin drop in his class. In Schuermann’s class, you hear cell phones ring about five times a day. Patrick even managed to change his ringtone during Schuermann’s class — he tried out six, seven, eight different ringtones one after the next until finally Schuermann asked for a little quiet . And even then he didn’t have the nerve to glare at Patrick. If somebody’s phone were to ring in Wagenbach’s class, whoever it belonged to would definitely not live to see recess. There’s even a rumor that Wagenbach used to keep a hammer on his desk to smash cell phones that went off in his class. But I don’t know if that’s true.
    Anyway, as usual, Wagenbach came in wearing a bad suit and carrying his shit-brown briefcase, and behind him he was dragging this kid who looked half-comatose. Wagenbach slammed his briefcase down on his desk and turned around. He waited with a scowl on his face until the boy was standing next to him and said, “We have a new classmate. His name is Andrej . . .”
    Then he looked down at a notepad, and at the kid again. Apparently, he wanted the new student to pronounce his own name. But the boy just stood there with his eyes half-closed and stared into the distance without saying anything.
    Perhaps it’s not worth mentioning what I thought the moment I saw Tschick for the first time, but I want to anyway. I had an extremely bad feeling about him the second I saw him next to Wagenbach. He seemed like just another asshole. Even though I didn’t know him at all and had no idea whether he really was an asshole. He was Russian, it turned out. He was average height, had on a dirty white shirt that was missing a button, bargain basement jeans, and misshapen brown shoes that looked like dead rats. He also had extremely high cheekbones and slits instead of eyes. His eyes — these narrow slits — were the first thing you noticed about him. They made him look Mongolian and you could never tell where he was looking. He had his mouth open a little on one side — like he was smoking an invisible cigarette. His forearms were huge and there was a big scar on one of them. His legs were skinny, and the top of his head was kind of squared off.
    Nobody giggled. Nobody ever giggled in Wagenbach’s class. But I had the impression that even if we’d been in somebody else’s class nobody would have giggled. The Russian just stood there and looked who-knows-where out of his Mongolian eyes. And he completely ignored Wagenbach. It was quite an accomplishment to