1/2986 by Annelie Wendeberg Read Free Book Online

want to kick his balls. Instead, I lower my head and bite down hard on my cheeks.  
    He taps on the hood of my rain jacket. ‘Do you have any other questions?’
    Yes, a million, but I want him gone. ‘Where and when do we meet the next time?’
    ‘Here. In precisely one week.’ He’s disappeared before I look up. Next to me on the soaked forest floor lies a book wrapped in clear plastic. A note is stuck on top of it. Find answers while I’m gone.
    I push the note aside and read the title. The Great Pandemic.
    Ugh, I am back in school.

    ———

    With my hood pulled low over my face and the rain jacket wrapped tightly around my shivering frame, I press the volume to my stomach and wait for the storm to pass. The binding of Runner’s book appears weatherproof, but I don’t want to risk soaking it.
    While my body is growing colder by the minute, my mind is racing. Chances are, this isn’t a bad joke after all and my life is about to take a drastic turn. Drastic is an understatement. Once news spreads, people will wonder what I’ve done to deserve such an honour. I’ll be the talk of the village, not because of something I’ve screwed up, but because of something great. Has that ever happened before? I wrack my brain and can come up with only one occasion — I managed to fix the high-pressure turbine at minus twenty-five degrees Celsius outside temperature and ten-centimetre ice buildup on the blades. It took a lot of well-measured whacks and a few new parts on the defroster unit, plus ten bloody fingertips, while my father was busy de-icing the low-pressure turbine up on the hill.
    I was twelve, then, and Mother told me I might make a good turbinehouse keeper if I could improve my grades. I doubt she believed her own words. After all, I’m a girl. Sometimes I think Father only wanted to torture me with all this. Allowing me to fix his precious machines, knowing I enjoyed it, knowing I hoped for more when there was no reason for hope at all.
    Ah, hope. Can one have hope without doubting? I guess not, because if there are no doubts, one would have to say “I know” instead of “I hope.” The stupidity of ungrounded expectations — that’s what optimism is. I’d rather stick to facts. Being noticed by a Sequencer, let alone being considered for an apprenticeship, is absurd. It simply doesn’t happen, and certainly not to the village idiot. Sequencer apprenticeships are so rare that hoping to receive one is like jumping out of a window expecting to fly. Sequencer apprentice… A prickling runs across my palate. I love this term.
    I’m struck by Runner’s weirdness. He rarely answered any of my questions directly, only talked about something totally unrelated and gave an answer much later. He picks a potential apprentice at his very first visit. He’d said the old one suggested me, but why the blind trust? Why not look first and decide later? It would spare him a lot of trouble. Why would he do this?  
    I’m still not one hundred percent convinced of his identity. But he must have shown proof of it to the dean, to our physician, and maybe to someone from the council, too. Not to Ralph, though. That boy is such a dork, if anyone waves the authority flag at him (and in Ralph’s case, adulthood is authority enough), he lolls his tongue and wags his tail. He’d been so nervous because he was afraid to disappoint. He didn’t want to kiss me at all, and only used this as an emergency strategy for Runner’s request to distract me. I feel a strange mix of relief and offence. I’m glad Ralph isn’t in love, or whatever one can call it, but I also feel betrayed. Weird.
    My biggest problem with Runner is that he neither looks nor behaves like a Sequencer. But there’s only one comparison: Cacho, the old Sequencer, a quiet man who hummed and smiled a lot. With a pang, I notice that I miss the old guy. I even liked his name. It makes no sense that he’d suggest me for an apprenticeship. I haven’t done