front of Joel.
'Are you thinking of staying there for good?' he says.
Joel still couldn't think of anything to say. Besides,
the unknown boy is speaking with a peculiar accent.
And he's smirking. Smirking non-stop.
'Who are you?' Joel asks eventually, standing up.
Although they are the same height, Joel looks like a
dwarf, up to his knees in snow.
'I moved here today,' says the boy. 'I didn't want to,
but I was forced to.'
Joel brushes himself down as he thinks.
'Where do you come from?' he asks.
'That doesn't matter,' the boy answers. 'I shan't be
staying here anyway.'
Joel notices that the boy with the snowshoes is red-eyed,
as if he'd been crying.
Joel suddenly loses control over himself. He says
something he hadn't intended to say at all.
When he hears the words spurting out of his mouth,
he regrets them right away: but it's too late by then.
'Those of us who live here don't sit down by the river
and start blubbering,' he says.
The unknown boy looks at him in surprise. Joel
wonders if he might be about to get beaten up. The boy
in the snowshoes looks strong.
'I haven't been sitting here crying,' says the boy. 'I
rubbed my face with my glove. I forgot that I am allergic
to wool. That's why my eyes are red.'
Joel thinks he understands. There is a girl in his class
who starts sneezing whenever anybody smelling of dog
comes into the room. It must be the same thing.
'My name's Ture,' says the boy with the snowshoes.
Then he walks off, as if he's not the slightest bit
interested in knowing that Joel is called Joel.
Joel watches him go, walking straggle-legged over
the snow.
Whoever he is, he can keep away from my rock, he
thinks. If he comes back here again I shall have to think
up some way of scaring him off.
He trudges up the slope, stepping in his old footprints.
Snowshoes and a telescope, he thinks. Who is he?
The next day Joel looks round to see if there is anybody
new in the school, but he can only see the familiar faces
in the playground. As soon as lessons have finished Joel
hurries down to the river again.
As soon as he passes the bakery he can see somebody
sitting on the rock in the distance.
Once again he trudges down the slope, cursing
inwardly because he doesn't have any snowshoes.
'I thought it was you,' said the unknown boy as Joel
comes wading up through the snow.
'That's my rock,' says Joel, and he can feel his voice
shaking with anger. 'Nobody else is allowed to sit on it,
only me.'
'Do you have a title deed?' asks the unknown boy,
with a grin.
Title deed? What's that? wonders Joel.
'If you own a rock you have to have a title deed,' says
the boy. 'A certificate of ownership, with an official
stamp. You have to have that.'
'It's my rock,' says Joel angrily.
His voice isn't shaking any more. He's just angry now.
The boy suddenly jumps down from the rock and Joel
feels sure there's going to be a fight. If the rock is his, he
will have to defend it. But instead the boy undoes the
straps fastening the snowshoes to his boots.
'Would you like to try them?' he says.
Joel looks at him. Is he being serious?
'That rock is mine,' he says again.
'I've no intention of taking it off you,' says the boy.
'Are you going to try the snowshoes or aren't you?'
Joel fastens the straps round his boots.
It's a remarkable feeling, being able to walk on the
snow. It makes him twice as tall. If I have a pair of
snowshoes on, I'm as big as a grown-up, he thinks.
'They were very good,' he says as he returns them.
'They really were very good.'
'What else are you called, besides Joel?' the unknown
boy suddenly asks.
How on earth does the stranger know that he's called
Joel?
'Gustafson,' he replies. 'But how do you know my
name's Joel?'
'It's carved into the rock,' says the boy. 'It must be
you if you say the rock belongs to you.'
Joel had forgotten that. Scratching his name into the
rock last autumn, with a rusty old nail.
'What about you?' he asks. 'Apart from Ture?'
'Swallow. But I'm a