The Storyteller by Antonia Michaelis Read Free Book Online Page A

the complicated procedure of getting coffee from a machine without flooding the whole place. But somehow she ended up standing at the counter behind Micha and the pink down jacket. Micha stood on tiptoes, pushed a slightly sauce-smeared strand of hair out of her face, and said, “I think I’d like to have hot chocolate. But if you have vanilla ice cream with hot chocolate, I’d take that.”
    The woman behind the counter straightened her white-and-blue-striped apron and stared at the child blankly. “Excuse me?”
    “Um, maybe you have something like vanilla ice cream plus hot chocolate for less money? Like they have at McDonald’s. You can buy coffee and a hot dog there for just one euro fifty.”
    “We’re not McDonald’s,” the aproned woman said. “And we definitely don’t sell hot dogs here. So you need to decide what you want, young lady. You’re not the only one waiting in line.” The tone of her voice was at least as cold as ice cream, but it didn’t taste of vanilla. It tasted of scrubbing powder and a white-and-blue-aproned disappointment in life. Around the woman’s mouth were wrinkles, carved by bitterness, in which Anna read: You! All of you! You don’t know nothing about nothing. You’re eating and drinking and wasting your parents’ money. Upper-class brats, you haven’t worked a day in your educated little lives. Bah. Nobody’s ever given
me
anything for free.
    But it isn’t our fault, Anna wanted to reply. Whose fault is it? Can you explain that to me? I want to understand, to understand so many things …
    The aproned woman put a white cafeteria cup with pale hot chocolate onto Micha’s tray. Obviously the little girl had decided on hot chocolate. Micha nodded, reached out her hand for the straws on the side of the counter, straws surely not meant for hot chocolate—they were the grass thin, brightly colored kind—and took two, a green one and a blue one. “Well, young lady, I’d say one is enough,” the aproned woman said, as if those straws were her own personal ones and she had to take special care of them. In reality, there were thousands of straws; Micha could have taken a dozen and nobody would have noticed. The aproned woman now tried to retrieve one of the straws from Micha’s grip, but Micha held onto both of them. The struggle took place just above the counter, just above the tray with the cocoa. Anna shut her eyes and heard the cup fall. She opened her eyes again. The floor was covered with hot chocolate and broken pieces of cup.
    Micha just stood there, both straws in her hand, looking at the aproned woman with big blue eyes filled with terror. The people in line were shuffling their feet.
    The aproned woman lifted her hands. “I don’t believe it!” she exclaimed. “How clumsy can you be? Young lady, that cup … you’re going to have to pay for that cup. Now look what you’ve done. What a mess! And I’m the one who has to clean it up. You hurry up and pay for that cup now and leave. The hot chocolate and the cup, that’s two euro fifty; the cup is one fifty.”
    When she said that, light rain began to fall from the sweet blue eyes. A small fist—the one without the straws—was held out, and in it, lay a single euro coin. “I only have this,” Micha’s voice said through the rain.
    “Don’t tell me you’re here by yourself!” Now the aproned womanwas nearly shouting. “There must be an adult somewhere who can pay for this!”
    “No,” Micha said, bravely, fighting against her tears. “Nobody has to pay for me. I’m all alone. On the cliff. All alone.”
    “Oh my God, would you leave her alone! She’s a kid! Just a kid! Don’t you have kids?”
    Anna looked around for the person who’d said this and realized that it was her. Damn. She’d sworn she wouldn’t interfere, wouldn’t draw attention to herself, wouldn’t give up her invisibility …
    “I do have children, as a matter of fact,” the aproned woman said. “Two, if you must know.