picking flowers and boys holding on to telescopes ran around the waist of one of those tall buildings.
“They wanted this part of town to be as impressive as possible. Can you tell?”
“Hmm,” said Noah. He didn’t think he liked enormous modern gray buildings. Over there was a tall clock sculpture with numbers and wires on it, though — that was more interesting. And behind it an enormous needle poking into the gray sky.
“That’s the television tower,” said Noah’s dad, pointing to the needle, and he said a word that sounded like “Fairnzaytoorm.” “That’s what they call it, the
Fernsehturm.
I think you can go up in it to the top; there’s a restaurant or something.”
The needle was huge and unsettling, but Noah liked the great big complicated clock. It looked like something a mad scientist would stick in the middle of a square.
“Over here! Over here!” said Noah’s father with some delight.
It was turning out to be a very good day after all: he had found the supermarket.
Secret File #6
HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU
The Fernsehturm looked like a needle with a great big eyeball on it, staring at you, wherever you were. That made the name especially appropriate:
FERN
SEH
TURM
=
FAR-
SEEING
TOWER
The supermarket was decorated with blue-tiled zigzags along the top of its walls and had a sausage stand outside. The rain had stopped. Noah and his dad wolfed one sausage each while they were waiting in line for a little grocery cart.
Noah had never had to wait in line to go
into
a grocery store, but that was the way it was done here. He got stared at in that line. He thought at first maybe he was eating his sausage incorrectly, or maybe you weren’t supposed to eat sausages while you were waiting in line for grocery carts, but then his father said, “The kids your age are all in school today.”
Oh, right: school!
“So when do I start school?” asked Noah. The thought of school in this strange place was somewhat scary, but having to sit in that apartment all day trying not to break the Rules was almost scarier.
“We’ll have to wait and see,” said his father. “We’ve asked, of course. Your mother’s trying to get the scoop from the Ministry of Education.”
During this not-so-very-long conversation, the stares from all those other people in line got twice or maybe even three times as intense. Noah figured he could guess the reasons why:
• He was a child who should be in school.
• He was eating a sausage in the grocery cart line.
• He and his father were speaking English.
• And of course there was the Astonishing Stutter.
Noah had had a lot of practice not minding being stared at, however. At least these people didn’t have the cold, spiky eyes of policemen or border guards. They were just curious. Well, Noah was pretty curious, too!
At the moment, he was figuring out the system of the grocery store. He was very interested in figuring out systems. He had made a Hierarchical Flowchart of his fifth-grade class that showed all the layers of popularity and mobility in the class subgroups. The really popular kids, like Brian and Casey, who were also, although this might be a random variable, tall (Noah was fully aware that he probably noticed their height because he himself was so short), were listed in a cluster at the top of the chart. Then there were the groups of sporty kids and nerdy kids and the ones who were hangers-on and desperately wanted to move up the chart and the wacko smart kids with Astonishing Stutters, who sometimes hung out with one group and sometimes with another: they were what you might call free-floating, like certain electrons.
That last group was pretty small. In fact, it was a set with only one actual member: the kid who used to be known as Noah.
Noah sighed. It made his heart hurt a little, thinking about his class back in Virginia.
Stop that!
he told himself, and he went back to
noticing everything.
Anyway, the system followed by this grocery
“They wanted this part of town to be as impressive as possible. Can you tell?”
“Hmm,” said Noah. He didn’t think he liked enormous modern gray buildings. Over there was a tall clock sculpture with numbers and wires on it, though — that was more interesting. And behind it an enormous needle poking into the gray sky.
“That’s the television tower,” said Noah’s dad, pointing to the needle, and he said a word that sounded like “Fairnzaytoorm.” “That’s what they call it, the
Fernsehturm.
I think you can go up in it to the top; there’s a restaurant or something.”
The needle was huge and unsettling, but Noah liked the great big complicated clock. It looked like something a mad scientist would stick in the middle of a square.
“Over here! Over here!” said Noah’s father with some delight.
It was turning out to be a very good day after all: he had found the supermarket.
Secret File #6
HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU
The Fernsehturm looked like a needle with a great big eyeball on it, staring at you, wherever you were. That made the name especially appropriate:
FERN
SEH
TURM
=
FAR-
SEEING
TOWER
The supermarket was decorated with blue-tiled zigzags along the top of its walls and had a sausage stand outside. The rain had stopped. Noah and his dad wolfed one sausage each while they were waiting in line for a little grocery cart.
Noah had never had to wait in line to go
into
a grocery store, but that was the way it was done here. He got stared at in that line. He thought at first maybe he was eating his sausage incorrectly, or maybe you weren’t supposed to eat sausages while you were waiting in line for grocery carts, but then his father said, “The kids your age are all in school today.”
Oh, right: school!
“So when do I start school?” asked Noah. The thought of school in this strange place was somewhat scary, but having to sit in that apartment all day trying not to break the Rules was almost scarier.
“We’ll have to wait and see,” said his father. “We’ve asked, of course. Your mother’s trying to get the scoop from the Ministry of Education.”
During this not-so-very-long conversation, the stares from all those other people in line got twice or maybe even three times as intense. Noah figured he could guess the reasons why:
• He was a child who should be in school.
• He was eating a sausage in the grocery cart line.
• He and his father were speaking English.
• And of course there was the Astonishing Stutter.
Noah had had a lot of practice not minding being stared at, however. At least these people didn’t have the cold, spiky eyes of policemen or border guards. They were just curious. Well, Noah was pretty curious, too!
At the moment, he was figuring out the system of the grocery store. He was very interested in figuring out systems. He had made a Hierarchical Flowchart of his fifth-grade class that showed all the layers of popularity and mobility in the class subgroups. The really popular kids, like Brian and Casey, who were also, although this might be a random variable, tall (Noah was fully aware that he probably noticed their height because he himself was so short), were listed in a cluster at the top of the chart. Then there were the groups of sporty kids and nerdy kids and the ones who were hangers-on and desperately wanted to move up the chart and the wacko smart kids with Astonishing Stutters, who sometimes hung out with one group and sometimes with another: they were what you might call free-floating, like certain electrons.
That last group was pretty small. In fact, it was a set with only one actual member: the kid who used to be known as Noah.
Noah sighed. It made his heart hurt a little, thinking about his class back in Virginia.
Stop that!
he told himself, and he went back to
noticing everything.
Anyway, the system followed by this grocery
Similar Books
