“I’ll be running around with a bright-yellow shopping bag anyway.” She thrust her hands into the freezer, hauled out three more packages, and placed them on either side of the head. Then weighed the shopping bag again. It was heavy—very heavy. You could see its weight from the tautness of the handles and the laminated canvas. When she looked away, she could with considerable effort imagine it was filled with bottles of Coke. “It’s more stable like that.”

“Are you sure?” asked Werner.

“It’s doable as long as I don’t think about it.”

“What will you say if somebody asks you what’s in the bag?”

She was silent for a few seconds before answering. “I hope nobody asks.”

2

2

Ralf opened his eyes and instantly wanted to close them again. His mother was sitting on the edge of his bed in a T-shirt with the slogan “Sometimes Dreams Come True.” Her eyes were free of makeup, and her short bleached-blonde hair was slightly unkempt. She regarded him in silence.

He rolled over, pulling the blanket with him.

“What did I do wrong?” she asked softly.

Everything, he thought, but said nothing. He couldn’t help recalling the self-satisfied smirk of his old principal as he informed Ralf that he was being expelled—immediately followed by his mother’s expression as she sat next to him in that musty office, her disappointment, her anger. She hadn’t believed him, even when he shouted it: he hadn’t taken anything from those two lockers. She had only grown angrier with him; she had told him that he needed to stop lying, and that the principal wouldn’t make an accusation like that for nothing. That was where she had gone wrong, on that October day three years ago. And on ten—twenty—countless other occasions since then too.

Was there anything about him that was good enough? Was there anything that he had done well in her eyes? His music was worthless (“ghetto music”); his clothes were unacceptable (“Take that cap off, Ralf; I’m ashamed of you!”); his grades were never good enough. Oh yeah, and his friends were losers. All of them.

That was how it started, Mom, he wanted to say, because you didn’t trust me. Because you didn’t believe me. Because you rejected everything I thought was important.

“Ralf? You didn’t fill in those forms. I had to order new ones; they were covered in grease.”

He threw the covers back and got up to get dressed. It was only seven o’clock, ridiculously early. The light outside was still gloomy.

“Why did you do that?” she continued. “You knew those forms were important.”