Cloud and Wallfish Read Online Free

about people matching their papers. That means, if your birth certificate says one thing, then that’s what you’ve got to go with. So here’s the deal — it’s about your birthday.”
    “It’s going to strike you as strange, and we’re really sorry about this,” said his mother. “You have to believe us that there isn’t another way.”
    “What about my birthday?”
asked Noah. And the word “birthday” came out with all sorts of extra stops and starts, as if it had a bunch of extra joints or something.
    This was all getting weirder and weirder. His birthday hadn’t been that long ago — March 23. A bunch of kids from school had gone bowling with him, and there had been cake and eleven candles and presents and all the usual stuff. He didn’t see how even a trip to “the other Germany” could threaten a birthday that had already safely happened.
    “Well, the thing is,” said his father, “to tell the truth, you were actually born in November.”
    “What?”
said Noah. “No, I wasn’t. March twenty-third. We went bowling for my eleventh birthday, don’t you remember? Joey got in trouble for throwing his shoes at Larry, and we ran out of —”
    Pepperoni pizza.
Why was something so tasty so impossibly hard to say?
    “Of course we remember the
party,
” said his father. “The point is, that wasn’t in fact your birthday.”
    “November eighteenth,” said his mother briskly. “That’s when your birthday actually is.”
    “No way,” said Noah. Perhaps he just gaped from the backseat without saying anything out loud, but all of his inside mind was shouting in disbelief: NO WAY!
    Birthdays are fixed dates. They do not just jump around.
    “It’s partly because you were such a smart young thing,” said his father. “And the school had a silly super-early cutoff for kindergarten for boys. So we just worked a little documentary magic and voilà, new birthday for you.”
    “No way, no way. You couldn’t do that. Even
you
couldn’t.”
    “You’ve never seen your mother wield her extraordinary forgery talents? You’ve never seen her write notes in my handwriting? You’ve never seen her sketch ridiculously accurate-looking pictures of dollar bills when she’s bored or waiting in line?”
    “Oh,” said Noah. Of course he had. But changing a birthday? Wasn’t that illegal?
    In the rearview mirror, Noah’s mother smiled a satisfied, not-very-modest smile.
    “Practice,” she said, “makes perfect.”
    “Wait,” said Noah. He was beginning to feel ill, and not just because his mother was taking every curve about ten miles per hour too fast and a foot or two closer to the curb than was reasonable. “Are you telling me I’m
not even eleven
yet?”
    “Exactly,” said his mother. “Technically, you’ll be eleven in November. Lucky for us! A child coming in through the Wall to stay with a parent on a research visa has to be
young
— ten’s already stretching it.”
    “Moreover,” said his father, “there’s the business about your name.”
    A great pool of icy numbness was swallowing up Noah’s legs and arms.
    “What about my name?”
Noah asked.
    “More paperwork,” said his mother. “A graduate-school-meets-border-controls-paperwork thing.”
    “Here’s the deal,” said his father, turning to look back at Noah. “People’s lives change. So, which only makes sense, their names change, too.”
    “They do?” said Noah.
    “Sure, they do. Names change
all
the time. Some people change names when they get married. Some people write books under a pseudonym. Some people just always wanted to be called Rainbow Stormchaser, and one day they decide to make it so. Some people emerge from their wild teenage years and decide it’s time to settle down to a quiet life in Oasis, Virginia, under different names entirely —”
    “That would be us,” said Noah’s mother.
    “You guys have two different names?” said Noah to his mother. “Is that what you’re