Cloud and Wallfish Read Online Free Page B

went early in the morning and came home when it was already a little bit dark, and to tell the truth, it was very peculiar that his father was in the car with them at this moment at all, so early on a Tuesday afternoon.
    “What about your job?” asked Noah.
    “I quit,” said his father. “This is worth it, I figured. Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go live behind the Wall. Exciting! And I’m finally going to get to write my novel about mink farmers.”
    Wait. Wait. Noah was beginning to feel downright head-spinny. He’d heard his father joke about writing a novel before, but
mink farmers
?
    “So there you have it: that’s why there’s all this business about the paperwork being just so,” continued his father. “Everything has to line up right for the East Germans or we won’t be let over the Wall.”
    “It’s the kind of wall you climb
over
? Like with ladders?”
    His parents laughed for a moment, and then both seemed to have some sudden serious thought and stopped laughing.
    “Sometimes people try — from the East German side,” said his father. “It’s been twenty-eight years already since the Wall went up in Berlin —”
    “Summer of sixty-one!” said his mother. “We couldn’t believe it at first. No one could believe it.”
    “— and people are still trying to get out.”
    “Why?”
    “Well, all sorts of reasons. You know, maybe they’ve got family on the other side. Maybe they want to be able to travel freely, not be told where they can go and who they have to be and what they have to do —”
    “Ahem,”
said Noah, who was being dragged off by his parents to some Communist country he had basically never heard of, four days before Zach’s birthday.
“GET IN THE CAR, NOAH! YOU ARE ONLY TEN! NO MORE SOCCER FOR YOU! NO CASTLES! NO CAKE!”
    The Astonishing Stutter made him sound even madder than he was, but that was okay with him.
    “Hmm,” said his father. “I see your point.”
    “Oh, nonsense!” said his mother, and there was a wicked glint in her reflected eye. “Our family is not a Communist country. Besides, like your dad said, this will be
fun.
”
    And when she said the word “fun,” she gave the steering wheel an extra little yank, so that the car jiggled left across the lane.
    “Well, anyway,” said his father, “in order to get through the Wall — to get us all through the Wall and into East Germany — you’ll just have to be a good sport and play along. That means using the birthday and the name that the birth certificate we sent the East Germans says you have.”
    “My name is just Noah,” said Noah. “I’ve never been anything other than Noah.”
    “Well, yes, of course, for us you’ve always been Noah. But I’m afraid officially that isn’t your name at all, so we’re all going to have to adjust to the change.”
    “It will be an adventure,” said his mother. “Something different! Like putting on a new mask!”
    “You’ll get used to it pretty soon, I think,” added his dad. “It’s just like any new habit. Do it for whatever amount of days, and it becomes normal. You’ll be totally adjusted to it sooner than you think. And anyway, there’s a sort of nautical relationship between your real name and the one you’ve been using all this time; you’ll see: one builds ships and the other sails in whales.”
    “What?” said Noah. “What what what?”
    It can be hard to breathe when people who ostensibly love you pop a new mask right onto your face.
    “Your actual real name, dear,” said his mother as she sped that rental car up to chase down the next tractor-trailer on the road, “is — and I do think you’ll like it once you get used to the whole thing — Jonah Brown.”
    Secret File #3
    AND THIS ISN’T NOW, EITHER
    The mathematically inclined reader will already have added twenty-eight to 1961 and discovered that Noah (now Jonah) is having this conversation on the way to the airport with his parents not “now,” but quite long