When the Snow Fell Read Online Free Page A

trouble.
    He ran across the schoolyard to the shedlike building that contained his classroom, took off his mittens and tried the window.
    He could move it. The paper was still there. Nobody had noticed that the catch wasn’t fastened.
    He suddenly gave a start and whipped round. He thought he’d heard something behind him. But there was nothing there. Everything was quiet.
    He opened the window and heaved himself up. He had to strain as hard as he could to get high enough to scramble inside.
    It was a strange feeling, being in his classroom late at night. The light from the streetlamps cast a ghostly glow over the empty desks. There was still a smell of wet clothes. He sat down at his desk. Put his hand up. Then he went up to the teacher’s desk. He tripped over asatchel that somebody had forgotten. The clatter echoed in the silence. He stood still and held his breath. But there was nobody there to hear anything. Everybody was asleep. Apart from the lost soul by the name of Joel Gustafson.
    He sat down at Miss Nederström’s desk, and looked down at all the pupils’ desks in front of him. He looked at his own place.
    “Joel Gustafson hasn’t been listening to what I said, as usual,” he said in an appropriately loud voice.
    He stood up and walked to his own desk. Sat down, then stood up again.
    “Go and sit on the outhouse roof, Miss Nederström, and don’t bother to come down again,” he replied.
    Then he wished he hadn’t. Perhaps there was somebody who could hear him after all? Or a tape recorder hidden somewhere?
    Besides, time was nearly up. It must be at least a quarter to twelve. Now he had only fifteen minutes left. He went to the harmonium to the left of the teacher’s desk, crouched down by the pedals and groped around with his hand until he located the bellows. He unhooked the connection at the back, then pressed the pedals. No air came.
    Tomorrow morning, when Miss Nederström started to play the morning hymn, there wouldn’t be a sound. And she wouldn’t be able to understand for the life of her what had happened. Nobody would understand it. Apart from Joel.
    He clambered out the window again, put the folded piece of paper back in place and closed the window. It squeaked slightly.
    At that very moment the church clock started to strike. Three booms. A quarter to twelve. Fifteen minutes to midnight. It had been a close shave, but he’d made it.
    The last of last year’s New Year’s resolutions had been kept. Now he could start thinking about this year’s.
    He’d left his rucksack in the shadow of the wall. He put it back on, smoothed down the snow under the window so that his footsteps couldn’t be seen, and hurried away.
    It was five minutes to twelve now. It would soon be New Year’s Day. He could see the illuminated clock face up in the tower. Joel had paused by the black wrought-iron gate leading into the churchyard. He shuddered, and noticed that he had a stomachache.
    He’d never been in the churchyard after dark before. Even though he was often around town on his bike at night.
    But that was where he was going to go now. It was another of his New Year’s resolutions from last year: next time, he would announce his new resolutions in the churchyard at midnight. He would walk in through the gate and prove that doing so wouldn’t make him die of fright.
    He felt cold. Wondered why he had put himself in thisposition. But there was no going back. He had to go in among all the gravestones lit up by the moonlight.
    You could keep the vampires away with garlic, but there was no known medicine to protect you when you visited a churchyard in the middle of the night.
    To be on the safe side, Joel had packed an onion in his rucksack. Even if it didn’t help, it could hardly do any harm.
    He’d also packed a couple of potatoes. One raw and one boiled. Samuel used to say that there was nothing like potatoes to keep people fit and well. Perhaps that indicated that potatoes had some kind of