Read Online The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - Free Book Online Page B

lemon-haired boy whose bony knees knocked in his pants under the desk. He
stretched his hand up and said, “Sister Maria, I think you forgot Liesel.”
    Sister Maria.
    Was not
impressed.
    She plonked her
folder on the table in front of her and inspected Rudy with sighing
disapproval. It was almost melancholic. Why, she lamented, did she have to put
up with Rudy Steiner? He simply couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Why, God, why?
    “No,” she said,
with finality. Her small belly leaned forward with the rest of her. “I’m afraid
Liesel cannot do it, Rudy.” The teacher looked across, for confirmation. “She
will read for me later.”
    The girl cleared
her throat and spoke with quiet defiance. “I can do it now, Sister.” The
majority of other kids watched in silence. A few of them performed the
beautiful childhood art of snickering.
    The sister had
had enough. “No, you cannot! . . . What are you doing?”
    —For Liesel was
out of her chair and walking slowly, stiffly toward the front of the room. She
picked up the book and opened it to a random page.
    “All right,
then,” said Sister Maria. “You want to do it? Do it.”
    “Yes, Sister.”
After a quick glance at Rudy, Liesel lowered her eyes and examined the page.
    When she looked
up again, the room was pulled apart, then squashed back together. All the kids
were mashed, right before her eyes, and in a moment of brilliance, she imagined
herself reading the entire page in faultless, fluency-filled triumph.
    A
KEY WORD
     
    Imagined
    “Come on,
Liesel!”
    Rudy broke the
silence.
    The book thief
looked down again, at the words.
    Come on. Rudy
mouthed it this time. Come on, Liesel.
    Her blood
loudened. The sentences blurred.
    The white page
was suddenly written in another tongue, and it didn’t help that tears were now
forming in her eyes. She couldn’t even see the words anymore.
    And the sun.
That awful sun. It burst through the window—the glass was everywhere—and shone
directly onto the useless girl. It shouted in her face. “You can steal a book,
but you can’t read one!”
    It came to her.
A solution.
    Breathing,
breathing, she started to read, but not from the book in front of her. It was
something from
The Grave Digger’s Handbook.
Chapter three: “In the Event
of Snow.” She’d memorized it from her papa’s voice.
    “In the event of
snow,” she spoke, “you must make sure you use a good shovel. You must dig deep;
you cannot be lazy. You cannot cut corners.” Again, she sucked in a large clump
of air. “Of course, it is easier to wait for the warmest part of the day,
when—”
    It ended.
    The book was
snatched from her grasp and she was told. “Liesel—the corridor.”
    As she was given
a small
Watschen,
she could hear them all laughing in the classroom,
between Sister Maria’s striking hand. She saw them. All those mashed children.
Grinning and laughing. Bathed in sunshine. Everyone laughing but Rudy.
    In the break,
she was taunted. A boy named Ludwig Schmeikl came up to her with a book. “Hey,
Liesel,” he said to her, “I’m having trouble with this word. Could you read it
for me?” He laughed—a ten-year-old, smugness laughter. “You
Dummkopf
—you
idiot.”
    Clouds were
filing in now, big and clumsy, and more kids were calling out to her, watching
her seethe.
    “Don’t listen to
them,” Rudy advised.
    “Easy for you to
say. You’re not the stupid one.”
    Nearing the end
of the break, the tally of comments stood at nineteen. By the twentieth, she
snapped. It was Schmeikl, back for more. “Come on, Liesel.” He stuck the book
under her nose. “Help me out, will you?”
    Liesel helped
him out, all right.
    She stood up and
took the book from him, and as he smiled over his shoulder at some other kids,
she threw it away and kicked him as hard as she could in the vicinity of the
groin.
    Well, as you
might imagine, Ludwig Schmeikl certainly buckled, and on the way