Read Online The Zigzag Kid by David Grossman - Free Book Online

else is doing, correct?” He looked at his reflection in the window and adjusted his tie.
    â€œPerhaps later,” he said, “when two of us are major friends, it is possible I call you Amnon. Only then. Because too close is not good. A person must to have boundaries, yes? For now you will be Mr. Feuerberg to me, and afterward we see, all right?”
    Let it be Mr. Feuerberg, then. Somehow, coming from him it sounded fine. I had a teacher once who used to call me that in class, as though she were holding my name with a pair of tweezers. But there was a big difference between her and Felix.
    The memory of this teacher brought out the chutzpah in me.
    â€œSo why do I call you Felix? Don’t you have a last name?”
    He turned to me with an approving smile. “It is enough for now, till we get out.”
    â€œOut of where?”
    â€œOut of here, this train, this locomotive.”
    â€œHow are we supposed to get out of the locomotive?”
    â€œWe cannot get out of locomotive until we get into it, correct?”
    Something cold and white fluttered around my heart, touched it for an instant, then passed, so quickly I didn’t have the chance to figure out what it was. A twitter of alarm, perhaps, or a warning. One painful spasm, and that was all; I forgot.

6
What’s Come Over Me?
    We hurried out of our compartment and headed toward the locomotive. Felix walked quickly ahead of me, alert and catlike. More and more I suspected him of being a
Shushu
. He kept glancing around all the time, like the bodyguard of some VIP. Only I was that VIP, apparently. It was fun to trail behind him with a blank expression on my face, hoping some cold-blooded assassin would come after me and give Felix the chance to pounce on him and knock him out, and then, as I coolly made my way past the cheering crowds, I would whisper to my followers, Such a bore, these assassination attempts.
    But it was not an assassin who approached me, it was the man in the top hat. I saw him get up as we passed compartment 3, his mouth opening in a soundless cry and his hand raised as if to stop me. All at once I understood: he had been waiting for me patiently, thinking I had disappeared because I didn’t have the nerve to play this game, and suddenly here I was again, but instead of turning to ask “Who am I?,” I walked right by and continued the game without him!
    Felix noticed him as well. A single glance, sharp as a whip, was enough for him: he grabbed my hand and yanked me past the door of the compartment. He looked so determined, so stern and tough, that for a moment I thought maybe it was no simple prank Dad and Gabi had planned for me but something far more meaningful and important, practically a matter of life and death.
    But there was no time to stop and ponder what was going on. It all happened so fast. I was hurled down the corridor, past the the man inthe black top hat, though I couldn’t quite figure out why I was supposed to run away from him, why Felix didn’t simply stop and explain that young Mr. Feuerberg here had decided to skip phase one of the game; and what’s wrong with that, Mr. Feuerberg is a free agent!
    I looked around and couldn’t believe my eyes: there was Felix, leaning against the door of compartment 3 with the silver chain in his hand. No mistake about it: it was his silver watch chain. With one vigorous pull, he managed to tear it out of his pocket and wind it around the door handles, with the watch still attached to it! His hands moved so nimbly, it crossed my mind that he would have made an excellent pickpocket, or perhaps he had been one in the past—and here I’d thought to warn him about pickpockets! I stared at him round-eyed: he couldn’t have cared less about the people he was locking into the compartment. As he wound the chain tighter he pursed his lips, and a fine shadow of cruelty played over them, the cruelty of a predator.
    And the same shadow