The Girl With the Red Balloon (The Balloonmakers Duology, 1, Band 1) - Hardcover

Locke, Katherine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807529338 ISBN 13: 9780807529331

Verlag: Albert Whitman & Company, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

When sixteen-year-old Ellie Baum accidentally time-travels via red balloon to 1988 East Berlin, she’s caught up in a conspiracy of history and magic. She meets members of an underground guild in East Berlin who use balloons and magic to help people escape over the Wall—but even to the balloon makers, Ellie’s time travel is a mystery. When it becomes clear that someone is using dark magic to change history, Ellie must risk everything—including her only way home—to stop the process.

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Katherine Locke lives and in a very small town outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with her feline overlords. In addition to fiction, she writes about books and reading and has contributed to The Forward, The GayYA, Teen Librarian Toolbox, and other sites.

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The Girl with the Red Balloon

The First Book in the Balloonmakers Series

By Katherine Locke

Albert Whitman & Company

Copyright © 2017 Katherine Locke
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8075-2933-1

CHAPTER 1

LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR

Berlin, Germany, Present Day

Ellie

My first day in Berlin was what my saba would have called a balloon day. A crystalline-blue sky without a single cloud, everything so bright that I wondered if I had time to run back up to the hotel for sunglasses. Instinctively, I touched my purse at my side. Passport, wallet, phone. Everything necessary for survival. At home, it was probably still snowing. Here, the air was vivid and crisp, like biting into an apple.

I chose to be in Berlin even though Saba hadn't wanted me to come. The crowd parted around me on the sidewalk, oblivious to the tiny war inside me.

Maybe today wasn't a balloon day. Maybe it was just a day with a blue sky, like any other. In a city where I didn't belong, thinking of my grandfather who hadn't belonged here either. I was taking German because of Saba. Because he was German, the same way he was Jewish, and I didn't know how to tell him that to me, both of those identities were equal. I tried, but that was when he could walk away from me. Now he just turned his head and his eyes went vacant. Mom said that was why he used the Hebrew word for grandfather, not the German or Yiddish words.

My mind was getting away from me again. I just needed to let go.

"Ellie Baum!" Mrs. Anderson, my teacher, stopped at the front of our group of sophomore and junior German students. She lowered her sunglasses to the end of her nose so she ended up squinting until her eyes almost disappeared. "You're dawdling. Keep up! Everyone together!"

Keep up, let go. Same things. I grimaced. If I could have wished a balloon into existence, I would have, just to send Mrs. Anderson back to the United States. The rest of us could explore Berlin on our own. Basically everyone we'd met so far spoke English anyway, and the hotel wouldn't know the difference. Anderson shook out the map and held it in front of her, like a bullhorn shouting her tourist status.

I rolled my eyes and caught up with Amanda. "This is ridiculous."

Amanda handed me our itinerary. "If she has us walk much more, we're going to see the whole city on the first day and we'll have nothing left to do."

Some spring break. I thought it'd be perfect: a chance to use my German, get out of snowy Pittsburgh, and bolster my college applications. It wasn't too early to start worrying about those. What if this wasn't worth it? What if during this entire trip I just felt worse and worse about leaving Saba behind and breaking his heart by coming here?

"You feel okay?" Amanda asked, frowning at me. "You look pale."

I shoved the itinerary back into her hands as we meandered from our hotel toward the U-Bahn subway station. "I'm fine. Going to be a long week."

"We'll figure out how to make it fun," Amanda promised, which wasn't quite what I meant. Amanda's idea of fun and mine tended to differ. She probably wanted to sweet-talk her way into some hot dance club tonight. Me? I was always the sidekick.

At home, I knew who I was. Here, I felt a little less like me, and a little more like the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. I didn't usually think of myself that way, but I couldn't shake the feeling.

In the suburbs of Pittsburgh, people just drove everywhere, so I didn't know what to expect from a subway, but the U-Bahn wasn't that bad. It didn't smell like pee, at least. Under Mrs. Anderson's dour gaze, we packed ourselves into one car and slipped beneath the Wall that once divided the city. And while some of my classmates were loud and obnoxious, no one really paid attention to us. The tunnel lights flashed by us, and my chest tightened. Deep breath, Ellie. I distracted myself by scrolling through my phone with Amanda, looking at the photos we'd taken so far.

"Girls, put those away," called Mrs. Anderson.

What was she going to do? Put us on a plane back home because we had our phones out? We both ignored her.

Amanda showed me pictures she had taken of street art she'd seen, including one of windows within windows all the way back until I could see a faint hint of green, like pasture land. "Even graffiti is better in Europe," she said.

I kept flipping through pictures, down to the ones that Saba and I took of his new dog a week ago. We talked about his dog, not about me going to Germany.

When I first signed up for the trip, I tried to tell him that Germany was different now than when he was here. He never returned to Berlin, not after escaping during the war. He didn't want to listen to me. Or maybe he couldn't.

"A country never changes, Eleanor. It's not a person. They killed six million Jews. The people you see? They sat. They let it happen."

I swallowed hard and put away my phone, looking up to smile at Amanda and the other girls. I was here. I needed to put guilt away and just figure out how to enjoy my time here

"Potsdamer Platz!" Mrs. Anderson called out. "Redstone High School, this is our stop!"

There she went again, sharing her neon tourist sign with the rest of us. Apparently, blending in was for other people. The locals on the metro gave us knowing looks as we and a hundred other people with cameras slung around their necks and maps in their hands pushed our way out the door, chattering in all different languages. The subway station dazzled with glossy white tile as we stomped up the stairs.

I seriously regretted not having sunglasses. Glittering, modern buildings formed a protective shield around the plaza. People moved in huge crowds at varying speeds. A woman in a business suit pushed her way through a crowd of hyper-blond tourists taking photos in front of the Potsdamer Platz station sign. A ticker sign displayed the international news on one of the buildings.

A memorial to the Berlin Wall stood in the middle of the crush. Mrs. Anderson guided us toward it with waving arms, like we wouldn't be able to find it. Six slabs of the Wall rose in front of us, covered in layers of vibrant graffiti, with commentary on plaques between them. It no longer looked like a wall this way, but rather a line of bright, colorful people linking arms. Red rover, red rover, send a wrecking ball and freedom right over.

Most people milled around the pieces of the Wall, taking pictures of it, taking pictures of themselves with it. I just stood there. I didn't know what to do, but I didn't want to take a picture with the Wall. I didn't know why we took pictures of ourselves with symbols of tyranny and oppression. Maybe it was a way of remembering. Maybe it was the only way we knew how to say we recognized the importance of everything that had happened to bring down the Wall.

I touched the Wall with my forefinger, middle finger, and ring finger, the same three fingers I pressed to the space between my eyes when I said the Shema, the holiest of Jewish prayers. I tried to think of something profound to say, but couldn't. Instead, I whispered, "I'm glad you're in pieces now."

I glanced around nervously, worried I'd been overheard whispering to stone, but no one paid any attention. Next to me, a middle-aged man with rippled scars like burns on the backs of his brown hands studied the Wall with a pensive look on his face. He looked old enough to remember the Wall when it divided the city. Maybe he had been one of those people who sat on the Wall the night it came down, cheering...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Albert Whitman & Company
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0807529338
• ISBN 13: 9780807529331
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 277
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar