The boy was perhaps twelve—yes, twelve—and up to no good. She could tell these things. He had a way of walking, an unperfected swagger he was still trying on like a pair of new and uncomfortable shoes.
Each morning Paula feels like dinosaur bones. You know how they’re not really bones, but sediment or silt or something that’s filled in the spaces where the bones used to be? She feels like dirt in the shape of an organism, embedded in earth. She feels like bone-shaped sediment if bone-shaped sediment could also be having a mild panic attack.
At the age of twelve Frances Amity Braun was diagnosed with synesthesia, a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. Which was to say she saw sounds as colors and melodies as patterns.
Even though the train was barely beginning to slow down as it entered the outskirts of Cologne, Ackerman got out of his seat on the 9:31 from Hannover, lifted his suitcase from the rack above him, set it on the floor, extended the handle and pulled the suitcase down the aisle to the end of the car where he stood by the door.
