“Just try, if you can, to send me a letter from the place. And if there’s some way you can come back, come get me.”
“Okay, Waldemar. I’ll try,” I say, but I will never come back. Even if I can come back, I won’t. I drop my satchel down into the dirt below. The books land hard like the sound of “good-bye.” I hold my arms behind my back, and with the butcher knife in one hand, the jar of poison jam in the other, I kick on Jarek Jaskolka’s door. Waldemar cries and hides against the wall of the house, holding the dead meadlowlark in his hands. He pinches his eyes closed.
“I’ll miss you, Waldemar!” I whisper.
I wait for the bad man to let me in.