</rxnaway>

Elastic Heart

I chewed on my lip, tapping the wooden desk with a pen and looked at the speed dial contacts on my phone. What are your doing Hirsch? This is an insane idea. But I had it all figured out, it was a perfect plan. Well, it wasn't so perfect, we still needed to work it out.

We had this week off. Papa would travel to Sweden for business, Legolas and Felix would be under my care for the entire week. That would be okay. It was easy. I had done that before. My allowance combined with Felix's could work up for two train tickets. And if my estimations were clear, then Dieter and Amy's would allow them to buy their tickets too.

I picked up the red flip-phone and dialed Amy, briefly looking down at my right arm and staring at the tiny scars. Tears threatened for a second until she answered.

"Diesel? I'm in piano class, what's the matter?"

"We're traveling to Berlin. Train. Tomorrow evening. Use your allowance and say that you'll go camping with my family."

"What? Diesel?"

I hung up and squeezed the pen in my hand even more, the plastic looking like it was about to break. I tapped and dialed Dieter, he couldn't be as busy as Amy for sure. I could hear Legolas jumping and barking at the door as Felix reached home, laughing and hugging the old Saint Bernard.

"Hello-"

"Tomorrow evening. Train to Berlin. Use your allowance and say you'll go camping with my family-"

"Do I bring snacks?"

"Please do.."

"Diesel?"

"Yeah?"

"It'll be fine. We got your back, we love you man."

"Thank you Di."

"You're welcome Di."

A knock at my door after I hung up the phone with Dieter- it was my brother. Covered in snow and freezing. "What happened?" He said, noticing that my sleeves where up and I had forgotten. "Oh nothing, I was just making some plans with you and Di-"

"Diesel did you hurt yourself?"

It hit me like a pang and gazed down at my wrists and arms immediately, pulling and tugging the sleeves down when he mentioned it, turning around and trying to hide them. It wouldn't work. Felix was strong despite being small.

"I- it's nothing Felix, I promise. I'll fix it." my voice wavered.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

I frowned, placing the pen down and rubbing my arms gently. "I was scared." His eyes softened and he embraced me, Legolas running in the room and stood in front of us. The dog placed his paws on my lap, wagging his tail and whimpering. I petted his fur; it was slightly matted but a bath and a nice dry would help that.

After a long silence Felix spoke up.

"What are we going to do?"

"Travel to Berlin. I'm getting a tattoo."

"Can I get one?"

We laughed, "No, you're too young. Pop would kill me." He pouted and then smiled. "You're right."

That's it. That's my brother. Who could I trust more than him in this insanity. I explained the entire plan to him, we traced out where we would stay, what'd we would do, and when we would come back to Bavaria. It all seemed fairly alright and it looked like it would work out and we hoped it did.