The rain stuck the leaves to the pavement and the poplars in front of the school rustled as quietly as if they were afraid to breathe loudly. Maja stood on the threshold of the "School Under the Poplars" and squeezed the shoulder strap of her backpack. There was a knot in her stomach - not a tidy one, like the Scouts', but an unruly one that tightens the tighter you try to pretend it's not there. - It's just a new corridor,' she whispered to herself. - Corridors smell the same everywhere: wet jackets and chalk. She walked in. Heat was beaming from the radiator, someone was shuffling about with a guitar, and a poster of the school choir with colourful notes hung on the notice board. Maja averted her eyes as she associated the notes with evenings at her dad's, who stayed far away, over the mountains, with work that didn't fit in the suitcase. - Maja? - Mrs Owl emerged from room 5A. She had a soft green jumper and a smile that resembled warm tea with honey. - 'I'd like to invite you in. This is your new class. We'll get through it, okay? Maja nodded her head. She wanted to say 'sure', but the word got stuck somewhere between her heart and throat and didn't make it to her mouth. The room was bright. Someone at the back waved a hand. - 'Hey, I'm Cuba,' said a boy with curly hair and a pencil case shaped like a shark. - I'll show you where everything is. Well, almost everything - he added in a whisper, as if he was saying something super important. "Almost everything?" - thought Maja, sitting down in the bench by the window. Outside the glass, raindrops raced like marbles from a cul-de-sac. Mrs Owl handed out notebooks. On the cover was the school logo: a poplar leaf in the shape of a heart. - 'Before we start, let me remind you about our box,' said the teacher, pointing to a wooden box on the windowsill. It was dark blue, with tiny silver dots and clouds drawn on it. - The Whispering Box. If something is bothering you, if you have hives in your heart and knots in your belly - you can drop a note in here. A worry, a joy, a question. We don't sign if we don't want to. Sometimes I answer, sometimes the adults answer, and sometimes... - she paused, smiling enigmatically. - Sometimes the answer comes in a different way. "In another way?" - Maja looked at the box cautiously, as if it were an experiment table. There was a piece of paper taped to the box with the words: "Leave what you don't want to carry by yourself. It would be good to leave the whole knot. At the break Kuba puzzled: - 'There's a story going around in our house that the box responds if you write really, really straight from the heart.' - He made a theatrical gesture over his heart. - She once gave me a star-shaped card. With glitter scissors someone had cut it out. Strange, no? - 'Weird,' Maja admitted, and her insides got either tighter or looser, she wasn't sure. - What if someone makes a joke of it? Cuba shrugged his shoulders. - Then nothing happens. Or Mrs Owl says that for a joke it's a bin, not a box. After maths, when the class poured into the cloakroom, Maja stayed for a while. She took a small sheet of paper out of her notebook. She stared at the blank paper for a moment until finally the pen began to write on its own. "I am new. I'm eleven and I feel like I'm five. I'm scared that if I say something everyone will hear my voice tremble. I'm angry that we've moved. I miss Dad. At night, my heart thuds like it's playing drums. I don't know what to do with all these feelings. They don't fit inside me." She turned up the corners of the card and slipped it into the Whispering Box. The wood clattered quietly. Maja suddenly felt a foolish urge to apologise to the box for putting something heavy in it. Instead, she stepped back and quickly left. The rest of the day rolled by like a train that doesn't stop on its platform. In history, Maja drew a knot in her notebook that pretended to be a cloud. In Polish she heard her name, but it was only the voice of Mrs Owl asking about metaphors. At lunch she ate only potatoes, leaving a cutlet because the knot did not like cutlets. As she returned from the corridor to collect her backpack, she passed the box once more. Something yellow was sticking out of a crack. Maja looked around. The corridor was almost empty, only the caretaker was pulling a bucket and humming under his breath. She approached timidly. It was an envelope. Yellow as the sun made of chalk. On the front, in a nice, even handwriting, someone had written: "Maja L." Maja's heart clattered against her ribs. She wanted to say "after all, it was supposed to be anonymous", but her voice again failed to reach her lips. Slipping the envelope into her pocket, she felt the paper smell of lime tea and library dust. The school library was as quiet as under a duvet. She sat down between the bookcases and carefully opened the envelope. Inside was a thin piece of paper, like from a musician's notebook. On the card was a drawing of a bell and a few sentences, slanted as if someone had written on their knee: 'Your feelings have a voice. Listen to them in a place where sound lives longer than words. Come when the silence is loudest. Room 104, the last sound of the day." Maja froze. It sounded like a joke, like a game, like something Cuba would come up with. But it wasn't his handwriting, and besides... Besides, someone knew her name. She felt the knot in her stomach go a little lower and change shape. It was no longer a ball, it was more like a knot that you could untie with your fingers once you hit the right thread. - Room 104... - she whispered. - Music. She stayed in the library until the last lesson. She stared at the clock with its brass numbers. The minutes glided by slowly, each doing a little squat along the way. She picked up a book on instruments from the shelf and came across a picture of an old bell. The caption proclaimed that bells can "carry emotions from place to place". Maja brushed her finger over the photograph. Can emotions be "carried"? Sometimes yes, sometimes they carry you. The last bell sounded at first as usual: confident, short, no surprises. An ordinary Thursday. But then something was left in the air. As if the sound didn't want to go away. The corridors quickly became deserted, the backpacks disappeared and only single traces of wet shoes remained on the floor. Maja stood in front of the door to Room 104, which was only a pencil's width wide open. A strip of light oozed from inside, cutting the darkness of the corridor like a paper knife. - Stupid - she muttered to herself, but she still had the envelope in her hand, like a talisman. She pushed open the door. The music room smelled of polish and old wood. The instruments stood in rows, covered with thin covers: drums under a cloth cloud, a cello wrapped as if in a blanket, a piano with a closed lid that resembled a dormant eyelid. In the middle, on a wooden stand, rested a bell. Not a big one, not a church bell, but a school bell, brass, with a handle of dark wood. Beneath it lay a baton wrapped in felt, like a wand that had forgotten it was a wand. On the chalkboard someone had written: "Hi, Maya". The letters were round, as if the word was smiling at her. Maja swallowed her saliva. She didn't touch the chalk. She didn't touch anything. And then she heard a melody. Barely audible, like a memory. A few notes she knew all too well. The lullaby her grandmother used to sing to her when she had a fever and a hot forehead. It was impossible. Grandma lived far away. There was no one in the room. The bell moved a tad, not up, not down, just the way breathing moves. The air trembled. A second note spread through the room like honey over a spoon. Maja felt that if she took a step, something would happen that she didn't yet know how to name. And that she wanted to name it. She moved closer to the bell. The metal was cooler than her fingers. She ran her fingertips over it, and her heart played one short bar - boom. The sound responded with a quiet tremble, as if someone had touched her too. - 'Don't be afraid,' someone said, but the voice could also only have been an echo of her own thoughts. Behind the curtain by the window something rustled. Maja turned around abruptly. The fabric had moved again - perhaps from the draught, perhaps not. In the afternoon light, dust particles could be seen swirling like snow in a souvenir ball. - Hallo? - she spoke up, and this time her voice came out of her really. - 'Anyone here? There was no answer. Only the floor squeaked quietly, as if something stood on a loose board. Maja took a step. She felt anger and longing and shame and courage mixing under her skin like paint in a jar. She reached out her hand to the curtain. Her fingers tightened on the edge of the fabric. Just before she pulled, she heard a clear, close whisper, right next to her ear, as warm as if someone was standing right next to her: - Maya...