The Neverending Story

by Michael Ende

stop reading. Besides, he had been afraid to go downstairs. He told himself that there was nothing to worry about, that the building was deserted, that no one would see him. But still he was afraid, as if the school were a person watching him. But in the end there was no help for it; he just had to go! He set the open book down on the mat, went to the door and listened with pounding heart. Nothing. He slid the bolt and slowly turned the big key in the lock. When he pressed the handle, the door opened, creaking loudly. He padded out in his stocking feet, leaving the door behind him open to avoid unnecessary noise. He crept down the stairs to the second floor. The students’ toilet was at the other end of the long corridor with the spinach-green classroom doors. Racing against time, Bastian ran as fast as he could and just made it. As he sat there, he wondered why heroes in stories like the one he was reading never had to worry about such problems. Once – when he was much younger – he had asked his religion teacher if Jesus Christ had had to go like an ordinary person. After all, he had taken food and drink like everyone else. The class had howled with laughter, and the teacher, instead of an answer, had given him several demerits for ‘insolence’. He hadn’t meant to be insolent. ‘Probably,’ Bastian now said to himself, ‘these things are just too unimportant to be mentioned in stories.’ Yet for him they could be of the most pressing and embarrassing importance. He was finished...