A/N: Hey guys! So, this is my story. The whole thing is already written—it's 25 chapters, and about 115,000 words. It really bothers me when fanfictions have inconsistent chapter lengths, so they're almost all between 3 and 6 thousand words. This chapter is actually one of the longer ones. I will try to update every week.

There will be a lot of discussion of suicide and self-harm in this story. It's all in the past, and none of it is too graphic, (I think, at least) but it will be in almost every chapter. So. Take care of yourself. Also, past (and future) character death, dog death and car is also going to be some discussion of Nazism and the Holocaust. I know that's probably not a good thing to write in a Hetalia fanfic, but, well, I hope it's tasteful.

As far as pairings go, there will be a little bit of established GerIta starting about halfway through. I didn't tag it because it's a very small part of the story, and before that there will be a lot of Ger and not a lot of Ita.

Character tagging is also a little bit weird for reasons that I think will be clear as the story goes on. Spain isn't tagged because of … reasons … but you should know he has a big role in the first part of the story.

Also, foreign languages—there will be a lot of them in this story. I speak Spanish, but I don't speak German, so, if you guys notice any errors, feel free to point them out.

As for the title, Bildungsroman is used as synonymous pretty much synonymous with coming-of-age story in lit class these days, but originally it was a novel about getting an education and being received into society. That's more what I was going for in calling the story that.

Bildungsroman

Chapter I: Arizona, USA

His foster mom, Suzanna, didn't visit for the first three days. Ludwig didn't ask why. He overheard it, though, between two nurses. Everyone else in the car was killed. Everyone else but him.

He would like to ask what his injuries were, what were the things that were keeping him glued to this bed, with occasional pain shooting up his leg and through his chest, but the answer seemed to change day by day. Different treatments, different doctors, a different color bag hooked up to his arm.

For a while they were yellow. Now they were clear. In the beginning, they were red.

Ludwig didn't get any other visitors, either. He didn't know why he expected he would. He didn't know anyone else in Arizona. He'd only been there for a couple of weeks, most of them in the summer. Hadn't had a chance to make friends at school. Ludwig didn't make friends easily, anyway.

Mostly, it was just him and the projector field that sat across from him at eye level. The news was on. The new was always on. Ludwig was sure he could find a way to change it, if he asked. He hadn't asked. He was morbidly fascinated, in a way.

They kept covering a terrorist attack in Munich. Somebody had driven a car into the side of a state building where meetings were going on. A boiler had exploded, taking half of the building with it. Many important people had died. The country was hurting. They showed that in speeches and crying and flags set at half-mast.

Really, Ludwig wished they'd move on to something else. It was tiring, in a way, to see all of those sad people. The last thing he needed to see was more sad people.

But he never could ask them to change the channel. The strength left him whenever a nurse walked in and gave him another prognosis. It was always good. It was always better than they'd expected. Ludwig supposed he should be grateful for that, but he wasn't. Maybe it was something about the way they said it, like they were jealous of nature healing him better than they ever could.

After three days, Suzanna visited him.

She kept it short, naturally. Walked in and sat down by Ludwig's bedside. Didn't say anything, but it was enough. She was there.

It ended the fear that Ludwig would see his caseworker walk in at some point and tell him they'd reassigned him, again.

Suzanna shut off the projector field on her second visit. She told him she was going to court and neglected to add what for. She said she was making them do blood tests and neglected to add what for. She said she'd bought flowers but neglected to add who they were for.

She'd walked into Ludwig's room empty-handed.

After that, it was just Ludwig and his memories. He stretched them out, long over the summer, and tried to imagine he was a bird, looking over his life. There had been school, sufficiently interesting if nothing else. There had been the summer, full of long days and foster siblings. There had been the time before that, filled with other homes and other cities.

Ludwig tried to remember them, only to get caught on what his caseworker, Laura, had told him—he shouldn't bother. He'd been through a lot, and it made sense for his brain to try and delete things that would only hurt him, anyway.

The only thing he'd taken with him from his past life was the scars that ran up and down his arms. There were other scars, as well, on his torso and legs, but those were mostly covered by the gauzy hospital gown. The scars on his arms, on the other hand, weren't covered by his short sleeves. Everyone could see them now—Suzanna, the nurses. Ludwig couldn't escape them now, either, so he might as well look at them.

Most of the scars were from burns. Little round ones—like someone had put out cigarettes on the surface of his skin. That had gone on for years and years, it seemed. Then, the cut scars started, going perpendicular across his arm, unaffected by the sunburn he'd acquired in Arizona. All of the scars were mostly on the inside, tender part of his skin. So. He must have made them himself.

Thinking about that made him restless. He sat up in bed, which pulled at his IV, so then he collapsed again, tired.

Then there were the scars that ran the other way down his arm, twisting like ropes, running parallel to his arties. He traced the scars with his fingertip, wondering what on earth had driven him to attempt suicide.

That thinking was exhausted, so Ludwig tried to remember more.

He recalled a string of piano notes in a minor key, hanging in the air. He recalled a summer breeze through an open window, hearing voices shout below.

Then, a nurse came in, changed the bag of fluid and turned the projector field back on. They were talking to the new foreign minister now, asking if he was going to put sanctions on the country of the terrorist's grandfather.

They finally let him go after three days of the physical therapist telling him he was OK, but he should keep the cast on for a bit longer. Ludwig had, long ago, learned how to maneuver with it. He was going to be fine, which was a relief after so long. Ludwig wasn't sure why it took the hospital three days for him to be released, but he expected it had something to do with Suzanna.

She didn't talk the whole way home.

Ludwig felt nothing, surprisingly, when he stepped into the car. Part of him expected a flashback, or at least a grimace. He should have been affected in some way by the crash. Everyone else had died, and he hadn't even been severely injured.

The car pulled up onto the driveway, with the gravel crunching underneath them. All of the windows of the small, stucco house he lived in currently were open. The door was open as well, with only the screen door locked shut, where the white tile floor could be seen through the iron swirls.

Ludwig got out of the car. He placed his cast foot on the gravel and swiveled it to move his good foot out as well. Then, he leaned on the side of the car as he closed the door and waited for Suzanna to get out.

Suzanna stepped out the other side and slammed the door. She walked up to the screen door, unlocked it, and stepped through. Ludwig followed her.

The outside air and light made the house look cleaner than it had been the entire time Ludwig had been there. Almost every table had a bouquet of flowers sitting on it and one by the entryway had been covered in cards. Right. They were in mourning.

None of the rest of the family was there, so Ludwig headed to his room. Or, at least, the room where he was staying for now. It was tucked in at the back of the house, with three beds jammed under a large window. The window was propped open now, the glass forming an acute angle with the screen. The beige shade still covered about a quarter of the window, so the room was fairly dark as well.

Through the left wall, Ludwig heard Suzanna turned the TV on. They were still talking about the terrorist attack in Munich.

Not knowing what else to do, Ludwig sat down on his bed. He looked at the small box under it. It was supposed to be full of his belongings, but he hadn't really owned anything before coming to live here, so it was just full of paperwork. Laura would probably stop by soon.

She was a tall, Belgian woman, with a quick and precise way of speaking. Ludwig had met with her several times over the beginning of the school year and in the summer as well. From what he could tell, she was on very good terms with Suzanna, which seemed like a good thing.

The other thing under Ludwig's bed was his backpack, shoved under there the day of Homecoming, when he'd gotten into that car. Ludwig sighed. How was he ever going to deal with this?

It wasn't something he could figure out now. So, figuring he was probably behind on school, he pulled the book he was reading for English class—Dante's Inferno—and started to read.

Over the course of the next hour and a half, the rest of the household came home. First was Nancy, Suzanna's biological daughter. She was thirteen and a half and already starting to put on some of her mother's weight. Her hair was a bright blond, and she talked very slowly but deliberately, as if every word she said was hand-delivered to her by God. She tended to wear single-colored tshirts and a small, silver crucifix around her neck.

The religious habit Nancy had picked up from Suzanna. She had driven all five of her kids to church every Sunday, where they had sat in overcrowded, hot pews and listened to the word of God. She had told Ludwig, on his first day there, that God was the reason why she'd started fostering, so he supposed he couldn't complain.

Ludwig was happier that he was exempt from the youth group all of the younger kids were required to attend. It wasn't that he was against religion, exactly, but he was under the impression that he wouldn't particularly enjoy the other kids that went to a group like that. Maybe he should start, though, just to get out of the house and meet people.

Most of his negative attitude about youth group came from Regino, who was the second kid to come home. He had just started high school a few weeks ago, at the same school as Ludwig was going to. But, he'd stayed with the family for much longer, for a few years at least. Ludwig wanted to ask him about it but was under the impression his adoption was a touchy subject.

He tended to dress in bright pinks and turquoises and had gotten a new piercing about once every two weeks over the course of the summer. Regino had a high-pitched, scratchy voice, which Ludwig heard as soon as the screen door slam shut. This time it was about how his history teacher had acted when teaching them about Japanese Internment.

Ludwig turned the page, realizing he'd come to the end of a canto. Rather than continuing to read about Malebolge, he took out his American history textbook. Ludwig liked history. It came easily to him, like breathing. Now, they were focused on the causes of the Revolutionary War, which was just fine by Ludwig.

He was barely into the first chapter when the last of the foster kids—Emily—came home. She was only a year younger than Ludwig, which made him the oldest. He was now the oldest. But, anyway, Emily was sixteen, had short, limp brown hair that she tended to keep in a black hat that matched the rest of the black clothing she tended to wear. She didn't often speak, but when she did, her voice was high-pitched and quiet, like a singing glass.

Every month, a box of manga was shipped to their house with Emily's name on it. How she could still afford it baffled Ludwig. Her parents had died only a few months earlier in a horrific accident that Ludwig still didn't know all of the details of.

She was a lot like him, really, more so than the rest of the siblings. And she demonstrated that when she walked over to the room that the three foster kids shared and sat down on her bed, the one in the middle.

"Ludwig?" she asked. "I didn't know you were home."

"They just released me," Ludwig said.

Emily was already putting her massive, over-the-ear headphones on. "Oh," she said.

Ludwig heard Suzanna and Regino talking on the other side of the wall. Suzanna said they'd released him, and Regino said that it was about time, anyway. Then he asked if they were going to meet with his caseworker. Suzanna gave a noncommittal answer, and then started pulling pans out of the cabinets.

Forty minutes later, the family sat down at the dinner table. The house was laid out in a rectangle, with the front door on one of the short side. Then, rooms were laid out in a linear fashion, first the living/dining/TV room, where the eight-person dining table was, as well as a large leather couch that had lost all semblance of shape several years earlier.

Then, there was the kitchen, which had beige laminate covering the floors, walls and countertop. The only color came from the small paintings of fruit that were located every three tiles. After that was an always-locked door that lead into Suzanna's bedroom.

Running linearly along the other side of the house were the kids' bedrooms. The first one belonged to the foster kids—Ludwig, Emily and Regino, and was generally dark and overcrowded, as they required three beds. The next one was Nancy's and Stephen's, which was covering in posters of boy bands and Jesus Christ. .

Because of Stephen, there were two empty seats at the dinner table. As always, the seat between Suzanna and Regino was open, but now there was another seat between Regino and Ludwig.

Ludwig tried not to stare at it too much.

Suzanna had made meatloaf, again. They usually had it about once or twice a week. Ludwig wasn't complaining, as her meatloaf was actually pretty good. She'd also made two varieties of potatoes—mashed and fried—for the sides.

As per usual, Nancy and the other kids were drinking soda. Ludwig was drinking ice water, which was mostly ice. Even despite the roaring air conditioning, it was still too hot in the house. The climate was one thing that Ludwig just couldn't get used to—the heat was dry, never-ending and cracked and peeled his skin.

"So," Suzanna said after a few moments of silence. "How were you kids' days at school?"

Regino went first. "Well, I got into an argument with Ms. Haysworth again." He rambled on for a few minutes about various history teaching standards.

"Very nice," said Suzanna. She turned to Nancy, her biological daughter. "How was it for you, sweetie?"

"Good," she said.

The rest of the dinner continued in silence.

As always, the foster kids switched off who did the dishes. This night was Emily's turn, and she soon found herself immersed in a pile of dishes, humming along softly to the music that was playing through her headphones. From what Ludwig could tell, it appeared to be some kind of emo music.

Having nothing better to do, Ludwig joined her, taking dishes into the sink and scrubbing them off with soap. It made sense to give back to family, considering what had just been taken from them. Soon enough, he found himself humming along in sync to Emily's music.

Outside the small window above the sink, the night was so dark it appeared flat. Remnants of light—street lamps and windows—shone outside. Across the street, in another identical house, a man and woman were cooking together, swirling around each other and laughing.

A few days passed. The flowers that had covered almost all of the tables when Ludwig was brought home from the hospital wilted. New flowers were brought in. People knocked on the door at all hours, bringing flowers, cards and tearful stories. One enthusiastic neighbor showed up with a large casserole and spend almost a whole minute hugging Suzanna.

Ludwig still wasn't allowed to go to school. He spent the time catching up on schoolwork. Then, when he finished that, he focused on getting ahead. Then, once he'd finished reading the Inferno and his American history textbook, he started reading through the old National Geographic magazines that were piled up at the bottom of a shelf in the living room. It seemed like a suitably impossible task—the oldest one was dated back from when Arabia was still ruled by the Saudis.

He was only about three volumes in when Suzanna took him to see his caseworker. Suzanna still hadn't spoken to him, and Ludwig saw absolutely no reason for that to change now.

Ludwig had never been to the Child Protective Services Office, despite the fact that Laura worked their. This time, they were meeting in a small coffee shop, on a quiet street. The barista smiled when Ludwig walked in the door. He ordered a black coffee, and then went to sit where his caseworker already was.

She was dressed as she usually was—in a black blazer and black slacks, with a white shirt buttoned all the way up. In her right hand, she was holding a coffee with a decimeter of whip cream stacked on top.

Ludwig sat down across from her.

"Have you heard about the attack in Germany?" she asked. Her voice had a subtle accent to it. After he'd first met her, it had taken him about a day to put his finger on what it was—Belgian. Belgian French, more specifically.

"Yes," he said.

"Dreadful thing, isn't it?" she paused. "Must be very sad for the German people."

"It was all that was on the news the entire time I was in the hospital."

"Oh," Laura said. "Well that must have been pleasant, while you were recovering." That was the kind of subtle, biting sarcasm that she used all the time. It made it hard to tell when she was being serious, which was a trait Ludwig disliked in her.

"Mmhmm," Ludwig said.

"Have you been taking your pills?" his caseworker asked.

The pills she was referring to were calcium supplements he was supposed to once a day, owing to the neglect his birth parents had given him. They were red, chalky pills and tasted awful. She insisted that they meet regularly for her to give him the pills.

"Yes," Ludwig said.

She smiled. "Good," she said. "Anything unusual or interesting happen to you recently?"

"Well, other than the car crash that I was the lone survivor of," Ludwig said. It came out harsher than he'd expected.

"Yeah, well," his caseworker started. "You know, these things happen. It's sad, really, but some people survive and others don't."

"That's why Suzanna took me here, isn't it?" Ludwig asked.

Laura nodded, still keeping her head low. "She's not handling it too well," she said.

"Are you going to move me?" Ludwig asked.

"No, I don't think so," Laura said. "You only have one year left, after all."

"Yes," Ludwig said.

His caseworker took another sip of coffee.

Ludwig took a sip of his.

"School going OK?" she asked.

"Yes," Ludwig said. "But I haven't been going since I was released from the hospital."

"When do you think you'll be back again?" Laura asked.

"Probably next week,"

"Good," she said and smiled.

"I have been thinking about taking a foreign language class at the community college," Ludwig said.

Laura stiffened slightly at that. "Which language?" she asked.

"Spanish," Ludwig said. They were in Arizona, after all. 19% of people spoke Spanish.

"Hmm," she said. "Why?"

"It seems like a good thing to learn." Ludwig didn't add that Stephen had been fairly popular at school; it didn't seem likely that he'd get any warmer of a reception there than he had gotten at home. And there was only so much awkward silence he could take. "It would look good on applications, if I apply for college."

Laura nodded. "Are you still thinking about going to college?"

"I don't know," Ludwig said. He would like to, certainly, but didn't have the faintest clue of how to pay for it, or if he could get in after only one year of high school. His caseworker had explained to him that his birth parents had claimed they were homeschooling him but didn't really teach him anything. If they had, it was deep and narrow into random topic, like the inner politics of the Holy Roman Empire, but nothing too useful. Luckily, Ludwig seemed to have picked up enough of the maths and sciences to be able to keep up.

"Well, you have time to figure it out. I could help you apply, if you want to," she paused. "The financial aid for foster kids is usually pretty good."

Ludwig nodded. It wasn't that so much as the loans that he was worried about.

"So, they don't have any Spanish classes at your high school?" she asked and took another sip of her coffee.

"No," Ludwig said.

"That's kind of surprising, in Arizona," Laura said.

"it's more of a technical high school," Ludwig said. It was, though it was starting to have more humanities now that the main high school had been shut down.

His caseworker shrugged. "You're probably not going to have enough Spanish after one year to do anything with it."

"No, but it's a start," Ludwig said.

Laura stirred her coffee softly. Ludwig took a sip of his. "I'm not trying to talk you out of it," she said. "I just want to make sure you're thinking critically about this."

"It doesn't cost anything," Ludwig said.

"OK," Laura said. "How will you get there?"

"It's only a few blocks away from the high school. I can walk," Ludwig said. It was odd how little she seemed to understand about this situation.

"I guess," Laura said. "Are they letting you drive yet?" she asked.

"No, not yet," Ludwig said. "I don't want to, anyway." He remembered his first time driving—the open road, the speed, the sense of freedom, the gears shifting underneath him, the dirt clouding the windows. He used to love driving. Now it would probably just remind him of the accident.

"Oh," his caseworker said. "It's not like you can blame them."

"No," Ludwig said, looking away.

The days before the funeral passed by in a slog. Outside, the heatwave was intensifying, and Ludwig was slowly forgetting what it was like to feel cold or even a normal temperature. It probably wasn't going to cool down anytime soon, either.

Almost all of the time was spent getting the house ready for visitors. And, while it was relieving to have something to do, there was never quite enough work to take Ludwig's mind off the crash and Suzanna's silence.

The other three kids had school, so most of the time it was just Ludwig and Suzanna, dusting, wiping down surfaces, setting up furniture. Suzanna's mother, Claudia, was coming, so they set up an air mattress in the living room. For that, the couch had to be moved, which was a day of lifting and making little progress. Ludwig couldn't help that much with his foot being the way it was, and Suzanna didn't have much muscle mass, either.

Most days they ate lunch together, avoiding each other's gaze at the dining room table. Other days, Ludwig didn't bother to eat lunch at all.

He was getting awfully sick of Suzanna's silence. It seeped quietly into all of the corners of the house, but particularly the back ones. He knew that Suzanna spent many hours back there, organizing or reminiscing, and that it really wasn't any of his business.

Suzanna blamed him for the car crash. Why she couldn't just tell him that was beyond Ludwig. He never understood why people danced around the subject. It was so much better just to get it out of the way.

And so, one day, he did.

He made eye contact with her one day when she was dusting the bookshelf. "Suzanna," Ludwig said. "I'm sorry," not knowing what else to say.

She looked at him and glowered. "What are—who are you? What gives you the right to live when my son—my lovely, baby son—is dead?" She looked at him, the pain clear in her blue eyes.

Ludwig flinched.

"I tried asking that French woman—"

"Belgian," Ludwig said quietly for no reason at all.

"What?"

"She's not French, she's Belgian. They're different countries."

This only served to make Suzanna more angry. "That stupid—woman! I don't care where she's from! She won't tell us anything! This is ridiculous!"

"I—" Ludwig started.

"Don't." Suzanna said. "I know what you did. We had to get blood tests done, for the insurance. They were all drinking but—" she looked at Ludwig again, somehow managing to be even more angry. "You were sober. What are—"

That wasn't true. Ludwig had been drinking, too. "I—"

"You have a driver's license! You could have driven! You told me that you love to drive! But you didn't, and look at what happened." She shifted her weight. "Get out of here. I don't want to see you."

And Ludwig complied.

After that fight, the silence was deafening. Ludwig tried to avoid Suzanna as much as he could, and he was relatively successful at it. It helped her mother arrived a few days later, meaning there was even more work to do. She smiled a lot at him and pulled him aside at various points to whisper things in his ear and continually complimented Suzanna on the fact that she'd taken these kids in.

Suzanna didn't even make eye contact with him.

The first night the six of them ate together, Ludwig took it upon himself to sit on the leather couch instead of the table. Emily, the second oldest foster kid, sat next to him without saying anything. The two of them ate in silence, listening to the laughter and conversation at the table behind him.

Suzanna's mother asked Ludwig if he wanted to restart school. Ludwig told her he wanted to wait until after the funeral.

They ate desert that night and every night. Suzanna had bought the good ice cream, and Emily brought it over to the coffee table.

Ludwig slept a little better that night. He only woke up at three in the morning after a nightmare about that war and that car crash.

The morning of the funeral, the three foster kids dressed up in their best clothes. For Emily, this was head-to-toe in black, with black slacks and a black button-up shirt. Regino wore black jeans with a purple shirt, unbuttoned enough to show just a bit of his chest. Ludwig dressed in an old blue sweater and black pants. They were several sizes too big for him, and the pant leg stuck out awkwardly with the cast.

The funeral was held in a small old funeral home on the edge of the neighborhood. The people who ran it were there early that morning, dressed solemnly. They all took turns hugging everyone in the family, including the foster kids. Ludwig was surprised by that, in a way, though it was unlikely any of them knew about their situation.

They all, one by one, kneeled in front of the casket. It was closed. His body must have been completely mangled in the crash. Ludwig felt a phantom pain in his injured foot as he kneeled.

It fell on Ludwig to finish setting up the photos. The biological family—Regino, Suzanna, Nancy and the grandmother, Claudia—sat around, talking about Stephen in low voices. Emily was on her phone, and Regino was fidgeting so much it looked like he was about to burst.

The funeral workers thanked him for his help, and then people started showing up to the wake. Stephen had been fairly popular at school, so it made sense that a lot of people came. Most of them ignored Ludwig, or gave him and his leg cast one glare and then moved on.

Three of Stephen's four best friends he'd had since elementary school were also killed in the crash. The fourth one—the one who'd refused to go to homecoming—was standing awkwardly in the corner, flanked by his parents standing guard over him. His hair looked wet, he was dressed in a grey sweater and pants and his face looked red from crying. He was going to give the eulogy, although right now, it looked like he could barely stand up.

Stephen had the opposite physique of both of his parents, tall and bony with limbs spread everywhere. That was his personality, too—spread everywhere, smiling, happy. Ludwig couldn't remember a time that Stephen wasn't happy. And, he certainly was nice to Ludwig on the first day there, when Stephen had asked what his story was, and Ludwig had explained that he had a lot of repressed memories. Stephen had actually believed him, which wasn't something Ludwig was used to.

And yes, Ludwig was very sad that Stephen was gone from the world. It wasn't though, like he could have done anything about it. Ludwig had been drinking just as much as the rest of them. Maybe even more, because he didn't quite know his limits.

The priest, a younger, Taiwanese man, named Father Johan, walked into the room and everyone stood up. He smiled and then walked over to where the family was sitting. He shook each one of their hands and told them how sorry he was for their loss. Stephen was a great kid.

He spent a bit longer with Ludwig. "God hasn't abandoned you," he said. "Even though it may seem like it. You can talk to me, you know." He paused. "Everything happens for a reason." Ludwig nodded. Then, Father Johan told him that he'd noticed Ludwig hadn't been coming to church, and that was kind of a problem. He'd like to see him there in the future.

Now, driving to church meant spending more time with Suzanna, and that would be nothing more than awkward. It wasn't like faith was comforting Ludwig right now, anyway.

The priest walked up to the podium and set his notes down. Everyone took this as a sign to sit in the seats arranged. Nancy and Suzanna took the seats on the side for the family. The foster kids sat in the front row. Regino was crying. He wasn't even abashed about it; he was simply sobbing into a handkerchief. Also in the front row with them was Kalvin, the kid giving the eulogy. He was sitting next to Ludwig, looking over his notes. Almost every word on them had been crossed out at least once and the whole paper was covered with little wet spots.

Ludwig should have been crying. Or have been in pain, at least.

Father Johan started the sermon. He talked about how Stephen was a man, a boy really, cut down before his time, unfairly. He read from the bible, talking about how everything happens for a reason. How God has a plan, despite all of this, and that they shouldn't worry. Stephen was in a better place now. He talked for a bit, more personally, about Stephen's contributions to youth group, back when he'd been involved, and his contributions to the community as whole. He was the center of everything, and that was gone now. Then, it was time for the eulogy.

Kalvin could barely make it through the first anecdote—how he'd met Stephen in the third grade—without crying. By the second, his father was behind him, holding onto his back. He stopped altogether in the third.

Father Johan told them all to stand up and remember they were all in mourning together. They bowed their heads and repeated the prayer.

Then, there was the funeral procession. Suzanna drove. Regino was too young to have his driver's license, and Emily didn't have hers out of laziness. Ludwig could, but he hadn't driven since the crash. He used to love to drive, though he doubted he would have loved this—bumper-to-bumper, with the police on both sides.

At one point, they reached the top of a hill and Ludwig caught a view of the procession behind them. It extended for a two and a half blocks down the street, the red lights blinking more or less in sync.

They drove to the cemetery without stopping, only slowing down once they reached its gates and windy turns. There weren't too many trees in this part of the city, but plenty had been planted in the cemetery, for the dead. Most of them had some kind of complicated watering apparatus attached to their trunks.

And, the dappled, checkered shade on the ground looked peaceful.

The plot they were going to was located right under one of the trees. The headstone had the family name with all three names—Suzanna, Stephen and Nancy—inscribed. All of them had birth dates, but only the second to last had an end date as well.

Ludwig gave a thought to how strange that was, to have a living name inscribed on a stone for the dead. Then, he wondered where he'd be buried, and if it would be by himself. The dirt here seemed alien to him, somehow.

The funeral home had set up a small altar at the gravesite with some flowers on it. Suzanna, Nancy and Claudia were already there, hunched over and crying. It didn't take Regino long to join them. Emily and Ludwig held back.

It was still insufferably hot, and the old blue sweater did nothing to deter the heat.

After the gravesite ceremony, they were back at the house for the reception. The air was cool, for once, but the ever-darkening red patches on Ludwig's skin had him worried. He'd been horribly sunburned in his first week there, and Stephen had reassured him that he would be tan afterwards and it wouldn't happen again. But it was.

Most people were still avoiding Ludwig. Josephine, a girl in their class who Stephen had sworn he didn't have a thing for, talked to him for a few minutes. She wanted to know what happened to his leg, which seemed to indicate that she didn't know about how he was involved in the crash.

When he finished explaining how he'd survived when everyone else had died, she smiled weakly. She said she was sorry about that. Ludwig smiled weakly back at her.

Then, another one of her friends pulled her away, and Ludwig was left on his own again.

Suzanna's mother introduced him to several of the neighbors.

He smiled through that, too.

Afterwards, for dinner, they ate leftovers from the party trays.

Nothing really changed after the funeral. Suzanna's mother kissed Ludwig on both cheeks as she left, reminding him to try hard in school and that he was going to do great things.

"Don't mind her," Nancy said of her grandmother. Then, after a pause: "she was an immigrant," she said, like that explained everything.

"From where?" Ludwig asked.

"Germany," Nancy said, looking directly into his eyes.

Two days after the funeral, Suzanna drove him to the doctor. The doctor's office was on the other side of the warehouse district, where large, empty buildings hunkered down over interwoven tracks and a row of cheap hotels lined one side. Ludwig had brought a Spanish phrasebook to avoid conversation, and he read it in the car.

At a stoplight before a railroad, Suzanna asked him, "What are you reading?"

"I'm learning Spanish," Ludwig said. On the horizon, two headlights appeared over the tracks.

"It looks like we're going to be a while," Suzanna said.

Ludwig didn't know what to say to that.

"So, are you just getting started?" Suzanna asked.

"Yes. This school year will be my first year," Ludwig said.

"Huh," Suzanna said. "Does the school require it?"

"No," Ludwig said. "I figure it would be a good thing to learn."

"Hmmm," Suzanna said. "I always thought it l was a little ridiculous to learn languages in school. I don't know when my daughter will have to speak to someone in French."

Another moment passed in silence. A box car went by, covered in intelligible graffiti.

"Where are you taking it, then? At your school?" Suzanna asked.

"No, at the community college," Ludwig said. "The school doesn't have language classes." Now, most of the cars were open. Some of them had steel beams strapped onto them, but some of them were just rest of the train passed by in silence.

Then, they arrived at the doctor's office. The whole area smelled like antiseptics, reminding Ludwig of that hospital he'd stayed in. He wondered, briefly, what was happening in regards to the terrorist attack in Munich. They hadn't been watching the news much recently, and it wasn't on in the waiting room TVs.

The doctor, middle-aged Latina told him that his leg was fine and he could get rid of the cast. Ludwig mentally calculated the number of days since he'd been in the hospital, and how long they'd told him the cast had to be on. It had taken shorter than expected, which was good. Now he'd re-enter school without any indication of what had happened to him, save for a small, crescent-shaped scar above his ankle.

Ludwig's first experience being back in school was when he went to talk to the principal about taking the Spanish class. He didn't have to walk far to get to the principal's office, which was a relief, since even being back at school overwhelmed him with memories. Every corner seemed to be a place where Stephen would have spent time, and everyone who walked past looked like one of his friends.

Luckily, the principal didn't have a problem with him taking the class. Ludwig was even under the impression that the principal had some kind of impression of him being a good student. How that happened, Ludwig didn't know.

He had a picture of Stephen behind him in a black, lacquered frame. It was probably just temporary. The principal probably couldn't stand to have one of his dead students staring at the back of his head for the rest of time.

Somehow, Ludwig had only missed a week of the Spanish class. He'd missed two weeks of school but reassured the principal that he'd be fine. And smiled.

All of this smiling was starting to hurt his cheeks.

Maybe he'd build up his smiling muscles and then would stop getting weird looks from people when he didn't return theirs.

The principal smiled back at him.

A/N: The title, Bildungsroman I chose it because a bildungsroman, at least originally, was a novel about getting an education and being received into society, it's used as synonymous with coming-of-age story in lit class these days …