He looked up at the stars. The stars did not care. He looked at the dark lake. The lake did not gasp. He looked down at his own pale, scrawny body. It was just a body. Like Dieter's. Like the volleyball-playing girl's. Like the grandmother with the potatoes.

Lukas hesitated. His hand was already in his pocket, wrapped around the pfennigs. But his eyes scanned the rack. The FKK Magazin was there, featuring a cover story on "Sauna Etiquette in the Harz Mountains."

His own family was a museum of tiny, polite horrors. His mother sprayed air freshener after using the toilet. His father wore pajamas with sleeves even in July. When Lukas accidentally walked into the bathroom while his father was shaving, shirtless, the man flinched as if he'd been shot.

The kiosk belonged to Herr Wegener, a retired train conductor with a face like a crumpled paper bag and the disposition of a gentle walrus. He didn't care what Lukas read. He cared that Lukas paid.

That September, his parents announced a "family weekend" at a lake. Lukas’s heart seized. A lake. He imagined a meadow, a bonfire, a circle of unashamed humanity.

He looked back at his parents. His mother was adjusting the umbrella to block a sliver of sun that had dared touch her ankle. His father was inspecting a hangnail.