Taner Spreads News at School of Lukas’s Involvement

Taner’s rumor transforms Lukas’s attempted sale of the stolen school computers into a public identification. The claim travels from an encounter at a computer shop, through Momo’s phone call, and into the school corridors, where classmates begin treating Lukas as the thief before any teacher has confronted him. Its force comes not from a formal accusation but from the speed with which private evidence becomes common knowledge.

Background: A theft already in the open

The rumor follows a break-in at the Gesamtschule in der Gropiusstadt. On the night of the theft, Lukas, Sanchez, and Julius entered the school using a key Sanchez had brought. In the storage room, Sanchez spotted unopened cartons of computers and monitors on high shelves; Lukas climbed onto a stepstool and passed the equipment down to the others. Their plan depended on getting the goods out and converting them into money, but the first attempt to sell computers quickly placed Lukas in view of someone who knew him.

The theft had already become a public story. At school, Herr Schiezeth introduced two officers from the Berliner Polizei, who said that computers and screens worth several thousand euros had been taken. Witnesses had described three male figures in black hooded jackets carrying the goods in a shopping cart toward U-Bahnhof Zwickauer Damm. The officers also mentioned reports of gunshots nearby, while stressing that investigators did not yet know whether the sounds were connected to the burglary. They asked students to provide information, making the school itself a place where suspicion could circulate even before the police announced a suspect.

Recognition at the shop

Taner’s knowledge begins with a specific encounter: he saw Lukas at his uncle’s shop, where Lukas had arrived with two others to try to sell computers. When Momo later tells Lukas what Taner has been saying, he reports that Taner described seeing him there and recalled that one of Lukas’s companions had caused trouble during the attempted sale. The account ties Lukas not merely to the school where the computers were stolen, but to an effort to dispose of them.

The shopkeeper had already recognized the danger in the situation. He pointed out that a large number of computers had recently been stolen from a school and that three students had now appeared with brand-new machines to sell. He then produced a newspaper whose front-page headline identified the break-in at the local Gesamtschule and put the stolen teaching computers’ value at 15,000 euros. Lukas, Sanchez, and Julius could see their school’s entrance in the accompanying photograph. The failed transaction thus left more than an unsold computer behind: it gave Taner a concrete link between Lukas and the highly publicized theft.

Momo relays the accusation

Momo calls Lukas and first mentions a fight from the previous day before turning to Taner, a student from the neighboring class. He tells Lukas that Taner is spreading the claim throughout the school that Lukas stole the computers. Momo adds that he told Taner to keep quiet, but that other people had already heard the story. He then asks Lukas directly whether it is true and whether Lukas had gone to the shop.

The question makes the call a test of friendship as well as a warning. Momo has passed along what he knows and says he tried to stop the rumor, but he does not simply accept Lukas’s innocence. Lukas’s response is bodily and immediate: he loses his breath, strikes his chest with an open hand, and struggles to inhale. Once the call ends, he stares at his phone, hits himself on the head with it, and imagines that a teacher will soon report the story to the police. His first proposed solution is to get rid of the remaining computers, as if destroying the objects could erase the trail that has already reached other people.

From rumor to public recognition

When Lukas returns to school with Sanchez, the accusation has become visible in the way people look at him. Students whisper, point, and exchange knowing gestures as he crosses the grounds and enters the corridor. Someone calls him Tony Montana; another student tells a companion that Lukas was the one who did it. The nickname and the direct accusation turn the rumor into a spectacle, while Lukas keeps his eyes down and avoids responding.

Sanchez tries to reassure him and urges him to stay calm rather than leave, arguing that leaving would draw attention. Lukas sees the same crowd differently: to him, the stares and whispers mean that everyone already knows. Their disagreement captures the shrinking space between concealment and exposure. Before they can decide what to do, three police officers emerge from a stairwell and walk toward them. The scene ends with Lukas looking down and continuing straight ahead, while the rumor, the school’s collective attention, and the official investigation converge in the corridor.

Public attention and the rumor’s force

The theft receives an unusual degree of attention in the news. Lukas’s father has read about the stolen computers and asks what happened at school; Lukas denies knowing anything and complains that thefts, beatings, and robberies happen there routinely without attracting comparable notice. He also objects to the reporting’s claim that the burglars caused vandalism, which the officers had not mentioned in their school briefing. In his account, the story becomes prominent because public property and money are involved, not because violence and theft are new to the neighborhood.

That contrast gives Taner’s rumor a particular weight. The school theft is already framed by police statements and newspaper headlines as a major case, so naming Lukas does more than spread gossip: it places him inside a story that adults, classmates, and police are all watching. The disclosure does not itself establish that Taner has reported him to the authorities. Instead, its immediate consequence is social exposure, followed by Lukas’s fear that the accusation will reach teachers and police next. The final arrival of the officers leaves that fear poised at the edge of becoming official.