He knew it was the girl by the tempo of feet against the thin wooden stairs, the uneven, quick slaps of rubber against his temporary ceiling.

"Thick gray clouds like a blanket," she sighed over her steps. "It's raining so hard right now, I can hardly see down the street." She tapped gently against the sheets that made his provisional door; he pushed it and the paint cans away, and a little light from the upstairs kitchen streamed into his place under the stairs.

"Hi, Liesel."

"Hi, Max." She grinned as she ducked and crawled beside him, settling in parallel to him against the far wall.

"No football today, then?" he asked as he readjusted their cover, darkness once more encasing them.

He heard her shake her head, the thin blonde hair ruffling against her shoulders. "Rudy is sick today, anyway." There was a sweet sadness to her tone. She pulled her knees to her chest, and wrapped her arms around her shins.

"That's a shame." The heat from her skinny limbs was nice against his side.

The pause between them was comfortable, even as the air grew stale and warm and their bodies began to cramp from the tight space.

"Why don't you do anything on Saturdays? It's just—I never see you write on Saturdays."

He smiled softly at the interest in her tone.

"That's a funny story, Liesel." He sighed and readjusted himself, switching to lean against the other wall. "And kind of a long one."

"I've got time." He could hear the shy grin that must rest on her mouth.

"Have they taught you about the Jews in your school?"

The echoes in her mind were unwelcome but flooded her thoughts anyway.

The Jew is a subhuman race. Their rituals are barbarous and they are the plague of Germany.

She had refused to listen to the words, but they had stuck anyway.

"A little bit. I didn't pay attention."

"That's kind of you."

"Papa said that everything they said were lies."

"That's probably true."

"It's completely true!" The vehemence of her tone surprised him greatly, and almost unsettled him. "They said your...people?" She hesitated slightly, unsure if her word choice was appropriate, but continued after a moment, "aren't human, and that's ridiculous." Her hand was warm and soft against his wrist, and the touch surprised him even more than her tone had. "Everything they say is ridiculous." The last was a grumble in her mouth, a private irritation said more for her own benefit than his, and she removed her fingers from his skin.

"You know you can never say that outside this house, yes?" His voice was weak, stupid and limp after her passion.

"Yes." An exasperated sigh. "But, anyway—your story."

He chuckled a little to himself. "Yes. It might be a little—silly—but in Judaism, the, uh, Sabbath is on Saturday, not Sunday. So I try not to do much work on Saturdays. I don't read, I don't write, I just...sit. And think."

"About what?" Her voice was shy, intrigued, worried of being too personal.

"About things. I don't-." He shrugged his shoulders, heavily. "I don't know."

"Oh." She shifted a little, and he imagined her pushing against the wall with her back, folding her legs underneath her in an attempt to become more comfortable. "Did your family...practice?" Her tone continued to fascinate him: she had never asked questions so personal before, and it was clear she was uncomfortable, nervous to ask a question that was out-of-bounds, too personal, too painful for him to recount. But her interest in the topic, in him, kept her going, encouraged her to ask even when she was afraid to.

It took him a moment to collect his thoughts. Thinking of his family in such a way—distanced, separate from himself—stopped the pain.

"We weren't as observant as some families I knew," he began. He spoke slowly, giving himself time. It shocked him how badly he wanted her to understand, to feel about his family and his childhood as he had felt. "It depended a lot on how everyone felt on the day. We usually held Shabbat—the Sabbath—but we didn't always. It depended on if we had the candles and who felt like having a cold lunch Saturday afternoon." A private chuckle. "We always celebrated Passover, Yom Kippur—always celebrated Purim." This chuckle was heartier than the first, and it brought a soft smile to Liesel's lips. "And Hanukkah -we did Hanukkah, too." He sighed sadly. "That's coming up." He shrugged. "We didn't always go to synagogue, but my cousins and me were confirmed and had our bar mitzvahs. It wasn't really—our...our religion, our traditions, were never really a big part of our lives unless they were holidays." He shrugged again.

A few choice adjectives flooded her brain (uncivilized, pagan) but she shoved them away with forceful concentration. "Which one was your favorite?"

He sighed, and it turned into a slight groan as he considered. "Hanukkah, I suppose. Yeah." He turned to her; she just barely saw him through the light that leaked under the sheets and paint cans. "My aunt made delicious latkes." She noticed his smile. "And spinning the dreidel—my cousins and I, we could all get very competitive if we wanted."

"How did you celebrate it? Did you ever celebrate Christmas?" Again he was surprised by her curiosity, her excitement.

The words fell from his mouth slowly; the story of the Maccabees was rough and unpracticed, and it halted frequently. But there came a rhythm to his speech, and the syllables hit the air with relaxed speed. He found himself describing the ancient Temple, the Greek and Jewish soldiers, the menorah and the oil, telling the stories that he hadn't heard for years. She seemed enraptured by them; she leaned in very close and soaked up his history.

"If I'm right, it should be coming up! Toward the end of Kislev." He didn't explain the foreign term to her, nor did she ask for clarification; she simply let it simmer in the back of her mind.

It didn't take long for Rosa to call the girl up for help in the kitchen. Liesel bade Max a hasty goodbye as she snuck through the ersatz doorway, and skipped up the steps. The air around the lonely Jew grew cold in his space underneath the staircase.

Beside her foster mother, the girl suggested a delicacy: fried potatoes.

The older woman scowled. "What, you think we're made of money?"

It surprised neither of them when Rosa handed a few extra marks to Hans the next morning before his trip into town. The man returned that afternoon with a smile, cheeks bright red from the cold air, a few small potatoes, and a handful of candles. He gave them to the girl, and after sunset that evening she brought them down to the man hiding in their cellar.

"It's not much," she apologized with a blush, "but happy Hanukkah, Max."