I have a lot of chapters prewritten so you guys can expect daily updates for a while. Also someone asked me where the story takes place and I realized I never really said where it is. The story takes place in a more rural town in Germany. I hope you guys like this chapter :)
Dear Gwen,
Do you remember how we used to sing when we were in the bomb shelters? We would start singing and then everyone else would and then eventually we wouldn't be able to hear the sirens or the planes or the bombs. I never really realized how much better singing made it until I didn't do it.
The family I'm staying with doesn't have a bomb shelter. And they live in a more rural area so they don't have community shelters. There was an air raid a few days ago and we all had to hide in the shed out in the backyard. Everything is so much louder when you've above ground. And when everyone is silent.
I did something stupid. Well, technically I did two stupid things. The family has a little girl. Her name is Holly and she's only six years old. We all made it out to the shed but she wasn't there so I ran back inside. She was hiding up in my room because she came to look for me because she thought I would know what to do.
I think I've spent more time with Holly than with anyone else in the family. She gets out of school early now and I take care of her while her mother is doing things around the house. I never really liked kids before, as I'm sure you know, but Holly is the most kind and innocent thing I've ever been around. I feel like I'm going to taint her if I get too close to her. I think she likes me. I know she doesn't hate me because she let me play with her favorite doll yesterday.
So I went back for her. I wasn't going to let her be all alone and scared.
The boy, Mike, came after me. The three of us had to stay inside the house for a little bit because the planes got close and we would have been spotted. I started crying. I never cry in front of anyone. I guess it helps that I don't really know him. He saw me crying (which was totally embarrassing) and held my hand.
I think you would like him. And I know you would tease me for saying so because we usually have the same type when it comes to guys.
I yelled at him when we got back to the shed. Okay, well, I didn't really yell. But I snapped at him. It's one thing for me to be stupid and go get Holly but what he did was way more stupid. Holly is six years old. She needs help in a situation like that. I don't need help.
So I snapped at him. It was stupid and I shouldn't have done it, I know. But I haven't been able to apologize yet. It's been four days. He doesn't really seem to care but every time I talk to him I think about how I would feel if I risked my life to help someone and all the thanks I got was being yelled at by some girl who can't keep her emotions in check.
Sometimes I hate him for coming after me. But most of the time I hate myself for being too stubborn to thank him.
I know you and Rita would tease me until graduation if I ever said any of this to you in person. But I wish you would. That would mean things were normal again.
I'm going to try to apologize today. Again.
It probably won't work. Again.
Jane.
Nancy had a friend over. Meaning both the nursery door and the closet door were shut. Jane sat on her bed reading Gone with the Wind for probably the hundredth time. She'd read it four times since she'd been living with the Wheelers. But it was her favorite book, her version of a security blanket, and she had yet to get sick of it.
Every muscle in her body froze at the sound of the nursery door opening. Her heart pounded so loudly in her chest she wondered if whoever was coming may have been able to hear it from where they stood. Jane shut the book and jumped to her feet. She scanned the room for a place to hide as the approaching footsteps got louder and louder. But the room was so ridiculously small that there was no place to hide. Jane braced herself for the worst as she heard the closet door being pushed open, then the door to her room moments later.
She let out a sigh of relief when Holly appeared in the doorway and came right over to her. What exactly it was that she had been expecting she wasn't sure. But Jane had a tendency to prepare for the worst at all times. Even before the war. She was the realist of the family. Though her mother usually preferred the word 'pessimist'.
"We wanted to come up here because we thought you would be lonely." Holly said as she climbed onto Jane's bed.
"We?"
Before the small girl could reply Mike squeezed through the small entrance to her room and shut the closet door behind him. Despite how much she tried to stop it Jane could feel her cheeks getting hot. Only Nancy and Holly had been in her room before. Even back at her house she'd never had a boy in her room. She watched his eyes quickly scan the room, likely thinking about how small it was, before meeting hers.
"She wanted someone to do her hair." He told her. "I figured you'd do a better job than me."
Jane's lips threatened to smile. She'd managed to keep her straight face longer than she imagined she would. "You figured right."
She took a seat behind Holly on the bed while Mike sat on the floor in front of her. Jane quickly hid her diary under her blankets. She's mentioned him a few more times in it than she would have cared to admit. As she took out the pigtails Holly was already wearing saw Mike looking at the book on her bed with a small smirk on his face. "Nice book."
"Thanks." She replied dryly.
Holly informed her that she wanted a French braid, like the one Jane had been wearing the day she moved in. Though she was sure it was above her skill level she figured she would at least try. As she worked Holly talked about school and all the things she had learned and all the friends she had.
"What was your school like?" she asked suddenly
Jane could feel Mike look up at her but she didn't dare look back at him. She had yet to say much about her life at all to the Wheelers. She certainly never talked about school. Though she had a feeling they were curious they'd never asked before. They were probably scared of touching some sort of nerve with her.
"It's like your school, I bet." Jane answered as her fingers worked a complicated pattern of twists in her hair. "I would go, I would learn, then we'd eat lunch, learn some more, and go home."
"Did you have friends?"
"Yes, two very good ones."
"What were their names?"
Jane hadn't spoken about her friends so much out loud since the day Gwen got taken. Rita had been taken a few weeks before so the two had been almost inseparable. The one day Jane hadn't gone to her house was the day they came for her family. Talking about them made her mouth feel weird. As if it had to readjust to the subject matter. "Gwen and Rita." She managed to say. "Gwen was blonde just like you."
"Did you have a boyfriend at school?"
Her lips twitched up dangerously high. "No, I didn't."
"Why not?"
She let out a sigh. Jane hadn't imagined she'd ever have to explain her lack of a love life to a six year old. In fact, she never thought she'd ever have to explain anything to a six year old. She wasn't usually so good with kids. "Well, I had friends who were boys. But not a boyfriend."
"Why?"
"Because the boys at my school didn't like me. Not like that. They only wanted to be my friend. They want pretty girls like you to be their girlfriend."
Holly fell silent but she could feel her trying to think of her next question. Jane hoped she would move on from the topic of boys. It wasn't a topic she was comfortable with anyway. But it was even more difficult to talk about with Mike sitting a few feet away from her.
Jane was more than halfway done with the braid when Holly asked her next question. "Why don't you go to school anymore?"
For a moment she debated whether she should have answered truthfully. On the one hand she didn't want to scare Holly and make her think the same thing could happen to her school. But on the other hand Jane had always thought it was important to be honest about what was going on to children and teens. They needed to know what kind of world they were growing up in. And why shouldn't she think it could happen to her school? It could.
"Because a plane dropped a bomb on it."
Holly turned around to face her with her mouth hanging open. Jane spared a quick glance at Mike who looked just as surprised by the answer. "Why would they do that?" the girl asked.
"Because it's a special school for people like me." Jane said. She hoped she wasn't saying too much. How would she know when she said enough? "And the people who dropped the bomb aren't nice to people like me."
"You mean Jews?"
She felt her stomach clench. The girl knew more than she let on. "Yeah."
"My teacher said that the things the people on the radio say about the Jews aren't true. That the soldiers bullies and that one day they're going to get in trouble."
Jane tied the hair tie at the end of the braid. It didn't look terrible but it certainly wasn't as good as the one that Mrs. Donna had given her. "Your teacher's right."
"I'm glad you're living with us." Holly said. "Even though your daddy got taken away."
Jane felt her stomach take a nose dive to the floor. So fast she thought she might be sick. No one had mentioned her father directly since the day she found out he'd been taken. Everyone tiptoed around the subject. Jane hadn't even been sure that the Wheelers knew the extent of her situation. Though now it was clear that Mrs. Donna had told them about her father when she wasn't around.
She wished they didn't know.
She wished a million things were different.
Jane could feel Mike watching her carefully. She was, for the most part, good at keeping a poker face. But she wasn't so sure she had managed to keep it up after someone mentioning her dad. She didn't know if she wanted to cry, scream, or run. Probably a little bit of all three. Instead she was stuck in a room with a little girl who didn't know any better and a boy she didn't know how to apologize to.
Moments passed and no one spoke a word. If she listened hard enough she could hear voices coming from one of the lower levels. Just when she thought she couldn't take it anymore Mike did her the favor of speaking up. "Hey, Holly, why don't you go look at your braid in the bathroom downstairs?"
"Okay." She said cheerfully before hopping off the bed and disappearing out the door.
Jane felt empty and hallow. Like someone had reached down her throat and ripped out all her insides. She was left with only her skin that was about to collapse at any moment. A bug could knock her over. If she were outside the soft spring wind could have easily carried her away.
"Jane?" she heard Mike ask.
But she didn't have the energy or the words to reply. It took everything in her to keep her bottom lip from trembling. She thought she'd run out of tears. She'd been proved wrong by one simple comment.
A tear escaped and rolled down her cheek. Then another and another.
Even with her eyes fixed on a spot on her bed she could see Mike pushing himself to his feet and walking the short distance to her bed. He sat in a spot that left some distance between them but close enough that he could easily touch her if he tried. She didn't know if she wanted him to or not.
Jane brought her hands up to cover her face. It was the second time in a week she had cried in front of him. "I'm sorry." She mumbled behind her hands. Her voice came out weak and pathetic sounding.
"Sorry for what?"
"I don't know." She cursed herself for not being able to say the truth.
For a while they stayed like that. Jane hiding behind her hands and Mike silently listening to her sniffles. She couldn't decide if she felt more foolish for vulnerable. It could have easily been a dead tie. She wanted to disappear, to sink into the blankets and never emerge. But at the same time she was thankful for his presence. If she were alone she may have totally broken down. She hoped Holly wouldn't come back up so that she wouldn't have to pull herself together.
She wasn't sure how much time had passed when Mike spoke up. It could have easily been an hour. It certainly felt like one. "Do you need a hug?" he asked quietly, just loud enough for her to hear.
Jane dropped her hands back into her lap. She could only imagine how much of a mess she looked. But he didn't seem to care too much so she didn't either. "What?"
"Holly says she doesn't like hugging me because I'm boney. But you kind of look like you need it."
She couldn't help it. She smiled. Not just a hint of a smile, like she had been limiting herself too, but a real smile. With her teeth showing and everything. As soon as she realized what she'd done her expression fell and a new wave of tears overcame her. Mike didn't wait for a response and moved closer to her. His arms wrapped around her shoulders and yes, he was a little boney, but she didn't care. She hooked her arms around his neck and let herself cry freely.
Jane thought about what her friends would say if they saw her hanging onto a boy. Imagining what they would say only made her cry harder. She loved Holly, and Nancy was starting to be like the older sister she had never had, and she didn't know many people who would willingly run out of shelter during an air raid to come after her. But she hated everything that had happened that caused her to meet the Wheelers.
When she finally settled down she wiped her face on her shoulder. She kept her arms around him, not quite ready to let go. "I haven't smiled since my dad got taken away." She admitted once her tears had passed.
"Why?"
"Because everything he said made me smile." She said. "And why should I be smiling and having fun when he's been taken prisoner?"
Mike seemed to sit with this for a moment. Jane could only imagine what he thought of her. Especially considering she didn't seem to know how to act around him. Either she was ignoring him, yelling at him, or crying in front of him. It was like he gave off some kind of energy that made her emotions totally out of sorts. To make things worse she seemed incapable of apologizing to him.
"Are you going to go back to not smiling?" he eventually asked
Jane shrugged, her shoulders moving against his. "I don't know." She admitted, "Probably not."
"Good. It made you kind of intimidating."
Before she could stop herself she let out a short laugh. It had been awhile since she had laughed at all. It felt weird to do it again. She sat up straight and let her hands fall back in her lap but she didn't move away from him. "I'm not intimidating."
"You kind of are." He said. He was smiling. She smiled back, which felt good. "I think my friends would be scared of you if they knew you."
Jane didn't know whether to be offended or laugh. "Why?"
"Well they're kind of scared of girls anyway." Mike explained. "But we don't have a lot of girls like you at my school."
She raised an eyebrow at him. "And what kind of girl is that?"
"Intimidating ones."
Oh. She had expected a different answer. It was a nice change that someone's opinion of her was affected more by her demeanor than her religion.
"But you're not scared of girls?" she asked. He was living in a house with four of them after all.
He smiled at her again. "Who said I'm not?"
Jane cracked another smile. She just couldn't help herself. It didn't help that his smile was dangerously contagious.
"You're really good with Holly." Mike noticed. "Do you have any younger siblings?"
She shook her head. "No. Just me and dad."
"What about your mom?"
Jane could feel her smile falter slightly. She was so used to no one ever mentioning her mother. Her friends knew better than to mention her in front of Jane. And she didn't know if her father never brought her up for her sake or his own. Either way she was thankful he didn't. Most of the time it was too painful to think about her too much. "Why is everyone all of a sudden so interested in me?" she asked. Answering a question with a question was her favorite method of deflection. Most people didn't pass up the opportunity to talk about themselves.
"We've been interested this whole time." He said. Though he was still smiling his expression seemed to have fallen a bit. "We just didn't want to ask."
Silence fell over the room. From downstairs she could hear Nancy and her friend laughing at a joke. Jane remembered how her and her friends used to get kicked out of class for laughing too loudly. They would all go into the hall and only end up laughing even harder until their teacher sent them to the principal's office. She wondered if laughing too much was just another thing she had in common with Nancy.
Though she wasn't directly looking at him she could see Mike watching her out of her corner of her eye. She could hear Rita and Gwen nagging her in the back of her mind. Just spit it out already!
Jane cleared her throat before speaking up. Why was she so nervous? "Um, I'm sorry for… shouting at you the other day."
"What?"
She had a bit of a bad habit of mumbling when she struggled to say something. "I said I'm sorry for getting cross with you the other day. During the air raid." Jane watched his expression carefully for a response. How his dark eyebrows came together and his freckles moved together as his skin crinkled slightly. "I shouldn't have gotten mad at you I just… I'm not really good at handling my emotions."
"Really?" he asked sarcastically. "I couldn't tell."
Jane reached forward and gave his shoulder a shove. "Why did you come after me anyway? You could have gotten yourself killed for being so stupid."
Usually it was Jane that broke eye contact. She felt an odd sort of satisfaction from him being the one to look away first. "I don't know." He admitted, which seemed like a stupid reason. "You could have gotten yourself killed too."
"I can get myself killed by stepping outside." She reminded him. "I can get myself killed for doing almost anything. You should be more careful since you have a better chance of living than I do."
He looked back at her with an expression harsher than the one he had been wearing only moments before. "You shouldn't say things like that."
"What? The truth?"
"We took you in to keep you safe." Mike said. "So you shouldn't talk about being killed. The war isn't going to last forever. You're going to be fine."
The same way she had the day they met in the library she felt small under his gaze. Something about Mike was so intense. She felt like a thousand pairs of eyes were watching her when he looked at her directly. He was a big fan of eye contact. She, on the other hand, was not. Yet she found herself unable to look away. As if her eyes had been locked into place and someone had stolen the keys. She could feel herself getting more and more nervous the longer he watched her.
"You sound so sure." She pointed out.
"I am."
If she could have moved she would have rolled her eyes. "But how can you be? You don't know what's going to happen. No one does."
He held her gaze for a moment longer before looking down at the floor. She wondered if he was going to reply to her at all. Before she could even think of changing the subject he pushed himself onto his feet. The ceiling of her room was slanted from the roof and the top of his head brushed the ceiling where he stood. Jane sometimes wondered if he had any clothes that fit him properly. They always either hung loosely off of him, several sizes too big, or were too short and left his wrists and ankles exposed. Most of the time it was a combination.
"I'll come get you when Nancy's friend leaves." He told her as he headed for the door. Just before he reached it he glanced back at her, the smallest hint of a smile on his face. "Have fun with your book."
He disappeared when he closed the door behind him and left her sitting alone in the room feeling as if her face had been engulfed in flames. She didn't know whether to be embarrassed or ticked off by his teasing. Instead of reaching for her book she grabbed her journal from underneath her blankets and opened it up to the page she had been on earlier that morning.
Dear Gwen,
I apologized to him. I don't know how to say it went. I'm pretty sure he got mad at me almost immediately after. He told me not to talk about being killed and all that because his family was going to keep me safe. He sounded so sure too.
He's stupidly optimistic. Sometimes I want to slap some reality into him. Most of the time I wish I could be more like him.
He said I was intimidating. But he's easily the most intimidating person I've ever met. He's like medusa. I feel like I can't move when I look at him. And not in the way you want me to mean. In a way that totally sucks.
His little sister asked me about my friends. She also asked if I had a boyfriend. It would have been really funny if my life wasn't so momentarily depressing.
I need to stop throwing myself pity parties. But I wouldn't have to have them at all if this blasted war wasn't going on.
I know if you were here you'd tell me I'm hopelessly in love with him. I wish I could tell you to shut up in person. It sounds mean on paper.
I love you.
Please be okay.
Jane.
