Jane knocked on Mike's bedroom door three times before waiting for a response. She'd only been in his room once before when Holly insisted that everyone play a game with her and that Jane went go her to get him. But she'd never been in there by herself. Even though being around Mike had gotten a lot easier over time she still found herself getting a little nervous whenever they were alone. He still had the same intensity that had a surprisingly strong effect on her. Sometimes her heart stopped when he looked directly at her. Other times it pounded.

When he opened his bedroom door she felt it stop.

"Still need that hair cut?" She asked, holding up the pair of scissors in her hands.

She watched his eyes move back and forth between the scissors to her face. "Hm… I don't know."

Jane rolled her eyes and grabbed his arm and tugged him forward. "You'll be fine. I'll do mine first so you can see just how talented I am." She said jokingly as she dragged him out of his room and into the bathroom.

Jane had already set down some towels on the floor to catch the hair she would be cutting. She had also brought in a radio that was plugged in and sitting on the back of the toilet. Mike sat down before turning it on and changing the station until he found one he was satisfied with. She brushed all the knots out of her hair and dampened it a bit (the way she always did when she cut her hair). As she prepared she could feel Mike watching her every move which admittedly made her a little bit nervous.

"Why did you start cutting your own hair?" he asked just as she picked up the scissors

Jane shrugged, "I don't know." She said. "I remember cutting my bangs once when I was 10. My parents didn't really get mad at me because I didn't do a bad job." She stared at herself in the mirror for a moment before glancing at him. "Should I do bangs?"

"No." he said immediately. "You'll regret it, trust me."

She grinned as she turned back into the mirror. Jane brought the scissors up and cut her hair so it was just an inch or two longer than her chin. Her curls dropped onto the towel on the floor. She always thought it was amazing how much longer her hair looked once she cut it off.

"You're cutting off so much." Mike pointed out.

"Yeah." She agreed. "This is the longest my hair has been in years. I like to keep it short. It's a lot easier to manage that way"

He pushed his bangs back off of his forehead but they only fell back into his eyes seconds later. He had started doing it more and more as his hair got longer. "That's cool." Mike said. "I think short hair looks better."

Jane could feel her cheeks start to get hot. She ignored the feeling and kept cutting her hair.

It never took her very long but she was looking with a bit more hair than usual. She hummed along to the songs she recognized on the radio and answered the questions Mike asked her. The more time passed the more things people asked her. She was just glad he knew better than to ask anything too upsetting. When she was done she set the scissors down on the sink and brushed out her hair again. Mike helped her check to make sure he was even. He admitted that he was surprised she did a good job.

"You thought I was lying?"

"I thought you were stretching the truth."

She rolled her eyes at him and she started brushing out his hair before dampening it. He showed her how short he wanted his bangs and took in a shaky breath when she picked the scissors back up. "Why are you so nervous?"

He looked up at her through his bangs. "I've never had a non-professional do my hair before."

Jane scoffed at him. "You're so privileged."

She stood so close to him that her legs were pressed against his. As she cut she was well aware of his eyes focused on her but she managed to ignore it and stare at his forehead. In her head she could hear her friends teasing her about being so close to him. All the girls in school had started getting boyfriends around freshman year. But it was something Jane had never been interested in. She would much rather be one of the boys than be with one of the boys. It may have had something to do with the fact that none of the boys in her school were interesting enough. Maybe it was because none of them found her interesting enough. Either way it didn't stop her friends from teasing her every time an older boy smiled at her in the hallway.

"Tell me about what you did before the war." Mike said suddenly, interrupting her train of thought.

It was amazing how such a simple statement could make her so nervous. "Why?"

"Because I want to know more about you."

Jane forced herself to look at him, her hand holding the scissors falling down to her side. With half of his bangs cut short and the other half still hanging in his eyes he looked. Little silly. It made him less intimidating to look directly at. "I'm not that exciting, Mike." She said.

He raised an eyebrow at her. The one on the side she had already cut. "Maybe you're more interesting than you think."

She stared at him for a moment before letting out a sigh. He was relentless sometimes. "What do you want to know?" she asked reluctantly as she started cutting again.

Mike fell silent as he thought. While he did Jane wondered what his sudden interest in her was. Every so often he would start asking her questions seemingly out of nowhere. But he didn't do it very often. She had a feeling that he was still a little hesitant to ask even though things between them had changed. He spoke up just as she picked the brush to check how even the cut was. "Tell me about your school."

Jane let out a short sigh. "It used to be a regular school. But it's in a Jewish neighborhood. Once everything started all the non Jewish families pulled their kids out of school and sent them somewhere else. It kind of became an all Jewish school by accident." She said. Every time she talked about anything before living with the Wheelers she felt her chest go tight. But at the same time she felt a bit guilty for never talking about it. As if she were pretending it never happened which felt a bit unfair to everyone she knew.

"We used to stay after school and play football when things started getting bad because we were scared of walking home." She continued. Some kids would leave only twenty minutes before Sunday they were so afraid. She and her friends used to get home a little after four.

"Why?"

"Sometimes kids from the other school would wait down the street and beat us up." Jane said. She could feel his sympathy even without him saying a word and it was something she didn't want. "Ask me something else."

Mike hummed as he thought of another question. While she waited she moved to stand behind him so she could cut the back of his hair. She could already start to feel herself breathe easier now that he couldn't look at her directly. "Did your school have a dance every year in September?"

"Yeah."

"Did you ever go with anyone?"

Jane's eyebrows pulled together. The most anyone had talked about her love life in months was when Holly asked if she'd had a boyfriend. Even her friends let the topic fade when things with the war started to get serious. When kids in their classes started disappearing. Who cared about boys when their classroom of 25 turned into a class of 10? "Um, no. Not really." She answered after a second's hesitation. "I mean I went with my friends. But not with a boy."

Mike shifted slightly. She wished she was better at reading people because she was starting to become thoroughly confused. "My school is having one once classes start." He said. "But I'm not sure if I'm going to go."

She wanted to point out that it was only mid August and that he had some time to think about the decision but figured she shouldn't. It had probably already occurred to him. "Why not?"

"Because there's no one in my school that I want to go with." Jane spotted his leg bouncing up and down out of the corner of her eye.

A small frown appeared on her face. Something in his voice sounded different but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. Yet another example at how rubbish she was at reading people. Especially Mike. "Is there someone not from your school you'd want to go with?"

"Yeah."

She brushed off the hair that was stuck to his back onto the floor and continued cutting. There wasn't much left for her to do. "Well why don't you ask her, then?"

He shifted once more. Jane managed to hold herself back from snapping at him for moving when she was cutting his hair. Did he realize she was holding a pair of scissors just inches away from his neck? "Because she can't go."

She felt the crease in her forehead only get deeper. "How do you know?" she asked. "Did you ask her already?"

Jane heard him let out a sigh. "No. I just know she can't."

"Why?"

"Because she can't really… go out."

Jane felt like she was putting together the pieces of a puzzle in slow motion. She also felt like the pieces were the opposite of magnetic and refused to stay together. "Is she like me?"

"Yeah."

She immediately wondered who he knew that was also hiding someone. Was it his friend Will who he had invited over a few times and was, as far as Jane could tell, his best friend? She would have thought that if someone he knew was also hiding someone that he would have mentioned it at some point in the past three months. That was a long time to keep that kind of knowledge to himself. Yet this was the first she was hearing of it. She also wondered how he had managed to meet his girl if she was in hiding. Didn't that sort of defeat the purpose?

Two pieces of the puzzle finally clicked and a realization hit her so fast she felt like she might be sick.

Oh.

Oh.

Jane immediately pulled her hands away from him as if he was ill with a contagious disease. Though she could have evened it out a bit more she felt the overwhelming need to escape up to her room. Her heart was pounding so fast that she worried it would suddenly burst out of her chest and make a mess in the room. She reached over and grabbed the brush off of the sink and ran it through his hair as quickly as she could. "You can still just go with your friends. I've always had fun when I've done that." Jane moved to stand in front of him but was unable to meet his gaze. "See? I didn't do terrible."

He stood up and she quickly moved to the side so he could stand in front of the mirror. Mike ran his fingers through his bangs as a small smile started to form. "I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised."

She managed to put on a smile and hoped it didn't look as forced as it felt. "I'm glad you like it." She couldn't even look at his reflection in the mirror. Jane started backing towards the door. Her feet were itching to run up to her room. "I'm going to go take a nap, I'll see you at dinner."

Before he could say another word she turned and headed down the hallway. She walked as fast as she could without seeming like she was in a hurry. Once she reached the stairs she took them two at a time so she could get away faster. Her chest felt tight, her throat felt sore, and she longed to be somewhere hidden. Somewhere where she could be alone.

She closed the nursery door behind her, which she never did, and practically ran into her room. Jane collapsed on her bed face down into her pillow. Her emotions were a cacophony of things she had never felt and it wasn't a combination that she enjoyed at all. More than ever she longed for someone that could give her advice or words of wisdom. Someone who wasn't related to Mike.

She wished that people came with an on and off switch for their emotions. Up in her room she would have switched off in a heartbeat. Jane was sick and tired of feeling things. The only thing she ever did was feel things. Just for a little bit, even if it was five minutes, she wanted to feel nothing.

Jane grabbed her notebook and pen from the nightstand next to her bed and sat up. She wracked her brain for someone to write to. Everyone she had previously written to were people she had no way of hearing back from. She had written to them enough times without a reply. It was a sickening feeling to ask questions to someone who might never give the answers. She bit off the cap of her pen and pushed up her sleeves when she finally thought of someone.

Dear Mike,

You are infinitely frustrating.

I don't have that much hope left in me but I seriously hope that you weren't talking about me.

There are a million reasons why you need to get that idea out of your head. Thinking about listing them all is giving me a migraine. Plus I think I would be sitting here writing for the next couple of weeks if I were going to list them all. I know you're a smart kid but you're so bloody stupid for thinking about me like that for even a fraction of a second.

Even if this war wasn't going on we wouldn't work out. We come from two incredibly different worlds. If we didn't know each other and we passed by one another on the street you wouldn't look at me twice and we both know it. I'm not hurt by the thought because I know that's just the way that things are.

When the war first started there was a boy at my school. His name was Gregory Sawyer. He started dating a Jewish girl named Janice. The kids in school bullied him more than they bullied her. They spit in his food, tripped him in the hallway, stole his clothes from the locker room. The day that we got let out of school for spring break a few kids ganged up on him and beat him up really bad. He was in the hospital for a while with a concussion and stitches. This was only a few months into the war when things weren't even that bad.

I don't want you to turn into Gregory.

If you've even thought about me in any sort of way for a second I want you to get that idea out of your head right now because I'm not going to let you risk your life just because you think the Jew girl living in the closet is interesting (or whatever you think of me that makes me so appealing that you're being so stupid).

I hate that you noticed me. And I hate that I noticed you.

My mother once told me that boys with dark hair and a good smile were the downfall of women in my family. She, like me, was right about pretty much everything she said.

Please for the love of god just ask out some girl from your school and fall desperately in love with her so you can forget about me. For your own sake.

Jane.

P.S. I hate you for this.