thank you everyone once again for keeping up with and enjoying this story. things are going to start getting a bit more exciting very soon ;)

Dear Rita,

I can practically hear you saying 'I told you so'. You're annoyingly right even when you're not here.

I've never had a crush on anyone before. It's not a fun feeling. I wish I could reach into my brain and rip out the part that's making me have these feelings. I don't know how do you do it. I think if I'd been dating boys as long as you've been I'd be exhausted. I feel like laying down just thinking about it.

I don't know who's the bigger idiot; me or him. It's probably him. I don't understand how he could think for a second that something could happen between us. Everything about us just is so different. My whole house could fit in the first three rooms of his. Also he doesn't like Gone With the Wind and I don't think that's something that I can overlook.

He said he likes short hair. And he said he wants to go to a school dance with a girl he knows can't go with him because she was like me.

I suppose I'm a bit stupid for not realizing what was going on with my feelings earlier. Then again, my emotions are a bit of a wreck right now.

I feel like I can't breathe when I'm around him. When he looks at me it's like everything in my body just forgets how to function. Even just thinking about him makes me feel all nervous. My hands get sweaty and my heart acts like I just ran a marathon. I hate it.

Even if this stupid war wasn't going on we wouldn't work out. Which just really sucks because I want it to work. Even though he can be incredibly annoying sometimes (most of the time) I really like him. He made me smile. Which, believe me, wasn't easy. I hadn't smiled in over a month. I was crying and he asked me if I needed a hug. He also said that his little sister didn't like hugging him because he's boney. She's kind of right.

Sometimes I can't decide if I want to kiss him or punch him in the face.

I think I get why he said I'm intimidating.

I need to get a grip on myself.

Jane.

Things didn't become nearly as awkward as Jane had expected them too. It probably helped that Mike had started school again so he wasn't around as much. During the day it was just her, Nancy, and Karen. Nancy had graduated a few years back and it didn't surprise either of them that she wasn't in university. Jane hadn't heard of a girl going onto higher education in years. As much as she knew Nancy wanted to go to school she was glad for her company. Having Nancy around made it easier to get through the day.

The longer she was with the Wheelers the more she began to open up. Slowly but surely. At dinner the night before she had done the unimaginable; speak about her mother. It had always been too difficult to talk about her at all. But most things were difficult for her to talk about so she started to push herself. All she had said, as they ate the meatloaf she had helped prepare, that it had once been her mother's favorite thing to make. They all looked at her for a moment like they couldn't believe what she was saying. She had found that it got easier to talk about hard things the more she did.

Jane and Nancy sat at the kitchen table drinking tea and picking at a plate of cookies. They had somehow landed on the topic of what they would do when the war was over. The all too familiar feeling of her chest tightening up made part of her want to change the topic as soon as she could. The other part of her reminded her that talking is what made things easier. That and writing her letters. So she suffered through the tightness and feeling like she couldn't breathe right with a small smile.

"I think I'd like to start a school one day." Nancy said in between sips. "A university for girls. For all girls. All races and religions."

A smile spread on Jane's face. It felt so good to smile again. "That sounds nice."

Nancy nodded. "I'd also like to move to the city. I kind of hate living in the country."

Jane's nose crinkled up. Even when she'd been living close to the city she hadn't been a fan of it. She much preferred the perfect amount of isolation of the area where the Wheelers lived. "The city isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's loud and smelly and dirty."

"I guess you would know better than me." Nancy picked up one of the cookies and took a bite. "What would you want to do?"

Jane thought for a moment. There were a million things she wanted to do but she was afraid of getting her hopes up too high. It was a sure way to let herself down. "I would find my dad and my friends. Move somewhere big enough that they can stay if they need to. And go back to school once it's rebuilt."

"Your school didn't even get rebuilt yet?"

She had to resist the urge to roll her eyes. "You think the government is going to pay for a Jewish school to be rebuilt right now?"

Jane watched her cheeks get red. "Right. Sorry."

"It's okay."

Nancy set her mug down. "Well those are all really attainable goals." Jane considered pointing out that finding her father and friends might not exactly be attainable but decided to enjoy Nancy's optimism. She may not have had much herself but she admired it in other people. "What's one thing you've never done before that you want to try once everything goes back to normal?"

Jane knew the answer in an instant. But her face felt hot from just thinking about admitting it out loud. She wracked her brain for another answer but came up with nothing. Most of the things she wanted were just everyday life things that she missed. There was only one thing she wanted that she'd never had before. It was never something she'd thought about before. Even when her friends starting bringing boys out to lunch with them Jane was always by herself.

Was there even a point to lying to Nancy? She figured there wasn't unless she gave too much detail. She knew she wouldn't judge her, and she had a feeling she wouldn't tease her nearly as much as her friends would have. "Um…" knowing there was no point in lying didn't make the answer come out any easier. "I want to… have a boyfriend."

She watched Nancy's face light up and break into a huge grin. Jane wished she could take back what she said almost immediately. "Aw, really?" she asked. Nancy seemed more excited about the idea than she was. "That's so cute."

"Shut up." She grumbled.

But Nancy only grinned wider. She knew it would be a while before she let the topic go. "Is there someone in particular you're thinking of?"

Jane felt as if someone had taken a match and lit her face on fire. She couldn't believe she was talking about dating and boyfriends with Mike's sister. "Yeah." She admitted quietly.

"What's his name?"

She tried to think of a name of someone she had gone to school with so she didn't have to say the truth. The name that she blurted was, admittedly, not who she would have chosen had she been able to think about it a little longer. "Donald Truman."

Nancy grinned as she picked her mug back up and took a sip. From the other side of the house she could hear the front door opening and closing only moments later. Footsteps got louder and louder until Mike came into the kitchen. Needless to say, Jane was mortified. He walked right over to them and sat in the seat next to Nancy before grabbing a cookie from the plate. "What are you guys doing?" he asked

"Well, Jane was just going to tell me all about Donald Truman." Nancy replied in a teasingly flirty voice.

Jane felt her face burning even brighter so she picked up her mug in hopes of hiding behind it as she took a sip. "No, I wasn't." she mumbled. How had she managed to get herself into such an embarrassing situation?

She watched Mike's eyebrow pull together and meet in the middle of his forehead. Though she wished he wouldn't because he always looked cute when he did it. "Isn't that the guy that used to tease you and push you around during lunch?"

"Yeah, but he doesn't anym-" Jane's voice faltered and she set her mug back down on the table. "How'd you know that? I never told you about him."

Mike hesitated, his eyes darting down towards the plate in the middle of the table. "I think you did."

"No, I didn't." she said as she sat up straighter in her chair. "I haven't mentioned him since…" she felt as if she were choking on her own words when a realization hit her like a truck going 60 mph.

The only time she'd even thought about Donald Truman since moving in with the Wheelers was in a letter to her mother.

Jane felt like the ceiling came crashing down on her. The one place she felt safe to express her emotions freely and without judgement had just been ruined. Not to mention she'd written about Mike an embarrassing amount of times. The thought that he might have seen what she wrote about him made her want to disappear.

"Did you read my diary?!" Jane snapped. She hardly bothered to control the anger in her voice.

She waited and waited for him to respond, to deny it and convince her that she had mentioned Donald Truman at some point over the past few months. Anything that would make her feel just a little less mortified. But he stared at the plate of cookies and didn't say a word. The longer he went without responding the more she felt like her world was ending. He may as well have taken a direct look into her brain and read her mind.

Jane gave up on waiting and quickly stood up. Her chair scraped on the wooden floor when she pushed it out but she didn't care about the noise. She also didn't care about the noise as she stormed off towards the stairs. Jane had half a mind to phone Mrs. Donna and ask if she could come back to her house. The thought of spending one more day in the same house as Mike made her feel like she was suffocating in her overwhelming feeling of betrayal.

Halfway through the living room she could hear someone's footsteps behind her. She prayed it was Nancy coming after her. Her hands were shaky by her sides. She was afraid if she stopped walking she would turn right back around and start hitting him. Just as she reached the bottom of the stairs she heard Mike's voice calling her. Couldn't she ever catch a break?

She turned on her heels and waited for him to reach her. She could only imagine the look on her face by the way he looked so sheepish as he approached her. But she didn't feel guilty. All she could feel was tears forming in her eyes and a black hole of embarrassment and hurt that had crashed into her stomach.

"Jane-" he began.

But she didn't want to hear it. What could he say that would make her feel better? She doubted there would be anything that could. "That was private." She hissed. Jane wanted more than anything to yell and scream at him at the top of her lungs but her voice seemed to lack the volume to do so. "Do you understand how incredibly violating that is?"

Mike seemed to have realized that he could offer no comfort and must have decided to silently wait for her to get everything out.

"When did you read it?" Jane intended on holding onto the hope that he hadn't seen what she wrote about him until the last possible second. She had mentioned Donald Truman in the first letter in the notebook. Maybe he'd had the sense to stop reading before he got too far in.

His eyes fell down to the floor. For once she didn't feel so nervous and scared around him. She was far too angry. "Last week."

She squeezed her eyes shut and let hot, angry tears fall down her cheeks. Jane would have felt less exposed if she had been walking around the house naked. She wanted to go up to her room and never open the door ever again. But most of all she just wanted a hug. Her diary had been her safe space, the only time she didn't feel like she had to be so strong all the time. The only place where she felt safe with her emotions. It might have hurt less if the family kicked her out onto the street and left her for dead. She forced herself to open her eyes and look at him again. "How much did you read?"

Mike looked just about ready to cry too. As much as she didn't want to she found herself feeling bad. If only she was as cold blooded as she had tried to be when her father had first been taken. "Jane, I'm sorry."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "I'll take that as you read the whole thing." When he didn't respond she felt the black hold in her stomach get even blacker. "I can't believe you would do that to me. I thought you were my friend."

"I am."

Jane laughed in a way that lacked any humor. "No, you're not! If you were my friend you wouldn't even think of doing something like that." She pulled the sleeve of her sweatshirt over her hand and wiped her cheeks. Her fingers were still shaking. "How could you do something like that to me?"

He shifted his weight. With her three steps above him she was finally taller than him. It made her feel even less nervous around him. "I didn't do it to hurt you. I would never want to do that."

Jane stepped back onto the bottom stair and shook her head. What the hell did he think she was going to feel? Did he think she would thank him for violating her privacy? "I don't want to hear it, okay?" she said. "Please just leave me alone."

Without giving him the chance to respond she turned and took the stairs two at a time. Thankfully she didn't hear his footsteps following her again.

She slammed the nursery door behind her before crawling through the door in the closet. For good measure she moved the chair in her room in front of the door so no one could open the door. It didn't have a lock so it was the best she could do. Just to make absolutely sure no one could come in she sat in the chair after grabbing her copy of Jane Eyre. As she always did when she was angry she read twice as fast as she usually did. She read about ten pages before she heard a soft knock on the door.

Jane turned around and waited for someone to try and open the door. Her hands gripped the arms of the chair tightly in preparation. Seconds ticked by and she heard nothing but silence. Was it Nancy coming to make her feel better? Mike once again attempting to apologize? Had Holly gotten home and come up to play with her? Out of the corner of her eye she saw a paper slide under the door and into her room before soft footsteps headed away from her door.

Once she no longer heard any sign of someone nearby she marked her page in her book and set it down. She reached for the letter with a slightly shaky hand. Sure enough she recognized the scribbly handwriting so common with boys. She felt a bitter taste form in her mouth at the irony that he was probably going to apologize through a letter when the whole thing had been started over letters.

Jane,

I know you don't want to hear it but I'm really sorry. The last thing I would ever want to do is hurt you. I had come up to your room one night to get you for dinner and the notebook was just sitting there.

You hardly ever talk to anyone about anything. You have no idea how hard I've been trying to get you to open up to me. We've all been trying. I just wanted to know you better and have a better understanding of where you're coming from.

I know it's stupid.

I hate that I hurt you. I think that you're the most remarkable person I've ever met. The fact that you're even able to function after everything you've been through totally blows my mind on a daily basis. I know you probably don't want to hear this but after I read it all I wanted to do was give you a hug. But you don't seem to be the hugging type.

You were wrong about one thing though. You wrote that if we were strangers and walked by each other in the street that I wouldn't look at you twice. I know you think you're right about most things but you couldn't be more wrong about that. You're easily the prettiest girl I've ever met.

I know that you're mad at me right now but I'll wait until you forgive me. I'll do absolutely anything to make it up to you.

The night of the air raid you asked me why I came after you. I didn't know how to tell you that I was terrified of something happening to you so I lied and said I didn't know. The thought of you getting hurt and me not being there to do anything made me feel sick. So I went after you.

You've probably noticed by now but I have a bit of a problem with impulsivity.

I wish things were different for you. Even though I feel incredibly lucky to have met you I hate everything that had to happen first. If there's anyone I know who deserves to just be happy it's definitely you.

I know you're going to be mad at me for a while. Which is fine, I deserve it. But when you're not mad anymore I'm going to show you that you're wrong and that it can work.

Mike.

Fat tear drops rolled down her cheeks and fell onto the letter as she red. His words were an emotional rollercoaster that left her feeling dizzy. Why did he have to have such an effect on her? Once she was done with the letter Jane attempted to throw the paper across the room. Instead it fluttered down onto the floor only a foot in front of her.

She pulled her legs up to her chest and put her head between her knees. Jane hadn't felt so alone in a long time. Not only had she been completely betrayed by someone she had come to care about but she had lost her one outlet that she could use to express the emotions she didn't dare express in front of others. She felt stupid and foolish for the way her heart was pounding as she thought over everything she had just read. It can work.

Was he trying to fool her or himself?