My head feels like it’s going to explode. I massage my chest to work out the tension that’s accumulated there in the last few minutes, but I can’t relieve the stress.
I was just seriously thinking about trying to find the person in the Nazi photo.
Even though I’m desperate to learn about Gram, and about this ancient apartment that somehow belongs to me now, I’m not ready to go there. At least, not yet. I should get what I can out of Adalyn’s diary before I consider more drastic measures.
Life is so weird. Just when you think you understand something, you realize it’s way more complicated than you ever could have imagined.
Chapter 3
Adalyn
“Girls, are you finished getting dressed? I suspect you’ll want jackets; it’s cool outside.”
Maman’s gentle voice has a sharp edge to it. She has been waiting for us in the foyer, coat on, for five minutes now, and I know she wants to hurry up and get to Madame LaRoche’s dinner, now that we have to be home before curfew. I would be ready to go, except that I’m standing in the doorway of Chloe’s bedroom, watching as my fourteen-year-old sister takes as long as she possibly can to locate her stockings.
“Could they be under the bed?” I ask.
“No,” she replies.
“Maybe you accidentally put them in the wrong drawer.”
“I doubt it.”
“Are they really lost, or is that you don’t want to see Maman?”
Silence.
I had a feeling. I know Chloe better than anyone else in the world, and in any case, my sister is about as subtle as a firecracker. She’s never been able to disguise her emotions, and she often blurts out exactly what she’s thinking at any given moment. We’re complete opposites, she and I: People complain that they always know what’s on Chloe’s mind; they complain that they never know what’s on mine. I guess I like to calculate the risk before I end up doing or saying something I’ll regret.
I motion for my sister to join me on the edge of the bed, and she does, wrapping her knees up against her chest. Her blond hair falls into her face, and she blows it away with a huff.
“This is about the soldier,” I say delicately. One wrong move, and she could explode.
“She shouldn’t have gotten so mad at me,” Chloe grumbles.
Since we returned home from Uncle Gérard’s, she and Maman have been clashing even more than usual. Maman, who went to finishing school—who always knows just the right thing to say in any social situation—has always been the person most offended by Chloe’s unfiltered behavior. The war has only magnified their differences. Maman seems to be trying to make the best of our new reality, while Chloe seizes every opportunity to show how fiercely she rejects it.
As usual, I’m caught in the middle.
A couple of weeks ago, Chloe barged into my bedroom with a fire blazing behind her eyes. She was brandishing a crumpled piece of paper she had found on a café chair, and she wasted no time in getting to her knees and smoothing it out on the hardwood floor for me to see. The title at the top said “33 Hints to the Occupied,” and what followed was a long list of ways in which ordinary people could make life more difficult for the Germans.
IF ONE OF THEM ADDRESSES YOU IN GERMAN, ACT CONFUSED AND CONTINUE ON YOUR WAY.
IF HE ADDRESSES YOU IN FRENCH, YOU ARE NOT OBLIGED TO SHOW HIM THE WAY. HE’S NOT YOUR TRAVELING COMPANION.
IF, IN THE CAFÉ OR RESTAURANT, HE TRIES TO START A CONVERSATION, MAKE HIM UNDERSTAND, POLITELY, THAT WHAT HE HAS TO SAY DOES NOT INTEREST YOU.
SHOW AN ELEGANT INDIFFERENCE, BUT DON’T LET YOUR ANGER DIMINISH. IT WILL EVENTUALLY COME IN HANDY.
“Isn’t it fantastic?” Chloe exclaimed. “There are people out there who want to resist, too!”
It felt wonderful to know we weren’t alone. Some of the girls at school kept remarking on how courteous the German soldiers were, not to mention handsome—how you could see their muscles bulging under their gray-green uniforms. Yes, we’d all been deprived of young men to look at for quite some time, but I was never going to trust our invaders, no matter how polite or attractive they were. Not after the horrors I saw on the road. I traced my fingers across the “33 Hints,” hardly believing the paper was real. Without thinking, I murmured, “This is ingenious.”
I should have known my reaction would embolden my sister. Yesterday, Chloe, Maman, and I were riding the metro back from the post office with another box of vegetables from Uncle Gérard when a blond-haired soldier stopped us and asked for directions in German. Before Maman and I even had time to react, Chloe stepped right up to him, planted her hands on her hips, and replied, in French, “We don’t understand a word you’re saying, and we don’t care to, either.”
The first part was a blatant lie, because Chloe and I have studied German in school since we were young. The second part, of course, was completely true. The soldier seemed to recognize that Chloe had insulted him in some way, and the polite smile disappeared from his face. He was beginning to look angry—and instead of backing down, Chloe took a step closer to the man, as though daring him to fight her. Would he do it? Would he arrest her for threatening him? I was a second away from lunging forward and grabbing her when a train finally pulled into the station. Maman, the blood drained from her face, pointed at it and shouted at the soldier in German, “There is your train, sir. We are very sorry!” Then she grabbed us each by the arm and yanked us in the opposite direction.
Maman sent Chloe to her room as soon as we got back to the apartment, and she didn’t come out for dinner. They probably would have gone on not speaking to one another for much longer, had Madame LaRoche not invited us to her dinner tonight.
I place my hand on Chloe’s knee.
“Maman was just trying to protect you. She didn’t know how the soldier would react.”
“She was trying to accommodate him!”
I sigh, because Chloe isn’t entirely wrong. Maman could stand to be a little less friendly to every German officer we pass in the street. But at the same time, Chloe needs to stop letting her one-track mind get in the way of her better judgment. Sometimes I want to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. She would run into so much less trouble if she learned how to be subtle every now and then.
“Just try to be more careful, okay?”
Chloe groans. “You don’t understand, Adalyn.”
“I don’t understand what?”
“How desperate I am to fight back in some way. It’s like I can’t sit still. I have to do something.”
I resist the urge to defend myself against Chloe’s accusation. Of course I want to fight back. Of course I want to do something—in fact, I have done something. I just had the sense to go about it discreetly, unlike Chloe’s careless performance on the metro.
Uh-oh. I just heard the unmistakable sound of Maman’s high heels click-clacking down the hallway. Quickly, I take Chloe by the arm and whisper, “I’m on your side, Chloe. Always. Now let’s just try and get through this ridiculous dinner without any issues.”
Just then, Maman’s head appears around the doorframe. Her cheeks are flushed from waiting inside with her coat on for so long.