‘What made you think that?’
When Julius didn’t answer, Mr Kim sighed and continued, ‘Is this when you did Charity Day in your old school? Anyhow, we’ll discuss it later. Do you have something to change into? Did you bring your school uniform with you?’
‘No. I only have my PE kit in my locker.’
‘Right. Well, you’re going to have to go home to change. You have chemistry next, don’t you? I’ll tell Ms Giordi that you’re going to miss first period.’
And as Julius stood there, bewildered, waiting for Mr Kim to finish the register, I was suddenly reminded of the image of Mila, when Ania said that she’d been singled out for stealing the apples. Neither of them was to blame, and neither was brave enough to stand up for themselves. A part of me almost hoped that Julius would tell them about the letter and our conversation at the bus stop yesterday. I would even own up to doing it. I felt that I needed some sort of punishment for what I’d done, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself. But instead of saying anything, I sat there, picking a hangnail on my left thumb until it bled, and staring out of the window where two pigeons were circling each other in the playground. I knew I was a coward.
I couldn’t concentrate at all throughout chemistry. Then, finally, halfway into the second period, Julius came into the lab in his school uniform, still looking flustered. He apologised for being late, didn’t make eye contact with anyone, and sat down in the first empty seat he could see.
For the next couple of days, Julius kept his head down. He hardly spoke in lessons, which was unlike him, and he sat alone at lunchtimes on the corner table, reading a book. He didn’t look sad exactly, but it was as if he realised that he couldn’t be his real self – he needed to be a toned down, black-and-white version of Julius. It made me feel terrible.
One rainy afternoon, I saw Arun approach Julius’s table with two of his mates, and my first thought was that they would probably start having a laugh at him, but they sat down and Arun showed him something on his iPad. Then Julius picked up one of Arun’s headphones and they listened to some music together. I couldn’t believe that I’d assumed they’d be mean. It turned out that not everyone was like us.
‘What’s going on there?’ asked Gem, peeping round from behind Dilly’s back.
‘Looks like Arun, Jace and Dave are hanging out with Julius,’ I muttered.
‘Arun must be doing it for a dare,’ said Gem breezily, but I could see that small spot glow red.
‘It doesn’t matter, Gem,’ said Dilly nervously. ‘Your plan worked brilliantly. The main thing is that Julius is right back in his box, where he belongs.’
‘Exactly, and we must make sure he stays there.’
EIGHT
Uncle Pete and my cousins came to visit at the weekend and we drove to the South Downs, which distracted me from school for a bit and gave me loads of great ideas for scenery in Girl 38. I spent ages drawing bush-covered hills and meandering rivers, except I changed the colours. On Planet U, the rivers were a lurid orange from all the lava, and the black hills rose like the backs of sleeping giants.
When we got home, I tried to make more progress on the comic and keep my mind off having to think about the week ahead.
First Mate Hawk Eye and Girl 38 had been travelling through the mysterious land of Planet U for hours, collecting huge berries that fell from the trees, fluorescent mushrooms and anything else they could get their hands on, and which might be edible. They were about to turn home before nightfall, when they spotted the Vilk. He was partly hidden by a sprawling bush, but his piercing eyes were visible through the leaves. ‘Shoot him!’ Hawk Eye demanded, so Girl 38 raised her bow and arrow. But no matter how she tried, she couldn’t pull back the string of her bow. It was as if an invisible force was stopping her.
I tried to sketch Girl 38 with her arm suspended in mid-air, uncertain about what to do next, but everything about her looked wrong. She just wasn’t convincing. I made several more attempts, but they were no better. Eventually, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I tore out the pages and scrunched them up.
I stared absent-mindedly out of the window and spotted Ania leaving her house with her shopping trolley. She made her way slowly down the path, and before reaching the gate, she almost tripped over an overgrown bush. She managed to catch the gate-post to steady herself.
I jumped up and ran to the garage to get the lawnmower. I’d never cut the grass for her as I’d promised. Dad showed me how to use the mower when he first bought it, and I’m a pro. I love the smell of cut grass – it reminds me of summer holidays at Uncle Pete’s. I figured that I wouldn’t have time to prune all of Ania’s bushes, but I could at least get rid of the dangerous branch and cut the grass.
First I snipped away at the worst bits of the offending bush. Then I pulled the lawnmower through the hole in the fence and I was off. I’d forgotten how efficient it was, because by the time Ania was back half an hour later, I’d made a good start in the jungle.
I laughed when I saw the delight on her face. She looked so pretty, standing there on the sunny patio.
‘Katherine, it looks fantastic. You’re my saviour!’ she shouted over the hum of the mower.
‘I’ll do the front for you later this week,’ I said, wiping my forehead.
‘You don’t have to. It’s the back garden that I wanted to use the most. Now I can bring my friend out into the sunshine,’ she said. ‘The light is so much better here than indoors. I’ve been secretly waiting to take him outside for ages.’
‘Who’s your friend?’ I asked, confused. I wondered if she meant Chester.
‘I’ll introduce you to him, if you could help me with one last thing?’
She led me back to her easel. The picture of Mila had been removed and carefully leaned against the wall. In its place, there was another small canvas – the beginnings of a new piece of work. It was a painting of a man with light-coloured hair and an impressive beard. He was peering at something in the distance, a look of concentration on his face.
Together, we took the easel into the garden, along with a stool and a sun chair, both of which had been gathering dust in Ania’s cupboard under the stairs.
‘Who is he?’ I asked, when we’d positioned everything in the sunniest spot.
‘I’ve named this painting “The Good Soldier”. He is somebody who helped me at a time when I needed it most. It was you who inspired me to paint him, by asking me to tell you my story.’
I peered at the portrait. It was in early stages, but I could tell exactly what sort of a person this man was. His mouth looked stern, but there was something wonderful about his eyes – something bold and honest. I knew immediately that I would like him if I met him and I wanted to find out more about him.
‘Tell me what he was like,’ I said, settling myself on the little stool.
‘Well, before I introduce you,’ said Ania, lying back in the deckchair and smiling, ‘I will have to tell you about what happened when I got on the train.’
‘I’ll ask Mum and Dad if I can have my dinner here and spend the evening with you. My cousins have gone, so I’m sure they won’t mind.’
‘Great. I will bring my food too. I feel we have a few hours of sunshine left,’ she said. ‘We might even be treated to a lovely sunset.’
Within minutes I was back with my bowl of spaghetti, ready to be taken away from my own worry-filled life. Ania sighed, closed her eyes and began.
‘There were so many people at the station when we arrived. Nowadays, there are crowds everywhere, aren’t there? I am sure that you are used to it. But where I lived I had never seen so many people in one place at one time. They were not just from our village, but from the whole local area. Most of them were packed into the station hall, so tightly that they could barely move.
‘The strangest thing was, that for such a huge crowd, there was very little noise. It was as if someone had turned off the sound in a film. I think that people were too scared to speak. I saw an old man wi
th white hair hugging a girl of about my age very tight to his chest. He had beautiful dark eyes and there were tears running down his cheeks. That image has stayed with me, you know, because it was so painful and so beautiful at the same time. I tried to paint it once, but I couldn’t make it look real.’
‘I think you could. You’re an amazing painter. You should try again.’
‘Who knows? Perhaps I will one day, when I am in the right mood. Anyway, I was stubborn back then and I was determined that I wouldn’t cry, even though I wanted to. So I didn’t even look my parents in the face when I said goodbye to them. I remember holding my mother as if I never wanted to let go. By then the soldiers had started to usher us on to the train, and we were being pushed in all directions. I got tripped and squashed, but I eventually ended up inside a carriage. I’d never been on a train before. I had no idea how it all worked, or what was about to happen. I had realised at that point that it would be a most unusual train journey.
‘There were no seats left. I think the train had come from another village before arriving with us, so there might not even have been any free seats when it arrived. I remember having my suitcase squeezed between my feet and searching for something to hold on to, when I heard a kind voice say, “Come and sit down. I’ve been sitting for ages, so it’s your turn now.”
‘I looked up and locked eyes with a boy who was probably a couple of years older than me. He had blond hair and freckles, and the build of somebody who spent a lot of time working in the fields. He smiled, and I realised that it was the first smile I had seen that day. Another boy said, “Let me take that.” He picked up my suitcase and somehow managed to find a space for it in the rack above our heads. He looked more serious than his freckly friend – maybe it was because of his glasses and his thick wool suit, which looked so uncomfortable. I saw the sweat on his forehead and wondered why he had not even loosened his tie. “I’m Adam,” he said, “and this is Henryk.”
‘Even though I was still scared, the boys made me feel much better. I had guessed correctly that Henryk was a farm lad, and it turned out that Adam was the son of a doctor in a village not far from us. They knew each other from school, but they were as different as they could possibly be. When I arrived in the carriage, they had been arguing over where the train was heading.’
‘Where did they think you were going?’ I asked her, dreading the answer.
‘Henryk thought that the enemy soldiers wanted our people to fight for their army. He kept stamping his feet and saying that he would refuse.
‘“Of course they don’t want us to fight for them, you fool,” said Adam. “Why would they want someone to fight for them who doesn’t believe in their cause? I tell you, they’re sending us to a labour camp. I’ve heard about them. They need to produce huge amounts of food to help with the war effort and they grow it on big farms where they work you to the bone. They need ruthlessly efficient workers. And if you’re not efficient enough, well… they get rid of you.”
‘There was a group of younger girls at the other end of the carriage and it was obvious that they were listening, so we lowered our voices. I could tell that the boys didn’t want everybody to panic.
‘“Why did they choose us?” I asked.
‘“Look around you. Everyone here is fit, healthy and young,” said Adam. “They think that older adults won’t work as fast, and younger children are no use to them, because they wouldn’t know what they’re doing and they’ll probably cry.”
‘He seemed to know so much about it and I thought perhaps he might be able to help me figure out where Mila was. I told them about what had happened outside the church the day before. Then, as soon as I’d said it, I wished I could take it back.’
‘Why? What did they tell you?’ I asked Ania. The dread that I’d been feeling reached a new level.
‘Adam looked at me strangely. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea, you looking for your friend,” he said. “Where they’re sending us is bad, but where they’re sending her is much, much worse. My dad has heard all about it – they’ve built special villages within cities just for Jewish people. They’re separated from the world by high walls and barbed wire and nobody can go in and out. People are dying of starvation, and if that doesn’t get them, then disease will. There’s a horrible typhus epidemic spreading. It is possible that your friend was sent somewhere else, but I think it’s almost certain that she’s ended up in one of these places.”
‘I wanted to clamp my hand over his mouth and stop the awful words. They weren’t true. They couldn’t be. It sounded like the sort of visions of the future that my father read in the strange books he got from his Russian friend. I thought that Adam had read something similar and was using the ideas to spread fear. I was so mad with him.
‘“You’re saying it to make us scared. Why would anybody trust you anyway?” I shouted at him, but he looked at me with his eyebrows raised, as if he didn’t care that I didn’t believe him. It was that look on his face which made me feel sick with nerves, because it made me realise that what he was saying was true, or at least close to the truth.
‘I sat for a long time, not looking at either of them, watching the fields changing outside the window. From a distance, I could see the colours that belonged to the different crops – the light yellow of wheat, the gentle gold of barley, the pale green of rye. I spotted the tiny farmers with their scythes working the fields like busy little insects. As the train slowed, I saw the gathering of hay and a group of girls bouncing on top of a sheaf, laughing as an angry man attempted to swat them away.
‘I couldn’t imagine that somewhere beyond those haystacks and the perfect rows of birches with their leaves rustling in the wind, there were people who had put other people behind a wall and were letting them die, perhaps even wanting them to die.’
‘That’s horrible,’ I said. ‘But why? Why were they doing it?’
‘I was asking myself the same question, Katherine. And I was panicking about what I was going to do. In fact, I must have panicked out loud, because I remember that the whole carriage turned to look at me.
‘Then Henryk, who had been quiet for a long time, whispered something to Adam, who nodded. He put his right hand out to me, grabbed my suitcase with his left, and told me to come with him.
‘The three of us pushed through the door of the carriage and down the corridor, which was so filled with people that we must have stepped on hundreds of feet before we got to the doors. There was a cold draught because the windows weren’t fully secure, so nobody wanted to sit there if they could avoid it. They would rather be cramped and warm. I wondered if it was the only empty space on the whole train.
‘“What are you doing?” I hissed at them. “Why did you bring me out here? It’s freezing!”
‘“We have a plan,” Henryk said. “But you need to promise us first that even if you don’t agree with it, you will not tell anyone about it. You must swear on your friend Mila’s life that you won’t.”
‘“I swear.”
‘I had only just met the two of them, but there was something in their faces that told me I could trust them and that they belonged to a group of very few people who actually understood, even in some small part, what might be happening to us.
‘Nothing could prepare me, though, for what they said next.
‘“We’re going to jump,” said Adam.
‘“What?” I thought I’d misheard him, what with the wind that rattled through the carriage and the noise of the train on the tracks.
‘“We’re going to jump,” he repeated. “I’ve been planning it since I found out yesterday that we’d be on this train. My uncle’s a train driver and I know a bit about how they work. They always slow down before they get to their next stop, so the trick is to jump at the right moment.”
‘“You’re mad,” I said.
‘“No,” said Henryk. “What’s mad is staying on this train. If we do it right, we’ll be fine. We’ll survive the jump and we’ll be able to get awa
y.”
‘“And if you don’t survive?” I asked him.
‘“Well, that’s not an option. The only question left is whether you’ll jump with us.”’
‘And you did? You jumped, didn’t you?’ I asked, my nails digging into my arm.
Ania nodded.
‘Adam told me that I had around six minutes to make a decision because that was the distance to the station. His plan was to jump and then escape somewhere to a nearby farm to find work, until it was safe enough to return home.
‘“It’s your only chance to save yourself and to find your friend,” he said. “If you don’t take this first step, how are you ever going to make it past the wall to find her?”
‘I think, in the end, it was the answer to that question which made up my mind for me.
‘“I’ll do it,” I said with my eyes shut.
‘We listened to make sure that there were no soldiers near, then Adam got out his penknife and fiddled with the lock on the door. At first, he struggled and I remember the flood of relief when I realised that the plan might not work – but then there was a burst of wind, as the door suddenly swung open. Adam went first. I watched his feet as he stood there, his hand holding on to the inside wall of the train as he judged the speed. He had been right. I could feel beneath my feet that the steady chugging was getting slower and slower. And then he nodded to signal that it was the right time. I turned to check that nobody had seen what we were doing, and when I turned back, he was gone.
‘Then Henryk grabbed my hand tightly and pulled me forward and upwards with all his strength. One moment our feet were still on the dirty wooden train floor and the next we were suspended, caught on a rush of fresh autumn air. In that tiny glimmer of time, I felt light and free, and happy, and then I hit the ground and everything turned black.’
NINE
The night after Ania told me about the train leap, I dreamed that I was jumping through the air, falling off the edge of Girl 38’s Infiniship, swirling through space, asteroids and planets spinning around me as far as the eye could see. Strangely, I wasn’t scared and that was because I was holding tightly on to somebody’s hand. When I looked to my left, I realised that the hand belonged to Julius. He smiled at me and I felt safe.
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