Anne Frank and Me

by Cherie Bennett

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  fifteen

  sixteen

  seventeen

  eighteen

  nineteen

  twenty

  twenty-one

  twenty-two

  twenty-three

  twenty-four

  twenty-five

  twenty - six

  twenty-seven

  twenty-eight

  twenty-nine

  thirty

  thirty-one

  thirty-two

  thirty-three

  thirty-four

  thirty-five

  thirty-six

  thirty-seven

  thirty-eight

  thirty-nine

  forty

  NOTES FROM GIRL X

  TIME LINE OF ACTUAL EVENTS

  FURTHER TIME LINE SOURCES;

  CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

  The sound of gunfire echoed through the exhibition hall. Panic struck. Screaming people ran in every direction and dove for cover. “Doom’s shooting!” someone yelled. “Doom’s got a gun!’

  Nicole found herself running toward an exit sign as a piercing alarm sounded. A wave of students pushed her from behind, slamming her against a wall.

  Mimi yanked her arm. “Come on!” She pulled Nicole away from the wall, but they were nearly trampled by a line of security guards, guns drawn, charging toward the sound of the shots.

  More screams, more crying. The air was thick with the smell of gunpowder. Nicole and Mimi were trapped in a mass of students jamming the emergency exit. “Help me!” a girl screamed, as she fell in the crush. A boy stepped on her arm and ran on.

  “Mimi!”

  “Hold on, Nicol”

  Nicole grabbed her friend’s hand. “Don’t let go!” They were being pushed from all sides.

  “Nico, I can‘t—”

  Nicole felt Mimi’s hand slipping from hers. “Don’t fall!” she ordered, as if her voice could keep her friend up. Mimi let go. “Mimi! Where are you? Mimi!”

  CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

  A sudden pain pierced Nicole, red-hot. And then, there was nothing at all.

  “Eloquent and poignant. The lesson is clear. The impact is powerful.”

  —The New York Times, on the play Anne Frank and Me

  OTHER PUFFIN BOOKS YOU MAY ENJOY

  Anne Frank: Beyond the Diary

  Ruud and Rian Verhoeven Van Der Rol

  Anne Frank: A Hidden Life Mirjam Pressler

  The Devil’s Arithmetic Jane Yolen

  The Devil in Vienna Doris Orgel

  Lyddie Katherine Paterson

  Summer of My German Soldier Bette Greene

  Thanks to My Mother Schoschana Rabinovici

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers,

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,

  a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2001

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Putnam

  Books for Young Readers, 2002

  9 10

  Copyright © Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld, 2001

  Novel adapted from the stage play Anne Frank and Me by Cherie Bennett

  with Jeff Gottesfeld, the Dramatic Publishing Company, 1997.

  Text set in twelve-point Celeste.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-07583-8

  eISBN : 978-1-101-07583-8

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Joseph Ozur, who lived, and for his family, who died;

  for the Mullers and Gottesfelds who did not survive;

  and in honor of the Righteous Gentiles.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Above all, thank you to the Jewish community of Nashville, Tennessee; its Jewish Community Center commissioned our play and underwrote the world premiere. And to Professor Jacques Adler (The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), who has fact-checked and consulted on this project for years.

  Also to Anne Frank Center USA, Simon Wiesenthal Center, University of Judaism, YIVO Institute, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the many French survivors to whom that institution introduced us. Also to Professors Deborah Lipstadt (Denying the Holocaust, New York: Free Press, 1993), Susan Zuccotti (The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, New York: Basic Books, 1993), Joyce Apsel and Holli Levitsky; David and Suzanne Winton, Stanley Brechner, Jeff Church, Moses Goldberg, Rob Goodman, Bryan Cahen, Ed Finkelstein, Bruce Rogers, Rabbis Stephen Fuchs, David Davis, and Zalman Posner, John Lo Schiavo S.J., Revs. Joel Emerson and Ann Bassett, Claude and Mirella Luçon, Jack Pollak, the Windisch and Chanderot families, Kate Emburg, Bill Younglove, Sofya Weitz-Levitsky, Abby Lessem, Karen Pritzker Vlock, the Gottesfelds and Bermans, Josh Kane, Refna Wilkin, our editor Susan Kochan, Nancy Paulsen, Laura Peterson, and Dramatic Publishing Company. Thanks, too, to sister authors Jane Yolen, Lois Lowry, Han Nolan, Carol Matas, Miriam Bat-Ami, Edith Baer, Norma Fox Mazer, and Sonia Levitin, lights to the nations and to us. We are indebted to the scholarship of Adler, Lipstadt, Zuccotti, Jeremy Joseph, Georges Weller, Henri Amouroux, Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton, Melissa Muller, Claude Levy and Paul Tillard, and Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, among many others. References to Anne Frank’s diary are from The Diary of Anne Frank: The Critical Edition. (New York: Doubleday, 1989).

  Girl X website design and execution by Lindsay Hurteau, age 15, Granby, Massachusetts.

  NOTES FROM GIRL X

  CAUTION!!! WEBSITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION !!!

  Day 1, 8:20 p.m.

  There are only four possible reasons you are reading this:1. . You know who Girl X is. But since that applies only to my best friend, M, that rules you out.

  2. . You’re a perv surfing the Net who thinks the X in Girl X means X-rated. Wrong. Wipe off the drool, get a life, and surf on.

  3. . You’re actually interested in the secrets of a tenth-grader in the burbs who is none of the following:a. smartest

  b. dumbest

  c. prettiest

  d. ugliest

  e. hippest

  f. geekiest

  The only thing remotely interesting about me is that I can dance. Other than that, most of the time, I’m just there. Someday, at our twentieth class reunion, with cheesy blown-up yearbook photos on the walls and a low-rent cover band playing Puff Daddy from what you will refer to as “the best years of our lives,” I’ll be the one you don’t remember.

  Some People: Seem to be born knowing exactly who they are and where they’re going; with a Day-Glo-highlighted road map to life.

  Other People: Are Under Construction, Detours Ahead, mapless, figuring it out as they go.

  I am one of the Other People. And the only reason I can think of for why you might still be reading this is:

  4. You’re just like me.

  NOTES
FROM GIRL X

  CAUTION !!! WEBSITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION !!!

  Day 2, 9:15 p.m.

  Frightening Thought du Jour: We are teen rodents of civilization, destined to run through a suburban maze at the end of which is the processed cheese: a life just as boring as our parents’.

  Random Acts of Blindness: I am such a cliché. I am in love with J, a boy who does not seem to know I exist.

  Confused Much? Today, a bad rep is a good thing. Everyone wants to be bad, badder, the baddest. Say you’ve had sex even if you haven’t. Live Hip or Die.

  Girl in the Middle: On one side of me, the sanctimonious Join-hands-at-the-flagpole-every-morning-because-True-Love-Waits kinda girls. On the other side of me, the pathetic Got-pregnant-on-purpose-kept-the-baby-who’s -in-day-care-down-the-hallway-while-I-go-to-class kinda girls.

  None of the Above: I am still among the (as M calls it) Have-not-yet-succumbed-to-the-Call-of-the-Wild. But why wait? I mean, what’s the point, if it’s the right guy? When’s the “right time,” anyhow?

  Smokin’: I fantasize about sex with J all the time; dream it when I’m asleep, daydream it when I’m awake. Makes me feel like I’m in free fall. What would it be like, really?

  Girl X Manifesto: Live, love, feel everything, fear nothing, never settle, never regret, never die.

  NOTES FROM GIRL X

  CAUTION !!! WEBSITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION !!!

  Day 3, 10:09 p.m.

  Girl Over the Top: Sometimes I am numb. Nothing matters. Other times, when I let myself feel, I feel too much. Bleed for everything.

  They Say to Me: You will “outgrow” this and “grow up.”

  I Say to Them: What does that mean? To stop caring?

  The Truth Hurts, So? There are some people meant for greatness. Then there are the rest of us. I’m not the stars or the sun—I don’t radiate heat. Or the moon-I don’t shine like a beacon to light the way. I am definitely not a celestial body. I’m an earthbound girl destined to revolve around someone else. And I would gladly revolve around J, who is the sun, the moon, and the stars put together. Loving him is a sickness. A fever.

  Frightening Thoughts du Jour: a. I am obsessed.

  b. I hate that I feel this way.

  c. I have such disdain for girls like me.

  000001 MAGIC COUNTER

  one

  Nicole Burns sat in the fourth row, third seat of Renee B. Zooms’ English class, watching the door and at the same time pretending not to. An elderly woman entered, looking around uncertainly. Zooms greeted her warmly. Nicole’s eyes slid back to the door. She was on alert for one thing. Him. J. Jack.

  Her best friend, Mimi, flew in; loose-limbed skinny legs sliding into the seat across from her. Mimi had recently gone retro hippie; ratty bell-bottoms, COSMIC KARMA T, love beads. She leaned close, and patchouli scent wafted everywhere. “So, Nico. I checked out Girl X last night.”

  “I know, I saw a hit on my counter. My public confessional now has an audience of one. Remind me why I’m doing this again.”

  “You have a desperate need for attention?” Mimi ventured.

  “It’s anonymous.”

  “True. Maybe you have a deeply disturbed need to bare the details of your secret, steamy existence to utter strangers.”

  Nicole dead-eyed her. “My life, as you know, is steam-free.”

  “Also true.” Mimi shrugged. “So do what everyone else does. Lie.”

  “Meem, the whole point is to tell the truth, even if—”

  Nicole’s voice dropped off; her internal organs rearranged themselves. J had just walked in. Her eyes followed as he went to talk with his supposedly former girlfriend, Heather the Perfect.

  Mimi peered at Nicole. “Amazing. I can actually see your IQ slump.”

  Nicole watched closely as Heather laughed and put one hand on Jack’s right bicep. Then the bell rang shrilly; Jack and Heather took their seats.

  “Settle down, people,” Zooms said, the closing door underscoring her sentence. “One of the first assignments for your biennial Holocaust studies unit was to watch the adaptation of Jane Yolen’s novel The Devil’s Arithmetic on TV last night. Hands of those who did?”

  A few hands hit the air: Mimi; the new girl, Suzanne Lee; a geek girl in the back row. Jack. David Berg. Not Nicole. She’d spent last night working on Girl X.

  Pursuing invisibility, Nicole slunk down in her seat as her teacher smiled thinly. “Delightful. Five out of thirty-one. I could weep. Somehow the words pop quiz spring to mind. However, this is your lucky day. Instead of a pop quiz, we have a guest speaker. Feel free to thank her for your reprieve. It is an honor to introduce Mrs. Paulette Litzger-Gold.”

  The old woman that Nicole had seen enter the classroom stood to a smattering of grateful applause. “I thank Ms. Zooms for inviting me,” she began, her voice slightly accented. “Why am I here to speak with you? Because I lived through the Holocaust. So, about me. I grew up in the most wonderful, sophisticated place in the world, Paris, France. What you do for fun now—go to movies, go shopping, listen to the latest music—is what my friends and I did then. In 1940, when I was your age, if someone had told me what was about to happen to me, I would not have believed it. But just five years later, I was liberated from a Nazi concentration camp more dead than alive.”

  The woman stopped for a sip of water and Nicole’s eyes slid to Jack. From her seat behind him, Heather dropped a folded paper onto his desk. He read it, then turned around to grin at her. She smiled back. It was not the smile of a girl who was an ex-anything.

  Mrs. Litzger-Gold went on with her story, about race laws and ration cards and resistance movements. Nicole was present in body only. Her mind was busy dealing with the Jack-Heather thing. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Zooms staring daggers at her. She slapped a perky I‘m-so-interested mask on her face.

  “If you find the things I am telling you unimaginable, I understand,” Mrs. Litzger-Gold was saying. “They seem unimaginable to me, too, even though I was there. Certain moments are burned into my memory. Such as the time French police knocked on the doors of Jewish homes in the dead of night. Many thousands were rounded up and taken to the Vélodrome d‘Hiver, a sports arena that would become a temporary prison. There was no food nor water nor sanitary facilities. Some killed themselves because the world had turned into a place in which they no longer wanted to live. I remember Drancy, the detainment camp outside of Paris where so many were held and then deported. And I have not yet begun to tell you about the horror of the concentration camps, the SS, and the crematoria. I also remember the good—an apple given by a stranger, the underground press, some defiant words on a scrap of paper that gave me strength to go on.”

  Chrissy Gullet’s hand sprang into the air.

  “Miss Gullet, what burning question forces you to interrupt our speaker?” Zooms asked, her tone withering.

  “I don’t mind at all,” the old woman insisted. “There are no bad questions, only bad answers. Please, young lady, go ahead.”

  Chrissy shook her hair off her face with a practiced gesture. “Okay, in fifth grade we read Number the Stars. We already know about the Holocaust. I’m very sorry that you had to go through it, but I don’t understand why we have to talk about it again. I mean, we don’t have Irish Famine Awareness Week, or How We Stole from the Native Americans Awareness Week, do we?”

  From the next row, dark-eyed David Berg, smart, serious, intense, glared at her. “You are monumentally ignorant.”

  “Excuse me, David, but this is America, okay? Which means I’m entitled to have a different opinion from you.”

  “And I’m entitled to tell you what an idiot you are.”

  “Leave out the name-calling, Mr. Berg,” Zooms warned. “Mrs. Litzger-Gold, would you like to continue?”

  The old woman answered with a gesture that clearly invited the discussion to go on.

  “Thank you,” Chrissy told her. “Okay, David, no offense, but you’re not really objective about this.”


  “Why, because I’m Jewish?”

  Mimi turned to Chrissy. “Try to keep up. The Holocaust was international genocide.”

  “Yuh, I got it,” Chrissy singsonged. “But it’s not like it could ever happen here.”

  Zooms scanned their faces. “Could it? Today, in America, could it happen?”

  “Yes,” David answered. “Of course it could happen here.”

  Eddie Valley snorted out a laugh. “My man, Mr. Paranoid.”

  “I think it could happen here, too,” Suzanne said mildly. Nicole smiled at her. Suzanne was pretty, nice, and had perfect strawberry blond hair. Three weeks before, Nicole had invited her to join her hip-hop trio.

  “Please.” Chrissy punctuated this with an eye roll. “All I’m saying is, this is America in the twenty-first century, not Europe a zillion years ago. No offense, ma‘am, but the Holocaust is totally irrelevant ancient history.”

  Mrs. Litzger-Gold looked bemused. “Perhaps you are right about the history part, though I don’t think of myself as ancient. But irrelevant? I cannot agree with you there.”

  Zooms swept her arms over the room. “Other opinions? People?” The usual suspects joined the debate. Jack was so impressive when he spoke—fair to both sides. He was just so everything. How could one guy be so—

  “Miss Burns?”

  Instant face flush, heart hurtling toward heaven. Zooms stared at Nicole. “Uh ... sorry?”

  “Eloquent as always, Miss Burns. I’ll come back to you when you’ve gathered your thoughts.” Zooms’ laser-beam gaze fell on a guy in the back row. “Mr. Hayden?”

  Nicole went limp with relief as all eyes went to Richard Hayden, a much bigger fish for Zooms to eviscerate. Eddie Valley had nicknamed him Dr. Doom for his habitual outfit: oversized army jacket, black shirt, and black pants. Dr. Doom got shortened to Doom, which is what everyone called him now.