Collette searches desperately for the girl but can’t see her on the other side of the bridge. She hopes the girl has gone back home.
Suddenly the soldiers at the campfire all stand up. Rushing across the bridge are three additional soldiers, waving rifles and shouting in German. Ahead of them is the girl, her oversized black coat dragging, her hair falling out from under her blue beret.
The Germans gather around the girl, noisily jostling each other. One of them pulls off her beret and puts it on his head, dancing around the fire. The others point and laugh.
And the girl is laughing, too. She’s laughing!
Collette has to cover her mouth to keep from crying out in dismay. The girl looks tiny in her father’s coat, surrounded by hulking German soldiers. But she doesn’t seem afraid.
The girl pulls something out of her coat pocket, glances around dramatically, and puts her finger on her lips. “Shhh . . .” Her high-pitched giggle can be heard through their deep laughter.
One by one, she hands them each a bar of chocolate.
They tear open the wrappers and devour the candy bars.
“Singen!” they shout, still grinning as they munch on the chocolate. The girl snatches back her hat, stuffs her hair underneath, stands tall and straight, arms at her sides, and sings in German. The men are quiet. Her voice wavers, but it still soars through the woods and she never hesitates.
The soldier who had been shooting at imaginary aircraft joins the group, his rifle slung across the front of his uniform. He starts to sing along, drowning out the sweet tones of the girl. The other men try to hush him, and he reaches for the girl and yanks her coat. She pulls back, but he keeps tugging, singing loudly.
Collette grabs a handful of the branches to keep herself from running toward the fire. Should she help this stupid girl who foolishly thought she could give candy to the Germans and get away free? But Collette can’t get caught, or all of Noah’s Ark will be in danger. As she holds her breath and watches as the scene plays out in front of her, she can feel anger building. She had always felt brave and important. Panther is counting on her. But this girl has caused Collette to be fearful. This girl has caused trouble, and Collette will not put the Resistance fighters at risk.
She peers around the shrubs, anxious to leave, but now uncertain about abandoning the girl. For a moment, she’s numb with terror, but she brushes away the fear and frantically searches the ground for something to throw. If she can toss something near them, she might be able to divert their attention and the girl can get away. “Stupid girl,” Collette mutters to herself as she looks around for rocks.
The singing soldier picks up a stick from the fire. The end is glowing, and he pokes it at the girl. “Tanzen!” he yells, and waves the stick around while he pulls the back collar of her coat, throwing her off balance. The girl looks bewildered and shuffles her feet in place. “Tanz!” another soldier shouts, and she dances more vigorously. They all join their comrade in teasing her as he threatens her with the burning stick.
The soldier isn’t satisfied with the girl’s dancing. He roughly pulls her coat collar down, but this time he pokes her once on her back with the hot stick. She cries out and stumbles, but keeps moving her feet as he circles her.
Just as Collette reaches for a large rock, a German officer bursts out of the old wooden shed behind her, shouting and gesturing. He has no coat. His uniform is covered with ribbons and medals. Collette ducks down. He takes long strides toward the campfire, passing Collette so closely she can see that his boots are untied.
The soldiers instantly pick up their rifles and spread out, three of them dashing across the bridge, back to where they came from. The girl also races across the bridge and cuts into the woods, away from the soldiers.
Collette doesn’t wait to see what the screaming officer does next. This time she makes it across the stream without floundering in the icy waters and disappears into the woods. Branches snap her face and her soggy coat catches on brambles, but she keeps going, vaulting over fallen logs and dodging trees.
When she can no longer hear the officer and can’t run one more step, she emerges from the woods onto the edge of the road. She leans against the trunk of a tall plane tree to catch her breath and listen for the pounding of footsteps. The soldiers seem to have returned to their posts. To her surprise, the girl steps out from behind a nearby tree, looking bedraggled as she fights with her father’s coat. She covers her mouth to muffle her cries as the coat slides over the burn spot on her back.
Without saying a word, Collette steps behind the girl and gently pulls down the coat’s collar. She carefully peels away the burned wool shirt from the raw red wound at the top of the girl’s back, scoops up snow, and pats it on the girl’s skin. The girl gasps but holds still.
“Believe it or not, you can use vinegar to soothe the pain,” Collette says. “My mama taught me that.”
The girl buttons the coat up to the top, grimacing as it rubs against her back. She roughly brushes tears off her ashen face, leaving streaks of dirt across her cheeks. “I was just trying to help you count. My father walks right up to the soldiers! He’s brought me along before, to sing a song for them. He gives them chocolate.”
Her hands shake as she pulls out the last chocolate bar and hands it to Collette. At first Collette drops it into her pocket with the apple and the roll, but she can’t resist and pulls it back out again. She quickly unwraps it and slides a chunk of chocolate onto her tongue. She moves it around slowly in her mouth, letting it soften, savoring the first candy she’s tasted in years. It’s so much better than she had imagined.
She offers a piece to the girl. “You keep it.” The girl waves it away. “My father can get me more.”
Collette takes one more bite and carefully wraps the rest to save for her mama and papa. She knows they’ll wonder how she managed to get chocolate when they are surviving on so little, but they won’t ask.
“Who are you?” Collette asks the girl, remembering that this girl is from a house where enemies visit freely.
The girl breathes in a deep breath of the frigid air and blows it out slowly. She still has tears. “My name is Marguerite. And you have to admit, I did draw out the Germans so you could count them all.”
Suddenly she whisks Collette’s hat off her head, revealing the ragged, short hair. “And you are certainly not Jean-Pierre. Let’s get out of here.” She turns and runs swiftly up the road toward the village. For a second, Collette freezes. Who is this Marguerite? She races after the girl, who seems to know so much. This time Collette has to catch up.
They run side by side, breathing hard. As they reach the streets of Brume, they pause to rest, and press their backs against the cold stone blocks of a high church wall. The girl winces in pain and pulls away from the wall. She has deep shadows under her eyes. “We’re on the same side, you know.”
Collette quickly decides to take a risk. “I’m not really Jean-Pierre. My name is Collette.”
“I know,” Marguerite says solemnly, handing Collette her hat, “and Panther is waiting for you.”
Collette moves away from the wall with a flash of fear, itching to run. How does this girl know about Panther?
Marguerite backs up and gives a slight wave. “Tell Panther that Skylark and Wallcreeper saw seven soldiers tonight. Not six.”
She ducks into a dark alley and is gone.
Chapter 13
Keepsakes
Brooklyn
November 2012—Day 6
A parade of National Guard soldiers rolls shopping carts overflowing with belongings through the gym. They’ve finally brought everything from the closets of Rockaway Manor that hadn’t been flooded. Plastic bags labeled with room numbers are dumped in the middle of the rows of cots. The nurses quickly sort the bags by floor, and I help with deliveries.
I find Granny’s room number right away. She sits on the edge of her cot and reaches out to pull the bag toward her. I help her sort through what the soldiers managed to re
trieve. “Here’s your special pink pillow, Granny.” I shake it out and place in on her bed. “It fell off the bed when they moved you.” She scoops it up and clutches it to her chest.
She holds every item and pets it like a kitten. Her button-down sweaters, nightgowns, and clean underwear are treated like old friends. She pulls out a shiny patent leather handbag and struggles to unclip the gold clasp. She shakes her hands impatiently. I open it and pull out a brush filled with gray hairs, a lipstick tube, and a stack of letters that are held together with a thin blue rubber band.
“Where’s my pen?” She snatches the collection of letters. “Do you still have my pen?”
I keep plowing through the bag, hoping that her dementia will suddenly kick in and she’ll forget that she asked.
“Put these with the pen.” She pushes the letters against my chest. “Read them. And take that pen back. It needs to go back.” I drop the letters on her bed and keep pulling items out of the plastic bag.
“Go back where, Granny?” I keep my nose in the bag. I want to steer clear of the subject, but she’s beginning to get agitated again. Something about that pen gets her upset.
“Broom!” She’s raising her voice and tugging on my arm.
“Granny, calm down. Just tell me what you want me to do.” She’s shouting, “Broom,” again and not making any sense. I hope my mom’s visit didn’t get her confused.
“Do you want me to get a broom and clean up our part of the Armory?” I neatly stack her things in a cardboard box, stow it under her cot, and tidy the rumpled covers on my own cot. “I can straighten everything up, but right now you should go and change into your red sweater. You can sleep in it tonight. It’s your favorite, isn’t it?” I sit down gently next to her on the cot. She seems so distraught and I can’t seem to calm her down. Her face is pink and her light blue eyes are filled with tears. How am I ever going to tell her that I lost her precious pen?
She taps the pile of letters next to her. “Please—take the pen to Marguerite.”
“Marguerite?” I hand Granny a clean nightgown and her worn red sweater with the fake pearl buttons and help her stand up. She shuffles away from me and disappears behind the coatracks that Nicole set up as a private changing room. “Granny, who’s Marguerite? Are these letters from her?”
I remake her cot with the Red Cross blankets and toss the letters into my backpack. She and I can look at them once she’s had a chance to rest. Maybe then she’ll make more sense.
In a few minutes, she reappears wearing her pink beret and red sweater and settles down on her cot. “Je suis fatiguée, Lilybelle.” Her pale yellow nightgown barely covers her thin legs.
“I know you’re tired, Granny.” I slide my new white socks on her feet and tuck her in for a nap. I grab the scarf André gave me and signal to Maria that I’m going outside. She salutes. She’ll keep an eye on Granny.
It’s a dreary day, and a brisk wind scatters litter around the sidewalk. I’d stored the bicycle in the lobby near the phone-charging station, but I have to walk it once I get outside. There are too many people and I don’t dare try the busy bike lane in the street.
I have no idea where I’m going. André had said that there were stores nearby that might have a pen that looks like my granny’s, but in what direction? And if I ever find the pen, who is this Marguerite I’m supposed to deliver it to? I keep walking, wheeling the bike around squares of dirt in the sidewalk where skinny trees have been planted.
The lights of restaurants and shops come on, one by one, and I think of Johnny. But I’d better not text him right now. He’s probably passing out menus to customers and serving up pie and coffee. His favorite time of day is when the lunch crowd fills up the family’s restaurant.
I sit on a stoop and check my phone to see if I can find information about stores in the area that might have fountain pens. There seems to be a row of antique shops a few blocks away.
It’s beginning to rain, and I loop the scarf around my neck a couple of times. Next to me, stacked against a brick building, is abandoned, broken furniture, including pieces of a bed. Someone else must have been displaced.
It’d be nice to actually have a mattress again, I think as people rush by, probably to a real bed and their own television. They may have neighbors who play music too loudly or cook weird-smelling food, but at least they don’t have hundreds of people in their home.
From my bed in our apartment, I have a view of the building right next to us, and sometimes I can see a man in his underwear eating out of a cereal box while he yells at the television. It’s crazy, but I miss that.
I grab the handlebars and decide to risk running over pedestrians so that I can beat the rain and get to one of the antique stores. As I round a corner, I swerve to avoid a large stroller that takes up the entire sidewalk. The mom pushing the stroller sails on by as I struggle to keep the bike steady on the uneven sidewalk. A man with a huge black umbrella curses at me as we almost crash into each other. Less than a block later, I give up and realize that riding a bike on the sidewalks of Brooklyn, especially in the rain, is probably not a good idea.
I roll the bike under an awning that covers the entrance to an apartment building. A doorman immediately joins me. “Just what we need—more rain.” He buttons up his black raincoat all the way to his neck. “Those poor people.”
I must look confused because he continues. “You know, all those people who were under water a few days ago. Sandy did a real number on this city. Been here all my life and never seen anything like it.”
I’m tempted to burst out my story. “I’m one of those people! My granny’s living in an armory!” But I don’t say anything. I couldn’t possibly explain why I’m out in the rain looking for a fountain pen, instead of inside a warm building, taking care of my grandmother.
The doorman motions for me to move on, so I keep walking the bike, looking for any store that might seem promising. The rain’s getting misty and it’s hard to see. The streets begin to empty, and I pass by a restaurant that’s packed. The aroma of spaghetti sauce is torture.
“I’ll try three shops, then I’ll go back,” I vow to myself. I don’t want to give up, but it’s looking like the Pen Emporium on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge might be my only hope.
After a few blocks, I steer past the entrance to the basement of a brownstone, when I notice that at the bottom of the stairs is a window with KEEPSAKES scrolled across in fancy gold letters. There’s a lamp in the window that has a glowing green glass shade pouring light onto rows of sheet music laid out like a fan.
The street is empty and the shop looks like it’s a possibility, so I decide to risk leaving the bike for a few minutes and check out the store. There’s no way they would have my granny’s pen, but maybe I could find something similar. At least I could dry off a bit and ask if they know where I can look for fountain pens in Brooklyn.
The shop is dimly lit, and at first I’m not even sure it’s open. A bell jingles when I push hard on the door, but the entrance is almost blocked by a huge rolltop desk that’s filled with little drawers and cubbies. Stacked on the desk are musty old books and a row of animal figurines made out of what looks like silver, connected by cobwebs.
I squeeze by the desk to take a quick look around. If there aren’t any pens in sight, I’m out of there. It’s hard to identify anything in the faint light, but it seems to be one room lined with bookshelves. There’s a strong smell of mildew.
Beyond the desk is a round table that looks like the one in my King Arthur book. At least a dozen chairs, some with high backs covered in red velvet, surround the table. Shiny plates with faded pictures of pink and yellow peaches sit in the center of lace place mats. Gold forks and spoons rest in an X across the plates and a gold knife is lined up at the top of each place mat.
I recognize crystal wineglasses almost like the ones that Granny gave to us when we emptied out her apartment. These have the initials ES etched on the side, and gold trim around the rim. A large ch
ina bowl, decorated with orange-and-black goldfish, sits in the middle of the table. It holds at least a hundred peppermint candy sticks, stuck upright.
“Want one of those, don’t you?” A tiny woman wearing a blue velvet hat with a fluttering peacock feather, steps out from behind a tall bookcase. “Well, you can’t have one. They’re for my guests.” She’s wearing an apron with bright red cherries on it, over a fur coat. I stifle a laugh and immediately think about Johnny and how he’d be trying not to laugh, too.
Her voice is scratchy and high-pitched, and she’s peering at me through huge red-framed glasses that cover most of her face. “I don’t remember you,” she says. “But if someone sent you, then sit down.”
She darts toward me and I back away, but she’s really fast and manages to scoot around me and the big desk and lock the door. “Now sit. We’ll wait for the others.”
I have to move deeper into the shop to get away from her. I’m used to conversations that don’t always make sense, and I’m sure I could push her out of the way and escape. But I don’t want to hurt her.
“I’m a customer.” I give her a fake friendly smile. “I saw the sign and decided to stop in.”
“Do you eat veal?” The woman locks two more locks on the door and then slides in a safety chain. My smile fades as I realize that unless there’s a back door, I’m completely trapped. Nobody has any idea where I am. In fact, I’m not sure where I am. Maybe André would eventually spot the bicycle, but if I don’t get out of here soon I might as well say good-bye to the unlocked bike. I reach for my phone.
“Goldfish?” The woman pulls a handful of goldfish crackers out of the pocket of the apron and throws them at me. Then she picks up a spoon and heaves it my way, followed by a fork. I duck behind one of the tall chairs and frantically look around for another exit. “SIT DOWN!” she screams.
I’ve watched Nicole calm down residents who get upset, especially when they aren’t completely in the real world. I know what to do. “Okay.” I stand up slowly. “Where would you like me to sit?”
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