SO MANY THINGS HAPPENED IN THE NEXT THREE DAYS, IT FELT LIKE WE WERE BEING PUNISHED FOR ESCAPING HARM IN THE FIRST THREE MONTHS OF THE WAR.

The Red Star Creamery was bombed, and the last of the butter in Leningrad was destroyed with it. Dozens and dozens of fires burned throughout the city, the blue sky woven with black and gray threads of smoke marking their locations. Food disappeared from the shelves. The government began rationing electricity and cut personal phone lines, although the public ones were kept on. Those were bad things, but the news that felt like a knife in my heart came with a knock on the door, early in the morning, when I was still asleep.

It was Georgi from down the hall. He stood there silently, his eyes glassy with tears, his pet rat, Leonid, climbing in and out of his cupped hands.

“Georgi, what is it? Are you all right? Has something happened?”

His lower lip trembled, and he watched Leonid for what seemed like a long time before he looked up and said, “Betty died. They got her. The Germans got her with their stupid bombs during the night.”

I gasped and fought the truth of his words. “No, not Betty.”

He nodded, a tear falling onto his hands. “Yes, I’m letting everyone know.” I stood motionless, watching as he crossed the hall. Just as he reached our neighbor’s door, he turned back to me. “And the roller coaster … It burned to the ground.” As he turned back around, I closed the door softly and stood staring into space.

Betty, Leningrad’s only elephant, was the pride of our zoo. She was a magical creature who got more beautiful with every visit. Our mothers had used Betty as a promise and a threat since we were toddlers. “If you’re good, we’ll go see Betty!” Or more likely, “If you don’t stop fighting with your brother, I won’t take you to see Betty!” And now, gone. Not dead of old age, but killed by a war that had nothing to do with her.

After Betty’s death — or murder, as Alik later called it — I thought things couldn’t get worse. I was soon proven wrong.

Nine days later, Olga led ten of the children from our apartment house to other apartment houses to knock on doors and collect bottles. The children of Leningrad had gathered almost one million bottles since the beginning of the month, our contribution to the factory that turned them into Molotov cocktails. That might seem like a primitive weapon to some — all you had to do was throw it and it burst into flame — but as the whole world now knew, Russia wasn’t really ready for war, so we had to make the most of what we had.

After an hour knocking on doors, Alik, Misha, and I each had full canvas sacks, almost too heavy to carry, the bottles clanking against one another and making a terrible racket as we dragged them to the curb.

“The truck should be here,” Olga said impatiently, looking up and down the street. The factory was supposed to have sent a truck for us to dump our bottles into and then follow along behind us the rest of the day. That way we could work efficiently — collecting, dumping, collecting, dumping.

“Here come the Germans.” Tomik, at sixteen the oldest boy with us, said it casually, while stopping to light a cigarette made from dried leaves rolled in newspaper. We were being bombed daily, and after eleven days we were almost getting used to it.

“All right,” Olga said with a sigh, as if she considered it just an inconvenience. “Get into the lobby of the building over there. Let’s move.”

I stared at the sky as I shuffled toward the nearby apartment building. This raid sounded different from the others, and soon I saw why. It was just three planes flying in fast and low, and dropping something, but it wasn’t bombs. You could barely tell anything fell out of those planes at first except that the sunlight glinted on whatever it was until it almost looked like a waterfall, a silver waterfall, made up of a thousand unnamed objects.

A swarm of them fell near the end of the block. Every one of us, including Olga, ran for the area where the things landed. It was like a dump truck had unhitched its back gate and unloaded its contents right there on the street. We slowed down and stared, approaching with curiosity and wonder.

“Cigarette lighters!” Tomik said with a smile. “And look — pens.”

“That’s a ten ruble note,” Georgi said in amazement. “It’s tied to a lump of metal so it won’t blow away.”

“Ration cards!” Alik exclaimed. “They’ve dropped ration cards!”

“Stop!” Olga cried. “Don’t touch anything. We’ll report it to the police.”

We prowled like a pack of tigers, walking slowly around our target, getting ready to pounce. “There are toys in there. I saw them, I’m sure,” Misha said excitedly.

Alik looked confused. “Why would the Germans do this? They try to kill us and then they give us presents?”

I shook my head, feeling wary and suspicious. “Maybe they think we’re ready to give up. They’re trying to make us like them or something.”

“I know I saw a little dump truck in there,” Misha said, taking a step toward the pile of riches.

“No!” Alik shouted, grabbing his sleeve. “Olga’s right. We wait. Don’t touch anything.”

“Since when do you take Olga’s side?” Misha snapped, but he stopped moving.

Tomik threw his cigarette butt to the ground. “There’s money waiting to be picked up, and you fools are going to wait for the authorities? Not me.”

“Tomik, don’t,” I said. He was always doing something to annoy people.

Ignoring me, he stepped forward and reached into the collection of miscellaneous things. “It’s a pen, Ivan. Who cares if I take a pen?” He held it up as if to emphasize how silly I was. I grabbed it in a lightning-fast move and threw it about fifteen feet from us so that it landed in the middle of the pile.

“You’re such a —” Tomik began, just as the pen exploded in a fit of fire and smoke. I barely registered the cries of the others, the shouts, the disbelief, as I stood frozen in shock.

“It’s booby-trapped. It probably all is,” Olga cried. “Don’t touch anything else. Back away slowly and go stand where we left our bottles.”

People were opening windows and peering out to see what had happened. “What do you want us to do, Olga?” I asked, knowing she’d soon be busy giving information to the police.

“Leave your bags of bottles at the curb,” she answered. “I’ll take care of it when the truck gets here. Just go home. Don’t tell anyone about this yet.”

I nodded, knowing that Olga was really upset, but out of all of us, she was the best person to handle this.

It was a long walk home for the group, and no one had much to say, even when we reached our apartment building and headed toward our own units. Misha and Alik stayed with me. I knew Auntie would be there and that somehow she would make things tolerable.

The door was locked, something I was still getting used to, but when I unlocked it, I was greeted by a smiling Auntie, an apron tied over her dress, the smell of something cooking wafting out from behind her. “Hello, boys!” she said enthusiastically, but she quickly saw something was wrong. “What happened?” She watched us slump listlessly into the room. I looked up at her, wanting to tell her how toys had been dropped for us with the express purpose of killing. Instead, I threw myself into her arms and held on tight, startled by the sound of my own sobs. She stroked my hair and held me until I was done. Misha and Alik didn’t say a word.

Leaning back so she could see my face, she said, “I’ve got some soup on the stove. Let me get you boys some lunch.” The three of us sat down, still stunned, saying nothing until we’d eaten. Very gently, Auntie said, “Do you want to tell me about it?”

It poured out then, each of us talking over the other, not just about the toys and the pen but about how hard it was to adjust to our new lives. “I’m even ready to go back to school,” I said, which got an understanding laugh from Misha and Alik.

Auntie listened, nodded, and didn’t interrupt. Finally she said, “How we behave during this terrible time counts just as much as winning.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, not absolutely certain what she was getting at.

“I mean, if we lose our humanity during the fight, then we have lost everything.”

Misha looked confused. “Lose our … what?”

“I think I understand,” Alik offered. “You’re saying we might die, but that before we die —”

“Be quiet,” Misha said. “I am not dying.”

“That if we were to die,” Alik continued, “how we acted toward one another is as important as if we stayed alive.”

“Yes,” Auntie answered quietly.

“What does it matter how you acted if you’re dead?” Misha challenged her.

“Just remember my words,” she said, getting up and beginning to clear the table. “Things may get very hard very fast.”

Truer words were never spoken. The first deaths by starvation began by the end of September. People were shot without trial for stealing food and ration cards from others. Food became the only thing that mattered, just as Auntie had predicted. By late October there were four inches of snow on the ground. Fuel was scarce; people were found frozen to death in their unheated apartments. Others anguished about how they would survive if the siege didn’t end soon.

That’s how desperate life became, and that’s how fast it happened. In the month of October, each citizen was given five and three quarters of a pound of food, mostly bread, to last them for one month. That equals almost three pieces of bread for the entire day. Nothing more. No fat, no vegetables, no meat.

The desperation to escape our surrounded, strangled, starving city created a kind of madness. For me, what happened next, in November, was almost worse.