I read those last words slowly, on the verge of tears myself. (Maybe I’m not so cold-hearted after all.) When Madeline finished the entry, she took a big breath and raised her head. Her face was dazed, and she was squinting and blinking, like she’d just come out of a dark movie theater. In fact, it was the opposite. When we’d moved to her room it was light out, but we’d been reading so long that it was now dark. It was silent too. Either Henry had turned the Xbox volume down or he’d stopped playing long ago. That whole argument felt like the distant past, and 1941 felt like the present. Weird.
The two of us looked at each other and breathed out deeply, so in unison that it made us laugh. Madeline went to turn on the light, and I rubbed my eyes.
“Wow,” Madeline said, propping herself on a pillow next to me.
“Double wow,” I said.
“It’s weird,” Madeline said. “Whenever we learn about the Holocaust—”
“Which is every year.”
“Every year in Hebrew school and in regular school, so really twice a year. I guess they do say that some people left before being put in concentration camps. But I never thought of it like this.”
“I never thought about it at all,” I admitted. I especially never thought that one of those people was in my family. That this story was somehow part of my history. Even if that history is adopted.
So in a way, Anna was about to be adopted. She was twelve—the age I am right now—and crossing an ocean all by herself. Leaving behind her parents and grandparents and a twin sister. And Oliver. Little Oliver—my great-great-uncle—who she clearly loved so much.
I wonder if Oliver made Madeline think of Henry. I know he made me think of Jaime. I’ve always taken for granted that he’ll grow up alongside me. We kind of used to be like Anna and Oliver. My parents have a photo on their bedroom wall: I’m seven, and Jaime’s four, and we’re next to each other with a glowing menorah in the background. There are six candles lit, so it must have been the sixth night of Chanukah. I know that I was seven, because in the picture my hair is in two puffy ponytails on the top of my head—the way I wore it almost every single day until third grade—and I’m holding up a box with a set of earrings, which meant the very next day, my mom would take me to get my ears pierced. And Jaime is wearing footie pajamas and grinning with gritted teeth, holding a toy fire truck above his head like a winner’s trophy. Thinking of the picture made me smile. I forgot how much Jaime had been obsessed with fire trucks when he was little.
“Maybe I’ll do my research project on people who left before being put in concentration camps,” Madeline said. “With lies and fake papers and crossing the mountains on foot. I wonder if Mrs. Coleman would let me do that instead of Kristallnacht.”
“That’d be really cool. Maybe I should switch mine to being about Luxembourg.”
Madeline gasped, her public radio dreams ignited. “Imani! You could find Anna’s old house! You could find out what happened to her family!”
“I’m hoping the answer to that is in here,” I said, tapping the cover of the journal. We both looked at it for a few seconds, wondering what other secrets it held. Then my mind flicked to the way that I was keeping this whole thing a secret from the rest of my family. It made me feel uneasy.
To be fair, though, aren’t they also keeping secrets about my past from me?
My phone buzzed. Neither of us needed to look to know it was my mom, telling me to come home for dinner. I sat up and reached for my sneakers.
“I know it’s not really fair to ask,” Madeline said, shifting in her spot on her bed, “but can you wait for me to read more? We can hang out after school tomorrow. I really want to know what happens next.”
“I’ll try,” I said, knotting my laces. “But no guarantees.”