EIGHT

You had no right.”

“No right to what?” Ollie scans both sides of the street before pulling me to the left, closing the door behind him.

“You’re in the resistance.” I don’t bother to phrase it as a question. Ollie walks steadily ahead, but his shoulders tense at my statement. It’s a sullen, vindictive cold outside, colder than it’s been in months, and my breath vaporizes as we hurry along the canal.

“We don’t have to talk about this now.”

“You’re in the resistance. You said you were inviting me to a supper club.”

He halts. “It was a supper club. It used to be. We’d talk about books and politics. I joined with Willem and Judith. When Judith had to leave school because she was Jewish, some of us decided that we couldn’t have a group to just eat dinner. We had to try to fix what was going wrong.”

He starts walking again and I chase after. He’s so smug with his half explanations, and so cavalier about the fact that he’s dragged me into this. “I can’t believe you, Ollie.” Everything I’ve felt in the past two days, every emotion, every fear, every bitter word I didn’t say to Mrs. de Vries, every doubting thought I had about finding Mirjam Roodveldt—all of it comes spilling out now, on the street, at Ollie. “How could you do this? Why didn’t you tell me that’s where you were taking me?”

“Because what if someone had stopped you on the way?” he says. “I wanted you to be able to truthfully say you were on your way to see a friend. I didn’t know how well you could lie.”

I can lie so very well, better than he thinks. Ollie has never seen me, flirting with soldiers while vomit rises in the back of my throat, or convincing my parents that my job is all flower-ordering and consoling sad families. Ollie has never seen the way I make everyone believe that I am a whole person after Bas’s death. Ollie is the one who shouldn’t be able to lie. “You, in the resistance,” I say finally. “You’re such a rule-follower.”

He cackles, an explosive, mirthless noise. “Don’t you think rule-followers are the best people to organize against the Nazis? It’s not all daring rescues and explosions. It’s a lot of tedious paperwork.”

“Ollie, why did you bring me?” I demand as he walks ahead. “I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t want to be involved in any of this. You could have just arranged for Judith to meet me at a café. Why are you trusting me at all? I could tell the police everything that I saw.”

He whirls around and his eyes are cold. “Are you going to? Are you going to go to the police? Do you think what we’re doing is wrong?”

“You know I don’t think it’s wrong.” Not morally. But in this world, you can be right, or you can be safe, and the type of danger Ollie is dabbling in makes my own work look like nothing. It’s not finite and contained, like dealing in black market goods or finding Mirjam. It’s huge and sprawling, an endless hole of needs that would swallow me whole. The Nazis might imprison a black market worker. They might imprison people who hide Jews, or send them to labor camps. But resistance workers caught in the act of stealing ration cards, working to overthrow the German regime? Those workers could be shot. The lucky ones, at least. The unlucky ones would be tortured first. How many more ways can my careful world be upended?

“I just don’t want to join,” I say. “I’m an Aryan poster girl, remember, Ollie? I don’t help the resistance. I find black market cheese.”

“We need black market cheese! We need food for the onderduikers in hiding. We need false identification papers. We need girls who are pretty so the soldiers don’t notice that they’re also smart and brave and working against them.”

“Judith already made me feel guilty. She made it clear how altruistic the rest of you are. I’m not.”

He grabs my shoulders, a sudden movement that throws me off balance. “Did you ever think that maybe you’re better than you believe you are, Hanneke?” We smell like wet wool, both of us do, and his fingers are cold even through the layers of my coat. I start to push his arms away, but he tightens his grip. “Did you ever think that maybe that’s why I brought you?”

“What are you talking about, Ollie?”

“I’m talking about that’s why. That’s why I brought you. Because despite your insistence that you don’t want to get involved, you know that what’s happening in this country is wrong, and you’re already in a position to help us.”

“None of that means I’m ready to risk my life. I already take care of my parents, and they would starve if something happened to me. I’m already looking for a missing girl. That’s how I’m resisting. I keep people fed, and I’m going to find a girl I was asked to find. Isn’t that enough, for one person to save one life? What you want from me is too much. I’m not ready to do more, and it’s not fair for you to ask.”

Ollie’s voice softens and so do his eyes, quiet and blue. “I think you are willing to risk your life. You’ve felt this is wrong for a very long time. You were fourteen and you were already talking about how evil Adolf Hitler was. Remember the dinner?”

I can’t look away from him. I know what he’s referring to. A dinner conversation from four years ago, at the Van de Kamps’. I was talking and talking about Hitler, while Mrs. Van de Kamp tried to distract me by passing the peas and then the rolls, and then finally she came out and told me that polite people didn’t discuss politics at the table. Bas hadn’t even been paying attention. Ollie was listening, though. I think he was even nodding along. But that was years ago. That was a lifetime ago. Ollie knows nothing about me now, certainly not enough to make these grand, sweeping speeches. He doesn’t know that Bas is dead because of—

Ollie gives my shoulders a final shake, and then releases them, raking his fingers through his hair. “We’re losing, Hanneke,” he says softly. “People are disappearing faster and faster, and being sent into God only knows what hell. One of the earlier transports? The families of deported men received postcards from their sons and brothers saying they were being treated well. Then the families received notices from the Gestapo, saying the men had all died of disease. Does that make any sense to you? Healthy young men—first they send postcards saying they’re fine, and then suddenly they’re dead? And now nobody sends back any postcards at all.”

“Do you think all the Jews are being killed?” I ask.

“I’m saying we don’t know what to think, or what’s true. All we know is that farms and attics are busting at the seams with onderduikers. The country is running out of places to hide people who desperately need to be hidden. We need help, more help, quickly, from people in strategic positions like you.”

“You don’t know me,” I whisper. “There are things about me where if you knew them, you wouldn’t—”

“Shhh.” He cuts me off.

I start to protest, but he presses a finger to his lips. His whole body has gone stiff, and his ear is cocked as he listens to something. We’re both frozen now that I hear it, too: German shouting, in the distance but growing closer. Muffled crying, and unorganized feet on cobblestones. These days, the sounds only mean one thing.

Ollie realizes it at the same time. “A roundup.”

The sounds are getting closer. My eyes meet Ollie’s, our argument immediately forgotten. He raises his wrist and frantically peels back his coat sleeve. I don’t understand what he’s doing, until he taps his watch and shows me the time. We spent so long arguing in the street that now we’re about to miss curfew. Both of us are on foot today, and we’re still a mile from my house.

We can’t be found, not in the middle of a roundup, when soldiers are already dangerously engorged with power.

“This way!” a soldier barks. His voice echoes off the cobblestones. “Move!” The voice is just around the corner. The soldier and prisoners will be on our street any minute.

“We need to—” Ollie starts.

“Follow me.” I reflexively grab his hand, pulling him toward a small side street. We walk quickly down that one, and then turn onto another side street, and then another. For once, I am grateful for Amsterdam’s winding street plan.

Beside me, Ollie’s gait is relaxed, but his upper body looks tense, and we speak to each other in gestures while ignoring the shouting I can still hear from a few blocks over. Both of our palms are sweating. I don’t want to have to see the people the soldiers are taking away. It’s cowardly, but I don’t want to be reminded that because I have blond hair and the right last name, they’re not taking me.

The street we’re on now is barely more than an alley, so narrow that I could nearly touch the buildings on either side with my outstretched arms. It’s safer than a main road because there’s less chance of being seen; it’s more dangerous than a main road because if someone does see you, there’s no way to run. I’m clutching Ollie’s hand so hard we’ll both have bruises tomorrow.

Our surroundings are beginning to look familiar. We pass a bookstore, closed for the night, whose owner I find coffee for sometimes, and an optometrist, and a cobbler who is willing to trade shoes for beer. I know where this street ends: near a dancing studio where Elsbeth and I were forced to take horrible waltzing lessons.

From there, it’s only a short walk home. If Ollie and I needed to, we could knock on a neighbor’s door, pretending to borrow an egg, and one of them would probably let us in. We’re almost safe. In the distance, I can still hear the cries from the raid. I quicken my pace to put more space between myself and that fear. Suddenly Ollie squeezes my hand even harder.

Two silhouettes wait at the end of the street, with long shadows that I know are guns.

We have to keep walking. There’s no alternative. There never is. I know their uniforms are green, and so we have to keep walking. We have to pass them; it would look suspicious to turn and walk in the opposite direction. I wish Ollie weren’t with me. Nazis don’t like it when you wink at them while with another boy. It probably reminds them of what could be happening at home.

Their guns are pointed down. They’re talking with each other in German too fast for me to fully understand. One of them slaps the other on the shoulder and laughs. It doesn’t even look like they’ve come from the raid. They were just out on their regular patrol, and it was our misfortune that we chose the same street.

I fold myself in close to Ollie’s body, making sure there’s more than enough space for the soldiers to pass.

“Good evening,” Ollie says in German as we quietly squeeze through. I nod and smile.

We brush by, and my body begins to un-tense. We’ll be at the end of this alley in just a few seconds. Next to me, Ollie is doing the same things I am: keeping a measured pace, making it look like we’re in no hurry to be anywhere.

“Wait!”

We have no choice, so we stop and face them. Several meters behind us, one of the Green Police has turned around, starting in our direction. I glance briefly back to the end of the alley, but Ollie firmly tugs on my hand. Don’t try running, he’s saying. Not while they have guns.

“Wait,” he calls out again, closing the gap between us. “Wait, don’t I know you?” He leans in, inches from my face.

Does he? It’s hard to tell in this light. Where could he know me from? Is he one of the soldiers I’ve flirted with? Someone Mr. Kreuk has sent me to sell to, laughing at his bad jokes until the transaction is done? Or has he seen me more recently, going into the Jewish Lyceum?

A curtain flutters in a nearby house. Inhabitants all along this street are crouched in their living rooms, silently watching us.

“I do know you,” he guffaws.

“I don’t think so,” I murmur, keeping my voice friendly. “I’m sure I’d remember you.”

“Yes,” he says. “You’re the couple. The romantic couple!”

“We are!” It’s Ollie, next to me, who answers the soldier. He’s responding in German, talking more loudly than I’ve ever heard him. His accent is still impeccable, but he’s slurring his words like he, too, has been out for a night of drinking. “Rembrandt!”

“Rembrandt!” the German agrees, and now I recognize him: the one from the square last night.

Ollie slings one arm around me. “How is our good friend, the fellow art lover? My fiancée and I love Rembrandt, don’t we, darling?” He looks at me pointedly, and even though my heart is beating out of my chest, I reach up to Ollie’s hand and give it an affectionate squeeze.

“Our favorite,” I manage.

“If you come to Germany one day, we have magnificent art.”

“We will,” I promise, with what I hope is a friendly smile. “After it’s all over.”

His eyes narrow. “After what’s all over?”

After the war, is what I meant. After we all get to return to normal. I don’t think what I just said is offensive, but the soldier obviously didn’t like it. “After,” I say again, beginning to improvise an explanation.

“After our wedding!” Ollie exclaims. “After all the wedding madness!”

Bless you, Ollie, Laurence Olivier. I’m not used to other people being as fast on their feet as I am when it comes to dealing with Nazis.

“So nice to see a couple in love.” The soldier pinches my cheek with cold fingers. “It reminds me of my wife, back home, when we were young.”

“To your wife!” Ollie raises an imaginary glass in the air.

“To my wife!”

Ollie winks at me meaningfully, lasciviously. “Maybe we should get home, my soon-to-be wife.”

“To your wife!” the Green Police yells.

“To my wife!” says Ollie.

“Kiss her!” he says, and so Ollie does.

There, in the street, for the benefit of the German Green Police and the people who are cowering in their houses but peeking out from their curtains, Ollie cups my face in his hands and kisses me. His mouth is soft and full, his eyelashes brush against my cheek, and only he and I know that our lips are shivering in fear.

Things that have changed about me in the last two days: everything and nothing.

I’m still lying to my parents, they’re still worried about me, I still ride around a changed city on a used bicycle with a stubborn tire and feelings of perpetual numbness and fear warring in the pit of my belly.

But the things that I’m lying about are much bigger, the things I’m doing much more dangerous. I’m an accidental member of the resistance, and if I am caught, instead of slapping my wrist for black market beer, the Germans could kill me.

I also kissed my dead boyfriend’s brother.

The last time I saw Bas:

I did go to the sad, stupid going-away party his parents held for him, the one in which his mother spent most of the time crying and his father stood in the corner so tight-lipped and still that people kept bumping into him and then saying, “I’m sorry; I didn’t see you standing there.” I did give Bas a locket with my picture in it; he did give me a lock of his hair.

I did kiss him in the dining room.

But when I left, he came running after and said he had something else for me. It was a letter. It was a letter in case he died. I was supposed to open it if the navy contacted his family, and inside it would talk about how much he loved and missed all of us, and how happy we had made him.

At least that’s what I imagine letters like this usually say. I wouldn’t know. I never opened Bas’s. When he gave me that envelope on the street, I told him the letter could only court bad luck. I told him that in order to prove how unnecessary it was, I was going to destroy it as soon as I got home.

And I did. I ripped it to pieces and threw it out with the trash.

So I’ll never know what Bas’s final, final words for me were. Sometimes I think they were to tell me he loved me. Sometimes I dream that I open the letter and inside it says, “I never forgave you for what you made me do.”