The Night War

From the two-time Newbery Honor-winning author of The War That Saved My Life and Fighting Words comes a middle grade novel set at the border between freedom and fear in World War II France, at the Chateau de Chenonceau, where a Jewish girl who has lost everything but her life must decide whether to risk even that to bring others to freedom.

“We don’t choose how we feel, but we choose how we act.”

It’s 1942. German Nazis occupy much of France. And twelve-year-old Miriam, who is Jewish, is not safe. With help and quick thinking, Miri is saved from the roundup that takes her entire Jewish neighborhood. She escapes Paris, landing in a small French village, where the spires of the famous Chateau de Chenonceau rise high into the sky, its bridge across the River Cher like a promise, a fairy tale. 

But Miri’s life is no fairy tale. Her parents are gone—maybe alive, maybe not. Taken in at the boarding school near the chateau, pretending to be Catholic to escape Nazi capture, Miri volunteers one night to undertake a deadly task, one that spans the castle grounds, its bridge, and the very border to freedom. Here is her chance to escape—hopefully to find her parents. But will she take it? One thing is certain: The person Miri meets that night will save her life. And the person Miri becomes that night could save the lives of many more.

In her return to the era of The War that Saved My Life and The War I Finally Won, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley brings a new and different story, one with a mystical twist, that explores a little-known slice of World War II history, a highly unusual friendship, and the power of choosing courage even when—especially when—there are no good choices to be had.

* Map and detailed author's note included. *

“Compelling [with] a hint of magic [that] becomes as satisfying as the whole of this fine novel.” —Booklist
"Historical fiction at its finest. [A] masterpiece . . . Readers will be wholeheartedly rewarded." —SLJ (starred review)
"Poignant . . . A gripping, humane tale." —Kirkus (starred review)
"A thrilling plot [and] thought-provoking read." —Common Sense Media (a Common Sense Selection)
"Fast-paced, suspenseful, and heart-wrenching. . . . Highly recommended." —Historical Novel Society
"A deeply sympathetic character facing increasingly dangerous and suspenseful circumstances.” —PW
“Engaging [and] imaginative [with] emotional weight and contemporary appeal.” —The Horn Book
"A must-read." —YA and Kids Books Central*A USA Today Bestseller*
*An Indie Next Pick*

★ "Historical fiction at its finest. Two-time Newbery honoree Bradley is at her best here; this is a novel that brings layers of the past to life [and showcases] the author’s expertise as a gifted storyteller. [Her] latest masterpiece features a determined and daring heroine . . . Readers will be wholeheartedly rewarded." —School Library Journal (starred review)

★ "This poignant story moves quickly but takes care to consider with sensitivity the excruciating choices Miri must make at every turn as she’s torn between choosing safety and honoring her heritage and her convictions. A gripping, humane tale that examines what war demands of children and what it costs them." —Kirkus (starred review)

“Bradley has crafted a compelling historical novel told in Miri’s apposite first-person voice. The book has a hint of magic that . . . becomes as satisfying as the whole of this fine novel.” —Booklist

"Grief, loss, courage, and choosing the best thing to do, even in dire situations, are important themes [in The Night War]. So is the ability to change your mind when you get better information. Part Holocaust-era thriller, part ghost story, part historical adventure, . . . Kimberly Brubaker Bradley packs a lot of peril, courage, history, and nuance into her tale of a Jewish tween fleeing Nazis . . . The Night War combines a thrilling plot with a lot of ethical issues . . . An exciting, thought-provoking read that celebrates doing the right thing [and] accepting that maybe you're wrong sometimes." —Common Sense Media (a Common Sense Selection)

"Fast-paced, suspenseful, and heart-wrenching. [Miri's] emotions are believable, admirable, and valiant. A fantastical element may catch some readers by surprise, but Bradley places hints along the way that may tip off those who read closely. The secondary characters are fully formed and give younger readers of this period hope that people are capable of seeing the errors of their ways. An extensive author’s note expands on elements of historical events. Highly recommended." —Historical Novel Society

“Engaging [and] imaginative . . . Miri’s vulnerability and sense of responsibility give [the story] emotional weight and contemporary appeal.” —The Horn Book

“Poses thoughtful questions about religious divides and parallels through the experiences of 12-year-old Miriam Schreiber, a German Jew [in 1942 France.] Miri’s highly credible emotions and actions make for a deeply sympathetic character facing increasingly dangerous and suspenseful circumstances.” —Publishers Weekly

"Miri is strong, courageous, and very determined . . . [This is a] must-read, [and] timely with its message that there is no place . . . in this world for racism at all." —YA and Kids Books Central

"A heroic main character with an emotionally compelling story. Its significance cannot be overstated, as we need this important book now more than ever." —Imagination Soup (starred review and Book of the Month)

Kimberly Brubaker Bradley (she/her) is the author of Newbery Honor winners Fighting Words and The War that Saved My Life. The sequel to the latter, The War I Finally Won, appeared on many state-award and best-books lists and was described as “stunning” by The Washington Post and “honest” and “daring” by The New York Times. Kimberly and her husband have two grown children and live with their dog, several po­nies, a highly opinionated mare, and a surplus of cats on a fifty-two acre farm in Bristol, Tennessee.Chapter One

July 10, 1942—Paris, France
I could hear sirens. Sirens meant trouble.
“Nothing to worry about, Miri,” Mama said, in her usual soft Yiddish. She didn’t look up from mending the pocket of my other dress.
“You don’t know that,” I said.
Her eyes flicked toward me. “It’s a fire engine, not a police sedan.”
“You can tell the difference?”
“I can.”
I knew she meant to reassure me, but I didn’t quite believe her. To me the two sounded the same. Ever since Monsieur Rosenbaum had been taken away, nearly two years ago now, the sound of sirens made my stomach hurt and my vision swim. Mama thought she understood. I let her think she did.
Now I took a deep breath. Released it slowly. Far below, the sirens continued. “I’m going up,” I said.
My mother pressed her lips together. Papa insisted she let me climb onto the roof, but she hated it when I did. Our apartment was on the sixth floor of our building, so if I did fall I would splatter, but I never feared falling. The roof was the only place in Paris I felt safe. Nothing could touch me there.
I moved our red geranium in its clay pot away from the window. I stretched one foot onto the top of the metal grille that kept things from falling out our window, grabbed the window frame, and heaved myself up so I was standing on the grille. From there it was easy to scramble up the slate tiles, still cool in the morning sun. Our window was a dormer on the top floor: It had its own little roof like a hat. I straddled the hat with my legs and let my head and shoulders rest against the main roof. I turned my face to the blue summer sky.
Sirens still wailed, but I could breathe easier now.
It had been my fault the Nazis took Monsieur Rosenbaum away. No one else knew that. I didn’t have the courage to confess it, not even to my mother.
It happened not long after the Germans invaded Paris, in the summer of 1940 when I was ten. I’d been walking through the crowded streets of our neighborhood, the Pletzl, on my way home from school when I saw our neighbor Monsieur Rosenbaum standing in front of two German soldiers on the sidewalk just ahead of me. Monsieur Rosenbaum was talking to them, though I couldn’t hear his words. Suddenly the soldier with a dark mustache grabbed Monsieur Rosenbaum by one arm. With his other fist he punched Monsieur Rosenbaum in the face.
Monsieur Rosenbaum’s head snapped back. Blood sprayed from his nose. I screamed. I ran forward and threw myself between him and the soldier.
The soldier pushed me sideways, hard. I fell to the pavement, scraping my knees and biting the inside of my cheek.
The other soldier looked down at me and said, “Is this your father, little girl?”
I looked up at the three men. I tasted blood inside my mouth. My arms and legs, my entire body, froze. Only my head could move, and I shook it, to say no.
I shook my head.
“Well, then.” The first soldier kicked me aside. He and the other soldier shoved Monsieur Rosenbaum into the back of a police van parked on the street. The van drove away, siren blaring.
We hadn’t seen Monsieur Rosenbaum since.
I should have said yes, he was my father. I should have jumped to my feet. I should have fought them.
I should have done anything but what I had done.
I ran home breathless and threw up in the toilet at the end of our hall. Mama tucked me into her bed and I lay with my face against the wall, weeping. Before I could bring myself to tell my parents what had happened, neighbors were pounding on our door with the news. Mama thought it was a coincidence that I was sick. I never told her otherwise. I never confessed my shame.
Monsieur Rosenbaum ended up in a prison factory in Germany. He’d been able to send two letters home. Every time I heard sirens, my heart raced. I thought I would vomit all over again. Sometimes I did.
“Miri,” my mother called through the open window.
Mama thought my fear of the police came from Kristallnacht, the night that caused us to flee Berlin. But there’d been no sirens then, even though our house caught fire. The German government had started the riot: They didn’t come to the rescue.
“Miri,” Mama called again. “Please come down. Nora’s here asking for you.”
I sat up. Nora was Madame and Monsieur Rosenbaum’s little girl. She had just turned two years old—she’d been a tiny baby when Monsieur Rosenbaum was arrested. I had loved her since the moment she was born.
I climbed down from the roof more carefully than I’d gone up.
“Gut margn, Miriam,” said Madame Rosenbaum. That was Yiddish for “good morning.”
“Gut margn, Miri!” Nora toddled across the floor and held her skinny arms out to me.
I propped the red geranium back onto the grille, out of Nora’s reach, and swooped her into my arms.
“Dit ‘bonjour,’” I said to her. Say good morning. In French.
Nora laughed. “Fromage!” she said instead. Cheese!
“Fromage?” I said, tickling her. “You’re the fromage! Fromage, fromage!”
Nora howled. “Fromage!” she shrieked.
“Fromage!” I shrieked.
Madame Rosenbaum rolled her eyes with a slight smile. “I’m waiting for her to forget that. Fromage, dommage—not such a difference.” She spoke in Yiddish except for the two rhyming French words.
Fromage means “cheese.” Dommage means “Too bad!” When Madame Rosenbaum confused the two a week ago, Nora had burst out laughing. “She won’t forget,” I said. “It’s too funny.”
Madame Rosenbaum said, “Also she’ll have you to remind her.”
“True.” I grinned.
“Fromage.” Nora sighed happily. She leaned her head against my shoulder and tucked the two middle fingers of her left hand into her mouth.
I spoke French fluently, unlike my mother and Madame Rosenbaum. Papa had been a language teacher in Germany and he’d taught me French from when I was a baby. Even if that hadn’t been true, all my school classes were of course taught in French. Almost everyone living in the Pletzl was Jewish. Many of us, like my parents and I, were recent immigrants, and the adults tended to speak the language of whatever country they came from. Mama and Madame Rosenbaum had learned some French but mostly spoke Yiddish, or German, as well, of course, as Hebrew, the Jewish language of prayer.
“Gut Shabbos,” Madame Rosenbaum said to me now.
I smiled. “Gut Shabbos,” I said back. It was Friday, so Shabbos, the Jewish Holy Day, began at sundown. In happy anticipation, we said Gut Shabbos—Yiddish for “Good Shabbos”—all Friday long.
Mama said, “Madame Rosenbaum is tired, Miri, and Nora needs an early nap. Will you do their marketing as well as ours?”
“Um,” I said. I didn’t want to go out on the street, and my mother knew it. “If you do the marketing,” I said, “I’ll clean the apartment for Shabbos. Both apartments.” Madame Rosenbaum and Nora lived next door to us. Monsieur Rosenbaum too, before.
Mama spread her arms. “One room apiece, Miri,” she said. “There’s almost nothing to clean.”
In Germany our house had had three bedrooms, a lovely parlor, and a bright garden that edged up against a little woods. We’d had green space and beautiful things.
Nora pointed toward the cupboard. “Hungry,” she said. “Eat?”
My mother got up quickly. “How could I forget? We have a treat for you, Nora habibi.” She opened our cupboard and took out the small paper-wrapped lump sitting beside a half-loaf of stale bread. She said to Madame Rosenbaum, “My husband taught a language lesson at a café last night. He ordered tea, and this came with it! We saved it for Nora.”
Madame Rosenbaum unwrapped a small dry slice of lemon. “Oh!” She caught her breath.
Nora had been sick most of the winter. Her cough lingered for months, and while she was walking and talking, she wasn’t growing as well as she should. The doctor said she needed more good food, more vegetables, more fruit. This hungry summer there was only less of everything. Most of the food grown by French farmers was being shipped to Germany to feed our enemies. All the French were hungry. We almost never saw fruit in the marketplace, and when we did, we didn’t have money enough to buy it.
Mama heated water and poured it over the lemon slice in a cup. She mashed the lemon with a spoon and stirred as much goodness as she could into the water.
I sat down at the table and put Nora onto my lap. When Mama handed me the cup I held it to Nora’s lips. “Yum,” I said. “Drink up.”
Nora wrinkled her nose above the cup’s rim. “Fromage?”
“Citron,” I said, telling her the French word for lemon. I thought how fresh and good it would taste. My stomach rumbled. We ate breakfast when we could, but I hadn’t today.
Nora smiled at me and drank the lemon water down.
“Go on, Miri,” Mama said, taking Nora and handing me our ration books and some money. “Vern heldishe.” Be brave. “Remember, the baker, he doesn’t bite.”



Chapter Two

I was not afraid of the baker. I was afraid of the soldiers. I was afraid of the crowds and who they might be hiding.
On Kristallnacht in Germany, a mob came down our quiet street shouting angry words. Someone threw a rock through my bedroom window. My father scooped me out of my bed covered with shattered glass and ran me out the back door into our garden. We don’t know who started the fire.
Our first year in Paris we never saw soldiers or police in the Pletzl, but after the Germans invaded, they were everywhere. Monsieur Rosenbaum wasn’t the only man who’d been imprisoned.
They wouldn’t come for me, a child. I knew this, but it didn’t comfort me. I hadn’t tried hard enough to save Monsieur Rosenbaum. Who would they take next?
I took a steadying breath and started down the stairs. Five flights. My clunky wood-soled shoes made a racket on the steps. My insides twisted.
On the ground floor I stopped at the concierge’s office to pick up my carte d’identité. It was a new rule, that apartment concierges—managers—in Jewish neighborhoods had to collect everyone’s identity cards each night.
Our new concierge, Madame Vertron, rummaged through the pile of carte d’identités on her desk. “Remind me of your name?” she said.
“Miriam Schrieber,” I said. Madame Vertron was a gentile, a non-Jew, because that was another new rule: Apartments in Jewish neighborhoods could no longer have Jewish concierges. While she searched, I practiced breathing, as Papa had shown me: long slow breaths while I counted in my head. In for five. Out for five.
Madame Vertron gave me a strange look. “Are you all right?”
I nodded.
“Do you want your parents’ cards too?” she asked.
I shook my head. Papa worked for a Yiddish newspaper printed in a small building inside our apartment building’s courtyard. If he needed his card before I came back, he could fetch it himself. Mama was still upstairs.
I opened the door and poked my nose into the busy street. The Pletzl was only a few blocks wide in each direction, but it was so crowded it never felt small, even though the name Pletzl meant “little place” in Yiddish. Papa told me that over ten thousand Jews lived in the Pletzl right now. I told him it needed a new name.
I braced my shoulders and pushed my way onto the sidewalk. Three people jostled me before I’d reached the first curb. Someone bumped my arm. I spun around—it was an old woman, not a soldier. Turning back I nearly collided with a pair of housewives, who cut their eyes at me for being careless. And then I saw I’d walked past the end of the line for bread, which stretched more than two blocks. I doubled back and added myself to the queue, staring at my shoes to avoid seeing any soldiers.
I hated being surrounded by so many people. If something bad happened, how could I escape? I wished I could hide—in a box perhaps. Stand inside my own private box and shuffle forward until it was my turn to buy bread.
Above me someone shouted, a greeting, not a warning. I looked up toward the open window, but sunlight obscured the person’s face. I blinked and looked away.
Hundreds of years ago, the Pletzl had been a neighborhood for rich people. Its creamy stone buildings still maintained a gaunt elegance, like very old women who had once been beautiful, but now they’d been sectioned into shops and apartments and housed far more people than they had been designed for. Our room under the eaves had once been a servants’ bedroom. The lower floors of the apartment buildings still had high ceilings, arched windows, and elaborate stone carvings around the sills—but most also had too few toilets, unreliable running water, and coal furnaces belching smoke.
Sometimes, when the press of the crowds overwhelmed me, I would half shut my eyes and let the shouts and smells of the current Pletzl disappear. In place of the endless queues and anxious people, I would imagine elegant women in silk gowns with elaborately powdered hair. Instead of the babble of different languages, I would hear the clip-clop of horses pulling shining carriages. Instead of grease and body odors, I would smell nothing but sweet perfume. In my imagined world, the beautiful people all spoke Yiddish. They were healthy and wealthy and had no reason to be afraid.
I looked up. A soldier on the sidewalk a block away stood scanning the crowd. People stepped into the street to avoid passing him too closely.
I turned my head. My stomach heaved. I wanted to run.
I dug my feet into the sidewalk and made myself stay in line. We had nothing to eat, and it was Shabbos.
In the garden behind our house in Germany, we’d had a hydrangea bush that grew white, sweet-smelling flowers all summer long. I used to pick a big bowlful of them for our Shabbos table, and I loved to lie down on the damp earth beneath the blooming branches. Everything around me was quiet and safe, white and green.
We hid beneath that same bush during Kristallnacht, but it had been almost winter then, and the bare branches hardly shielded us from view.
In the Pletzl there wasn’t a single bush. I so missed seeing green leaves instead of stone streets. I so missed smelling flowers instead of old fish and sweat.
I wondered if my bush was blooming now, behind the ruins of our former home.
“Miri!” someone yelled. I jumped and spun around.
It was Anna, one of my school friends. “Oh,” I said, putting my hand to my chest. “You startled me!”
“Sorry!” Anna shouted. “Gut Shabbos!”
“Gut Shabbos!” She was too far down the growing line to chat with. Gradually I shuffled forward toward the bakery’s bright blue door. The warm smell of baking bread drifting down the street obscured all other smells. I inhaled, filling my lungs if not my belly.
At last it was my turn. They still had bread! Beautiful tiny braided loaves, because of Shabbos. I pushed our ration books across the counter. “Five, please.”
“Good morning,” the baker said. He tapped his fingers against the ration books. “Say ‘good morning.’”
I took a breath. “Good morning,” I said. I was not afraid of the baker. Only he was such a large man, and he had such a thick mustache. If he were in uniform, he would look exactly like a German soldier.
“Look at me when you’re speaking to me,” the baker said, with a gentle smile. “What do you say? Gut Shabbos.”
As though I were Nora, needing to be taught manners. I had a sudden urge to call the man a cheese. I grinned. “That’s better,” he said. He leaned across the counter and studied the rest of the line. “I wish I could fill your arms with bread. I can sell you three loaves. No more.”
We had coupons enough for five, and I could have eaten six there on the spot, but I knew he was trying to be fair to the people still waiting.
In Germany, our house had had a kitchen with our own oven and stove. Every Friday, Mama baked the challah herself, two rich, sweet, fluffy loaves. We ate it until we were stuffed and still had bread left over. When it went stale—sometimes it lasted long enough to go stale!—Mama dipped slices in egg and milk and fried them in butter.
No eggs now. No milk. No butter. No oven, no stove, no kitchen, no garden. No flowering bushes. Home had become a single small room under the eaves on the sixth floor of a shabby apartment building. As Papa said, we were together, which was enough.
And for today we had three loaves of bread. I tucked them into my market bag and went down the street to join another line. I was able to buy a tiny piece of cheese—joy—and a head of lettuce—limp and small, but a head of lettuce nonetheless. Then—I saw it behind the greengrocer. A tomato! A fresh ripe tomato! The first tomato I’d seen in a year.
“That,” I said, pointing at it. For once I spoke without hesitation. “That tomato. Can I buy it?” You didn’t need ration coupons for vegetables. “How much?”
A Shabbos miracle. I had enough money. I paid and the shopkeeper put the tomato, warm and heavy, into my hand. My mouth watered. My belly rumbled. I nestled the tomato between the loaves in my market bag.
Hurrying home through the bustling streets, I tripped over a stone curb. I fell forward, arms outstretched. I might have landed on my market bag—might have smashed our precious tomato—but a strong arm grabbed my elbow and hauled me back onto my feet. “Careful,” a man’s voice said.
He wore a uniform. I gasped. But then, the smallest moment later—not a soldier. A French policeman, a gendarme. Not a Nazi. Also, I knew him—he was Monsieur Thireau, his son Thomas was in my class at school. “Monsieur Thireau! Thank you,” I said.
He was still holding my arm. “You’re Miriam, yes?” he said, smiling.
I knew I was safe but my heart still pounded. I took a deep breath and answered, “Oui. Yes. Mama says I need to pay better attention. Gut Shabbo— Oh. I mean, thank you again, Monsieur. Have a good day.” The Thireau family wasn’t Jewish. Most of the students in my school were—enough that, unlike most French schools, we didn’t have classes on Saturdays—but not all of them. My parents instructed me very strictly to always be polite to the Christian students. Many Christians were good people. I should not be prejudiced against them.
“Bonne journée.” Monsieur Thireau tipped his hat to me.
At home, Mama turned the tomato gently in her hands. “This is beautiful,” she said. “Nearly as good as the ones we used to grow. Remember?”
I remembered, those long-ago summers of endless food. I used to pick the tomatoes in our garden hot from the sun and eat them like apples, their juice running down my chin. We grew as many tomatoes as we could possibly want and still had extra to share with our friends.
Now Mama sliced this tomato thinly. I arranged the ruby slices on a plate so they looked like a flower and Mama added salt, pepper, and a drizzle of oil. I opened the can of sardines Papa had brought home and set them beside the loaves of bread. Mama and I admired the spread laid out on the table. “A feast!”
The afternoon sun had faded into a beautiful summer evening. I took my geranium off the window grille. “What do you think?” I asked Mama. “Shall I cut one flower for the table?”
After we fled to France four years ago, we had no money for frivolous things. But one day Papa brought home a small potted plant: our red geranium. “I know you two,” he’d said, putting his arm around Mama and smiling at me. “You need something green and growing. Flowers are as necessary to you as bread.”
Now Mama considered my question. We’d repotted the geranium twice and it was growing well. “No,” she decided. “The blossoms last longer if we leave them on the plant.”
I wiped the bottom of the pot, moved the plate of tomato slices, and put the entire geranium onto the center of the table. Then I got out our brass candlesticks and the precious candles we only lit for Shabbos.
We’d lost our silver candlesticks along with the rest of our house in Berlin. Mama pretended not to mind. I minded—they’d belonged to my great-grandmother and my grandmother, and would someday have belonged to me—but I would not hurt my mother by complaining. I polished our cheap brass candlesticks and put the candles into them, ready for lighting at sundown.
Then I went to the open window, put my foot on the top of the grille, and grabbed the upper window frame with my hand.
“Oh, Miri, not again,” said my mother.
On the roof I stretched myself out over the hot tiles. The heat soothed my tense shoulders. I felt my body relax. The evening sky was a paler blue than morning.
Inside, I heard Mama greet Madame Rosenbaum. She and Nora always joined us for dinner on Shabbos. I heard Nora laugh. Heard Papa come in and say, “Where’s Miriam?”
Mama said, “On the roof, where else?”
Papa chuckled. I didn’t move. The red-gold sky faded to indigo.
“Princess,” my father called, “time to come out of your castle in the air.”
Papa always called the roof my castle. I slid down, stepped onto the grille, and poked my head into the room. “Gut Shabbos,” I whispered.
My father held out his wide strong hand and helped me inside. “Gut Shabbos,” he said. I held the thin skirt of my dress in my hands and made him a royal curtsy. He smiled and made me a deep bow.
“Come, Your Majesty,” he said, “our banquet awaits.”
Nora slapped her little hands against the table. “Fromage!” She squealed with delight when the rest of us laughed.
It was a perfect evening. We were in the middle of a horrible war, but nothing could dampen this moment of joy.
I didn’t know it, but that was my last Shabbos in the Pletzl. Inside of a week, my whole world shattered.


Chapter Three

We had a single day’s warning. My school was on summer holiday but the school itself was near our apartment, and I walked past it often. When I did so on Wednesday, the principal, Monsieur Migneret, beckoned to me from the doorway.
“Miriam,” he said quietly, leaning over, “this is very important.” He blinked at me behind his spectacles and lowered his voice even further. “The Germans are planning a roundup. Tell your father not to sleep at home for the next few nights. Spread the word to everyone you can.”
I stared at him. Fear coursed through my body. “Thank you,” I whispered. I rushed home.
The Nazis had taken Monsieur Rosenbaum early in the occupation. They’d claimed he’d broken a law, though we never learned which one. Since then, Nazis sometimes rounded up groups of civilians on no pretense whatsoever, to get more prisoners to work in German factories. They nearly always targeted Jewish men.
I found Papa in the small noisy pressroom in the courtyard where he worked. Even though I whispered the news, all the men in the room went still, listening. Papa blew out his breath.
“All right, yes,” he said. “We know places we can go.” He patted my shoulder. “It will be all right.”
My arms and legs were trembling. My breath caught in my throat. “What else can I do?” What I wanted to do was hide. Immediately. Hide somewhere safe with my papa and mama, with Madame Rosenbaum and Nora, until this danger was past.
Papa kissed my damp forehead. “Your school friends, if you know where they live,” he said, “go and tell them privately. We can’t be too obvious—we don’t want the concierges to realize we know a roundup’s coming.”
I barely knew Madame Vertron, but I hadn’t thought of her as someone we couldn’t trust. “Yes, Papa,” I whispered. “But—”
“Miri.” Papa kissed me again. “We don’t choose how we feel, but we choose how we act. Choose courage.”
He was always saying that. It irritated me as much as it soothed me. I was not afraid for myself—the Nazis wouldn’t take me to work in a prison factory.
I