by Cat Winters
“I’ve got to see if Addie and Nela need me to drive the ambulance.”
He followed me into his bedroom. “And if they don’t?”
“I don’t know.” I shoved my right foot into a shoe and tied the laces. “I need to walk for a while. I need air. I’ve got to go somewhere. I can’t breathe.”
“You don’t understand, do you?” He parked himself in front of me with the shard still gripped in his fingers. “You can walk and walk to the ends of the earth, but that pain inside you, you know the one you’re always telling me about?”
I forced the other shoe over my left foot with a grunt.
“It will never go away, Ivy. Not until you make peace with everything that’s happened here. It’ll always follow you, and you’ll never get away from it.”
“I’ve got to go.” I knotted the laces. “You’ve blocked yourself from loving me because of Belgium. Now I’m going to block myself from loving you so I don’t have to worry about you ever again. I’m tired of this.”
“I’m not going to die.”
“Yes, you are. I saw your brother and know you’re marked for death—I can practically smell it on you.” I jumped to my feet and pushed him aside. “I’ve got to go.”
“You spend so much time worrying about people dying on you and forgiving you”—he chased after me—“but nothing will ever change for you until you forgive everyone else—your father, your brother, me, yourself for not being strong.”
“I am strong.” I hurried down the stairs with my feet thumping and skidding, and he followed.
“You seem awfully weak right now, Ivy,” he said, “running away like this. You’re always running away, aren’t you? You didn’t hide out in your parents’ house for years because you were worried about your family. You worried about yourself in the big, bad world because emotions terrify you.”
“You’re the one who can’t love.” I tore through the darkened store. “Don’t talk to me about emotions.”
“A sadistic military operation carved my heart out of me. What’s your excuse, Fräulein?”
“Don’t bother waiting for me anymore. I’m not coming back. I’m done.” I grabbed for the door, but he yanked me backward by my elbow.
“Don’t leave,” he said, his face close to mine.
“Why should I stay? You lied. This isn’t paradise.”
“It could be if you stop asking me questions about everything. Just forget the rest of the world—”
I pulled away, yet he tugged me right back.
“Let me go!”
“Ivy—”
“Let me go”—I pushed his hand off me—“you disgusting Kraut bastard. You fucking German animal.”
He shrank back and blanched, and I could almost see the red sting of my words slapped across his face in the shape of a handprint. My mouth tasted rotten and filthy, and I knew if I stayed in the shop another moment, I’d vomit up all the rest of the poison brewing inside me. I backed away and slipped out the door to the black streets of Buchanan.
Chapter 21
I only made it as far as the sidewalk in front of Weiss’s Bakery before my legs gave out. The air smelled of rain, and moisture on the cement dampened my skirt and my outstretched palms and fingers. I couldn’t move. I could only crouch on my hands and knees and imagine Daniel stabbing a girl to death and Father and Peter beating Albrecht’s face until their hands swelled to twice their normal sizes. A bayonet. Four fists. A bayonet. Flu victims spitting up black liquid. Daniel hanging from a rope. Father hitting Billy with a shovel. So much death. So much violence. I pressed my palms against the sidewalk and shook with convulsions that turned the sidewalk blurry. My eyes watered, and tears stung my skin, and I groaned in pain, as if I were the one being stabbed and beaten and strangled.
“Do you know what I wonder?” asked a voice nearby.
I lifted my head with a start and saw Lucas peering at me from the shadows between the protruding display windows of the tobacco shop next door. The lenses of his spectacles reflected a trace of moonlight, and I could just barely see the thin line of his lips that didn’t smile or glower or show any other discernible emotion.
“I wonder,” he said, “if the Kaiser’s army dispersed handsome young men across the United States and instructed them to fill women’s heads with pity and their wombs with Boche babies.”
I scowled at him from down on the ground, my chest heaving.
“That hedonistic life you just shared with that Kraut?” he said with a nod down toward Daniel’s store. “All that naughty pleasure? I’m willing to bet that was just another German tactic to dominate the world. As you just said”—Lucas swallowed, and I could see the ripple in his throat—“he’s a disgusting Kraut bastard. An animal. A fucking animal.”
I pushed myself to my feet and grabbed Lucas’s spectacles off his nose. He cried out in shock, but I shoved him away and threw the glasses out to the street with a satisfying crack of the lenses breaking against asphalt.
“Ivy!” Lucas covered his naked eyes. “What did you do?”
“Stop spying on me!” I shoved him again.
“You broke my glasses!”
“What I do with Daniel Schendel is none of your business.” I grabbed his left arm and squeezed it tight enough to make him cry out in pain. “It’s not anyone’s business but mine and his. Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
I shook him. “Are you sure about that?”
“Yes, I hear you!”
“Stop working for the APL and do something better with your life. Nobody here is an enemy of this country except for all of you Peeping Toms who rob us of our freedom. We’re all just trying to survive—that’s all.”
From down the street, the instruments of the band hollered through the streets of Buchanan with voices even louder than mine. Still bearing down on Lucas’s skinny biceps, I swung us both around and faced the direction of the Masonic Lodge. My arms and legs vibrated with the urge to sprint down the sidewalk and scale the brick walls to reach the music as fast as I was able.
It’s like a siren call to you, isn’t it? Daniel had asked me during one of our first nights together. One day, you’ll find yourself going to it . . . and never coming back.
Lucas sputtered up a sob. “I want my glasses. I can’t see a damn thing but blurry dark shapes. I’m blind.”
I clenched my eyes shut. “I’ve just made a terrible mistake.”
“I’ll say you did.”
“No, I don’t mean your glasses. Oh, God.” I rubbed my throat with my free hand. “Why did I say those things to him?”
“Do you see them in the street? Are they salvageable?”
I let go of Lucas’s arm.
“Wait! Stop!” He grabbed hold of my left shoulder with a force that toppled me off balance. “Don’t go anywhere. I can’t see.”
“Don’t panic. You’ll push me over.”
“Go get them—please!”
“Here, I’ll make a deal with you.” I yanked his fingers off me. “I’ll help you with your spectacles, but only after you do a tremendous favor for me.”
“What favor?”
I tipped my head to the right and listened with my left ear, in search of any sounds of other APL spies creeping around us. The jazz music rollicked across the town like a tipsy party guest, slamming into walls, rattling windows, snuffing out all other noises.
“Lucas,” I said in a whisper, “I’m about to do something highly unpatriotic.”
“But”—he snorted—“you’ve already been doing something highly—”
“Please, just listen.” I inched another step closer, getting right in front of his panicky brown eyes that looked so tiny and mouse-like without the spectacles. “There’s something I’ve got to do to make amends with Daniel Schendel, but it violates the Sedition Act by inciting disloyalty. Or, at least, the APL’s definition of disloyalty. Tomorrow”—I glanced backward for a fleeting moment, worried I’d just seen a shadow scuttle beneath a streetlamp—�
��if you feel the need to turn me in, you may do so. But only as long as you swear to make the APL leave Mr. Schendel alone for the rest of his living days.”
Lucas’s lips quivered, and his blind eyes widened. “But . . . what are you . . . ?” He gulped. “What are you going to do?”
“My father and Peter killed Mr. Schendel’s brother last week. They forced themselves into their store and beat him to death.”
“I didn’t . . .” Lucas shook his head. “I didn’t know that.”
“Really?” I lifted my brows. “Other members of your group have talked all about it. I’ve heard them.”
“Those other fellas in the APL don’t always take me seriously, on account of me being the youngest member. They don’t tell me everything.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “Swear upon everything dear to you that Daniel Schendel will be all right. If you want to turn me in to your fellow volunteers to prove your worth, go ahead and do so. I don’t care. Just keep him safe.”
“I just want my glasses, Ivy. I’m tired and want to get back home.”
“I’ll take you home and arrange to have your glasses mended and paid for immediately, but only if you promise to help him. Otherwise”—I bent close to his ear and dropped my voice to a whisper that I hoped gave his neck chills—“I’m leaving you here, alone in the street.”
His lips trembled again. “That’s not like you, Ivy.”
“That’s how I felt about you when you first flashed your APL badge at me and asked about Peter joining the war. We’ve all turned into brutes, when what we should be doing is helping one another.”
He scraped his teeth across his bottom lip and seemed to weigh my words with care.
“Help me.” I squeezed his left shoulder. “And I’ll help you. All right?”
He nodded and sniffed. “All right. I swear. You and Mr. Schendel will both stay safe. Just . . . get me my glasses now, OK?”
I stepped away from him, keeping my eyes upon him for any twitches of his mouth or alterations in his expression that might indicate he was lying about our safety. My feet sidled toward the spectacles lying in the middle of the road. I leaned over and picked them up, feeling the dense weight of the bottle cap lenses, and when I took my eyes off Lucas to survey the damage, my jaw dropped.
The glasses remained intact.
I hadn’t broken them at all.
“How bad are they?” asked Lucas from the curb, holding his arms around himself, rocking. He looked more like the little boy I remembered from the past—the one with skinned-up knees who would come running into our yard, his brown cap flying off his head, shoes untied, to see if Billy could play.
“Well . . . umm . . .” I lifted the lenses up to the lamplight and inspected for signs of hairline fractures.
“Did both lenses break?” His voice cracked. “Do you think . . . c-c-could I at least see out of one of the lenses?”
“The glasses are fine, Lucas.” I plodded back to him to the beat of the drums down the way. “Somehow, they didn’t get damaged in the slightest. I could have sworn I heard them splinter, but . . .”
He reached out his hand, and I placed the spectacles on his palm.
His jaw stiffened. He situated the handles of the frames over his ears with a brusque movement that made my stomach dip. His magnified brown eyes glared at me without blinking.
“You’ll still help though, won’t you?” I asked, rubbing my hands over the gooseflesh below my sleeves. “You’re a kind person. You’ve always been kind, ever since you first started coming to play at our house.”
He pushed his glasses farther up his nose and backed away, slipping into shadow, the same way I’d found him. “I don’t help whores and traitors, Miss Rowan.”
“Lucas—”
“If you’re planning to violate the Sedition Act”—his nose and his lenses disappeared into darkness, but he flashed his silver American Protective League badge, which managed to catch a glint of moonlight from beneath his coat—“then you’ll need to do so at your own risk.”
The blackness of night swallowed him up completely.
He was gone.
Chapter 22
The ballroom had escalated in elegance.
Instead of one dozen dancing couples, two to three dozen young pairs, dressed in bright evening gowns and dark suits with silk neckties, fox-trotted around the hardwood floor. At least three dozen more guests sipped champagne at tables draped in ivory cloths. At a long buffet-style table on the far right of the room, a chestnut-haired fellow in a white coat—a professional bartender, it seemed—poured bottles of the sweet-scented booze into sparkling flutes and slid them across the surface for those who waited. No one wore flu masks. No one peeked over her shoulder as if worried the APL might tap her on the back and demand that she kiss the American flag. The wild number blasting from the band’s gleaming instruments sang a song of utter denial.
Pain lifted from my body and evaporated into the air. My brain went a little dizzy from all the jewels and bright crystal chandeliers and the couples spinning together like silken cogs inside a grand machine. I veered away from the rightmost side of the establishment, where uniformed doughboys gathered around the freshly poured drinks. They laughed and ogled the ladies with the lowest necklines, and I envisioned them separating in two different directions, like a parting olive curtain, to reveal Billy standing at dead center, smoking his cigarette, asking with his eyes, Have you figured out yet who’s going to die, sis?
I cupped my hand over my brow and locked my knees against the sensation of the floor buckling beneath my feet.
“Hey there, Miss Rowan,” said a male voice that struck me as familiar.
I lowered my hand to find Benjie from Nela’s house strolling toward me in a smart black coat and striped gray pants. He smiled and looked nothing at all like the flu patient who had grabbed hold of my leg in a panic on the bloodstained floor of Polish Hall.
“Hello, Benjie.” I smiled in return and relaxed my knees and my shoulders. “You found the place.”
“How could I miss it? I heard the jazz clear across town.”
“The band’s swell, aren’t they?”
“They’re sweller than swell.” He beamed with a broad grin and tucked his hands in his coat pockets. “I’m just glad they let me in the place. It’s not as lily white as I expected for this part of town.”
“That’s true. I’m awfully glad it isn’t.”
“Just look at everyone out there.” Benjie turned toward the dance floor and inhaled with satisfaction.
I scanned the room and saw that every single soul in the place veritably pulsated with music. The band—that beating heart of jazz and pleasure—seemed to ensure that every man and woman, whatever color or background they might have been, danced and lived and breathed inside those gleaming golden walls. If anyone were to ever say to me that music wasted one’s time, I would urge them to climb the stairs to that Buchanan Masonic Lodge ballroom and experience their own toes tapping to the rhythm of hot jazz, their own blood throbbing with vitality.
The doughboys around the buffet table ensnared my attention again, so I turned my back on their uniforms and faced Benjie more fully. “I’m actually about to make a rather strange request of the band. If a little fellow in thick spectacles charges into the room, please point him in my direction and let him know I’m the one to blame.”
Benjie laughed and shook his head in confusion. “What the devil are you talking about?”
I glanced back at the five windows that peeked across at Daniel’s store from the brick outer wall, and I could have sworn those windows stood a little taller and wider than I remembered. Brand-new curtains framed the panes—thick velvet ones in a royal shade of red, quite pleasing to the eye.
“Miss Rowan?” asked Benjie. “Are you all right?”
“Umm . . .” I cradled my forehead in my hand. “I just . . . I’m not quite myself right now. I’ve had a terrible falling-out with someone and need to do something to h
elp.”
“Your sweetheart?”
I pressed my fingers against my skull and managed a pained smile. “Yes. Although sweet doesn’t seem the right term to describe us.”
“I’d ask you to dance so you could forget about him”—he peered back at the other couples, none of whom merged black with white—“but, I don’t know.”
“No, thank you. I’ve got to give my strange request to the band and make amends. I’m much too old to dance with you anyway.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, miss.” Benjie flashed another broad grin and leaned back on his heels. “You look mighty young and fine to a poor boy who’s just left the clutches of death.”
“Find a girl your own age, Benjie.” I backed away. “One who doesn’t have so much trouble hanging on her shoulders.”
I turned around and bumped straight into Ruth Sellman, who carried a flute of champagne and wore a bright-blue dress that seemed alive with swaying fringe and glimmering beads. “Well, hello. Our homebody’s back.” She grabbed my hand and yanked me toward the dance floor. “Wyatt Pettyjohn’s here, and he’s been looking for a dance partner.”
“No!” I dug my heels into the floor and brought us to a halt. “I can’t dance right now.”
“Why not?”
“I have a special song request I need to make.”
With a snort, Ruth looked toward the band. “Please don’t tell me it’s a war song, meant to rally the boys. If I hear ‘Over There’ one more time, I swear I’ll smack—”
“No, it’s not that at all.” I unknotted my fingers from hers. “Tell Wyatt”—I caught sight of Wyatt’s forlorn eyes and his shirt that needed extra tucking into his gray pants, coming toward us around the perimeter of the dancers—“tell him I’m actually here for a purpose other than dancing and visiting at the moment.”
“I highly recommend that you get a drink and make yourself at home instead,” she said. “You’re going to spoil everyone’s fun by turning down dances and acting peculiar. This is a party. It’s supposed to be scrumptious.”
