Free River in the Sea by Tina Boscha

careful, okay?” Mrs. Deinum squeezed her shoulder tenderly. Her face was still ashen from her husband’s announcement. Mr. Deinum paid no attention to her gift.
    “My father, he told you about the dog,” Leen blurted, not quite sure why those words spilled out, and why they sounded like a question, almost explanatory. 
    “Yes, you be careful,” Mr. Deinum said. Leen jumped, thinking back to the muddy grave. “Those Allieds ought to be here by now,” he said, looking into his teacup, still full. “They’re near Rotterdam, they’re coming to the river. You’ll have Canadians on your doorstep any day now. And then, our Klaus will come home.”
    “Any day now,” Mrs. Deinum said, nodding furiously, and Leen was not sure if she was talking to herself or to her husband.
    “ Dunke ,” Leen said, slipping quietly out of the door. She tried to close it as softly as she could. But the wind picked up and her hands were still shaking, and the door slammed shut.
     
    It was the first time she would pass the camp alone.
    As she pedaled near, she saw soldiers milling about, standing in groups, eating what looked like hunks of bread. They looked haggard, like shadows, not at all frightening, not like the driver had been. Pater said they were stretched thin, that the cuts in rations were due to the German army’s own hunger. He was right; the camp soldiers’ faces were drawn, gaunt and pale, and across the mud and grass, Leen’s eyes met another pair from across the fence. She quickly turned away, but there was something about his face that stayed with her no matter how hard she tried to think of something else. Then it hit her. Of course. They all looked hungry, but they also looked expectant. They were waiting too.
    As soon as the camp was behind her Leen’s body reacted by releasing a deep yawn. The cold air was a shock against her dry throat. She ached for a summer day, for a warm, dry spot in a freshly plowed field where she could nap. She yearned for an escape, for empty pockets, for no more worries about salt or the camp or if Pater might overhear someone call her name and then make a playful barking sound.
    It wasn’t until she neared the turn to go home that she realized she didn’t have to go home. She wasn’t ill, and Mem and Pater didn’t expect her for another two hours. Maybe it’d get back to them that she’d been at the café, but maybe not. Besides, another chocolate milk sounded nearly perfect to her. If she could not have sunshine and sleep, she could have a little bit of sweetness. Perhaps Mr. Iedema would be there, and he could buy her one. She’d let him, just one more time.
    Inside the café, Arnold struck a match against the lip of the bar and lit a cigarette before the flame had a chance to die down. He nodded to Leen as he exhaled. Breathing in the sulfur and tobacco, the idea of a glass of chocolate milk quickly diminished as Leen realized what she had not had that day, the one thing that could give her the hot sunshine she’d been craving, deposit it right inside her lungs.
    Skiet , she thought. Issac wasn’t there, and he was the one she pestered to give her cigarettes. She didn’t have any money either. She stopped and patted her pockets. Of course she had money.
    Leen found an empty table in the back. She weighed different strategies. She could be direct, even just ask for a cigarette without ever mentioning the salt. “I’ll smoke it outside,” she practiced internally. But who would she ask? And who would give a girl a cigarette in public anyway? And if someone did, did she have the nerve?  Could she really allow herself to flick a match and marry it to the cigarette pressed between her lips?  She’d be noticed. She would be in the day’s local gossip before the cigarette was halfway gone. But wasn’t she already? Her own questions exhausted her. Leen ran her fingers over the worn grain of the tabletop, oiled by a thousand fingertips. Perhaps if she hadn’t already