Free The Summer Before Boys by Nora Raleigh Baskin Page B

in his voice so I knew he was the one throwing the ball. Far, as hard as he could. He called out loudly, “What do Baghdad and Hiroshima have in common?”
    I stopped and looked back.
    â€œI don’t know.” The boy caught the ball, lifted his arm, and threw.
    â€œNothing,” Peter paused, ball in hand, and then shouted, “Yet.”
    I knew what Hiroshima was. It was the Japanese city that was bombed and completely destroyed by the Americans in 1945. Almost every website about the end of World War II had the same photo of a woman whose shirt was burned right into her body and it left a geometric tattoo on her skin.
    It took me a second to get it. Peter was telling a joke.
    â€œThat’s a funny one, Pete.” The other boy laughed but I don’t think he even understood what it meant.
    Eliza pulled me away, but not before I saw Peter look at me, to see if I had heard.

twenty-three
    W e had practically run the whole way home. Eliza lifted her arms like wings and let the wind carry her up into the air but I had already forgotten what we used to see. If Eliza really had feathers, I would have seen them falling off, one by one and being carried into the night sky. But of course, she didn’t. She didn’t really have wings, did she?
    I ran right beside her with my hands out too. It felt good. I let the excitement of the night flood through me.
    â€œWe’re flying.” Eliza laughed.
    â€œWe can look down on the whole world,” I said even though I couldn’t. “I can see our school.”
    â€œI can see the playground.”
    â€œI can see Tomasello Pool.”
    And Eliza was happy.
    We were both lying in bed but not nearly asleep when we heard Uncle Bruce and Aunt Louisa come back.
    â€œThey could have called when we weren’t here,” Eliza suddenly whispered to me. “What if my mom called the house and we didn’t pick up?”
    It seized the inside of my chest. What if she had?
    How could I not have thought of that?
    â€œThere’s nothing we can do about it now,” I said. I kept my eyes on the wall but when Aunt Louisa pulled open the screen, I shut them as quickly as I could.
    â€œAre you sleeping, girls?” Aunt Louisa said quietly. I could tell she was leaning over the bed. She said it again. Eliza rustled and groaned and shifted onto her side.
    I felt terrible. Aunt Louisa would be so angry at Eliza if she thought we had left the house. She might punish Eliza for the rest of the summer. But she wouldn’t be able to do anything to me. She never did.
    Eliza always got the blame when I was here. It was like Aunt Louisa was afraid of upsetting me. I could hear Eliza breathing steadily as if she were fast asleep.
    How did she do that?
    I squeezed my eyes shut. At least I was facing the wall but I couldn’t hold my breath much longer.
    Finally, Aunt Louisa pulled the covers over our shouldersand left the room. I heard the screen slide across the floor and click into place. The TV sounds came on, the gray light moved across the ceiling, from light to dark, and dark to light, like a moth was batting against a bare bulb.
    â€œShe would have said something if she knew,” Eliza said. “She would have asked.”
    I let out my breath. Aunt Louisa wasn’t the secretive type. If we were in trouble we would know by now. The heat pressed down on the sheet, on my legs. I inched my feet out the bottom and let out my breath.
    We had gotten away with it.
    I had gotten away with it.
    So why did I feel so guilty?

twenty-four
    M arion Crandell was the first American woman to be killed in World War I and she wasn’t even a soldier. Or a nurse. She was a French teacher from Iowa and she was working in a YMCA kitchen giving out food to French soldiers. The place where she was working—dishing out beans, maybe cole slaw, maybe pork?—was hit by a German artillery shell only two months after she got there.
    And she was