Free Don't You Know There's a War On? by Avi

Reveals
    U-boat Toll in Recent Convoys.

24
    OKAY, NEXT DAY , Thursday, plenty of stuff happened.
    First off, even though I walked with Denny to school, I still didn’t tell him what happened the night before. He never asked. The truth was, I was keeping it to myself. I didn’t want to share.
    After checking headlines at Teophilo’s, Denny and me talked about the war. What was going on in North Africa. Where his father was. The Pacific news. And my father, wherever he was, dodging Nazi U-boats.
    In school I kept watching to see if Miss Gossim would act different to me. She didn’t, except once. Sort of. It was at family news time. Gladys Halflinger announced to the class that her mother was expecting. When she did, I thought Miss Gossim took a quick look over at me. Maybe I was only wishing it.
    Then, it being Thursday, we did war stamps.
    War stamps went like this: The U.S. government had to buy all kinds of stuff for our soldiers. Guns, ammo, airplanes,ships, tanks. So what did they do? They borrowed money from people by getting them to buy war bonds. The thing was, they borrowed from kids too by getting us to buy war stamps.
    When you bought a stamp, you pasted it in a special book. Fill your book and you’d get a twenty-five-dollar war bond. The government promised to give the money back with extra. Soon as peace came. Most of us bought only one or two stamps a week, so it took a long time to fill a book. Almost as long as it took to win the war.
    You could buy stamps for ten cents or twenty-five cents. I liked the ten centers best. They were red with a picture of a minuteman on them.
    Thursday, Billy Wiggins was war-stamp monitor. If you were war-stamp monitor, you stood in front of the class and made a speech about why it was a good thing to buy stamps and support our boys in the war. Then we kids would line up. As Miss Gossim watched, we’d buy stamps from the monitor. Stick them in our books.
    That time, Billy made a speech about how bad Hitler was. Nothing I didn’t know. Then, as the kids paid their coins, making a little pile on Miss Gossim’s desk, I noticed she was looking at the money. Looking upset, actually.Then I remembered her saying how little money she had, being a teacher and all.
    I was thinking, Holy moley, how am I going to help her? I mean, she only had a couple of days left. Maybe she had a plan for her life, but I didn’t. It was what the movie serials—like in Dick Tracy Against Crime Inc .—called “a desperate situation.” If something didn’t happen, there wasn’t going to be a next week. It was gonna be “The End.” Goom-bye.
    But at three o’clock, all she said was “Children, study your history books tonight. Tomorrow we’ll have our test on the American Revolution.”

25
    AFTER SCHOOL , Denny and me, we were walking home. No one was saying anything ’til he said, “Learn anything new about Miss Gossim?”
    Now, remember, I hadn’t told Denny nothing about my visit to Miss Gossim’s. For that matter, I never told him I’d seen her looking over the cliff either. Hadn’t even told himwhere she was living.
    At first all I said was “I guess she’s still only got ’til Monday.”
    He said, “When do you think she’ll tell the class she’s going?”
    â€œThe last hour, I bet.”
    Then he said, “You figure out yet why she got fired?”
    Soon as he said that, I knew I couldn’t handle it alone. I was a kid. This was supercolossal grown-up stuff. If I was going to help Miss Gossim, I needed help.
    So I said, “Remember the other day when we were collecting, how I followed her?”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œWell, I found out where she lives.”
    â€œOh, sure,” he said, smooth as a Fudgsicle. “Hicks and Orange. That apartment building. Apartment Five-C.”
    I looked at him, really annoyed. Then I remembered that he knew