Free Spying on Miss Muller by Eve Bunting Page A

Müller’s father was a Nazi,” I added. “I saw his picture.”
    â€œMost Germans are.” Greta’s lips twisted. Was she laughing at me? There was something in her voice that made me think so. She talked the way some teachers talked to the little kindergartners.
    â€œAnd if we do find out she is a spy...” I said, menacingly.
    â€œYes? Then what will you do?”
    I was wishing I hadn’t started this. It suddenly sounded so fake, like a story out of the
Girls’ Crystal,
not real in the way Greta knew reality.
    â€œWell, we’ll tell Old Rose... or the police.”
    â€œWill you kill her?”
    â€œKill
her?” I gave a high little laugh. “Of course we won’t kill her. I mean—”
    â€œWhen you follow Miss Müller, can I come with you?” Greta asked, her voice so urgent that it made me instinctively slide down the steps farther away from her.
    â€œWell...” Oh, why,
why
had I brought this up? “You see it’s really the whole dorm, Snow White dorm, not just me...” I stammered. “It’s not my decision, and we don’t know exactly when—”
    â€œYou can come and get me. I waken very easily. I know how to be quiet.”
    â€œYes, but—”
    â€œThey killed my father.” Greta’s face never changed expression.
    â€œPardon?” I said, though I had heard perfectly well. Too well.
    I pressed myself backward so hard against the railing that I felt it cut into my back. Oh no! Oh cripes! “You mean the Germans?” I asked. Goofy question. My stomach was starting to stab in that familiar way that shouts “Cramps coming.” The milk of magnesia wasn’t strong enough to handle this. “How do you know they killed him? I thought you didn’t know.”
    â€œWe have ways of finding out.” Greta stood up. “His name was on the last list that was smuggled through.” The textbook lay open, the pages crumpled where she’d sat. A robin zoomed down from a branch, grabbed a worm, and zoomed back into the tree. From assembly hall I heard the babble of voices, the scraping of feet. Assembly was over.
    â€œI have to come with you when you follow her,” Greta said. She was holding my shoulder the way I’d held little Hillary’s girdle at dispensary.
    â€œAll right,” I said, but I didn’t mean it. Greta let go and I gave myself a shake. Lying was not something I did except maybe in a very big emergency. This was a very big emergency. When we followed Miss Müller, we definitely were not,
not
going to take Greta Ludowski with us. Goodness alone knew what
she’d,
do!

Chapter Nine
    T HE TEACHERS WERE coming out of Assembly Hall, Old Rose sweeping along in front like Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, Mr. Atkinson behind her, his head tilted back on his skinny neck, his sharp nose poking in every direction. Miss Müller walked next to Mr. Bolton. He seemed to be her friend. Did the rest of the teachers like her, or did they hiss at her too, among themselves?
    Beside me I felt Greta tense, and she muttered something I didn’t understand. Maybe it was in Polish. I wished with all my heart that the world was the way it used to be when I’d never heard of Nazis, when Greta was safe in Poland with her parents, and Miss Müller was back in Germany. A time when Alveara was just a school, not great but okay. When nobody dreamed that bombs would fall on Belfast. And oh, how I wished that I hadn’t blabbed to Greta today. She was on the track now... not the way we were, but in a more deadly way that frightened me. “Will you kill her?” she’d asked.
Kill her.
    Swarms of girls came pouring out of assembly. Lizzie Mag rushed toward me. “Lots of girls are leaving Alveara,” she said. “Their parents are taking them home because Belfast is too dangerous. Betty Austin’s going and Selina Brown.”
    I looked at