Anne Frank and Me (2 page)

Her best friend, Mimi, flew in; loose-limbed skinny legs sliding into the seat across from her. Mimi had recently gone retro hippie; ratty bell-bottoms, COSMIC KARMA T, love beads. She leaned close, and patchouli scent wafted everywhere. “So, Nico. I checked out Girl X last night.”

“I know, I saw a hit on my counter. My public confessional now has an audience of one. Remind me why I'm doing this again.”

“You have a desperate need for attention?” Mimi ventured.

“It's anonymous.”

“True. Maybe you have a deeply disturbed need to bare the details of your secret, steamy existence to utter strangers.”

Nicole dead-eyed her. “My life, as you know, is steam-free.”

“Also true.” Mimi shrugged. “So do what everyone else does. Lie.”

“Meem, the whole point is to tell the truth, even if—”

Nicole's voice dropped off; her internal organs rearranged themselves. J had just walked in. Her eyes followed as he went to talk with his supposedly former girlfriend, Heather the Perfect.

Mimi peered at Nicole. “Amazing. I can actually see your IQ slump.”

Nicole watched closely as Heather laughed and put one hand on Jack's right bicep. Then the bell rang shrilly; Jack and Heather took their seats.

“Settle down, people,” Zooms said, the closing door underscoring her sentence. “One of the first assignments for your biennial Holocaust studies unit was to watch the adaptation of Jane Yolen's novel
The Devil's Arithmetic
on TV last night. Hands of those who did?”

A few hands hit the air: Mimi; the new girl, Suzanne Lee; a geek girl in the back row. Jack. David Berg. Not Nicole. She'd spent last night working on Girl X.

Pursuing invisibility, Nicole slunk down in her seat as her teacher smiled thinly. “Delightful. Five out of thirty-one. I could weep. Somehow the words pop
quiz
spring to mind. However, this is your lucky day. Instead of a pop quiz, we have a guest speaker. Feel free to thank her for your reprieve. It is an honor to introduce Mrs. Paulette Litzger-Gold.”

The old woman that Nicole had seen enter the classroom stood to a smattering of grateful applause. “I thank Ms. Zooms for inviting me,” she began, her voice slightly accented. “Why am I here to speak with you? Because I lived through the Holocaust. So, about me. I grew up in the most wonderful, sophisticated place in the world, Paris, France. What you do for fun now—go to movies, go shopping, listen to the latest music—is what my friends and I did then. In 1940, when I was your age, if someone had told me what was about to happen to me, I would not have believed it. But just five years later, I was liberated from a Nazi concentration camp more dead than alive.”

The woman stopped for a sip of water and Nicole's eyes slid to Jack. From her seat behind him, Heather dropped a folded paper onto his desk. He read it, then turned around to grin at her. She smiled back. It was not the smile of a girl who was an ex-anything.

Mrs. Litzger-Gold went on with her story, about race laws and ration cards and resistance movements. Nicole was present in body only. Her mind was busy dealing with the Jack-Heather thing. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Zooms staring daggers at her. She slapped a perky I‘m-so-interested mask on her face.

“If you find the things I am telling you unimaginable, I understand,” Mrs. Litzger-Gold was saying. “They seem unimaginable to me, too, even though I was there. Certain moments are burned into my memory. Such as the time French police knocked on the doors of Jewish homes in the dead of night. Many thousands were rounded up and taken to the Vélodrome d‘Hiver, a sports arena that would become a temporary prison. There was no food nor water nor sanitary facilities. Some killed themselves because the world had turned into a place in which they no longer wanted to live. I remember Drancy, the detainment camp outside of Paris where so many were held and then deported. And I have not yet begun to tell you about the horror of the concentration camps, the SS, and the crematoria. I also remember the good—an apple given by a stranger, the underground press, some defiant words on a scrap of paper that gave me strength to go on.”

Chrissy Gullet's hand sprang into the air.

“Miss Gullet, what burning question forces you to interrupt our speaker?” Zooms asked, her tone withering.

“I don't mind at all,” the old woman insisted. “There are no bad questions, only bad answers. Please, young lady, go ahead.”

Chrissy shook her hair off her face with a practiced gesture. “Okay, in fifth grade we read
Number the Stars.
We already know about the Holocaust. I'm very sorry that you had to go through it, but I don't understand why we have to talk about it again. I mean, we don't have Irish Famine Awareness Week, or How We Stole from the Native Americans Awareness Week, do we?”

From the next row, dark-eyed David Berg, smart, serious, intense, glared at her. “You are monumentally ignorant.”

“Excuse me, David, but this is America, okay? Which means I'm entitled to have a different opinion from you.”

“And I'm entitled to tell you what an idiot you are.”

“Leave out the name-calling, Mr. Berg,” Zooms warned. “Mrs. Litzger-Gold, would you like to continue?”

The old woman answered with a gesture that clearly invited the discussion to go on.

“Thank you,” Chrissy told her. “Okay, David, no offense, but you're not really objective about this.”

“Why, because I'm Jewish?”

Mimi turned to Chrissy. “Try to keep up. The Holocaust was international genocide.”

“Yuh, I got it,” Chrissy singsonged. “But it's not like it could ever happen here.”

Zooms scanned their faces. “Could it? Today, in America, could it happen?”

“Yes,” David answered. “Of course it could happen here.”

Eddie Valley snorted out a laugh. “My man, Mr. Paranoid.”

“I think it could happen here, too,” Suzanne said mildly. Nicole smiled at her. Suzanne was pretty, nice, and had perfect strawberry blond hair. Three weeks before, Nicole had invited her to join her hip-hop trio.

“Please.”
Chrissy punctuated this with an eye roll. “All I'm saying is, this is America in the twenty-first century, not Europe a zillion years ago. No offense, ma‘am, but the Holocaust is totally irrelevant ancient history.”

Mrs. Litzger-Gold looked bemused. “Perhaps you are right about the history part, though I don't think of myself as ancient. But irrelevant? I cannot agree with you there.”

Zooms swept her arms over the room. “Other opinions? People?” The usual suspects joined the debate. Jack was so impressive when he spoke—fair to both sides. He was just so
everything.
How could one guy be so—

“Miss Burns?”

Instant face flush, heart hurtling toward heaven. Zooms stared at Nicole. “Uh ... sorry?”

“Eloquent as always, Miss Burns. I'll come back to you when you've gathered your thoughts.” Zooms' laser-beam gaze fell on a guy in the back row. “Mr. Hayden?”

Nicole went limp with relief as all eyes went to Richard Hayden, a much bigger fish for Zooms to eviscerate. Eddie Valley had nicknamed him Dr. Doom for his habitual outfit: oversized army jacket, black shirt, and black pants. Dr. Doom got shortened to Doom, which is what everyone called him now.

“Your opinion, Mr. Hayden?” Zooms pressed, as Doom slumped in his seat, staring out the window. Weeks ago, he had announced that he'd no longer be taking part in classroom discussions. Zooms hadn't called on him since. Until now.

“Mr. Hayden, I asked you a question.”

Silence.

“In the absence of a coherent response, might I assume that flunking my class is appealing to you?”

Doom remained mute, unreadable under Zooms' gaze. She refused to give in. Long seconds ticked by. Then, still staring out the window, Doom spoke. “My grade should be based on my test scores and the quality of my papers. Class participation is inane and entirely subjective.”

Zooms stepped between Doom and the window. He neither looked at her nor looked away. “Did you listen at all to what our guest speaker said, Mr. Hayden? Would you agree that some things are worth speaking up for? Or against?”

Silence.

“I realize you are doing this to irritate me,” she continued. “Congratulations on your success. Now, are we to assume that your silence means you agree with Adolf Hitler, that the world should be
Judenrein—
Jew-free?”

Slowly, Doom turned his head to look directly at Mrs. Litzger-Gold. Nicole shivered.

Zooms strode to the front of the room. “Hopefully, the rest of you can overcome your adolescent self-absorption long enough to recognize the importance of speaking out in the face of tyranny. And the paper you'll be writing on that subject—thanks to your colleague Mr. Hayden—will reflect that. A thousand words. Due next Thursday.”

“Thanks, Doom,” Eddie muttered. Someone else hissed “Freak” in Doom's direction.

Zooms checked her watch. “Unfortunately, the bell is about to ring. Now, I'm sure you'd like to thank Mrs. Litzger-Gold for speaking with us today.” She led the class in applause, until the bell rang and kids flew from their seats as if shot from a catapult.

“Remember, people,” Zooms called. “We meet in front of the school tomorrow morning at eight o‘clock sharp for our field trip to the
Anne Frank in the World
exhibit. On Monday we'll discuss her diary and the exhibit. I suggest you anticipate a pop quiz.”

A few kids stayed behind to talk with Mrs. Litzger-Gold. Nicole hung back because Jack had gone to ask the old woman a question. Then it hit her: This was her chance. All she had to do was to go up there and pretend she had a question, too. Jack would notice. He'd be impressed with her sensitivity. For the first time, he would really see her.

She headed for the front of the room, trying to come up with a question for the speaker. What happened to your family? That might be good. At that moment, Mrs. Litzger-Gold finished answering Jack and looked directly at Nicole. The weirdest feeling came over Nicole, as if she was somehow
connected
to this woman.

“Thank you again, ma‘am,” Jack said, as he walked away. For once, Nicole's eyes didn't follow him. They were still locked on the old woman's face.

“Have we ... met before?” Nicole ventured.

“Have we?”

“Ironic question, Miss Burns,” Zooms called. She was closing the classroom windows. “Considering that you weren't listening when Mrs. Litzger-Gold was speaking.”

Nicole's face burned. “I was listening.” Her eyes went back to Mrs. Litzger-Gold. For some reason, Nicole didn't want to lie to her. “To tell you the truth,” she said, her voice low, “I really wasn't listening to you much.”

The old woman smiled. “To tell you the truth, I already knew that. I also know you stayed behind to talk to that handsome boy and not to me.”

“You're right. I'm sorry.”

Mrs. Litzger-Gold cocked her head to the side, still contemplating Nicole. “Do you believe in signs?”

Nicole was confused. “What, like astrology?”

“More like things unspoken, things the heart knows.”

“I don't know.”

“What is your name?”

“Nicole.”

“A lovely name.” She began to gather her things from Zooms' desk. “Perhaps we'll have a chance to speak again sometime, Nicole. I would like that.” With a smile on her lips, Mrs. Litzger-Gold's eyes met Nicole's one last time. Then she walked out the classroom door.

two

Despair. Nicole's pale face stared back at her in the mirror over her dresser: lank brown hair, boring brown eyes in a forgettable face, a body that was ... a body. Not awful. But light-years from Heather the Perfect's.

Nicole pushed away the gloom. Winding her hair with a scrunchie, she padded over to her boom box, pressed ON, and danced. “One and two, three and four...” Watching herself move to the hip-hop groove, she tried a regulation Chrissy hair flip. Her ponytail whipped around and smacked her in the eye.

What was the use? What difference would it make if she changed the Fly Girls choreography a million times? True: Jack would see her dance at the talent show a week from Saturday. False: Seeing her dance would make him fall in love with her.

She turned off the music and threw herself onto her bed. It was a stupid dream. The dance was stupid. She was stupid.

Squee-eak. Scree-ech.
Through the wall came the sounds of a violin being tortured.