Beheld by Alex Flinn

Author:Alex Flinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-11-11T05:00:00+00:00

2

When we reached home, it was worse than expected. There were two telegrams, two on the same day. George was confirmed dead. Jack was missing.

“Maybe he’s a prisoner,” I said. I had to hold on to hope of seeing Jack again, dear Jack, who had held by hand and taken me to the zoo. Jack, who had helped me with my spelling, Jack, who’d been my ally in the war against my sisters.

“Missing just means they haven’t found a body,” Ethel said.

“Don’t say body. I can’t think of Jack like that.” But I thought of Phillip’s sunken ship, all the men on board. They were likely “missing.” Ethel was right.

In the weeks that followed, I had nothing to think of but grief. We had a small funeral for George. Then we wore black and went about our lives as if we weren’t wondering how anything could ever be the same again. We shuffled about our lives by day, and at night, we sat in the dark, remembering what would never be, the good times that wouldn’t be had, the weddings, the nieces and nephews never born. There was nothing even to look forward to. I cried every night for George and Jack, but especially for Jack, whose body lay God knew where in France. And the bombs continued to fall, one, two, even three nights in a week, without warning, so we never knew what was coming.

Only when the weeks became a month did I admit I was still thinking about Phillip, the man from the party. I thought about him all the time, about that day, the first time I’d felt like a grown-up. I wondered if he wondered about me. Probably not. Still, I looked for him on the street, at the grocer’s, everywhere, but I didn’t even know what he looked like, other than tall with blond hair. I asked people who had been to the party, people like Helen and Dora, who was now Mrs. Private Ned Stone, but they didn’t know who he was. No one did. I hoped maybe he was searching for me, and I went to the only places I thought I might find him, near the elementary school. And Regent’s Park, where it smelled nothing like springtime in an atomizer. All of London stank of smoke and sulfur and motor oil and death. It was gray and hazy and cold as ice. I would never find him.

Over dinner one night, we were discussing, as usual, the possibility of leaving London.

“A bomb hit the Bank of England yesterday,” my father said over a dull dinner of mostly vegetables and rice. “I think you should go and stay with my aunt Lydia. It would be safer.”

“But we’d be leaving you,” my mother said. “We could all stay in a shelter.”

“That bomb gutted the Underground station. I want you to leave. If you left, I wouldn’t always have to worry about you if there’s a bombing.”

I knew he didn’t mean he wanted us to go away, just wanted to make us safe.

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