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the kitchen, though she didn't say anything.
    "What's the matter?" Amazing Grace asked.
    For once it wasn't Mary who spoke up. It was Martin. "Mrs. Leudloff is a German spy. She keeps a shortwave radio in her house."
    Amazing Grace scowled. "Do you think that just because she's German, she's a spy?"
    It was a trap. Amazing Grace often set traps for us. Her father was German, which made her half-German. Her mother was Austrian. Martin said Hitler was Austrian, too.
    But Martin didn't flinch. "Everybody
knows
she has a shortwave radio. People have heard it."
    "Who?" Amazing Grace demanded.
    Martin played with his spoon in his cereal. "Mr. Schoenfeld, where we're supposed to go for eggs," he said.
    "Mr. Schoenfeld is Jewish," Amazing Grace said. "So he hates all Germans. Mr. Schoenfeld is stupid. The reason Kay can't go there for eggs is because he got lime in his eye and is in the hospital. So today Kay goes to Mrs. Leudloff."
    She had spoken. The matter was finished.

CHAPTER 3
    Before they left the house, my sisters gave me advice about Mrs. Leudloff.
    "Be polite," Mary said. "And don't tell her anything that goes on in this house. Don't dare mention that your sisters work in the arsenal!"
    I promised I wouldn't. Mary had told me, on more than one occasion, that loose lips sink ships, that Nazis burn people in ovens, and that I am lucky to be a little girl living in America, rather than a little girl starving in Europe.
    "Don't linger," was all Elizabeth said. Then she put her arm around me. And her arm around me was better than anything she could tell me.
    On the long walk to get the school bus,
Martin had his own advice. "Going for eggs is better than going to the butcher shop. Sometimes I have to wait an hour in line. And all day, in school, I worry that I'll lose the coupons for meat. And sometimes I have to lug along that ball of fat to turn in. I hate it."
    Turning in a ball of fat was part of the war effort. I don't know what they did with the fat. None of us did. We figured it was a military secret.
    "Be careful of Rex, her Nazi dog," Tom said. "He'd just as soon bite your leg off as look at you. And listen for her shortwave radio. The FBI will want to know if you hear it."
    I jingled the egg money that was wrapped in a handkerchief in my pocket. Usually I was nervous enough, carrying egg money around with me all day. Amazing Grace would kill me if I lost it. Now I had to worry about old German spy Mrs. Leudloff all day, too.

    By the time I got on the bus my hands were freezing. But chapped hands could be hidden in my pockets, once I set my books and lunch box down. There was nowhere I
could hide from the cold looks of the public-high-school girls.
    I scrunched down into my seat. I knew I looked a sight in my blue serge uniform, my navy blue pea jacket, my cotton stockings held up with garters, and my clumsy brown laced-up oxford shoes.
    The public-high-school girls wore neat pleated skirts, saddle shoes, and the whitest bobby socks. The white on their saddle shoes was buffed to a shine. The socks were rolled over twice. Under their coats they wore soft cashmere sweaters. Did one of them have my mittens? Why would they want them? They wore fashionable woolen or leather gloves.
    I stared out the window. I hated traveling five miles on this bus every day to school. But my little country school had been closed down the Monday after the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, a little over two years ago now. If I had no other reason to hate the Japs, that was enough.
    I'd gone to school on Monday morning, the eighth of December, to find the doors locked. I'd stood crying in the schoolyard.
    How could they close our school?
    We had walked there every day, Martin, Tom, and I, past brooks and fields. It was not far from home.
    I remember running around the schoolyard that day looking for Martin. Mary and Elizabeth, of course, had been in high school. But Martin would know what was going on.
    He did. "They're taking us away."
    "Away?