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  I hear a voice high and clear:

  "Well, we're lucky, aren't we? Imagine if we didn't have a father to find us an annex, or if we were all stuck in here hating each other!"

  I feel a sharp stab of irritation. Anne Frank, as loud and sure of herself as ever!

  Lucky? How can we be lucky? She makes it sound as though we're playing a parlor game.

  Straight in front of me is another staircase, steep and dangerous. To the left is where the voices are. Everything is small and cramped like the streets and canals outside. And dark.

  I turn left and stand in the doorway. The Franks are sitting at a table. They all turn and stare at me.

  "Oh!" says Mrs. Frank. For a moment there's a shocked silence. We all stare at each other. "Oh, Peter! It's you! For a moment I didn't recognize you."

  I blink. It's hard to see their faces clearly in the half-light. Mr. Frank is standing up and walking toward me. He smiles. "Peter. You're here. Let me show you your room."

  "Room!" says Anne. "That's not what I'd call it!"

  "Anne!" says her mother. I don't look at her. Anne Frank thinks enough of herself already, without me joining in.

  "Hello, Peter," says Margot, quietly. Why are you here? The thought flashes furiously across my mind—Why are you here, and not Liese! I nod at her.

  Mr. Frank takes me back to the steep stairs. I follow him up, slowly. We go through a kitchen.

  "This will be your parents' room and our communal kitchen. We all have to double up, I'm afraid."

  I don't say anything. I can't. Next to the sink is a doorway. He steps through it.

  "And this is your bedroom."

  There is a window, covered with a dark blind. It's hard to believe the sun is still out there behind it—shining. We're pushed up close together by the lack of space. Beside us is another staircase going up.

  "Above you are the attics, where we store everything, and hang washing—that means you'll have us all traipsing through here, I'm afraid."

  At least there's light coming from somewhere.

  "The attic windows are too high to be covered," says Mr. Frank, "and so at least this room has some light!" As though he can read my mind. I take a deep breath. Squashed up next to the staircase is a bed. At the bottom of the bed is a desk.

  "Well," he says, "it's perhaps not what we'd normally call a room, but it's all yours."

  I sit down on the bed.

  "Thank you," I say. The words come out small.

  "I'll leave you then..." But he stops at the door. "Would you like to see the bathroom?"

  I shake my head.

  "You know the names of all the office workers downstairs who'll be helping us, don't you?"

  I shake my head, I can't remember. Mr. Frank smiles.

  "Well, you'll have plenty of time to get to know them. There's Miep Gies—she's our main contact with the outside world—then there's Mr. Kugler, Mr. Kleiman, and Bep and her father, Mr. Voskuijl."

  "Thank you," I say again.

  "Well, come downstairs and have a drink when you're ready—and welcome, Peter!"

  "Thank you," I say quickly. I want him to go away.

  I lie down. I close my eyes. Behind them the heat throbs in my head. The room is airless. If I stretch out my arms ... if I stretch out my arms they'll crash into the walls on one side and the staircase on the other. If I stretch out my legs, my feet will hit the door. I lie on the bed and keep everything close to my sides. Somewhere outside, the church clock rings the quarter hour.

  I close my eyes and begin to shake. I open them, but I can still see Liese's face at the window—and the van disappearing.

  Where is she?

  Where will they take her?

  The sound of voices next door wakes me.

  "Mrs. van Pels, have you really brought hats in your hatbox?" laughs Anne.

  "No! No!" says Mother. "It's not a hat in there, it's a ... chamber pot!"

  They all laugh, Mutti loudest of all. I pull the sheet up over me. I hide my head beneath its light cotton and curl up, trying to escape, but the picture keeps on coming ... Liese's face ... A bright hot pain sears through my head. White, like lightning.

  Mutti steps through the doorway. "Peter?" she asks. "Peter!" She reaches for my hand but I put it quickly under the sheet. She bites her lip.

  "You're here!" she says. "Thank God!"

  "Why wouldn't I be?"

  She stares at me. I look away.

  So she knew.

  She sensed that I wanted to run.

  I don't say anything.

  I want her to go away.

  But she doesn't, she looks around instead.

  "Oh, Petel!" she whispers. "It's so small." And then she takes a deep breath. "But at least we're all here. And we're all safe!"

  Except Liese.

  I don't say anything. I don't ever say anything much any way, unlike the Franks—but I think a lot. I wonder how this can be called living. How can we be in a space this small? We're trapped in this building like rats in a sinking ship, waiting to be caught. The pain flashes through my head again, lightning striking a steeple.

  Anne's voice floats up the stairs: "We've made tons and tons of jam already ... and doesn't the whole place smell wonderful—of cherries and sugar! Oh, and Daddy, I think this must be the best hiding place in the whole of Holland!"

  I feel my body tighten. I can't help it, or do anything about it. It flinches at her words. It's taking on a life of its own. It's like it's trying to crawl away through the walls, back to the outside.

  Back to wherever Liese is.

  Why didn't I stay? Why didn't I fight? Why did I stand there with a stone in my hand doing nothing?

  I groan out loud.

  "She makes it sound like we're at a tea party!" I hiss.

  "Peter!" says Mutti. "We must be—"

  "Grateful," I say quickly, because if I hear her say it I think I might have to scream or slap her.

  Mutti stares at me. "I'm sorry," she says. "I know it'll be hard for you, but we are lucky. Lucky to be alive and lucky to have someone prepared to help hide us!"

  Lucky! That word again. Lucky!

  I don't feel lucky.

  "Peter?" she asks, and I turn to look at her.

  "What?"

  "There wasn't only a chamber pot in that box, you know!"

  She gestures to the door. Standing on the threshold, head cocked to one side and ears erect, is Mouschi. My cat.

  "Oh!" I say. Mutti smiles.

  Mouschi leaps up onto my bed and curls into my side.

  "Thank you!" I say.

  "Well, now that he's here, what can anyone say?" she whispers.

  I don't answer; I just bury my head in his fur. When I look up, she's gone.

  I didn't know.

  I didn't know that a bed below an attic is a luxury. I didn't know that to grieve, as I was grieving for my freedom, is a blessing and a privilege, as well as a sorrow.

  Here in the lager there are no feelings. Only the minutes passing, the one foot in front of the other, the mud, the staying upright, the hanging on to the spoon for your soup so that no one steals it. You cannot grieve for another. You are too busy making sure that it will not be you.

  AUGUST 8, 1942—PETER IS HAUNTED BY LIESE IN HIS DREAMS

  I wake up, my heart beating fast, clicking along like a train through a tunnel. Darkness.

  Wetness in my hands.

  Eyes wide open and searching through the dark.

  I'm trying to hold on to something. My mind gropes for it, but it's gone. It's over. Limp and finished. I feel my face flush red in the night. I listen. Somewhere in the distance the church clock strikes three. Next door, Mutti groans and turns over.

  Did I make a sound? Did anyone hear me?

  I listen to the silence. It's so high up here. The whole night feels different.

  The memory of the dream comes without warning. I dreamed of Liese. Liese in a crowd. She is carried along by a river of people. Her dark hair a dot amo
ng many.

  "Liese!"

  I scream her name.

  I'm terrified that no one knows who she is. No one but me.

  She turns. Her violet eyes are wide and frightened. Our eyes catch before she's carried away by the stream of people. Forced along by the high banks of soldiers beside them.

  Suddenly I'm right up next to her. Pressed against her by the thousands of bodies around us. They lift us up from the ground. I feel my face sink into her breasts, my arms lock around her body. I feel us carried along as her legs surround my waist ... I bury myself in her. I hold on tight until we explode together.

  And then I'm far away above us both, watching the memories pour out of me. The taste of her lips, the feel of her skin beneath my fingers, the first time I saw her, her hands moving across the piano keys, the day I asked to carry her books ... the memories fall around us like rain as we cling together.

  But the river of people keeps on moving—as though nothing is happening at all.

  "Liese," I whisper.

  She holds my face in her hands and we stare into each other's eyes.

  "Peter!"

  I reach out but she's already beyond me. I watch, helpless, as she disappears into the crowd. Calling my name. "Peter!"

  I am Peter—the thought wakes me.

  This is who I am.

  I am Peter.

  I whisper the words into the night.

  I try to hold on to the remembered warmth of Liese's body in the sheets.

  I don't know how I am to wash the sheets. I don't know how I am to hide my shame. I don't know how I am to live anymore.

  Yes, I am Peter—but will somebody tell me how?

  AUGUST 9, 1942—PETER IS SUFFOCATING IN THE ANNEX

  "Petel! Petel!" Mother's voice wakes me. "Get up. Everybody is wondering where you are!"

  But I can't. It's always so dark in here, it's like the day never really begins. I wake up so tired.

  "I'm tired," I say. I turn over.

  "You've got five minutes!" she hisses. She's embarrassed by me. I should be awake and not asleep. I should feel lucky and not worried that I might be dying. But all I want to do is sleep.

  The kitchen is right next door to my room. Everyone has breakfast there. I can hear everything. Father's telling everyone how cleverly he fooled people into thinking that the Franks had fled to Maastricht. I stumble into the room. Nobody greets me they just glance at me, at my slept-in clothes and my filthy hair. I sit down. They nod at me and carry on.

  I wonder if I'm really here.

  The story is "What Happened When the Franks Left." I've heard it a million times already, we all have, but they still go on and on. I try to listen to the words, but the sound of their voices comes at me from a long way away. The words all make sense in my head, but I keep on getting the feelings wrong. I shiver, when everyone else is laughing.

  Anne looks at me—a harsh, questioning look. A slow blush crawls over my cheeks. She looks away, scornful.

  "...and old Mrs. Siedle told me herself that she had seen you all loaded into a military vehicle!" says Mutti.

  I remember the feel of my foot hitting Liese's garden wall. I hear the military engine coming down the street.

  "Yes!" laughs Papi, taking over. "I heard it myself, too! And here we are, sitting right in the middle of the same city! Who would believe it?"

  They all laugh. Anne glances at me again, sharp: "Peter doesn't think it's funny," she says.

  I stand up too quickly and the chair falls over. Slowly their eyes land on me. I try to stand up straight and be polite. I don't know what's happening to me. My head's full of shavings—leftover pieces with no shape or meaning. "Excuse me," I say, and feel my face blush. I leave the room. Behind me I hear Anne clap her hands like a child with a new present.

  "Now no one will ever guess. Ever!" The laughter goes on.

  I don't lie down on my bed, I drop down. I fall away from the thoughts that won't stop churning inside me.

  Where are you, Liese?

  How can this be funny?

  Am I the only person in the world not laughing?

  Falling asleep feels wrong—it feels like drowning.

  ***

  I can't get up. The days go by—half-light, half-dark. I sleep. I eat, but the food doesn't taste of anything. I blush and stumble when the Franks talk to me.

  I dream of Liese. And sometimes I wake with my sheets wet and my heart wild. I'm not sure what's real anymore. I think Anne came and stood in my doorway. "Do you like your room, Peter?"

  "It's not a room, it's a corridor." She raises her eyes to the ceiling. She's so thin, a child really, not like Liese.

  Liese.

  Liese.

  Liese.

  Where are you? What's happening to you? I shiver. When I look up, Anne's gone. I'm not sure she was ever there.

  ***

  If I close my eyes I can feel Liese's hands landing on me. Light. Soft, like butterflies. I nearly groan aloud. Stifle it. I feel a pain like longing, an ache in my side. I can't breathe. Am I dying? I think I must be.

  "I'm dying!" I can't believe I've really said the words aloud, but I must have, because everyone's looking at me.

  I blush.

  "Honestly, Peter!" Mrs. Frank says as she flicks out a clean tea towel.

  "Have you ever heard of the word hypochondria?" asks Anne.

  "I can't breathe!" I whisper.

  "Perhaps if you did a bit more and slept a bit less?" Mr. Frank says gently.

  Mutti and Papi look furiously at each other.

  No one believes I'm ill.

  I go back to bed.

  The Westertoren church bells strike midnight. I creep up the attic steps. One of the windows is very slightly open. I lie down and breathe in the fresh, outside air. Gulp it.

  "Can you hear the bells, Liese?"

  I look at the moon, the way we always promised each other we would. We never said goodbye, just:

  "At ten."

  "At ten."

  I whisper the words—is she doing the same somewhere?

  Where are you?

  I fall asleep in the wisp of air from the window. I don't dream. I sleep wondering if the moon is shining down on us both. All through the night I hear the church bells striking through my dreams.

  Can you hear them, Liese?

  When I wake up, it's light. Birds are singing in the big chestnut tree outside. My neck is stiff and my head hangs sideways off my neck like it's cocked and listening. Or broken. Listening for something no longer there.

  The clock chimes five times. I hear it again, beneath the bells, the click of wheels against the track, the trains that carry us all away. Where to? There are whispers like wheels. Rumors like dark tunnels. But we know really, don't we? We all know, but we can't say it.

  Camps.

  Death camps.

  Suddenly I know it, feel it. She's gone. She was here in Amsterdam, where she could hear the clock, but now she's gone—into that river of people.

  I crawl, stiff and slow, down the attic steps.

  "Peter!"

  Mutti stands at the bottom of the steps, staring up at me. How long has she been there?

  "What?" I begin, and then I see my filthy sheet rolled up in her hand. On my bed is a clean, white flat sheet. We glance at each other, look away.

  "I..."

  "Shh!" she smiles at me. "Don't worry. I can wash it before the Franks are even up, and we can replace their sheet. They won't notice."

  "Thanks," I mutter, but she's already gone.

  The bed feels good. Cool and clean. I sleep without dreams.

  When I wake up again, breakfast is over.

  When I dream of Mutti, that's how I see her, standing at the bottom of the stairs. The way she did when I was a child, her legs braced and arms raised, waiting for me to leap into her arms.

  I dream I'm in clean sheets on a real mattress, and that I'll wake with the sun on my face. Best of all, I'll turn, and go back to sleep in the sunlight. />
  But it's only a dream.

  When I wake, I crawl over all the dead and dying bodies to piss in the pot. I listen. Good the pot is not too full. To piss when it's full can mean death. You have to go out into the freezing night and empty it. After that all sleep is over.

  All hope of rest is gone.

  I crawl back and wait for the word that drags us from our bunks:

  WYSTAWACH.

  Wake up.

  But it doesn't come.

  AUGUST 21, 1942—PETER'S FATHER IS ANGRY

  "Peter! Peter! Peter!"

  I didn't know I was asleep. My name comes at me, hissing and angry.

  "Peter! Peter! Peter!" It's Father, calling me. I sit bolt upright.

  "What?" I'm about to shout, but his hand covers my mouth quickly, forcing my head back down onto the pillow.

  "It's only me: Papi," he hisses. "It's OK, don't make a sound."

  I force my body to go limp. I close my eyes. I feel my heart beating.

  "Get up," he hisses. "Get up and help. Right now. Do you hear me?"

  I don't answer. I try to take his hand away without opening my eyes, but he keeps it there.

  "You could at least try to be a man!" he says. I turn over. I want to go back to sleep, to be anywhere but here.

  "How dare you shame us all like this!" he hisses. "You're nearly sixteen years old. Get up. Stand up. Start helping. Those two girls do more than you." He takes his hand away. "If I can't fight, what point is there?" I don't know where the words come from; they are just there, between us. The shock of them makes me open my eyes. We stare at each other.

  "Fight!" he says, and he sits back and shakes his head at me. "You think you can fight this? Get up and make yourself useful, that's how we fight."