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the city, and people were starting to go in search of it, so many people that the dangerous trips got a name: hunger journeys. “Journeys,” Margriet scoffed when she heard of it. “Begging, I’d call it.” And she got up earlier and earlier to be closer to the front of the endless lines.
    Piet often didn’t come home until hours after school was dismissed, using the house just for eating and sleeping. Father shouted at him sometimes about homework, but Piet did not appear to be bothered by a bit of shouting.
    As her belly began to jut out from her shrinking body, Mother fussed over ration books and guilders and gave orders that were mostly ignored.
    Father did mysterious things at his desk, or went on unexplained outings. Pretending to work, Lena thought. She had long ago stopped worrying that Father would be picked up bythe SS and shipped off to Germany. He was over the age limit, for one thing. She knew of other men too old and boys too young who were taken despite their ages, but Father somehow seemed immune.
    She had also stopped wondering how he managed to bring home money. Before the war he had been some sort of businessman, though exactly what he did had always been a bit unclear. Since the start of the war, money had become scarcer and scarcer, but he still managed to get his hands on some. Lena suspected him of involvement with the black market. But whatever he was up to, he wasn’t very good at it, judging by the worry lines that sprouted and spread on Mother’s face.
    Bep was different from the rest of the family. She was more present than ever, begging for help on homework from her first year of school, or more often, idle and underfoot, as the colder weather made the courtyard uncomfortable and no one made time to spend with her. Shooing her away, Lena sometimes felt stirrings of guilt or moments of compassion, but she went right on shooing.
    As for Lena herself, she kept busy with school, with following orders from her parents and her older sister, mostly in the kitchen, and stealing what time she could to disappear into a corner and read. Regularly, she got shouted at when her corner turned out to be next on Margriet’s “to clean” list.
    Books were not easy to come by, so she was reduced to rereading, but this still gave her imagination other worlds to occupy. Lately, it had been romance and adventure in Paris; a young man had fallen in love with her, and she was resisting his attentions, which grew stronger with her efforts. He wrote her letters that made her whole body turn liquid, but she would not give in. Ever!

CHAPTER THREE
    “Lena!”
    She looked up, startled, met Margriet’s eyes and jumped to her feet to put a meal on the table, once again torn from the world in the pages of her book.
    Dinnertime again.
    Lena found it more and more difficult to be bothered with the tasks that were required of her. The war kept shoving itself in her way, insisting somehow that she pay attention. Putting supper on the table and keeping up in school just didn’t seem to matter much. She tried to escape into her books, which she now knew almost by heart; she tried to let dinner conversation float over her; she tried to stay out of Piet’s way, to avoid his latest news.
    But today, the Germans had burned the port of Amsterdam, part of their retaliation for the ongoing railway strike. The Bergs had all seen the clouds of black smoke just hours before, and despite Father’s insistence that Piet stay in the house, he had rushed off on foot to see the damage for himself.
    Now, at the dinner table, he was so wound up he could not swallow. “Father, you should have seen it,” he said, his voice highpitched, his face red. “They’re destroying everything. Our whole infrastructure.”
    Lena stared. Infrastructure? Since when had Piet talked like that?
    “The wharfs were burnt, and the water was black with oil and soot. A ship was on its side, half submerged. The cranes were twisted metal. What do they expect