So Charlie said nothing. Instead, he scratched his thoughts and anger into drawings in the notebook George had given him from his kit bag, along with an unused pencil after Charlie had worn down his own. He’d offered to pay George for the items, but George waved his pence away. “Take them,” he’d said. “They’re no use to me.” But Charlie had insisted on paying him something, and when he’d offered George his cigarettes, George gladly accepted the trade. “Now those I can use.”

When the boys weren’t working the galleries, searching the trenches, or sleeping, Charlie passed the long, boring hours capturing life on the Western Front in his drawings. He drew soldiers sleeping in dugouts, husbands and sons writing letters home, rat hunts and card games in the trenches, and football and boxing matches in the fields far behind them. He sketched snipers on fire steps, injured soldiers on gurneys, and bodies on the battlefield. He drew every member of their crew, including Max and the new canary that Charlie, despite Mole’s warning about getting too attached, had given a new name.

“Don’t forget Feathers,” Bagger would remind Frederick every time they left the dugout.

“Her name’s Poppy,” Charlie would correct.

With a pitying shake of his head, Bagger finally gave up, and the crew started calling the new canary Poppy.

A few days after Thomas’s carbon monoxide poisoning, Charlie woke to find himself alone in the dugout. It was the first time he’d been alone since he’d joined the army. At first, he thought he should look for the others, but instead he lit a hunk of solidified alcohol in Mole’s Tommy’s Cooker, a small, smokeless portable stove, and made himself a cup of tea from the tunnelers’ rations before climbing back onto his bunk. Ever since he’d drawn the sketches of James for Thomas, Charlie had longed for a picture of his own brother, Henry. Taking advantage of the quiet, he opened his notebook and started to draw.

An hour later, Thomas and George returned to the tunnels after watching a raucous football match between several tunneling crews. As they neared the dugout, they heard a scream and rushed inside just as Charlie hurled a tin cup across the room. Thomas jumped back, and George ducked as it struck the beam above his head.

“Blimey, Mouse! What was that for?” George picked up the cup and attempted to reshape the dented side. “We all know the tea is rubbish, but no need to take it out on the cups.”

Charlie’s face blanched. “I’m—I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean to…”

Thomas stepped into the dugout. Dozens of crumpled balls of paper littered the floor. Charlie jumped down from his bunk and, apologizing again, scrambled to pick them up. “I didn’t mean to make such a mess.”

“What is all this?” George asked, snagging one before Charlie could. He straightened out the paper. Dark scratch marks partly obscured the image of a boy’s face.

Charlie snatched the sketch from George. “It’s none of your business!”