By the time the Liberty Loan Drive occurred, Rebecca was so successful she was put in the lead of collecting money between Pine and California Streets. When her duties were described to her, she made the troop den mother explain them four times, which surprised everyone, because Rebecca was usually so intelligent: Rebecca was supposed to walk into a business and, while three girls of her choosing sang the “Buy or Die” song (to the tune of “Over There”) a cappella, she was to accept pledges to buy twenty-, fifty-, or hundred-dollar bonds. She was to put these IOUs in a special envelope and hand the envelope in at the end of the day. Further, if anyone actually handed her money, as some well-meaning souls did, she was to hand it back and explain that there was no way to account for cash.

“Just hand it back?” she asked, more than once.

“Yes. Otherwise it will get lost and no one will know—not the person who donated it, not the government, not us—it will vanish without a trace.”

“Oh. So just give it back, then. Oh.”

On the fourth iteration, she understood that this wasn’t a trap. The Girl Scouts were just unprepared to have a Golod in their midst. The morning of the Third Liberty Loan Drive, Troop 14 raised twenty-three thousand dollars from local employees, and Rebecca pocketed $183 in untraceable loot. When the troop met up at Union Square for lunch, she ate her hot dog with tears in her eyes, which her elders ascribed to patriotism, and they were right.

The girls were given an hour off to spend with their families. Rebecca’s did not come, which might have bothered her but she was feeling full of beans. She looked in the store windows on Geary. Every moment, the $183 in the grouch bag around her neck seemed to be giving off heat. She considered how humbly she would wear her Silver Fish badge.

“Gum!”

The street was swarming with girls, smaller than Rebecca, perhaps nine years old. The Adams Gum Company of Oakland had engaged dozens of them, dressing them in Red Cross uniforms, and instructed them to hand out gum. She watched, the idea of adorable girls being a commodity crossing her mind for the first time. Now there was a small, dimpled blonde, her Red Cross wimple starched to perfection, smiling up at Rebecca, tray of gum hanging from a canvas harness around her shoulders.

“Gum?”

Rebecca considered it. She reached out for a sample, but somehow, accidentally, hit the tray as hard as she could, sending packs raining upon the sidewalk.

“Sorry,” she said.

She helped the little girl put all the gum back, a vision of cooperation to all passersby—two lovely girls in two patriotic uniforms!