“I can’t eat that,” Simone said.

Rebeka stared. “Me neither.”

“Oh, surely you can make an exception. You’re half starved,” Ilse said.

“That’s my decision.”

“But you can’t do the Resistance much good if you’re dead,” Mitzi said, around a mouthful of sauerkraut.

Phillip glanced at Rebeka, the tension in her mouth and her hollowed cheeks. Maybe he could convince her to have some of the bread rolls, or the sauerkraut—just something to get her strength up before they started the search for her brother—

Rebeka spun from the booth with a miserable cry. Phillip dropped the sausage link he’d been pulling toward his plate and rushed toward her, but she was fury and wounded pride, shoving him away. “Don’t touch me,” she wheezed, then slumped forward. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it isn’t you, it isn’t you.”

But it was the whole world. It was people who blamed their troubles on those with even less power than them. It was the “believers” whose mouths prayed as their hands shoved away the suffering, the sick, the poor, the oppressed. It was the nonbelievers convinced that empathy was a weakness they needed to evolve past.

Rebeka clasped Phillip’s hands in her own. “This is why we’re here,” she whispered feverishly. “This is why we’re carrying on. Because I’ll be damned if we put our fate in the hands of people who can drop our cause the moment it becomes too heavy for them to carry.”

Phillip shook his head. “I’ll never be clever enough, smart enough, innovative enough to prove my worth. I already tried, and I only made things worse.”

“Your worth as a person isn’t something you have to prove.”

Phillip tipped forward, legs going weak beneath him. Such a simple idea, but one he’d never even considered. His whole life had been about proving himself. To his successful parents, to Mr. Connolly and the white world south of Archer Street, to himself. He was trying to make himself tall enough that no one could push him down. But maybe he was already enough. Or, could still be yet.

He tried to smile at her, but relief overwhelmed him, a wave that threatened to break on his face. “I still want to help,” he managed.

Rebeka raised her hand and brushed her thumb along his lower lashes. He knew it came away damp, but didn’t care. “Then let’s wreck the Third Reich.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

EVANGELINE