One day not long after the war began, the teacher called Miriam abruptly to the front of the class and instructed her to go to the director’s office. Miriam’s eyes widened with fear and she looked toward me with worry. There was a ripple through the classroom. Going to the office meant you were in trouble. I could not imagine what solemn, mousy Miriam had done.

After Miriam had left the room, I asked for a pass to go to the toilet. In the hall, a trickle of pupils were leaving their classrooms, other students being summoned to the office. They were all Jewish. I saw Miriam walking down the corridor with her head low, alone and scared. I wanted to say something or reach out to her, to protest the unfairness of these students who just wanted to learn like everyone else being taken. But I silently returned to class.

The Jewish pupils did not come back to school after that day. When I told Krys what had happened, he clenched his fists angrily, but did not seem surprised. “They are taking the Jews’ rights and privileges,” he told me. “If we don’t stop them, who knows what they will do next?” For me, this was not about politics, though, but the friend I had lost. Miriam’s departure from school left a much greater void than I could have imagined. I’d thought of her many times since, curious what had become of her. Sometimes I replayed that day over several times in my head. What would have happened if I had said something in protest, tried to help her? It would not have changed anything. I would have gotten in trouble and they would have expelled the Jewish students just the same. But Miriam would have known that someone cared enough to speak up for her. Instead, I had done nothing.

The girl in the sewer was a Jew like Miriam, I realized. She must be hiding from the Germans. I wondered if there was something I should have done to help her—and whether or not I could have managed it if there was.

The truth was, I was not a brave person. I would never help the Germans—of that much I was certain. But I had not been courageous enough to stop them from expelling Miriam, and I was wary of trying to help this strange girl now. Keep your head low, that was the lesson I had learned from the war. Tata had fought for his country and it had gotten him killed. Stay out of everyone’s way and you might have a chance of coming out on the other side.

Yet as I neared Ana Lucia’s house (I had long stopped regarding it as home) I kept thinking about the girl beneath the grate. Ana Lucia was out when I returned, so I gave the cherries to Hanna. “It’s only half enough,” she said, not ungrateful but afraid of Ana Lucia’s terrible wrath.

“I’ll keep looking for more,” I promised. Of course, by the time I might find any more cherries, it would be too late for tonight’s dessert.