“You shouldn’t have come,” Rebekah said, seeming frightened, as Gaëlle took her coat off hurriedly, and pushed it through the wires at her. Rebekah grabbed it as it fell to the ground. “You’ll get sick,” she protested, feeling guilty for taking it, but it was warm, and she was grateful to have it.
“Put it on,” Gaëlle insisted, as their eyes met and held, and everything they felt for each other was there. “Don’t be stupid. You need it more than I do. I’ll come back tomorrow,” Gaëlle promised.
“What if they catch you?” Rebekah asked with a look of terror.
“They won’t. I love you, you stupid thing,” Gaëlle said, and Rebekah smiled.
“You’re the stupid one for coming here. I love you too. Now go before they catch you.” She had put on the coat and was shivering less violently.
“See you tomorrow.” Gaëlle smiled at her and got on her bicycle.
“It’s all right if you don’t come,” Rebekah said, hoping that she would. And then Gaëlle turned her bike around and pedaled away, trying to look normal as she did, but no one saw her.
It took her two hours to get home, and she was shaking from the cold when she got there. She went to her room before anyone could see that she had come home without her coat. And she sneaked up to the attic that night, to find some of her old clothes so she could bring a coat for Lotte the next day. She found one that looked as though it might fit, and she rolled it up as small as she could to put it in the basket of her bike. The coat was black velvet with an ermine collar, and Gaëlle could remember wearing it one Christmas a long time ago, when her grandmother was still alive and had come to visit.
She was quiet at dinner that night, but her parents didn’t seem to notice. There was nothing much to say these days, all the news was bad. Her mother had had a letter from Thomas, and most of it had been blacked out by the censors, but her mother said it sounded like he was fine.
And the next day Gaëlle skipped school again and went back to see Rebekah. She was outside watching the fence, and came over as soon as she saw Gaëlle approach and stop under a tree. She took the coat for Lotte, and Gaëlle gave her some apples and chocolate bars and some chunks of bread wrapped in a napkin, in case they were hungry. She hadn’t dared take more, but Rebekah grabbed the food gratefully. She was wearing Gaëlle’s coat, which was too long for her, and she said the conditions in the camp were awful, people were sick and cold and had too little to eat. They just gave them soup and stale bread and a few vegetables, and people were fighting over food. And there were only outhouses and far too few of them. They had met a few families they knew at the camp, and two of her father’s employees from the bank, who’d been shocked to find the Feldmanns there. It told them just how bad things were.
And from then on Gaëlle rode to the camp directly after school every day. She stopped eating her lunch and brought it all to Rebekah. Going there got her home close to dinnertime every night, and she told her mother they had kept her at school to help with the younger children and clean up afterward, and she believed her. Gaëlle went faithfully every day, except on Christmas day and one week in February, when she was sick with the flu. And miraculously none of the guards at the camp ever noticed her. There weren’t many of them, and most of them were young. And given the nature of their prisoners, mostly families with children, they weren’t particularly vigilant and focused their attention on the residents milling around, not on the fence.
It was May, and Gaëlle had been visiting Rebekah for five months, when a guard spotted her for the first time. Gaëlle had just passed a pale blue ribbon through the fence to her, it was the same color as their eyes, which were the same, like their pale blond hair. The ribbon snagged on the fence as Rebekah took it, and a little piece was left on the barbed wire. Gaëlle snatched it back and put it in her pocket, as the guard shouted at her to stop, and Gaëlle froze.
“Hey! What are you doing here?” he said, pointing his gun down, and trying to sound fierce. He was barely older than they were, and seemed like someone they would have known at school.
“I just stopped to ask what this is,” Gaëlle said innocently, smiling at him. Her heart felt as though it would fly out of her chest, it was pounding so hard.
“It’s a summer camp for families,” he answered, smiling at her. She was a pretty girl, and so was Rebekah, but he paid no attention to her, since he knew she was a Jew. “Do you live near here?” She nodded, and he pointed his gun back down the path. “Then go home. This place isn’t for you, it’s for poor people. They send them here from the cities to get some fresh air.”
Gaëlle tried to look as though she believed him, and headed down the path without glancing back at Rebekah, and she heard the guard tell her roughly to go back to the others in the barn. It was too dangerous to turn back, so she didn’t. The camp was out of sight when Gaëlle stopped to catch her breath and calm down. She pulled the little piece of blue ribbon out of her pocket and held it in her fingers for a minute, thinking of Rebekah, and she was glad nothing worse had happened. It seemed incredible that they had already been there for five months, and more people were arriving all the time, but they hadn’t sent them anywhere. They were just keeping them at the camp. Rebekah said that there were rumors that they would be sent away, but nothing had happened yet. Rebekah’s father had tried to meet the commandant to find out where they would be sent, but he wouldn’t see him. And the population of the camp had grown from hundreds to thousands by June. And Gaëlle and the others had noticed that several of their classmates had vanished from school. One by one the Jewish families were disappearing, and no one talked about where they’d gone. No one knew for sure, and it was too dangerous to ask.