Either way, why wouldn’t she tell Mrs. Janssen? She must have known how terrifying her disappearance would be.
I pedal madly through the streets. Now that I have a lead, the gears in my brain begin to spin. I’ll need to find Christoffel, to find out whether his father made it to Kijkduin and returned with a response from Amalia. If Christoffel’s father didn’t get to the hotel, I’ll need to get there myself and search every room. Either way, I should go to the train station and see if I can find the regular conductor for that route. A fifteen-year-old girl in a bright blue coat traveling alone might have stood out. But how would she have gotten on the train? The station agent wouldn’t have been allowed to sell a ticket to someone whose papers were marked Jood. I need to ask Mr. Kreuk if I can have a few days off. I need to find out if there’s an underground transport, a way that Mirjam might have gotten to Kijkduin without riding on the train. I need to go back home first, to change clothes and come up with a story to tell Mama. I steer my bicycle in that direction and am so lost in my plans that, a block from my house, I almost run over Ollie, who is standing in the middle of the street and waving his arms to get me to stop.
Something’s wrong.
Obviously something’s wrong; he’s standing in the middle of the road, waving like a lunatic.
But he’s not waving like a lunatic. Ollie is waving his hands listlessly, like he almost wishes I wouldn’t see him and wouldn’t stop. When I screech to a halt in front of him, they drop to his sides.
“What are you doing here?” I demand. “I was just thinking about you. I have new information and need your help.”
He kneads his hand into his side; he’s been running and now he has a cramp. “I just looked for you at your house; your mother said you rode off in this direction. I need to talk to you.”
“Good. You’ve found me.”
“It’s serious.”
“I know it’s serious. I found something at Mrs. Janssen’s house. Actually, I found it at my house, but I didn’t realize what it meant until—” Something is propelling me to keep talking, because if I’m talking, then Ollie won’t be able to tell me what it is that’s making his mouth twist like a scar.
“I have some bad news,” he says. “I think we should find a place to sit.”
“I don’t want to find a place to sit. I discovered something today. We don’t have time to sit.” I force a laugh, like he’s being funny. “Ollie, catch your breath, and let’s go.”
“No, Hanneke. Something happened.”
“Something did happen. I know where Mirjam is. Let’s go.”
He doesn’t follow me. He doesn’t try to convince me again, either. He just stands there, letting me get all these protests out of my system, letting me feel how heavy the air around us has grown. “I can take you back to your parents, if you want. Or we can go to my house.”
“What is it, Ollie? Is it—” Even now, I pause, because until I say the words, they’re not true. “Is it Judith? Did something happen on the way to her hiding place?”
“Judith is still at my house. It’s not Judith.”
“Is it Willem?” I’ll rip their names off like a bandage, starting with the ones that would hurt the most. Let it be Leo, I think. Let it be the person I know least well of all. There’s something wrong with me for thinking like this, for wishing bad luck to Leo, but I know everything in life has to have a trade.
“Hanneke. Listen to me. I went to the theater to try to talk to Judith’s uncle. And it’s happened, Hanneke. Last night Mirjam was brought to the Hollandsche Schouwburg.”
EIGHTEEN
What?” I push Ollie away from me, repelling everything he just said. “You’re wrong.”
Of course he is wrong. Mirjam is not in the Schouwburg. My arms flail out at him, wanting to make him take it back.
“Hanneke, there was a big roundup late last night.” He catches my wrists in his and holds them against his chest. “They were looking for people whose names were on their list, but when they couldn’t fill their quotas, they started taking anyone they found who had Jewish papers. Dozens of people were brought in who weren’t scheduled to be deported yet. One of the names on the list is M. Roodveldt. Mirjam is at the theater and she’s scheduled to be transported in two days.”
“But I know where she’s going now,” I insist. “She went to Den Haag. They couldn’t have caught her, because she wouldn’t still be in Amsterdam. She wouldn’t—”
“Maybe she got out of the city, but she was captured and brought back in. Or maybe her temporary hiding place was raided before she got out. A lot of things could have happened. All we know is that someone with her name is there.”
Roundup. Raided. Roodveldt. His words float above me, but none of them make sense. Ollie’s heart beats beneath my hands. “We’ll need to figure out what to do next, then,” I say finally. “To start, we have to go to the theater. You’ll distract the guards. We have to go and get her out right now.”