Wake The Stone Man Read Online Free Page A

just looking,” and she said, “Well, you have to leave the store if you’re not going to buy anything.” Nakina held up a lipstick and said, “I’m buying this.”
    The woman followed us to the cashier and waited until Nakina paid for the lipstick. They wanted her out but not before they got their money. You gotta love this town.
    On the big day we walked into town. Nakina wore the new pink lipstick. It looked good on her.
    There was one good thing about South Fort, they had not one, but two — count ’em — two movie theatres — the Odeon and the Capital. North Fort only had one — ha.
    We sang all the way into town with arms linked, shouting at the top of our lungs: “When I saw her staan-ding there.” We swung our heads as we sang so our hair would flip around. Nakina’s hair was straight so it really flew but mine was like a frizzy pot scrubber so it just wiggled. We were still singing when we got to the theatre.
    It was dark when we went in but I remember thinking something was weird. I expected to see a lot of kids from school but the theatre was almost empty. The maroon velvet curtain opened. And the first thing I saw were the credits: Histoire … nuit et Brouillard . What the hell. French? That was the first clue.
    After the credits rolled there was this big green field. Nice. And nothing happened. I waited for four guys in black suits to pop up on the horizon and run across the field. Then the camera moved back, and farther back, and I was looking at the field from behind a barbed wire fence. Then music, flutes and violins, and a man’s deep voice speaking in French and there were subtitles across the bottom: “The blood has dried, the tongues have fallen silent.”
    The camera panned back farther behind the fence and I saw rows of buildings with tall brick chimneys. The man was speaking again — names like Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. I didn’t know what it meant, but I was pretty sure that Paul, John, George and Ringo weren’t going to come running across that green field.
    The next shot was a crowd of people and some little guy in a uniform was shouting at them, and as his arm shot up into the air Nakina punched me in the shoulder. “What the hell, Molly!”
    I looked at her with raised eyebrows because I really didn’t know what to say, and she hissed, “The Capital you idiot, the Capital Theatre.”
    She punched me again “Get up. Now! ”
    Nakina stood and pushed past me, grabbing my sweater as she went, but I didn’t move. At the end of the aisle she pushed past an old man and woman and they grumbled at her. I saw her shadow move up the aisle towards the door. I didn’t move. Couldn’t. It was too late.
    I looked back up at the screen and saw long low buildings behind barbed wire. At the end was a big brick building. I tried to read the subtitles but they went by too fast. They were like weird poems.
    I saw crowds of people standing at a train station. A row of children, alone. I wondered where their parents were. Maybe it was a school trip? But they looked scared and I knew it wasn’t a school trip. Maybe they were being sent away because of the war? I had heard about kids from England being sent to Canada during the war. Maybe these kids were being sent away to keep them safe.
    I watched them getting on the train, not into the passenger cars — they went into the big open baggage cars. More and more and more kids. Some guy in a uniform pulled the sliding door across. I saw a face in the crack just before it closed. The face of a girl about my age with a scarf on her head. Her eyes were big white circles. The guy in the uniform pulled the door again and the girl’s face disappeared. He bolted the door closed. More trains, more people, more guys in uniforms with dogs. The camera pulled back to a shot from above showing the train moving across a field. Then night, and