The Romeo and Juliet Code Read Online Free Page B

Winnie and Danny were not scared. They played cards all night in that office, waiting to hear. I slept on my suitcases with my head on my stuffed bear, Wink. Danny said later it was Wink that turned the tide. The officer finally just couldn’t say no.
    When I stood on the huge pier on the second level that cold night and looked at the enormous Queen Anne all dressed in her gray war costume, I thought I might faint. I had never seen anything so big in all my life. We boarded quietly and quickly and lay in our tiny room belowdecks listening to the churning engine carrying us through dangerous waters to America.
    Everything on the boat was bolted down, all the chairs, all the many tables in the dining room, a sea of tables, and we were only a tiny group of people sitting in a corner being quiet, listening for a U-boat or a torpedo, listening overhead for a bomber. For the whole eight days, we never saw the sky. And there was a storm at sea and we heard that the waves were as steep as mountains rising gray, higher than we could imagine. Winnie was sick in the hall, and I found a room with a huge swimming pool with no water in it, and the stairs were wide and empty, and most of the time we didn’t speak and when we did, all our voices echoed.

In June, the sky continued to drizzle and drip in Bottlebay, Maine, USA, and I wrote a letter every day to Winnie and Danny. Most of the time, I tried not to talk to anyone except for Wink. He was quite playful really when we were alone, but with the Bathburns, he too fell silent. The Gram went into town for supplies a couple of times and I was invited along, but I always looked up at the sky instead of answering. Finally, one day I said, “Oh, all right. I’ll go,” but only because I had to.
    And that very morning at the end of June, it stopped raining. It stopped and it stopped and it stopped. And the sun did come out and the sky was a hot summer blue and a few people appeared on the beach below with sun umbrellas and pails and towels.
    If you are feeling uneasy, sometimes a blue sky can make things worse. Better to have the sky match how you feel than to have it be so lovely out while you are so dark and rainy and lonely inside.
    “Riding into town with The Gram, eh? Taking your life in your hands, are you?” said Uncle Gideon, slapping the side of the old black automobile that he had just backed out of the barn for us.
    I frowned to keep the sun out of my eyes and waited while Uncle Gideon helped The Gram ever so gently into the car. She smiled up at him from the driver’s seat with her white hair slipping slowly out of its bun in the wind. I hadn’t seen The Gram smile much before. Then I heard Uncle Gideon say very quietly, “I do think this is a good idea. We should introduce her to the town. Better not to raise any suspicions about anything .”
    “Well, Flissy, perhaps you’d like to buy some supplies to make a proper British tea for us,” said The Gram quite loudly, shaking her head at Uncle Gideon.
    “Jolly good, old thing,” said Uncle Gideon. “Isn’t that what they say over there? ‘Old thing’? I’d love to have a real British cup of tea again.”
    “Have you had one before?” I said, feeling the word suspicion floating round now in my head.
    “But, of course, Flissy,” said Uncle Gideon, “I’m very fond of England.” And he put his hand over his heart and looked at me in a mournful sort of way. “I certainly know the difference between a good cup of tea and a bad one. And I went to university there, you know.”
    “Oh,” I said.
    We were standing in the scruffy grass, looking at the Packard, which was ever so much bigger than our little Austin Minor in England. All the British cars were so much smaller. We were standing there in the bright morning sun, with wild rosebushes all round us being bumped and battered about in the wind.
    “Well, Fliss, the windows are all broken, so don’t try to roll them up and down. And The Gram doesn’t like to