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linoleum floor as she went to her room.
    â€œMiss Müller,” I called out. “Did you take Boots back to his quarters? You went and got him when the air raid started, didn’t you? Didn’t you?” I asked, repeating it in the same kind of sarcastic voice Ada had used.
    There were a few seconds of silence; then Miss Müller said, more sharply than she had ever spoken to me before: “He went back by himself, Jessie. Old Boots is deaf, not blind.”
    â€œYes, thank you. I know that,” I said. My heart was thumping. I lay in the darkness that was total except for the ceiling glow from Miss Müller’s lamp. I’d had my first air raid tonight, and my first kiss. I remembered Ian’s lips, so soft and dry. They’d made me tingle. I was tingling now.
    Tonight I’d had my first real suspicions about Miss Müller, too. I shuddered a bit and turned over in bed.

Chapter Five
    T HEY LET US SLEEP an hour later than usual the morning after the air raid. I heard first bell, saw my emergency case where I’d dropped it in the middle of the floor when we came back last night, and remembered everything. I lay thinking about my mother and father. Were they all right? Oh, please, they had to be all right.
    â€œAre you awake, Jess?” Lizzie Mag called.
    â€œSort of,” I said.
    â€œDid all those things really happen?” she asked, and her head bobbed up over the top of the partition that divided our cubies. We could do that if we stood on our dressers.
    â€œI think so,” I said.
    She and I walked to the bathroom together carrying our soap dishes and towels and our still-warm hot-water bottles.
    â€œWhen are you going to tell Maureen and Ada about Miss Müller?” Lizzie Mag whispered.
    â€œAfter school, I guess. There’ll be no time before, not to give them the details. We could still start the spy watch tonight.”
    Some of the girls from the other dorms were in the bathroom already, all buzzing about the air raid.
    A list of names and dates was pinned to the bathroom wall. Three of us were supposed to break the skimming of ice and bathe in one of the cold tubs every morning, so as not to waste water. My name was on for this morning, but I checked to make sure no one was looking, then crossed it off and pulled the plug.
    Bengie stood at one of the washbasins. Usually we tried to avoid prefects. They tended to be bossy, and they were supposed to make us stick by the rules. But when we saw Bengie today, we crowded around her. The prefects had a radio in their sitting room and could get the BBC news.
    â€œDid you hear anything about the air raid, Bengie?” The big cave of the bathroom made our voices hollow, as if we were talking through a pipe. The damp air smelled of disinfectant, Monkey Brand soap, and the hot-bicycle-tire smell of water that’s been rumbling around in a dozen hot-water bottles all night.
    â€œThirteen people got killed,” Bengie said.
    We gasped. Thirteen people. How awful to think we’d been enjoying ourselves when people were dying.
    â€œThe Germans dropped six bombs,” Bengie went on. “Most of the damage was done on the Shore Road.”
    â€œDo they think someone in Belfast guided the planes?” Lizzie Mag asked.
    Bengie snorted. “If somebody did, he did a bad job. The bombs were probably meant for the shipyards, and they missed by a mile.”
    Lizzie Mag’s eyes met mine in the mirror. The blue lights were off for daytime, so we looked normal—not great but normal.
    â€œWas there bombing anyplace else?” I asked. “In Derry?”
    Ada interrupted me. “In Dungannon?” That’s where her parents lived.
    â€œNo place else,” Bengie said. “Only Belfast.”
    We all smiled.
    â€œWhew!” Ada crossed herself, which was an awful thing to do since none of us was Catholic, but it did help to relieve the pressure.
    â€œDid we manage to shoot