Noah closed his eyes briefly, then turned toward the newcomer with a polite smile. “Hi, Ms. Green.”
Honestly, was there a conspiracy to keep me and Noah from concluding a romantic moment?
We spent the rest of the ferry ride talking to Ms. Green, a Barbanel family friend. From Hyannis, we caught the Cape Flyer to Boston’s South Station, and then the Red Line whisked us to Harvard Square, that bastion of red brick and ivy.
We’d booked an apartment behind the Cambridge public library, a fifteen-minute walk from the train station in Harvard Square. We emerged from the subterranean metro into a bustling area filled with bookshops and restaurants, crowded with busloads of tourists and students who traveled in packs. We strolled along brick sidewalks until we’d left the heart of the square and traveled up quieter streets, past stately Victorians and small parks. Lush gardens fronted the homes, some carefully tended, others chaotic riots of color and lush green.
“I think this is it.” I looked up at a narrow town house, pale yellow with white fringe. We’d made it to the apartment. The apartment for just me and Noah.
Ahhh.
Mom had originally been appalled I planned to spend a nightalone with a boy. I’d thought about not telling her about the Boston trip—thoughtreally hardabout not telling her—but keeping a secret from her would be worse than dealing with her shock. After a quick round of her telling me about safe sex and me yelling,Mom, we haven’t even kissed,we calmed down, and she moved into a “please don’t drink/do drugs/get abducted” spiel, which I vastly preferred.
I’d told Niko and Haley and Jane about the trip, too, and their suggestions had been diametrically opposed to my mother’s. And Jane had told me if we didn’t at least make out, I was canceled.
We punched in the code and opened the front door, also painted yellow with a frosted glass window. A narrow staircase brought us to the top of the house and into a third-floor apartment filled with light and plants. Two bedrooms lay on either side of the central living room, and a tiny kitchen and bathroom were off it.
“Do you have a preference?” Noah asked.
A preference. Did I have a preference about the room I slept in, in the apartment which also had a boy in it. No, I did not, because my brain was too busy with other things likethe boy in the apartment.
“This one’s fine.” I tossed my bag in one room, with a wall of books and a painting of the Boston skyline, with the Prudential and Hancock towers and Citgo sign. “Should we head over?”
“Let’s.”
Back we went down the red brick sidewalks, until the houses turned into stores and people replaced the gardens. A bakery piped out the scent of freshly baked bread in the center of the square, and we turned into it exactly on time for our meeting.
“There.” I nodded across the café at a woman who matched the photo we’d found. Dr. Genevieve Weisz wore jeans and a T-shirt and looked like she needed a nap, despite clutching a thermos to her chest with the desperation of a toddler clinging to her blankie. We headedtoward her, and I was surprised to find I was nervous. I cleared my throat. “Dr. Weisz?”
She looked up and smiled. “Abby?”
“Hi.” I did an awkward wave, then realized she was an adult, so I stuck out my hand.
She shook it firmly, then Noah’s. “Let’s go order.”
We wound up with a spread of pastries, while I got a hot chocolate and Noah an iced coffee. Dr. Weisz added an espresso to the order, clearly afraid her cup might runneth dry.
It was lucky Dr. Weisz had already claimed a table, because people packed the place. Most of them looked a few years older than me—college students, which made sense, with the school right across the street. There was a scattering of adults with laptops, even though it was three o’clock on a Thursday. Dr. Weisz slid her own computer into a backpack, then shoveled in several papers as well. “How was your trip in?”
“Great. Thanks for meeting us.” I nudged Noah, unable to stop picturing him walking these streets, studying in this café. “Noah’s going to be here next year, actually.”
“Really? What are you studying?”
“Um.” He glanced at me, and the words he said next came out fumbling and awkward, which I wasn’t used to from him. “Econ, but I think—I might take a few biodiversity classes.”
I blinked rapidly and smiled at him.
I tried a chocolate croissant as they talked about the college, closing my eyes as the layers of buttery dough and thick bar of dark chocolate melted on my tongue. Mm. Delicious.When they’d covered enough ground to be polite, I leaned forward. “What about you? How did you end up studying Kindertransport?”
“My grandmother was part of the British Kindertransport effort,”she said. “Which I thought I’d do my thesis on, but when I looked into it, I became curious about whether America had a similar situation.”
“It didn’t, right?” I glanced at Noah. “Rabbi Abrams gave us the general explanation about Kindertransport, and it sounded like it was less organized here.”
“Right.” She inhaled a gulp of coffee from her thermos. “In the UK and Europe, Kindertransport got around ten thousand Jewish children out of Nazi-occupied countries, but the States shot down a similar bill. Kids need to be housed and fed and schooled, and the government didn’t want to pay. In British Kindertransport, private organizations had to agree to sponsor the kids so they wouldn’t be a financial burden.”
“Wait,” I said, slightly confused. “So if British Kindertransport wasn’t about supporting the kids, what even was it?”
“Basically expediting visas and legally allowing more kids to enter the country, all at once. Applying for immigration was messy and expensive. You needed documents, the documents cost money, they expired, you had to get them again—you needed a sponsor so you wouldn’t be a financial burden—you needed ship tickets and interviews with the US State Department.” She shrugged. “The UK expedited the process so the Kindertransport children could enter, but the US didn’t. So people simply didn’t have the money to come here.”
