My Own Revolution by Carolyn Marsden Read Free Book Online Page B

shadows along the forest floor, the bushes in bloom.
    She smiles like old times, as if we’d never had the talk beside the fountain. “My favorite was playing Partisans against Nazi Germans.”
    “How about Janosik?”
    “All of you guys fought over who would get to be him,” she says. “Over who had to be just one of his men.”
    “Or worse, who had to be the one getting robbed. Remember how you were all three witches at once?”
    She laughs, then lowers her pretty face to gaze at the pine needles. As the witches, Danika bestowed upon us the magical staff — a tree branch — and the magical shirt and belt, both borrowed from her father’s closet. She handed these things to whoever was playing Janosik, announcing with big drama, “Now you have the power to escape all traps.”
    I head toward the stream, praying that she’ll follow me. She hesitates only a moment, looking into the treetops.
    We take the path that parallels the stream, where the water glides over the yellow shallows. The woods fill with shouts and the smoke of newly lit cigarettes. When we arrive at the place where the stream tumbles thickly, darkly over the boulders, I stop. Still keeping my distance, I look down onto her light hair, saying, “It wouldn’t be weird, Danika.”
    She wrinkles her forehead, as if confused. Then she shakes her head ever so slightly. Even before she speaks, the chill of the forest closes in. “It would,” she says firmly. “It would be very weird.”
    “Other kids used to be just friends and now they’re boyfriend and girlfriend. Just look at Erik and Libena.”
    She sits down on a square, mossy rock. “It’s something other than that, Patrik. There’s something bigger happening.”
    “What, then?” What could possibly be bigger? I lean against the trunk of a pine. The irregular, puzzle-piece bark imprints itself on my back.
    She takes a deep breath, then says, “A few days ago, my father was invited to join the party.”
    This knocks the wind out of me. “And?” Surely, Mr. Holub has said no. He’s always seemed like a decent, levelheaded guy.
    “He’s joining.”
    “That’s terrible news.” I look around at the tumbling stream, at the silly clumps of lilacs. “Joining the party means spying on others. Like your neighbors. Like your friends and family. If someone doesn’t spy, he goes to prison.”
    “I know all that.”
    “You know it, and yet . . . ?” Between the trees, the blue sky glares at us.
    “Sometimes things like that are necessary,” Danika says in a small voice.
    “Dr. Machovik has already sent a colleague of his, a friend of his, off to do roadwork.”
    “He probably had good reason,” she says primly.
    I stare at her, my childhood friend gone wrong.
    She rubs her hands together, as if trying to warm them. “My mother says we’ve been poor too long. By joining the party, Tati will get a higher-paying job.”
    “A fine motive.”
    “Stop it, Patrik. You don’t know how we eat day-old bread. And we hardly ever get butter or meat.”
    “What about people like Adam Uherco? What about him?”
    “Sometimes . . .”
    I kneel down beside her, my face close to hers. “So you’d betray people to eat better? Is that it?”
    “Don’t say that.”
    “I’m right, though. Aren’t I?”
    She’s silent, her lower lip shoved out. She picks up a leaf and twirls it by the stem.
    “I get it. You’re now forbidden to associate with someone like me. Someone who doesn’t buy the party line.”
    “I can
associate
with you. I can be your friend.” Danika starts to tear the leaf along the veins, carefully, as if dissecting it for botany class. “But anything closer . . .”
    I snatch the leaf from her hand. “And what do
you
think about this party that would keep you from me? What do
you
feel?”
    “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t.” She picks up another leaf.
    A new thought falls like a tree across my path. “You’d never betray me, would you? You’d never betray my