The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley Read Free Book Online Page A

asking us what we want,” she said. “Come. Let’s have something to eat.”

    After we ate, Miss Smith sat beside the radio, looking distant and unhappy. “Miss?” I said. “Have they started bombing yet?”
    She shook her head. “Not yet. The sirens went off in London, but it was just a drill.”
    I perched on the edge of the chair beside her. The voice on the radio droned on. “Miss?” I said. “What’re hunters?”
    She looked up as though half asleep. “What?”
    I repeated the question. “You said you were living off the sale of Becky’s hunters,” I said. I knew about selling things. There was a pawn shop down our lane, and when work at the docks was slow, women took things there.
    “Hunters are an expensive type of horse,” she said. “Becky had two of them.”
    “We could eat less,” I said. “Jamie and me. We’re used to it.”
    Miss Smith’s gaze sharpened. “Of course not,” she said. Her voice took on an edge that made me swallow. “You aren’t to worry about that. I’ll handle it, or Lady Thorton will. You’ll be looked after.”
    “It’s just—”
    “You’re not to worry,” she said. “It’s a beautiful day. Wouldn’t you like to play outside?”
    Jamie was already out there. I nodded, took my crutches, and went. Butter grazed far across the field. “Butter!” I called, sliding over the pasture wall. He raised his head, but didn’t come to me.
    I lay down. The field was fascinating. Grass, dirt, flowers. Little flying bugs. I rolled onto my stomach and stroked the grass, sniffed it, pulled it out of the dirt. Scooted forward to examine a white flower.
    Eventually I felt a whoosh of breath against my neck. I rolled over, laughing, expecting Jamie, but it was Butter. He sniffed my head, then stepped aside, grazing. I watched his feet and how he moved them, and how his long yellow tail swished flies away.
    The sun was high and then it was lower, and the air grew chilly. “Supper!” Miss Smith shouted from the house. When we came in she gave me an eye and said, “Have you been rolling in mud?”
    I didn’t know what she meant.
    “Never mind,” she said. “Don’t look so stricken. You’ll wash.”
    Jamie shouted, “Another BATH?”
    “Sit and eat,” Miss Smith said. “Yes, a bath. You can plan on having a bath every night while you’re here.”
    “Every night ?” Mud or not, I felt cleaner than I’d ever been.
    “I don’t mind you getting dirty,” Miss Smith said, “but I won’t have mud on my sheets.”
    Jamie and I looked around. There were lots of things whose names we didn’t know. And clearly she did mind our getting dirty, at least a little. Finally I said, “Miss? What’re sheets?”

    Sheets were the thin white blankets on the bed. Supper was something called soup, that came in bowls. You were supposed to drink it from spoons, not from the bowls themselves, which seemed like too much work. But I was hungry, and the soup was salty and had bits of meat in it, so I did as I was told.
    Jamie refused to eat at all.
    “If you want to go to bed hungry, you certainly may,” Miss Smith said. “Soup is all I’ve made and soup is all there is to eat.”
    This was a lie and we all knew it. Her cupboard held all sorts of food. But Jamie’d gone to bed hungry before. It wouldn’t kill him.
    At night he cried into his pillow and in the morning he’d wet the bed again. “I want to go home,” he said. “I want to see Billy White. I want to be like always. I want to go home.”
    I didn’t. Not ever. I had run away once and I’d run away again.

The next week three things happened. First, Miss Smith spent most of each day either sleeping or staring dully into space. On Monday she made meals for us but did nothing else. On Tuesday she didn’t even get out of bed. I’d watched her cooking on her range enough to understand how it worked, so I fed Jamie and me. Midafternoon I made Miss Smith some tea. Jamie carried it up the stairs for me and we took it