The Wrong Boy by Suzy Zail Read Free Book Online

over the rusted basins. Stripped naked, they bent over the cracked porcelain, struggling to scour the dirt from their bodies without soap.
    I turned to leave.
    “You’re not washing?” Erika asked.
    My skin felt itchy, my scalp too, but it all seemed like a waste of energy, washing our faces with festering water, drying ourselves with our dirty dresses.
    “I can’t see the point.”
    “The point is to stay human.” Erika bent over a bowl of brown water and splashed her face. “We mustn’t become animals, Hanna. That’s what they want.”
    I walked back to the barrack with the Markovits twins. At school I’d always been able to tell them apart. Lili wore her hair swept up in a ponytail. Her ribbons were blue. Agi preferred pink and she always wore plaits. Now they were bald. I looked from one to the other.
    “I’m Lili. That’s Agi,” Lili said, pointing to her sister. “Don’t feel bad; even we get confused.”
    “Did you lie to get in here too?” I whispered, looking over my shoulder to see whether the block leader had followed us out.
    “Lie? About what?” The twins looked confused.
    “The man with the stick, he was sending children to the left and adults to the right. I said I was sixteen so I could stay with Erika.”
    “He didn’t ask us our age,” Lili answered for both of them.
    “But he asked lots of questions about us being identical twins,” Agi butted in. “He was so excited, you’d think he’d never seen a pair of twins.”
    We stopped talking when the block leader returned from the washroom. I lined up with my tin cup behind Lili and Agi and waited for breakfast. I got a splash of cold black water and gulped it down. The block leader called it coffee, but it tasted like dishwater. A thin woman with peeling lips was bent over her cup, crying. The block leader put down her ladle.
    “She doesn’t eat, so no one eats.” The block leader grabbed the pot of black water, kicked open the door and hurled it outside. The woman looked up from her rusted cup.
    “You want something to cry about?” the block leader glowered. “Outside! Now!”
    The woman stood up and walked to the door. Her skirt was wet but I couldn’t tell if it was coffee or fear that stained the fabric. The block leader followed her out and the door slammed shut behind them. I looked about frantically. We weren’t allowed to cry? What else weren’t we allowed to do? No one met my gaze. The few women that had coffee tipped their cups up and drank hurriedly before the block leader returned. A girl was bent over in the middle of the room, her nose to the floor, sucking at the black drops that had dripped from the pot. Those without breakfast stared angrily at the door.
    “Bitch,” someone whispered, but they weren’t talking about the block leader. They were talking about the woman who’d cried into her cup.
    We lined up again, bookended by two women with green triangles and truncheons. My stomach grumbled.
    “Work detail!” the block leader announced when she returned to the room, red-faced and panting. The woman with the peeling lips wasn’t behind her. “You’re here to work. Work and you’ll be fed.”
    “What work will we be doing?” Erika asked, nervously eyeing the block leader’s whip. Her fingers fluttered to her face. Her cheek was still swollen. Her skin raw.
    “Ditch digging, carting rocks, whatever you’re told. If you can sew or cook or do anything else useful with your hands, let me know and I’ll get you a job.”
    Erika and I looked at Mother, then at each other. Mother could sew and cook, but we couldn’t let her out of our sight. She no longer knew what she was saying or where she was. If she stayed with us we could protect her.
    “There are easier jobs I can recommend you for.” The block leader lowered her voice. “All I expect in return is a small token of your appreciation.” She pulled a cigarette from her pocket and slipped it between her yellowing teeth.
    We walked through