Stealing Magic (7 page)

The vendor smiled at them, now that he had their attention, and they decided to look at his wares. They saw postcards of Paris and the exposition, along with a wide variety of souvenirs.

“Look at this.” Jack pointed to a small red model airplane. It had a single propeller and was the type that would have been big enough for only a few passengers. “It looks familiar.”

“Bonjour, mes amis américains!”
the man said in a big, friendly voice.

Louisa automatically translated for him. “He said, ‘Hello, my American friends.’ ”

“
Vous aimez?
You like?” He picked up the toy plane and handed it to Jack.

“Yes,” Jack replied.
“Oui.”

“C’est l’avion d’Amelia, la belle aviatrice américaine.”

Jack and Ruthie looked toward Louisa.

“He said, ‘It is the plane of Amelia, the beautiful American aviator.’ ”

“That’s where I’ve seen it before—it’s Amelia Earhart’s Vega!”

“Pour les jeunes américains, un cadeau!”

“He said, ‘For the young Americans, a gift.’ He wants to give you this plane!”

Jack’s eyes lit up. Ruthie looked at him. “We can’t, Jack.”

“Sure we can. He wants to give it to us!”

“Je vous en prie.”
The man was pushing the plane into Jack’s hand.
“J’insiste.”

“ ‘Please,’ he said. He insists,” Louisa translated.

“What’s the big deal?” Jack said to Ruthie.

“Never mind.” Ruthie turned to the vendor.
“Merci beaucoup.”

Even Jack knew what that meant, and he repeated the phrase.

“
Vive
Amelia Earhart!” the man said, and then handed Ruthie two small flags, one French and one American. She smiled at him and waved the two flags.

Louisa explained, “The French like Americans—except the way they dress!”

Jack looked at the model plane in his hands. It was made of metal and hand-painted with fine details. “This is outstanding.”

“You know, we’d better start heading back,” Ruthie said.

“So must I,” Louisa echoed. “My mother will worry.”

“Do you live near here?” Jack asked as they crossed the bridge.

“Yes. Just over there.” She pointed across the park to a row of beautiful buildings. “It is very nice. But I miss my home in Berlin. And my school. And my friends.”

“Where did you learn such good English?” Ruthie asked.

“It is taught in my school in Berlin. But I also have American relatives. They don’t speak any German at all, so we must speak in English when they come to visit.”

“Your English is perfect,” Jack admired.

“Thank you very much!” She beamed at the compliment.

“How long will your family be staying in Paris?” Ruthie wanted to know.

“Until we can go back to Berlin.” Louisa’s voice sounded sad.

“What do you mean?” Ruthie asked.

“We can’t go home now. Because of them,” she said, pointing over her shoulder to the big Nazi tower across the way.

“The Nazis?” Jack asked.

“Yes; they are running the government. My father can’t work in Germany right now.”

Of course Ruthie knew a little bit about what had happened in Germany under the Nazis, but now she wished she knew more. “What does your father do?” Ruthie asked.

“He is a surgeon. They took away his license because we are Jewish. But my father says it will get sorted out and we will go back soon.” Louisa seemed uncomfortable with the subject. “I really must be going now. Will you come to the Jardins du Trocadéro again?”

Ruthie was about to answer no, but Jack was faster.

“Oh, sure. We’ll probably see you again,” he answered.

“If you don’t see me with Frieda, come to my house. Number seven, rue Le Tasse. Second from the end. You will see the name Meyer on the doorbell. Just ring.” She
smiled at them. “I mustn’t be late.
À bientôt
, Ruthie and Jack.”

Ruthie smiled back, knowing what she had said.
“À bientôt!”

Louisa ran off with Frieda, whose long ears flopped while her short legs moved so fast it appeared she had eight instead of four.

“She’s nice,” Ruthie said as soon as Louisa was out of earshot.

“We’d better go back—it’s getting late.”

As they left the Jardins du Trocadéro, they passed by a newsstand that they hadn’t noticed before. There were several magazines and newspapers. The one on the biggest pile had the words
Le Temps
written across the top.

“Hey, look,” Jack said, pointing to the date on it. Ruthie read
18 juin 1937
.

“
Juin
is June,” Ruthie declared.

“Wow. That’s just a little over seventy years ago,” Jack said. He turned to Ruthie. “Amelia Earhart is flying around the world right now! She took off at the beginning of June in 1937!”

“Wow. But didn’t she … she didn’t make it, did she?”

“Exactly,” Jack said. “It’s kinda amazing that we’re the only people on the planet right now who know that. In just a few weeks she’ll be declared missing.…” His voice trailed off and he gazed at the little red plane. “I wonder …”

“If we could do anything to save her?” Ruthie had been
thinking the same thing. “She’s one of the most famous people of the century; we’d be changing history!”

“We could go to the embassy, or call the newspaper.”

“What would we say to convince them? ‘You’ve got to stop Amelia Earhart—her plane is going to crash’? Do you think anyone would believe us?”

“Not a chance,” Jack conceded. “Man, that’s sad.”

Ruthie wrapped her brain around this dilemma. “Amelia Earhart knew the risk she was taking. She chose the danger.”

“I guess she’s sort of like the astronauts.”

“Right. If she accepted the odds, then probably we should too.” This made sense to Ruthie, but she hated that she couldn’t do anything about it. They arrived at the spiral staircase and began the ascent. Approaching the top, Ruthie said, “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“To the airplane. The reason why I said you couldn’t take it,” she began, arriving on the balcony and remembering to stay out of sight behind the curtains.

“Oh, right.” Jack looked at the plane longingly. “It’s such a good one too.”

“All clear,” Ruthie said.

They came through the balcony door into the room—the portal back to their time—and even before they made it across to the garden door, the Vega had disappeared from Jack’s hand. “Just like the arrows,” Jack said.

They stood quietly for a moment on the ledge. Then Ruthie said, “Louisa could still be alive. I mean, in our time. She could be like Mrs. McVittie’s age.”

“If she survived the war,” Jack said with a worried edge in his voice.

“What do you mean?”

“The Nazis took over Paris during World War Two. It was definitely not a safe place for anyone Jewish.”

“That’s terrible.” Ruthie pondered what Jack had just said. If this trip back in time was like their other visits to the Thorne Rooms, she knew she had just met a person who had really lived, like Sophie Lacombe and Thomas Wilcox. She understood that she and Jack could do nothing about Amelia Earhart; her fate was sealed. But maybe they could something to help Louisa. “You know what we have to do, don’t you?”

R
UTHIE WAS FILLED WITH QUESTIONS
at dinner that evening. She wanted her dad to tell her all about Paris in 1937 and what had happened to the Jewish people who lived there during World War II. It was difficult to get her questions answered since her parents were busy planning her sister’s upcoming trip to visit colleges.

Many of Ruthie’s classmates went to cool places over spring break: exotic islands with pink sand beaches, resorts in someplace called the Mayan Riviera, or at least Florida. Ruthie, however, would be spending spring break right around the corner at Jack’s while her parents and Claire traveled to college campuses. If she hadn’t had other things on her mind—a real travel adventure—she would have felt completely cheated.

It was Ruthie’s night to do the dishes with her dad. As he washed and she dried she could finally have his
attention. He taught high school history and loved answering her questions.

“Of course you’ve learned about the Holocaust and the Jews who lived in Germany. But a large number left Germany in the 1930s, especially after 1935, when a set of laws limited their freedoms and citizenship. The Nazis believed that Germans were a superior race and that Jews were inferior.”

“That’s so crazy.” Ruthie had learned all of that in school, but she still couldn’t believe it. “What happened in Paris?”

“France was invaded by the Germans, and in 1940 the French surrendered. Paris was occupied by the Nazis for the duration of the war, until the American army came and liberated the city four years later.”

“What happened to the Jews there?” Ruthie pressed.

“They were no safer in Paris than in Germany. Some found ways to hide, but many, many were taken off to concentration camps. And most of those people were killed.”

Ruthie was beginning to feel sick. It was as though the war were happening now and she had to do something to stop it.

“You okay, sweetie?” her dad asked.

Ruthie took a deep breath. “I guess. It’s just so … horrible.”

“Yes. That’s why it’s important to know history—so we don’t repeat it. After all, World War Two wasn’t really that long ago.”

Ruthie had heard her dad say stuff like that before, but
it had always gone in one ear and out the other. Now she listened and believed him. She wiped the drips off one of the china plates that her mother had inherited from her grandmother. What would it feel like if she had to leave this apartment, leave Chicago and Oakton, and be sent to a concentration camp?

Ruthie thought about Louisa and her little dog as she watched the soapsuds disappear down the drain. A realization grew in her, like a wave rising. Visiting the rooms and the past was not simply an exciting adventure; it involved matters of life and death, and she had a responsibility to do whatever she could to help Louisa.

Ruthie went to her bedroom and closed the door. She called Jack from her cell phone.

“We’ve got to warn her soon,” Ruthie blurted out when he picked up, without even saying hello.

“Yeah. I know. Let’s go back on Saturday.” Jack sneezed three times on the other end of the line.

“I have my first drawing lesson on Saturday, and I don’t know how long that will take. But my parents and Claire are leaving on Friday, remember? And there’s no school that day anyway—it’s Good Friday.”

“Okay. Friday.” Jack sneezed again. “I’m going to sleep now.”

“Bye.” Ruthie pushed the end call button but couldn’t end the conversation she was having in her own head. What could they say to Louisa? How could they warn her and make her understand the danger she was in?

“Bonjour. Comment allez-vous?… Je m’appelle Ruthie. Comment vous appelez-vous?”
Ruthie repeated after hearing the woman’s voice through the earphones. She sat on her bed practicing French from a CD her mother had given her and looking at a picture book of Paris. For three nights she had practiced the language and absorbed the images, thinking it might be useful.