The Last Embrace by Pam Jenoff Page A

want to go. I had the Connallys. I didn’t need anyone else.
    â€œYou’re almost eighteen now,” Aunt Bess had pressed. “You need to meet some nice boys.”
    â€œAnd the Connallys aren’t?” I demanded. Uncle Meyer blinked in surprise at the forcefulness of my voice.
    â€œIt’s not that. But being Jewish matters. After everything that you’ve seen, I would have thought that you would appreciate that.”
    I pushed aside my aunt’s disapproval and watched the boys play as they had done dozens of evenings this summer. But this time was different: it was the last time. Tomorrow it would all be gone. Swatting back a tear, I ran up the stairs to my room and grabbed the camera that Uncle Meyer had given to me as a birthday present. “I noticed you admiring it,” he’d confessed. It was smaller than the one Papa had let me use and not as new. But I didn’t mind; I took it everywhere, capturing bits of the city, like the shopkeepers beneath the sagging awnings at the Italian market and the old men who fed pigeons in Mifflin Park. I saved a bit of my allowance each week to buy film and had gotten permission to use the darkroom at school, rinsing the images until the contrast was just right.
    I stood on the stairs, snapping shots of the boys as they tackled one another, their hair and skin golden in the late-day sun.
    â€œHey!” Liam scowled at the clicking sound. “No pictures.”
    I lowered the camera and walked down the steps. “Why not?” I challenged.
    â€œYou gotta be careful with that. Someone might think you’re an Axis spy.”
    â€œLiam!” Jack cautioned.
    â€œI didn’t mean anything by it.” His face flushed. But there was some truth to what he’d said: people looked at me differently since the war began. Even though I was an American citizen now and my accent had faded with time, my past meant I would never truly be one of them. I was an outsider, foreign once more.
    â€œI doubt the Germans would want a photo of you anyway,” Jack chided his twin, trying to break the tension. Liam did not answer but stormed off around the side of the house.
    â€œBut, Liam, we’re going to the boardwalk!” Robbie could not imagine anyone passing up on that. His voice was drowned out by the choky rev of Liam’s dirt-bike engine, then tires squealing. Seeing Robbie’s face fall, I walked over and squeezed his hand, which was still a bit slick with bacon grease. Jack looked at me helplessly. Liam was so much moodier and more distant than a year ago. We had hoped that the summer away from the city, where trouble was so easy to find, would have done something to calm Liam’s wild ways. There were moments when he seemed his old self, playing with his brothers in the surf. But his darkness always returned.
    Mrs. Connally stepped from the house, shielding her eyes as she scanned the side yard. “Where’s Liam?”
    â€œGone—on his bike. He said something earlier about meeting some friends at the beach.”
    Mrs. Connally’s face fell. “I hate that thing,” she said bluntly. The bike had been a reward—Liam was allowed to buy it with the allowance he’d saved in exchange for finishing the semester with no Fs. But it had backfired, allowing him to roam farther and longer than ever before. “He’s having such a hard time.” She seemed to be pleading with me to do something, though what I did not know.
    Before I could ask, Jack came to my side with Robbie in tow. “Ready?”
    â€œWhat about the others?” I asked, purposefully vague.
    But the point of my question could not have been more obvious. “Charlie’s got plans.”
    â€œA date,” Robbie piped up cheerfully.
    â€œRobbie, don’t.” Jack shifted uncomfortably. He had been trying to spare my feelings. A foot seemed to kick me in the stomach. I had seen Charlie talking to