The Uninvited by Cat Winters

camouflaged position against the dark bricks of the music store. He looked just like a child playing detective.
    “Where have you been?” he asked.
    I kept my fingers on the top button of my coat. “What does it matter?”
    He shrugged. “I just want to know what you’re doing out at this late hour? Billy wouldn’t have liked to think you were sneaking around.”
    I managed a laugh. “Billy loved to sneak out after dark. What are you talking about? He used to run off to your house whenever he was mad at our father, if I remember correctly.”
    “He wouldn’t want his sister prowling around by herself though.” Lucas reached into the breast pocket of his coat. “Will you do something for me, Ivy?”
    I stiffened. “What?”
    He pulled out a folded-up American flag and shook it out until the bottommost stripes hung down to his knees. “Will you kiss this flag for me? Show me how much you love this country?”
    “Lucas . . .” I shook my head, confused. “I used to bandage up your knobby little knees whenever you’d fall down in our yard.”
    “Are you one hundred percent American, Ivy Rowan?”
    “Of course I am.”
    “Then why do you smell like a German?”
    My mouth fell open. I gaped at Lucas’s still-round cheeks and magnified baby-brown eyes.
    He stretched the flag out farther across his chest. The Stars and Stripes reflected off his lenses, and, again, he started to ask, “Why do you smell—?”
    I grabbed hold of the fabric with both hands and kissed it loud enough to make an obnoxious smacking sound. I then raised my head and, not even caring that I spat as I spoke, I said in his face, “Billy would hate you for this.”
    “He’d hate you, too,” he said, and he added, with a sting in his voice, “ whore. ”
    I should have slapped him across his cheek. I really should have smacked that boy good and yelled at him for insulting the sister of his dear fallen friend. Fear of the APL paralyzed my hand, however.
    Instead, I let go of the flag and fled.
    I T H R E W M Y weight against May’s front door from the inside and turned a key to click the dead bolt into place. May’s sewing machine whirred behind me, but the noise soon stopped, and May asked, “What’s wrong?”
    I shifted in her direction and found her staring at me though little silver glasses that reminded me of Granny Letty’s spectacles. I would have found the look delightfully entertaining if Lucas hadn’t just ripped my pride out of my chest.
    “Someone caught me visiting the German,” I said.
    May removed her right fingers from the Singer’s round hand crank. “Who?”
    “A twenty-two-year-old busybody who used to be friends with my brother. He’s part of the APL now.” I hurtled myself over to her sofa and plopped down on the cushions before my head could go too dizzy, and, I swear, I could smell Daniel’s workroom in the upholstery and the rich maple frame.
    “Ivy.” May swiveled toward me with a creak of her wooden chair. “If anyone ever corners you or threatens you again, there’s only one thing you need to say.”
    “What?”
    “You tell them, ‘I’m the daughter and sister of men who dispose of Huns.’ ”
    A chill shivered down my spine. The guilty spot in my stomach palpitated with squeezing shots of pain that made my mouth taste of metal. “I can’t say that .”
    “If the APL is dragging you away and labeling you a traitor, you have every right to state the truth. You’ll be untouchable.”
    I leaned forward on my elbows and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Maybe I should take my piano lesson earnings and buy a big, fat Liberty Bond tomorrow. Prove I’m one hundred percent American.”
    “Don’t waste your money to please idiots terrified of looking like cowards. And by the way”—she set her glasses on the sewing table—“is this particular German worth so much fuss? I know he’s in mourning and a tragic figure, which I’m sure melts your poetry-loving heart. But is he at least