Hero by martha attema

The Hiding Place
    Vroom! Vroom!
    The sound of engines startled eight-year-old Izaak out of his world of make believe. He was pretending that he was the milkman, delivering milk bottles to the houses along the canal. Every chair was a house. First, he loaded his metal wagon full of imaginary bottles from the dairy. Bessie, his metal horse, pulled the wagon. Izaak chatted with the people along the way. “How is the war going? Did you hear the Allied troops have liberated the southern part of the Netherlands?”
    Izaak pretended to ring a bell. “Ding, ding. The milkman is here.”
    Outside, brakes squealed.
    â€œQuick, Izaak, take your horse and wagon and run upstairs!” Mama stood in the doorway. The doorway of a small, gabled house. A house in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. A house that was not Izaak’s.
    Izaak picked up the brown, metal horse and scrambled to his feet. He thrust the little wagon in his pocket and glanced at Mama, his eyes dark with fear. Not again, he thought, and ran as quietly as he could up a second flight of stairs.
    Mama was right behind him. They slipped into a room in the attic and Mama closed the door without a sound.
    Izaak heard a loud knock on the front door. Footsteps sounded in the hallway. The front door creaked open.
    Voices traveled up from downstairs, loud voices that made Izaak cringe.
    Along the wall of their attic roomstood a large, mahogany dresser. It had been moved away from the wall. In the faint afternoon light, Izaak and Mama crept behind the dresser, through a hole cut in the wall into their secret hiding place. Together they dragged the dresser against the wall to hide the opening.
    The space was just big enough for a mattress. In the corner stood a bucket that they used for a toilet. Izaak did not like the smell of that bucket.
    Mama pulled him down beside her on the mattress. Her arms wound tightly around him. Izaak wriggled. He could hardly breathe.
    â€œShh. Not a sound,” she whispered.
    He felt the cold metal of the horse in his left hand. He pressed the little wagon in his pocket with his other.
    Izaak and Mama sat still, as still as they could. They waited.
    The sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs made Izaak shiver. Mama held him.
    Her head rested on his. He smelled her warm skin. The pounding of Izaak’s and Mama’s heartbeats filled their small hiding place. Izaak felt the tight-ness of her arms.
    The voices grew louder. He tried not to listen.
    Now the voices had reached the room in the attic, their room. He heard the door open.
    â€œWho are you hiding in here?” The voice of a German soldier cut through the wall.
    Izaak stopped breathing. Mama stopped breathing.
    â€œI told you, there is nobody in here,” Mrs. Waterman answered.
    A white line of light appeared on the floor. The beam moved from left to right and back. A flashlight, Izaak thought. Someone opened the dresser drawers, one at the time, and closed them with a bang.
    The heavy footsteps trooped out the door and down the stairs.

    In a long gush, Izaak and Mama blew out the air that had been stuck by fear. Izaak knew he wasn’t allowed to move until Mrs. Waterman came upstairs and told them it was safe.
    â€œMama,” he whispered, “are they gone?”
    â€œNot yet.” Mama’s voice was very soft.
    Izaak felt trapped, not just in his mother’s arms, but in this house. In this city. In this war.
    For over a year, Mama and Izaak had been in hiding at Mrs. Water man’s house.
    Izaak, his twelve-year -old sister, Sarah, and their parents had lived in their own gabled house along one of Amsterdam’s canals. The house had big, bright rooms. Izaak and Sarah each had their own room with sunny windows on the third floor. Izaak’s room had a high ceiling and creampainted walls. Beside his bed stood a wooden chest full of toys. Oak-stainedshelves held his favorite books and his collection of metal and wooden horses. Izaak often