How Huge the Night by Heather Munn Page B

winter town of soft white curves and blue shadows, the tiny warm glow of windows down along the white streets. Magali and her friend Rosa ambushed Julien and Benjamin on the way to school with snowballs, and they gave back as good as they got. The schoolyard rang with shouts when they got there, snowballs flying; Julien fell on the deep snow by the wall and started packing snowballs . He got Léon Barre in the ear, and Léon’s friend Antoine got him back, and then he got Pierre in the neck; that was sweet. He filed into class with the others and listened to Henri and Philippe and Pierre behind him planning a battle, a real one; a whole-class snowball fight fought by the rules of ballon prisonnier. It was brilliant . He had to give them credit. It was going to be perfect.
    And he was going to be there.
     
     
    The sun was bright and the sky deep blue, and the wind had blown the snow into knee-deep drifts and long sparkling curves in the sun. The trees were a black-and-white tracery, the river clear and edged with ice, and in the schoolyard Henri Quatre and Pierre were picking teams.
    The lines were laid out: two team zones facing each other across a narrow no-man’s-land, and behind each team’s zone, its prison, bounded by a hand-high wall of snow. If you got hit, you were taken. If you managed to catch a snowball someone had dodged, you could remake it and throw it at the enemy, and if you hit one of them you went free. The military implications were beautiful. Julien took one look at those prison walls and instantly craved the same thing as every boy in that schoolyard: to be the brave French soldier, captured but not cowed, resisting, breaking through the lines of the cowardly boches .
    Gilles for Henri’s team, Philippe for Pierre …
    “Hey we’re the French, okay, and you’re the boches! ”
    “ You’re the boches! ”
    “Julien,” said Pierre.
    He was in Pierre’s camp in a flash, bending down to pack a snowball ; it crunched delightfully, perfect snow. He was shaping another when he heard Benjamin’s voice.
    “Um … can I join?”
    Julien straightened but did not turn; he stood motionless as Pierre shouted, “Hey, we’re the French Army, we can’t take boches . Go ask them over there!” And laughed.
    “ You’re the boches! ” hollered someone from the other team.
    Julien turned then and saw Benjamin’s face.
    Benjamin turned away and walked silently across the field. Something stuck and burned in Julien’s throat. He looked across at the no-man’s-land, at the prison camp, all the lines and colors of high adventure drawing themselves in those packed snow walls. He wanted it. He wanted that daring escape, that courage under fire. The battle was gearing up, his team assuring each other confidently that they were the French Army, that the line would hold. He was a part of this. No one had thrown him out. But as he bent for a snowball to hurl at the enemy, before his eyes was Benjamin’s face collapsing like a bombed house. The windows shattered, the walls falling inward: a direct hit.
    Julien looked at the wall. Benjamin stood in deep snow, his head down, a small gray figure against the white. Snowballs flew; around him boys were calling, their voices thin and distant as the cries of rooks. He dropped his snowball and walked off the field.
    The snow muffled his steps as he approached the wall. “Hey.”
    Benjamin’s head came up fast, and Julien caught the gleam of tears in his eyes before he looked away, blinking hard. “Yeah?” he said roughly. “Why aren’t you out there?”
    “Because that was wrong.”
    Benjamin looked at him. The tears in his eyes wavered and spilled. “There’s no place for us,” he said. “In Germany they hated us because we were Jews. They broke all the windows of our shop. That’s one of my first memories. I was four. That’s when we left. Last year they beat my uncle David and broke his hands so bad he can’t work anymore.” He swallowed. He took off