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I don’t see much of Dad over the next few days It’s like he’s avoiding e visitor, find out his real name, where he’s from, why he was here, why Dad told him about my dreams But Dad clearly doesn’t want to discuss it, and what Dad wants, Dad gets
So I say nothing I keep my questions to myself And I try to pretend that my surreal conversation with Owl Man never happened
On Friday we visit the I forward to this for weeks and my spirits lift for the first time since my run-in with Nancy and the rest of that bizarre afternoon We don’t go on many school trips - the ers to control e’re let loose Twenty of our lot were taken to the Tate Modern last year and they ran wild The teachers swore never again, but they seee of heart
"I don’t expect you to behave like good little boys and girls," Burke says on the Tube, to a chorus of jeers and whistles "But don’t piss e of you and I’ll be held accountable if you get out of hand Don’t steal, don’t beat up the staff, and be back at the et a prize if we do all that, sir?" Trev asks
"No," Burke says "You get my respect"
I love the War Museum I was here before, when I was in pri at the World War I stuff, but the tanks and planes in the main hall are what I most reasps as we enter the gardens outside the museum "They’re massive!"
"You can have a proper look at them later," Burke says
"Aw, sir, just a quick look now," Elephant pleads
Burke says nothing, just pushes on, and we follow
Thethis time, but the tanks and planes are as cool as ever The planes hang fro’s three or four floors high Everyone coos, necks craned, then we hurry to the tanks They’re a, and you can even crawl into so them We should be too old for that sort of stuff, but it’s like we slip back to ere ten years old - the lure of the tanks is iives us a few roup from the school to arrive As the third lot trickle in, we forroup and head upstairs to where the Holocaust exhibition starts
This is the reason we’re here We haven’t focused much on the Holocaust in class - at least not that I reh it - but our teachers reckon this is iardless of the very real risk that we ht start a riot and wreck the place
Burke stops us just before we go in and ether
Kray sniffs the air and "
I expect Burke to have a go at him, but to my shock it’s Jonesenzio - I didn’t even knoas here - who speaks up
"One of my uncles was Polish He was sent to Auschwitz in the thirties Not the death caassed people, but the concentration camp He orked like a slave until he was a skeleton Starved Tortured The bones in one of his feet were ser thanfood fro for nearly tenhiain until he was dead"
Jonesenzio steps up to Kray, stares at hih for everyone to hear, "If there are any more jokes, or if you take one step out of line from this point on, you’ll have to answer to me"
It should be funny - pitiful even - but it isn’t Everyone shuts up, and for the first time that I can ever remember, we stay shut up
The exhibition is horrible It’s not so bad at the start, a bit boring even, where we learn about the buildup to war, how the Nazis came to pohy nobody liked the Jews But it soon becohettos, death cae of Jews being rounded up and chased by Nazis hits hard So does the funeral cart on which piles of corpses heeled to lasses, taken froassed and cremated
But what unsettles e She wrote stories in it and dreeet, colorful pictures As I stare at it I think, That could have been ed out, shipped off to a death caassed, creers And all that’s left of me is a stupid book I used to scribble in, in a cold, empty room where no one lives anyh the chahten and I have to look awayto stay dry