Lea! Did you eat the last apple I was going to use to make us a pie? Don't you know there's a war going on?" her mother shouted out the window. Lea, sitting below on the apartment stoop, tossed an apple core into the bushes; yes, she knew there was a war going on. Ever since that German guy decided to invade Poland, there had been a war going on turning her life in Rome, Italy, inside out and upside down until she couldn't even eat an apple in peace. Lea grabbed the bucket and trudged to the custodian's closet for a mop with little consolation that her work efforts helped pay the rent while papa was away in the war. Fear inched up her spine as she opened the door to the dark, dank, and dusty room. She steeled herself to run in and run out when a movement in the corner caught her attention.
Sunlight streamed in, shining a beacon on blonde hair that stuck up like thatch from a young man's head as he crouched, clothed in a tattered German uniform, with his arms wrapped around his knees, shaking and muttering.
"What are you doing in here?" Lea demanded in her native Italian tongue. She knew some German from her schooling, so when the young man stuttered his reply, she understood him to say in his German tongue, "no more war," but his petrified, blue eyes pleaded better than his German could. Lea, seeing he was no more than 16 years, motioned him to stay and remain quiet.
Sneaking up to her apartment, she heard her mother in the back rooms, so Lea stole into the kitchen and retrieved a long loaf of bread from the window sill. Swiftly cutting it lengthwise, she stuffed it with sliced salami and wrapped it in wax paper before placing it in her bucket to lug back to the fugitive.
"Here," she offered the provender to him, and he bit into it ravenously. "Slow down! I don't know when I can get you more—this must last you days." She gestured hoping he would understand, and then she began the perplexing task of determining how to return a German boy to his family.