Anne Frank and Me

Table of Contents

 

 

Mimi yanked her arm. “Come on!” She pulled Nicole away from the wall, but they were nearly trampled by a line of security guards, guns drawn, charging toward the sound of the shots
.

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

“Eloquent and poignant. The lesson is clear. The impact is powerful.”

—
The New York Times, on the play Anne Frank and Me

Anne Frank: Beyond the Diary
Ruud and Rian Verhoeven Van Der Rol
Anne Frank: A Hidden Life
Mirjam Pressler
The Devil's Arithmetic
Jane Yolen
The Devil in Vienna Doris Orgel
Lyddie
Katherine Paterson
Summer of My German Soldier
Bette Greene
Thanks to My Mother
Schoschana Rabinovici

PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers,
345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M
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Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam's Sons,
a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2001
Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Putnam
Books for Young Readers, 2002
9 10

Copyright © Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld, 2001

Novel adapted from the stage play
Anne Frank and Me
by Cherie Bennett
with Jeff Gottesfeld, the Dramatic Publishing Company, 1997.
Text set in twelve-point Celeste.

eISBN : 978-1-101-07583-8

 

eISBN : 978-1-101-07583-8

 

Above all, thank you to the Jewish community of Nashville, Tennessee; its Jewish Community Center commissioned our play and underwrote the world premiere. And to Professor Jacques Adler
(The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), who has fact-checked and consulted on this project for years.

Also to Anne Frank Center USA, Simon Wiesenthal Center, University of Judaism, YIVO Institute, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the many French survivors to whom that institution introduced us. Also to Professors Deborah Lipstadt
(Denying the Holocaust,
New York: Free Press, 1993), Susan Zuccotti
(The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews,
New York: Basic Books, 1993), Joyce Apsel and Holli Levitsky; David and Suzanne Winton, Stanley Brechner, Jeff Church, Moses Goldberg, Rob Goodman, Bryan Cahen, Ed Finkelstein, Bruce Rogers, Rabbis Stephen Fuchs, David Davis, and Zalman Posner, John Lo Schiavo S.J., Revs. Joel Emerson and Ann Bassett, Claude and Mirella Luçon, Jack Pollak, the Windisch and Chanderot families, Kate Emburg, Bill Younglove, Sofya Weitz-Levitsky, Abby Lessem, Karen Pritzker Vlock, the Gottesfelds and Bermans, Josh Kane, Refna Wilkin, our editor Susan Kochan, Nancy Paulsen, Laura Peterson, and Dramatic Publishing Company. Thanks, too, to sister authors Jane Yolen, Lois Lowry, Han Nolan, Carol Matas, Miriam Bat-Ami, Edith Baer, Norma Fox Mazer, and Sonia Levitin, lights to the nations and to us. We are indebted to the scholarship of Adler, Lipstadt, Zuccotti, Jeremy Joseph, Georges Weller, Henri Amouroux, Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton, Melissa Muller, Claude Levy and Paul Tillard, and Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, among many others. References to Anne Frank's diary are from
The Diary of Anne Frank: The Critical Edition.
(New York: Doubleday, 1989).

Girl X website design and execution by Lindsay Hurteau, age 15, Granby, Massachusetts.

Day 1, 8:20 p.m.

 

There are only four possible reasons you are reading this:

Day 2, 9:15 p.m.

 

Frightening Thought du Jour:
We are teen rodents of civilization, destined to run through a suburban maze at the end of which is the processed cheese: a life just as boring as our parents'.

 

Random Acts of Blindness:
I am such a cliché. I am in love with J, a boy who does not seem to know I exist.

 

Confused Much?
Today, a bad rep is a good thing. Everyone wants to be bad, badder, the baddest. Say you've had sex even if you haven't. Live Hip or Die.

 

Girl in the Middle:
On one side of me, the sanctimonious Join-hands-at-the-flagpole-every-morning-because-True-Love-Waits kinda girls. On the other side of me, the pathetic Got-pregnant-on-purpose-kept-the-baby-who's -in-day-care-down-the-hallway-while-I-go-to-class kinda girls.

 

None of the Above:
I am still among the (as M calls it) Have-not-yet-succumbed-to-the-Call-of-the-Wild. But why wait? I mean, what's the point, if it's the right guy? When's the “right time,” anyhow?

 

Smokin':
I fantasize about sex with J all the time; dream it when I'm asleep, daydream it when I'm awake. Makes me feel like I'm in free fall. What would it be like, really?

Girl X Manifesto:
Live, love, feel everything, fear nothing, never settle, never regret, never die.

Day 3, 10:09 p.m.

 

Girl Over the Top:
Sometimes I am numb. Nothing matters. Other times, when I let myself feel, I feel too much. Bleed for everything.

 

They Say to Me:
You will “outgrow” this and “grow up.”

I Say to Them:
What does that mean? To stop caring?

 

The Truth Hurts,
So? There are some people meant for greatness. Then there are the rest of us. I'm not the stars or the sun—I don't radiate heat. Or the moon-I don't shine like a beacon to light the way. I am definitely not a celestial body. I'm an earthbound girl destined to revolve around someone else. And I would gladly revolve around J, who is the sun, the moon, and the stars put together. Loving him is a sickness. A fever.

 

one

Nicole Burns sat in the fourth row, third seat of Renee B. Zooms' English class, watching the door and at the same time pretending not to. An elderly woman entered, looking around uncertainly. Zooms greeted her warmly. Nicole's eyes slid back to the door. She was on alert for one thing. Him. J. Jack.