THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL : THE DEFINITIVE EDITION ... - Fidele

could understand how he must have felt, but it just wasn't true!
"Oh no, Peter," I said. "I'd never be so mean. I told you I wouldn't pass on
anything you said to me and I won't. To put on an act like that and then
deliberately be so mean. . . No,Peter, that's not my idea ofa joke.
It wouldn't be fair. I didn't say anything, honest. Won't you believe me?" He
assured me he did, but I think we'll have to talk about it again sometime. I've
done nothing all day but worry about it. Thank goodness he came right out and said
what was on his mind. Imagine if he'd gone around thinking I could be that mean.
He's so sweet!
Now I'll have to tell him everything!
Yours, Anne
FRIDAY, MARCH 24, 1944
Dear Kitty,
I often go up to Peter's room after dinner nowadays to breathe in the fresh
evening air. You can get around to meaningful conversations more quickly in the
dark than with the sun tickling your face. It's cozy and snug sitting beside him
on a chair and looking outside. The van Daans and Dussel make the silliest remarks
when I disappear into his room. "Annes zweite Heimat,"* [* Anne's second home]
they say, or "Is it proper for a gentleman to receive young girls in his room at
night with the lights out?" Peter has amazing presence of mind in the face of
these so-called witticisms. My mother, incidentally, is also bursting with
curiosity and simply dying to ask what we talk about, only she's secretly afraid
I'd refuse to answer. Peter says the grown-ups are just jealous because we're
young and that we shouldn't take their obnoxious comments to heart.
Sometimes he comes downstairs to get me, but that's awkward too, because in spite
of all his precautions his face turns bright red and he can hardly get the words
out of his mouth. I'm glad I don't blush; it must be extremely unpleasant.
Besides, it bothers me that Margot has to sit downstairs all by herself, while I'm
upstairs enjoying Peter's company. But what can I do about it? I wouldn't mind it
if she came, but she'd just be the odd one out, sitting there like a lump on a
log.
I've had to listen to countless remarks about our sudden friendship. I can't tell
you how often the conversation at meals has been about an Annex wedding, should
the war last another five years. Do we take any notice of this parental chitchat?
Hardly, since it's all so silly. Have my parents forgotten that they were young
once? Apparently they have. At any rate, they laugh at us when we're serious, and
they're serious when we're joking.
I don't know what's going to happen next, or whether we'll run out of things to
say. But if it goes on like this, we'll eventually be able to be together without
talking. If only his parents would stop acting so strangely. It's probably because
they don't like seeing me so often; Peter and I certainly never tell them what we
talk about. Imagine if they knew we were discussing such intimate things.
I'd like to ask Peter whether he knows what girls look like down there. I don't
think boys are as complicated as girls. You can easily see what boys look like in
photographs or pictures of male nudes, but with women it's different. In women,
the genitals, or whatever they're called, are hidden between their legs. Peter has