The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

She stayed in bed even after she finished the tea. I let Jamie rummage through
the cupboard and eat anything he liked, and I did too, though I was pretty sure
I’d get in trouble for it later on. I let Jamie skip his bath, but I took an extralong
one, with hot water so deep my legs floated. I pulled the sheets off the
bed so it wouldn’t matter that Jamie had wet them the night before, and we
slept fine.
In the morning Miss Smith got up, her frizzy hair a yellow cloud around
her head. “I’ll try to do better,” she told us. “Yesterday was—about Becky. I’ll
do better today.”
I shrugged. “I can take care of Jamie.”
“Probably,” Miss Smith said, “but somebody ought to take care of you.”
That was the first thing. The second was that the Royal Air Force built an
airfield across the road from Butter’s pasture. It went up completely in three
days, landing strip, huts, everything. Jamie, fascinated, kept sneaking over to
watch, until an officer marched him back to Miss Smith with his hand around
Jamie’s neck. “Keep him home, ma’am,” he said. “No civilians on the
airfield.”
The third thing is that Billy White went back to London.
Jamie’d fussed about missing Billy and his friends, but I didn’t know how
to find them, and I wasn’t going to walk the countryside in a blind search. I’d
gotten the hang of crutches quick, so walking was easy, but I enjoyed having
Jamie to myself. We were spending our days outside. There was a building in
the garden called a stable, that Becky’s horses used to live in, and sometimes
we played there, but mostly we were in Butter’s field, which I loved.
On Thursday all three of us walked into town, because we’d finally eaten
up most of the food. The first thing we saw was Billy White with his mother
and his sisters waiting at the station for the train.
“Billy!” Jamie shouted. He ran up to Billy’s family and grinned at them.
“Where’re you staying? I’m not far, it’s just—”
Billy said, “Mum’s come to take us. We’re going home.”
Jamie stared. “But what about Hitler?” he asked. “What about the bombs?”
“Haven’t been any bombs so far,” Billy’s mother said. She had her arm
around her youngest girl. When I smiled at the girl, Billy’s mother pulled her
a little bit away from me, as though my bad foot might be catching. “And I