Disclaimer: Obviously, I own none of this, because I am not the amazing writer known as Markus Zusak, but it was for a school assignment so I figured I might as well...

TW: death, bombing, concentration camps (all of these are only mentioned momentarily)

I breathe in the smell of her papa's cigarettes and paint in the basement, the odor of her mama's tasteless soup that kept me alive for so long. We grasp onto each other like the cables entangled between train cars, hurtling at full speed ahead and unable, unwilling, to let go.

"Liesel," I finally rasp. My throat is parched and my mouth numb from lack of speech. In the camp, nobody talked. The dead lay silent with glassy eyes, piled high by the adjacent crematorium, sometimes propped at odd angles. The living didn't speak much either, couldn't muster enough energy. The broken pieces of our lives were picked up only after the liberation, a puzzle scattered by a childish Führer's tantrum.

The world blurs around her, and I taste blistering salt running down my cheeks. I keep holding on, because I can't lose the word shaker again, not when I've just found her.

When Dachau was liberated (it was April 29, 1945, I could never forget it), I didn't know whether she was one of the leftover humans, or a snowman of ash, seeping into the cracks of the slaughtered streets. I told the translator at the camp that I was from Molching, and they said it had been bombed two years before. I had to find her. The weight of surviving wouldn't have been so heavy if I didn't carry it alone. I ran from the still-standing barracks, past the train cars filled with rotting corpses. I walked by a crumbling city still in disrepair, feeling naked without the curtains of darkness to absorb the bright spotlight of the sun. I was desperate to find a family that I wasn't sure still existed.

I hold on to her now, asking, "Liesel? Did they survive?" She looks at me warily, as though I'm still a melting snowman in her basement that's too fragile to touch. At my hair, like it's haphazard pattern of feathers signify that I'm a lost bird without a nest. She plays with the lump of thread in her hands, and it's the color of lemons, like Rudy's hair is supposed to be.

Alex Steiner glances over at me from the window where he's adjusting the display with sorrow carved in his oaken features, and the woodwork of his face communicates what his voice will not.

We're the only leftovers here.

Grief hits me like a punch from the Führer in one of our boxing matches, right in the place he knows it will hurt most, the heart. I'm sitting on the floor, but I crumple over again, my chest contracting in dry heaves, because it seems I will always be a survivor. I wasn't the one in a bomber plane that night, but it still feels like I'm the one who's fingers slipped and broke the pen on a gorgeous illustration. I thought I could fix it by leaving before I ruined the landscape, but now the sketch of Hans and Rosa and all of Molching has a dark, ugly, irreversible ink splotch on it.

I want to scream at the butcher in the sky for taking away Rosa, with her cardboard face wrinkled in sympathy, who hid a Jew and asked no questions. I want to give him an uppercut for dear Hans, who played the accordion with a soul made of silver and compassion, who had so much life, but it wasn't enough to cheat Death a third time.

I look over at the girl who knew them best, tears dripping languidly off her face like wax off a candle. At Alex Steiner, the wood of his face splitting and groaning as he cries for his family and his neighbors.

There's so much sorrow in this quiet tailor's shop, in this entire continent. Everywhere becomes a reminder of the pain, and it pushes you over the edge and into the deep end. So you swim, because drowning isn't an option. You fight your way past the currents and the creatures of the deep, punching wildly, foolishly wasting your energy. You hope to wash up on shore, and perhaps you hitch a ride on a boat.

She walks with me to the train station, tears glistening in the June sunlight like God rained down on her and left the rest of us suffering in a drought. It's been over a year since the liberation.

"Couldn't I just come along with you now?", she asks for what must be the umpteenth time. My heart pangs in sympathy for her longing.

"I wish I could, Liesel, but the travel arrangements have already been made, and you're still a child. They're worried that you might be a burden to the state." I'm the one who's a burden.

She tells me she hopes my journey to Australia goes well, a note of apprehension in her voice. I take her graphite-smeared hands in mine, and I feel the stories simmering beneath the surface, waiting to bubble over like soup left on the stove too long, oozing flavor down the sides of the pot.

"As soon as I can find work, I'll send a letter. I'll write a story for you about what it's like down there, and soon I'll fold your tickets and papers inside like a friend once did for me."

She sighs resignedly and hugs me once more as Herr Steiner stands nearby with my suitcase.

"And I'll help Herr Steiner in the shop, and reply to your letters. I'll tell you all about the weather here, like I used to do when you were in the basement," she recites.

"And someday...", I smile at her, and swallow down the cold lump of disbelief welling up in my throat. I don't deserve to be this happy. I wish I didn' t have to leave her behind.

"Someday…", she echoes, liquid sunshine still dripping down her face. It's as if my thoughts were painted on my face because she says, "Someday I'll find you again, and you won't have to be the only leftover anymore".