Bullets sang and men exploded and sometimes it happened the other way around.

One night, trying to sleep in the shadows behind the Orange Julius shop, Jasper counted the friends he had made, subtracted the ones who'd been killed, and came out with one. He pulled the two blankets around him--one covering the holes in the other--and sang the apple song his grandfather would sing to put him to sleep.

His father had been lost in the war.