Children of Refuge

  “But do your parents think the Freds were right to take kids away from some people?” I asked. “From bad people?”

  Zeba tilted her head. Now her braids looked crooked.

  “What do you think?” she asked. “Should kids be forced to grow up with parents who maybe don’t even love them? Who don’t raise them in a loving way? Who might even teach them bad things?”

  I thought about my own parents, who were thieves. Who’d let me think I’d been kidnapped. Who’d sent me away.

  But only to get me away from Cursed Town, I told myself. They think I’m getting a good education in Ref City.

  It was weird how much I longed to defend my parents. I wanted to ask Zeba, How bad is too bad? Do parents have to be perfect, or else?

  What if it’s a lot harder for some people to be good than it is for others?

  I couldn’t say those words out loud.

  “Why did you put that thing online?” I asked Zeba instead. “Why did you ask kids to come here if they wanted to talk about adjusting to their new homes?”

  Zeba looked down at her hands, neatly folded in her lap.

  “Mama and Daddy say, in the current political climate it’s best not to say too much about Freds or Fredtown,” she explained. “They say people want to forget all that. But kids raised by Freds want to help people. It’s what we grew up with. Lots of places in Refuge City, no one wants to help anyone. I thought if kids came to the soup kitchen, they could help poor people, and it would make them feel . . . needed. Right again. Normal. Useful.”

  I jerked back, my knee jarring against the table.

  “So you were just looking for kids to help you and your parents in their . . . their business?” I accused.

  “Our soup kitchen isn’t a business,” Zeba said. “It’s a charity. We give out food for free. People need this soup kitchen or they would starve, because there’s corruption—the money these old people should get to live on goes into building newer and fancier sports arenas and, and—”

  Her father suddenly appeared behind her and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Zeba, is it time to ask this boy to leave?” he said. “If he’s starting to get violent and yelling at you, then—”

  “I’m not yelling!” Okay, I did kind of yell that. And maybe I’d been a little loud saying that thing about her parents’ business.

  I realized that some of the sleeping old, gray people had awakened and were staring over at us, blinking in confusion. I lowered my voice.

  “Anyhow, I am definitely not being violent,” I told Zeba’s father. “I just proved I was raised by Freds, remember? Freds didn’t let us learn anything about violence!”

  I thought guiltily about the video games Enu had taught me, and the way I’d learned to cheat on the basketball court. Then I pushed that out of my mind and looked back at Zeba. She had tears glistening in her gold eyes now, but I was too mad to care.

  “I thought you said your parents were ‘humanitarians,’ ” I snapped at her. “I thought you said they liked to help people. And this is how they treat people like me? Is it because I was raised by Freds? Is it because I’m from a different Fredtown than yours? What’s the problem?”

  Zeba’s father let his shoulders sag. His hand clenched on Zeba’s shoulder.

  “I—” he began. “I’m sorry. I never realized how hard it would be, having an almost-teenage daughter. I just want to protect her. And you kids from Fredtowns, you don’t have any sense of the dangers around you. It’s like Zeba is defenseless.”

  “Daddy, I can take care of myself,” Zeba said. She sounded embarrassed.

  “Anyway,” Zeba’s father said. “Let me begin again. I’m Michael.” He reached out and shook my hand. “I’ve been given to understand that there were twelve Fredtowns associated with kids from Refuge City, because the Freds preferred to raise children in smaller communities. Which Fredtown were you in? Are you friends with any of the other kids I’ve met through Zeba? Friends with any of the other kids who have already started volunteering here?”

  Ugh. So Zeba had been right—other kids raised by Freds had wanted to work in this soup kitchen. They still wanted to help other people and live by Fred principles even though they were back on Earth.

  I suddenly felt like shocking this smug, Fred-like man. Udans, Enu, and Kiandra wouldn’t have approved, but I intended to enjoy telling him where I was really from.

  “Actually,” I said, “I didn’t grow up in any of the Fredtowns connected to Refuge City. My Fredtown was the one with kids from Cursed Town. And when I went home from Fredtown, that’s where I went first. Cursed Town. That’s where I belong.”

  Zeba’s father surprised me by letting go of Zeba’s shoulder and wrapping his arms around me instead, in a giant hug.

  “You survived! You escaped! Then there are still refugees getting out of Cursed Town! Hallelujah!” he cried. “Tell me—how did you get away from the fighting?”

  This man was every bit as crazy as a Fred.

  I pulled away from his hug.

  “Um . . . the Freds kidnapped me the day I was born, just like everyone else kidnapped by a Fred,” I muttered. “It was the last day of the war, and—”

  “No, I don’t mean twelve years ago,” Zeba’s father said impatiently. “I mean last week when the fighting started again and they imposed martial law. But you escaped?”

  I didn’t know what “martial law” meant. I barely understood the word “fighting.” But I twisted up out of my chair and faced the man. I grabbed the front of his shirt.

  “There was fighting in Cursed Town last week?” I asked. “People got hurt there last week?”

  The man’s expression softened. His eyes filled with an expression I recognized from every single time my Fred-parents had ever glanced at me. Sympathy. Pity. Sorrow.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “There was fighting in Cursed Town last week. And people were hurt. People were killed.”

  “Rosi,” I said. “Rosi, Rosi, Rosi, Rosi . . .”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I was lucky there was a computer in the back office of the soup kitchen. Or maybe the people at the soup kitchen were lucky, because I might have started throwing tables and chairs and turning the whole building upside down looking for a computer, if Zeba and her father hadn’t immediately grasped that I needed one.

  “We can look up the names of the dead and the injured,” Zeba’s father said, leading me back toward the office and the computer. “And the names of the imprisoned combatants . . . I’m sure it will turn out that your friend is fine. A kid raised by Freds wouldn’t have been part of a battle. I take it you got out of Cursed Town before the fighting began?”

  He was treating me like an invalid, like someone who might not even be able to stand up by himself.

  Back in Fredtown, I’d always hated how my Fred-parents babied me when I was sick. But now . . .

  Maybe I really wouldn’t be able to stand up if Zeba’s dad wasn’t holding on to me.

  The soup kitchen’s computer was ancient and clunky and huge, and it seemed to take a year to boot up.

  “Let’s see, the news coverage here was . . . suppressed,” Zeba’s father said, leaning over the keyboard. “Most people in Refuge City just want to hear sports scores and entertainment news. But some of the more serious news sites devoted a lot of time to this disaster. . . .”

  “Something that happened in tiny little Cursed Town was that awful?” I whispered numbly, even as I sank into a chair. “Awful enough that people in Refuge City noticed?”

  People who weren’t Enu, Kiandra, and me, anyway. Or Enu’s basketball-playing friends. I thought about my parents’ expressions when they’d assured Enu, Kiandra, and me that they were “thriving” in Cursed Town and everything was fine. They’d known about the fighting.

  They’d known that they could get away with lying to us.

  Zeba patted my shoulder from behind, but I didn’t look back at her. I kept my eyes glued to the computer screen. br />
  Her father paused in his typing.

  “The fighting in Refuge City set off . . . repercussions for the entire planet,” he said. “I think the newscasters can explain it better than I can. This is from last week, the first announcement.”

  He hit the enter key, and a grim-looking woman appeared on the screen. She had on a frilly blouse and a bright gold suit. Her hair was stiff as a helmet, as if someone had spent hours turning it into an architectural structure. But her face sagged, and her skin had a grayish tint that made me think of dismay and distress. She looked as hopeless as the old people waiting out in the dining area of the soup kitchen.

  “This is hard news to impart,” she said. “We’ve just learned that events in Cursed Town this afternoon have triggered the most controversial aspects of Agreement 5062.”

  Someone gasped behind her in the news studio. Or maybe I let out a gasp myself.

  “Agreement 5062?” I repeated. “I’ve heard of that. On the plane—or rocket ship—coming from Fredtown. That was the agreement that said none of the Freds were allowed to come home with us. And that the men who did bring us home—they had to leave, like, twenty minutes after dropping us off. . . .”

  “That was only one part of Agreement 5062,” Zeba’s dad said. “The whole agreement had all the details about what would happen when you children came home. And . . . about what would happen if there was any fighting after you got home.”

  “As of this afternoon, the Enforcers have returned,” the newscaster said. “I repeat, the aliens known as Enforcers are back on Earth because of fighting in Cursed Town. They are in charge. For now they hold control only in the restricted regions around Cursed Town, but if any fighting spreads, they will expand the territory under their control.”

  I didn’t know what—or who—Enforcers were, so her words just flowed over me. I wanted to complain, Can’t we just get to the lists of the injured and dead? But I wasn’t sure I could say the word “dead” out loud.

  And, anyhow, the newscaster was saying, “Here’s video we’ve obtained of the fighting today.”

  Her face disappeared, replaced by grainy footage of a scruffy-looking marketplace.

  “Oh! That’s the marketplace in Cursed Town!” I cried. My heart thudded hard; I remembered that the day Rosi had found me fishing in Cursed Town’s creek, she’d been on her way to see her father in the marketplace. She’d been taking him lunch.

  And then she was supposed to spend all afternoon with him selling apples.

  But I saw her after that, that night! I reminded myself. I know she stayed safe that afternoon!

  I just didn’t know what had happened to her the next afternoon. Or the next one. Or the one after that.

  Or, for that matter, I didn’t know if she’d gotten home safely the night we’d both sneaked out. The night I was kidnapped.

  The night I’d avoided thinking about for a week and a half.

  “What day was this?” I asked Zeba’s dad, even as the scene on the screen flashed around aimlessly, showing peaches, cassava root, and bags of rice, all laid out on tables for sale.

  “Monday a week ago,” he said distantly, his eyes on the screen.

  The day after I’d been kidnapped. The day after my parents had sent me away because . . . because they knew no one was safe in Cursed Town?

  Or because they knew the fighting was coming?

  Someone darted across the screen—a girl carrying a small boy piggyback-style.

  “Oh! There’s my friend Rosi! With her brother Bobo! She’s safe!”

  I didn’t hear if Zeba or her father answered, because I was watching Rosi so intently.

  Rosi scrambled up on top of a table. That was not very Rosi-like. If I’d done something like that, Rosi would have scolded me, No, Edwy, don’t! It doesn’t look very safe. You might get hurt. You might ruin the goods someone has for sale.

  What had happened to Rosi to make her desperate enough to act like me?

  A close-up of Rosi’s face appeared. She seemed to be shouting something, but I couldn’t hear what it was. Instead the newscaster’s voice apologized, “Unfortunately we only have visuals of this, not audio.”

  “She’s probably telling everyone to be peaceful and calm and nice to everyone,” I told Zeba and her father. “That’s how Rosi is.”

  In the next instant someone punched Rosi in the stomach.

  “No!” I screamed. “No, no—”

  Rosi, with Bobo still on her back, doubled over and wobbled at the edge of the table.

  “Somebody help her!” I screamed, as if I were right there and everything was happening right now.

  Hands reached up for Rosi, but no one steadied her. No one soothed her or gently helped her and Bobo down, like any Fred would have done.

  Instead these hands yanked her off the table, and slammed her and Bobo toward the ground.

  “What? Who does that to Rosi?” I cried.

  On the screen people crowded around her and Bobo. I saw someone lift Bobo and pull him away from the throng, but Rosi didn’t stand up. Nobody helped her. And even though Bobo screamed and held out his hands toward where Rosi had fallen, people kept passing Bobo farther and farther away from his sister.

  “Zeba, you don’t have to watch anymore,” I heard Zeba’s father say. I realized she was crying behind me.

  Zeba’s father reached for the keyboard, as if he intended to shut everything down. I grabbed his hand and shoved it away.

  “I have to see what happened next,” I insisted, and Zeba’s father drew his hand back.

  I was watching for Rosi so intently, it took me a moment to realize that lots of people had started hitting each other. A man picked up a kitchen knife from one of the tables and started brandishing it.

  And then everything swayed and went black, as if the camera filming the scene had fallen to the ground.

  The newscaster in the gold jacket appeared on the screen again.

  “Unfortunately, that’s all the footage we were able to retrieve,” she said.

  I looked to Zeba’s father.

  “You said there were lists,” I hissed, as if I was accusing him of something. “Lists of the injured and the dead. Is Rosi . . . Is Rosi . . . ?”

  “What’s your friend’s last name?” he asked.

  Oddly, I had to think hard about that. Even back in Fredtown I’d made a big deal about having people call me Edwy Watanaboneset, my full name. I’d liked every single one of those syllables. But Rosi had laughed at that. She’d been the only Rosi around, so she didn’t see why people had to waste their time saying her first and last name. But of course I knew what her last name was.

  “Alvaran,” I said. “She’s Rosi Alvaran.”

  Zeba’s father didn’t answer, but quietly typed something into the computer.

  “She’s not on the list of the dead,” he said, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “She isn’t on the list of the hospitalized.”

  Well, there. Everything was fine. Rosi was okay.

  But Zeba’s father was still typing. Something else came up on the screen, and he sat back so he didn’t block my view. But my eyes were too blurry to focus. I could only stare.

  “Your friend Rosi was thrown into prison as one of the combatants,” he said.

  Combatants? Combat? People who fight?

  “That can’t be!” I protested. “Rosi wouldn’t fight! Who would put Rosi in prison? That’s got to be a mistake! Someone needs to fix this—of course Rosi’s innocent!”

  Zeba’s father peered at me, and it was awful how much pity his gaze contained.

  “Regardless,” he said. “She was in prison. But . . . she escaped. And nobody knows where she is now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I tore back into my own apartment.

  “Kiandra!” I screamed. “Kiandra, you have to help me!”

  I’d run all the way home from the soup kitchen. My breath came in ragged gasps, and after I swung the door open, bangi
ng it against the wall, I had to stop for a minute to lean over and try to inhale.

  The apartment was silent and almost as dark as when I’d left it two hours—and a lifetime—ago.

  “Kiandra?” I called again.

  A bedroom door creaked open—not Kiandra’s, but Enu’s.

  Oh, yeah, the whole “Don’t you dare wake me until morning” threat . . . I guess this isn’t really what Enu would call morning yet. . . .

  I didn’t care if I made him mad. Not when Rosi was missing.

  But when he stepped out of his room, he wasn’t rubbing sleep out of his eyes or balling his hands into fists. He was already dressed, in his blue basketball warm-up suit, his orange basketball T-shirt peeking out from underneath. The front of his hair looked damp, as if he’d splashed it while washing his face.

  “Edwy, where have you been?” he asked. “Why aren’t you ready? It’s almost time to leave for the big game!”

  “What?” It took me a ridiculous amount of time to remember that a basketball game was the reason he’d been so upset about me disturbing his sleep in the middle of the night. “Oh—the game. I can’t go. I’ve got to get Kiandra to help me find my friend Rosi. She’s missing. Kiandra can hack into any computer and find out anything she wants, can’t she? Can’t she?”

  That was the hope I’d been holding on to, all the way from the soup kitchen.

  “Rosi? Who’s Rosi?” Enu squinched up his face into his most annoyed expression. “How important can this friend be if I’ve never heard you mention her even once, the whole time you’ve lived here?”

  So important that I was afraid to mention her name to you even once, the whole time I’ve lived here, I thought. Because if I talked about her, that would remind me I left her behind. . . .

  To Enu, I just said, “More important than a basketball game!”

  Dimly, behind me, I heard the ding of the elevator. Had Kiandra gotten up early and gone out on some errand? And was she just now coming back?