Children of Exile

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  For the kids of Montaña de Luz

  CHAPTER ONE

  We weren’t orphans after all.

  That was the first surprise.

  The second was that we were going home.

  “Home!” my little brother, Bobo, sang as he jumped up and down on my bed, right after the Freds told us the news. “Home, home, home, home . . .”

  I grabbed him mid-jump and teased, “Silly, you’ve never even been there before! How do you know it’s worth jumping on the bed for?”

  “I was born there, right?” Bobo said. “So I do know, Rosi. I remember.”

  He blinked up at me, his long, dark eyelashes sweeping his cheeks like a pair of exquisite feathers. Bobo was five; he had curls that sprang out from his head like so many exclamation points, and his big eyes always seemed to glow. If he’d known how adorable he was, he would have been dangerous.

  But there was a rule in Fredtown that you couldn’t tell little kids how cute they were.

  It was kind of hard to obey.

  “How could you remember being such a tiny baby?” I asked. “You were only a few days old when you arrived in Fredtown. None of us were more than a few days old, coming here.”

  I tried to keep my voice light and teasing. I was twelve; I should have known better than to look to a five-year-old to answer my questions.

  But no one else had given me the answers I wanted. And sometimes Bobo heard things.

  “Edwy says home is where we belong,” Bobo said, stubbornly sticking out his lower lip. “Edwy says we should have stayed there always.”

  “Oh, Edwy says,” I teased. But it was hard to keep the edge out of my voice.

  Of course Edwy has an answer, I thought. Even if he just made it up. Even if he knows it’s a lie.

  Edwy was twelve, like me—we were the oldest children in Fredtown. We were born on the same day. And we were the only ones who were moved to Fredtown on the very day of our birth, instead of waiting a day or two like everyone else. The Freds always told us it had been too “dangerous” for us to stay with our parents then. For the past twelve years, they’d said it was too “dangerous” for any of us children to go home.

  I was maybe three the first time I asked, But isn’t it dangerous for our parents, too? Why didn’t they come to Fredtown to be safe with us?

  The Freds always said, They are adults. You are children. Adults have to take care of themselves. It is our job to take care of you.

  I didn’t think that counted as a real answer.

  That was why Edwy and I had decided when we were ten—back when we still talked to each other—that we were probably orphans and the Freds just didn’t want to make us sad by telling us that.

  We’d argued about this a little: I said surely the newest babies of Fredtown weren’t orphans. Surely their parents were still alive.

  “But there haven’t been any new babies in my family since me,” Edwy said fiercely. He always got fierce when the only other choice was sounding sad. “And none in yours since Bobo.”

  Once he said that, I could see lots of other evidence. If our parents were still alive, wouldn’t they at least send us a letter every now and then? Wouldn’t they have done everything they possibly could to come get us?

  Didn’t they know where we were?

  When I asked the Freds questions like that, they patted me on the head and told me I was too young to understand. Or they talked about how life was made up of hard choices and, as our guardians, they had chosen what was best for all of us children. And what was best for civilization itself.

  The way the Freds talked was tricky. You had to wrap your mind around their words sometimes and turn them inside out to try to figure out what they were really saying.

  The way Edwy talked was tricky, too.

  “Rosi!” Bobo said, squirming against my grip. “I want to jump some more!”

  If any of the Freds saw us, I would be in trouble. I was twelve and Bobo was five; it was wrong for someone who was bigger and older and stronger to overpower someone smaller and younger and weaker. It was wrong to hold someone who didn’t want to be held.

  “Fine,” I told Bobo. “But mess up your own bed, not mine.”

  I turned and deposited him on his own cot. I was tempted to tickle him too, to try to bring back his glee and his ear-to-ear grin. But that would have required my asking him first, Is it all right if I tickle you? And I didn’t have the patience for that just then.

  Bobo didn’t spring instantly to his feet like I expected. He didn’t go back to bouncing. He just sat in a heap on his own bed and asked, as if he’d just now thought of the question: “Rosi, is it safe to go home now? Why was it too dangerous before but safe now?”

  I ruffled his hair and made my voice as light and carefree as a summer breeze.

  “You know things can change, you little apple dumpling, you,” I said, using the baby name our Fred-parents had given Bobo years ago. “You know the Freds wouldn’t send us home if it wasn’t safe.”

  I wasn’t like Edwy. I didn’t usually lie. Not on purpose.

  So why did I feel like I was lying to Bobo now?

  CHAPTER TWO

  Fredtown was a simple place. If I thought way back to when I was really little, I could remember when only a handful of families lived here, in only a small cluster of buildings. Even now, there were only sixteen blocks of houses, each block a perfect square laid out in grids as precise as the graph paper Edwy and I used for geometry homework. The school, the park, the library, the town hall, and the marketplace stood in the center of the town, surrounded by all the houses.

  These were the kinds of questions the little kids asked when the Freds first told us we were going home:

  Can we take the park with us?

  Can we take our houses?

  Can we take our toys?

  Who will play in the park if we’re not here? Won’t the playground and our houses and our toys miss us?

  When they gathered us all together to tell us we were going home, the Freds seemed to want to answer only the little kids’ questions. When Edwy or I—or any of the almost-as-old-as-us kids—raised our hands, the Freds caught our eyes and shook their heads subtly, the way they always did when they wanted to say, Not in front of the little ones. We’ll talk about your questions later.

  Later hadn’t come yet.

  Instead, the Fred-parents were meeting at the town hall, so all of us older kids were looking after the little girls and boys.

  I was just lucky Bobo was the only little one I was in charge of today. I was lucky I hadn’t been given responsibility for the ones who didn’t have a brother or sister old enough to babysit, like the Calim sisters (ages four, three, two, and one) or Peki and Meki, the toddler twins next door.

  But Bobo had messed up both our beds now, and was starting to fuss: “When will the Freds be back? What’s for supper? I’m hungry—can I have a snack? Will there be snacks when we go home? Can I take my teddy bear? The Freds will go home with us, right? Right?”

  “Let’s go to the park,” I said. “I’ll push you on the swing.”

  Bobo tucked his hand into mine, and we stepped out the front door.

  “Don’t want to move away from Fredtown,” he whispered. “Don’t want to move anywhere. Even home.”

  It was like som
e evil fairy godmother had cast a spell on the little boy who’d so gleefully jumped up and down on his bed only moments earlier. In the blink of an eye, he’d turned into a child who might cry at the brush of dandelion fluff against his cheek; at the scrape of a shoe against his heel; at a single wrong word from me.

  “Hey,” I said in my strongest voice. I made myself forget for a moment that I was worried about going home too. “Hey—look at me!”

  Bobo turned his head and looked. A small almost-tear trembled in his eyelashes.

  “No matter what, you will have me with you, remember?” I said. “Your big sister, who’s been with you always? Doesn’t that matter more than where we live? People matter more than places or things. You know that.”

  “I know that,” Bobo repeated.

  The almost-tear didn’t fall. But he didn’t wipe it away, either.

  “Okay, race you to the park!” I said, and took off, tugging on his hand.

  It was perfectly safe to dash off without watching where we were going. There were stop signs at all the cross streets along the boulevard. Fredtown was designed like that, to have as many places as possible to run and play.

  I told myself we were running just to get Bobo to leave his sad thoughts behind. But maybe I wanted to run away a little bit, too.

  I let Bobo beat me to the park, and he was already swinging on the monkey bars by the time I got there. I pretended to huff and puff, making my final strides into huge, dramatic events, just like our Fred-daddy always did.

  “Can’t . . . take . . . another . . . step,” I panted, totally hamming it up. “Oh, wait. . . . Almost . . . there. Almost . . .”

  I made my steps gigantic and labored, as if I had only enough energy for one or two more.

  Bobo giggled, just like I’d hoped.

  “You’re silly, Rosi,” he called to me, dangling from the metal bars. “Watch!”

  He kicked his legs forward, building momentum to reach for the next rung of the monkey bar. He’d just learned to swing all the way across the bars. Fred-mama, Fred-daddy, and I had all stood there and clapped for him his very first time, only last week.

  And now it was my turn to have tears stinging my eyes. Those were the same monkey bars I’d first conquered when I was about Bobo’s age. I could remember Fred-mama and Fred-daddy clapping for me, too, standing in the exact same spot. Every memory I had was like that—located in Fredtown. My whole life had happened here: either on the sun-splashed playground; or in the bright, open, cheery school; or in the marketplace aisles, crowded with a world of treasures; or at our house, where Fred-mama and Fred-daddy took turns tucking Bobo and me into our beds. . . .

  Why didn’t they just tell us to call Fredtown “home,” and never make us move anywhere else? I thought rebelliously. I slashed the back of my hand against my eyes, wiping away the tears. Or at least hiding them. Why didn’t they just tell us our Fred-parents were our real parents and left it at that? Why did they even have to mention our other parents? How much could those real parents of ours actually care if they never contacted us?

  There were other little kids on the playground, other big brothers and sisters watching carefully nearby. On a normal day, I probably would have taken charge and suggested some game everyone could play; I would have gotten busy counting off teams and doling out playground balls and appointing umpires or referees. Or maybe I would have gathered the younger kids together for a giggly session of shared jokes and riddles and silly made-up stories. But I didn’t like the way the eight- and nine- and ten-year-olds were watching me now—like they thought I had answers; like they thought I might be able to explain what it meant that we were going home.

  I kept one eye on Bobo but took a step back from the playground. I pretended I was so deep in thought that it would be wrong for anyone to interrupt me. Cupping my chin in my hand, I gazed down into one of the town hall window wells—that was what we called the dug-out spaces around the basement windows. The spaces were only about two feet by two feet, just deep and wide enough to let light in. You might think the window wells would also be great places for little kids to slip down into during hide-and-seek games, but they were too obvious, the first places any seeker looked. So mostly we all just avoided them.

  Only, there was a little girl hiding in this window well now.

  It was a little girl whose moss-green dress might as well have been camouflage, especially matched with her dark hair and dusky skin. All those shadowy colors blended in with the dappled light and pebbles and fallen leaves at the bottom of the window well. Still, I crouched down and tapped the little girl’s back.

  “Cana!” I whispered. “Quick—go hide somewhere else, someplace harder to find. . . .”

  I was surprised that this particular little girl would make such a careless mistake. Cana was only five, like Bobo, but she was unusually quick and sturdy and smart. She’d probably had all the founding principles of Fredtown memorized even before she started kindergarten: The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. And For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. And A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history. . . .

  See what I mean? Not easy words, not easy thoughts. But Cana was good at remembering.

  She turned and peered up at me, her heart-shaped face tilted just so.

  “Oh, I’m not playing hide-and-seek,” she whispered back. “I’m listening. Edwy told me to.”

  I glanced past Cana, toward the blurry, distorted shapes behind the glass-block basement window. Everything fell into place. Those blurry shapes were Freds. They were having their meeting in the town hall basement.

  And Edwy had bribed or tricked or swindled Cana into eavesdropping for him. Into spying.

  “But that’s—that’s—,” I sputtered, too angry to explain. I held out my hand to Cana. “Here. Let’s get you out of there before you get in trouble.”

  And before Edwy lets you take all the blame if you get caught, I thought.

  Cana took my hand and I pulled her up. She stood on the brink of the window well and wrinkled her tiny face into a confused squint.

  “We’re allowed to hide there,” she said. “I wasn’t breaking any rules.”

  “Except that it’s wrong to eavesdrop on the Freds,” I said, still crouched beside her. “We’re not allowed to hide there when the Freds are meeting.”

  “Why?” Cana asked. “And why not?”

  “Because we’re children and they’re adults,” I said. “Because there are things we’re not allowed to know yet.” I’d spent my entire life in a town where practically every other kid was younger than me. I could answer “Why?” and “Why not?” questions in my sleep. But this time I couldn’t stop myself from asking another question of my own. “But since you did eavesdrop . . . what did you hear?”

  I need to know so I can decide whether to tattle on Edwy, I told myself. I have to know if Cana heard anything damaging, that would require her to see a counselor to banish dangerous images from her mind. I need to know because . . .

  Because I was every bit as curious as Edwy.

  That was the honest reason.

  Cana tilted her head and gazed at me.

  “Nothing interesting,” she said. “Edwy said the interesting stuff would be anything that was opposite what they told us, and there wasn’t any of that.”

  Edwy thinks the Freds are lying, I decided. Does he think we’re not really going home? Not really going to meet the parents we’ve never known?

  “So they just said stuff you already knew?” I asked Cana.

  She shrugged.

  The Freds kept talking about how we’re all so innocent and trusting,” she said, blinking up at me. She certainly looked innocent and trusting.

  She’s five, I thought. She is innocent and trusting. That’s how Edwy could trick her without really even trying. And . . . so could I.
r />   I sighed and started to reach out to Cana, to pat her back reassuringly and tell her to run off and play with Bobo and the other little kids. But she wasn’t done talking.

  “One of the Fred-daddies said maybe they’d raised us to be too trusting,” she said. “He said . . .” She rolled her eyes skyward, as if searching her memory for the exact words she’d overheard. “He said maybe they’d just been setting us up for disaster all along.”

  Disaster?

  The word hit me like a thunderbolt. For a moment I felt like I’d had the air knocked out of my lungs.

  Then I saw the way Cana peered at me, so anxiously. I didn’t know if she’d understood what she’d heard when she heard it, but she understood now.

  Probably because of the way I reacted.

  “I’m sure he was only joking,” I said quickly. “Exaggerating. To be silly. Or talking about some kind of game. You know how some kids act like it’s a disaster to get tagged out in Wiffle ball. Edwy does that.”

  “Oh,” Cana said, wrinkling her nose. “I didn’t think of that.”

  She stood before me, a little girl in a moss-green dress. A little girl who was too smart to believe what I’d just said.

  “Just don’t eavesdrop anymore,” I said. “It’s too easy to hear something that might just confuse you. Or upset you. For no reason.”

  Cana still looked doubtful. I put my arm around her and led her toward the playground, toward the monkey bars where Bobo was playing.

  If any of the Freds glanced out from the town hall just then, would they see two innocent girls, the older one looking after the younger, like she was supposed to?

  Or would they see a whole park full of children headed for disaster?

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Last bag,” Fred-mama said, easing my suitcase onto the back of the truck that was taking everyone’s belongings to the airport.

  “Thanks,” the driver called back to her. He went on to the next house, where the Fred-parents of the toddler twins Peki and Meki started loading up.