The Other Side of the Island

  The neighborhood children hushed and stared when Honor approached. They would not play basketball with her anymore. Their parents had warned them. Honor’s parents had committed a Selfish Act. Even though Corporation Counselors came to talk to them, Will and Pamela would not give up Quintilian. Now every afternoon on day seven, Will was required to volunteer for digging ditches. He dug ditches to pay his debt to society. Pamela wheeled the recycling bins to the curb for the whole row of town houses. This was how she paid her debt. The bins were heavy, but none of the neighbors helped Pamela. No one wanted to be seen with the Greenspoons, because a family with two children was Not Approved.

  There were no gifts or baby showers for second children, no balloons or celebrations. There were no openings for second children in the Colony day-care system, and so Pamela couldn’t work like the other mothers; she had to stay home with Quintilian. Pamela did not complain. Even though she looked tired, she never said she was sorry for what she’d done. She loved Quintilian. At first Honor didn’t think she could share her mother’s feelings, because the baby had caused so much trouble, but gradually she changed her mind.

  Quintilian was cheerful. His dark eyes were perfectly round, and when he learned to sit up, he clapped as if he were applauding himself. He made Honor laugh. She liked to squeeze his fat legs and watch him learn to stand and babble. She loved to rest her hand on his huge fuzzy head.

  On Errand Day, when the family slept in late, Honor would carry Quintilian into their parents’ room. Then she’d bring in the Errand Day Leaflet from the front door, and Will and Pamela would sit up against their pillows and fold paper gliders from the leaflet’s stiff pages, announcing the new week’s Goals and Initiatives. Waste Not, Want Not: Save and Reuse Boxes, Bags, Bottles, Shoes. Anti-roach Week: Invest in Traps TODAY. Families were meant to post the Goals and Initiatives on the wall right next to their picture of Earth Mother. Sometimes the Greenspoons did, especially after Mr. Pratt or his wife, Mrs. Pratt, came calling. Most weeks they forgot.

  Whoosh! Will and Pamela launched those paper gliders over to Quintilian, where he stood holding on to the foot of the bed. He’d laugh and laugh. Sometimes he laughed so hard he lost his balance. Then, with a surprised look on his face, he’d find himself sitting down. When Quintilian picked up the gliders, they went straight into his mouth.

  For breakfast on Errand Day, Will made pancakes. He fried them on his griddle. “A big one for Daddy, a middle-size one for Honor, and a wee little tiny one for baby,” he said.

  “Aren’t you forgetting someone?” Pamela asked.

  “Patience, patience, don’t be in such a rush,” teased Will.

  “I’m hungry, you know,” said Pamela.

  “Do you think we should feed her?” Will asked Honor and Quintilian. “Well, all right. A great big enormous one for Mommy.” He scraped up all the leftover batter and poured an extra-big pancake for Pamela at the end.

  Then, when breakfast was over, the family would go off shopping or wheel their dirty clothes to the neighborhood washing machines. They’d pile up their laundry in Quintilian’s stroller and he’d ride on top.

  But the best times of all were afternoons at Peaceful Park. The park was big and dusty, and hardly anybody played there. No one liked that scorching field without a single tree. No one except the Greenspoons. Peaceful Park was perfect for flying kites.

  Will and Pamela built two kites, and they were amazing creations. Pamela cut the kites out of old red rain ponchos. Will rigged the fabric to the lightest, thinnest lengths of green bamboo and tied each kite to an extra-long roll of cord. Finally Pamela drew faces on the kites with black laundry marker. Great toothy smiles and crazy bloodshot eyes. On breezy days when the wind was not too light and not too strong, Will and Pamela and the children flew their homemade kites in Peaceful Park until they were specks in the blue sky. When the wind was just right, the kites felt so strong and safe up there that Honor imagined nothing could budge them.

  “Ho hum,” boasted Will, “I could stand here all day and this kite would hold. It’s like fishing.”

  “Fishing in reverse,” said Pamela. “Sky fishing.”

  “What do you fish for in the air?” asked Honor.

  Pamela and Will started laughing. “Oh, planets,” said Will. “The occasional comet. An asteroid or two.”

  Honor held one kite string, and Will held the other. Pamela held Quintilian. On those afternoons, four did not seem like the wrong number for a family. Four seemed just right.

  Other days were difficult. Will stayed out late and Quintilian cried and wouldn’t go to sleep. Then Pamela stroked his back, and Honor tried to sing him lullabies. She sang him “Safe We Shall Abide,” the hymn she’d learned at school. “Safe we shall abide, from wind and rain and tide . . .”

  But Quintilian didn’t like the song and screamed louder than ever.

  Pamela walked up and down with him until he finally drifted off. Then Honor couldn’t sleep. She stayed up worrying, afraid the Neighborhood Watch would find Will after curfew. Mr. Pratt and Mrs. Pratt were always on the lookout. Pamela sat next to Honor on the bed and drew pictures. Fluidly, Pamela drew animals with a pencil. Cats and horses seemed to come alive on paper. She practiced for hours, filling every scrap she could find. But Honor kept glancing at the window. Where did her father go at night? “Why is he late?” Honor asked.

  Pamela never answered that question.

  When Honor was eleven, she got a new teacher, Miss MacLaren, and her class visited the school library once a week. Although owning books was Not Allowed, borrowing books from the library was Encouraged. Once a week Honor borrowed a school library book to bring home. She read about the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz. She read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, a book about four children who teamed up with a lion to save the world from winter. And she read The Secret Garden, about a little girl and boy who planted flowers that never died.

  Honor loved the school library, but she was also afraid of it. The floors were polished wood, and they creaked. The bookcases were high and set close together. In the center of the room Miss Tuttle, the small, golden-eyed librarian, sat watching everyone like a cat. Miss Tuttle had long thick hair she stroked back now and then away from her face. She powdered her face white, and her small hands and cheeks were puffy. Whenever classes came in, Miss Tuttle was working at her desk marking books and cutting out paragraphs with scissors. No one talked, because Miss Tuttle needed to concentrate. She bent over her work and every once in a while lifted up a page to admire the cutouts she had made—so many small and large rectangles in some places that the paper looked like lace. Then she swept the cuttings into her white recycling bin.

  Every week, all the children in year H, both boys’ and girls’ classes, filed into the library, and each child picked out a book from the low shelves close to Miss Tuttle’s desk. Honor and Helix often looked at the medium and higher shelves, but they knew better than to touch books up there. Once, when Miss Tuttle was bent down over her cutting work, Helix whispered, “I dare you.”

  Honor hesitated. Then she reached out and touched the edge of a dark blue book on the upper shelf. Instantly, Miss Tuttle said, “No, no, not for you. Those are for older children.”

  “How did she see me?” Honor whispered to Helix.

  “She sees everything,” he said. “If you ever try to hide a book from her, she’ll find it. And if you . . .”

  “Silence is golden,” said Miss Tuttle.

  That same day, two boys, Hawthorn and Hector, began pushing and shoving in the back of the library. Hector was an orphan. His parents had been taken, and so he slept at school with the other orphans in the Boarders’ Houses. Everyone was supposed to treat orphans kindly, but they were scheming children. They always had a hungry, jealous look about their eyes. The girls in Honor’s class called this look orphanish. The truth was, orphans always wanted whatever anyone else had. Hector was fighting with Hawthorn because he wanted Hawthorn’s book.

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p; “Class, please come to the front,” said Miss Tuttle, but the boys were too busy squabbling to listen. Miss Tuttle did not rise from her chair. She pushed a small red button with her finger. Bing! At once, as if by magic, a pair of doors opened at the back of the library. The doors opened wide to reveal a great dark cavern of a storage room. All the children stood transfixed. Hawthorn and Hector stopped fighting and stared in awe at the blackness. Then the doors swept closed again and Miss Tuttle beckoned the boys forward with the others. “There is no fighting,” she said. “Fighters go in there. Any questions?” she asked the class assembled before her desk.

  Bravely, Helix raised his hand. “Is it true that you’re a Retriever?” he asked Miss Tuttle.

  “Yes, I am a licensed Retriever,” Miss Tuttle said. Coolly she opened her desk drawer and showed the children her tranquilizing darts. She held up a dart for them to see. The students stared in awe. The dart was slender and just the length of Miss Tuttle’s finger. Honor could scarcely breathe. When she looked at the dart, its delicate point glinted silver. A memory was returning to her, a memory of long, long ago. She was almost sure that once she’d seen a dart like that. She was just on the edge of knowing. She closed her eyes. She saw the pebbled beach in the Northern Islands. She saw the glint of silver. She heard her mother scream.

  Miss Tuttle shut her desk drawer with a snap. Honor opened her eyes. A little cry escaped.

  “You had a question?” Miss Tuttle turned her gold eyes on Honor.

  Mortified, Honor shook her head. The memory was gone.

  Librarians had special powers in those days. They didn’t just organize books; they were historians and record keepers. They were called Informational Safety Officers, and when families neglected to file forms, the librarians sent out notices marked Overdue.

  After Honor’s eleventh birthday her parents received three overdue notices in the mail. The first letter was stamped Overdue in black; the second letter was stamped Overdue in orange. The third letter was large and stiff and stamped Final Notice in bright red. After that letter came, Mr. Pratt sat down with Will and Pamela for a talk. Honor hid on the stairs and listened.

  “You’ve missed all of your daughter’s ten-year-old appointments,” Mr. Pratt said.

  “We’re planning to—” Pamela began.

  “Planning isn’t good enough,” said Mr. Pratt. “This is your last chance. If you fail to meet your obligations, you will suffer.”

  “Suffer?” said Will scornfully.

  “Most people do suffer when they go to the Persuasion Booth,” said Mr. Pratt. “Most people try to avoid twenty-four hours of Persuasive Reasoning and Positive Reinforcement. I’m telling you this for your own good. I’ve had some Positive Reinforcement myself. Ever notice my false teeth?”

  After that visit, Honor’s parents sent in all her forms.

  Ten was an important number in those days—even more important than it is now. There were ten months in the year and ten hours in the day. There were ten days in the week: nine days of work and school and, of course, a tenth called Errand Day.

  At ten, children could join the Young Engineers. Honor had begged her parents to let her join the neighborhood troop, but Will and Pamela had never taken her to a single meeting. Now, at last, at eleven, Honor got to wear a green neckerchief and pledge allegiance. “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United Troops of Engineers and to the Corporation for which it stands, one planet, ceiled fast . . .”

  “Just remember what you’re saying is pure propaganda,” Will told Honor when she practiced at home.

  “What’s propaganda?”

  Pamela frowned and shook her head slightly, but Will answered, “Stories Mother tells us.”

  Honor glanced at the framed picture of Earth Mother on the living room wall. For a moment the smiling face looked sinister; the twinkling eyes looked small and hard. For just a split second Earth Mother looked like a witch. Honor looked away. “Oh, come on, Dad, don’t you want me to have friends?”

  Honor’s troop was all neighborhood girls from year H, and they called themselves the Heliotropes. They met once a month at the Neighborhood Youth Center for fun and games and speeches by their troop leader, Hattie’s mother. There were sleepovers in the Youth Center with its wonderful cooling units. There were spelling bees. There were cookouts—indoors, of course, because of the heat.

  The Heliotropes worked to earn purple badges for their vests. They could only earn badges by working together. They were a team. Either all the Heliotropes earned a badge or none of them did. There were badges for recycling projects and badges for litter cleanup. There were badges for sewing and even badges for singing. “Let there always be sunshine,” the Heliotropes sang. “Let there always be blue skies. Let there always be Mother. Let us always agree.”

  Even more important than the Young Engineers, in those days, ten-year-olds received official identity cards. Honor had been waiting and waiting for her card.

  “Everybody else in my class has one!” She’d nagged her parents all year, but they always forgot, or they were busy with Quintilian. Will and Pamela were disorganized. They piled up papers in their closet and sometimes lost them altogether.

  Now, at last, shamefully late, Pamela took Honor into the City on Errand Day and the two of them stood in line at the Identity Bureau. The line was long and snaked all the way around the edges of the tiled lobby.

  Honor was so relieved and happy. She swung her hat by its strings.

  “Stop that,” said Pamela.

  Honor was wearing her new school uniform: a khaki skirt and a white blouse with a window in the pocket for her identity card, just like those on grown-up clothes. Honor craned her neck to see the front of the line, where ushers directed people into different offices.

  “Stop fidgeting,” snapped Pamela.

  “Why are you angry?” Honor asked. She wasn’t sure exactly why her parents tried to keep her back the way they did. They didn’t like her to go to the Young Engineers. They didn’t want her to get her identity card with the privilege of her own little coupon book at the Central Store. She wasn’t sure why all this made her parents so unhappy, except that they didn’t want her to grow up.

  “Next,” said the usher, and the line edged forward. Nervously, Pamela smoothed Honor’s bouncy hair.

  They had been waiting an hour before Pamela signed a special permission slip and Honor was called into a small white room much cooler than the lobby. A registrar sat there on a stool. He didn’t say hello. He looked tired and blotchy.

  “Right thumb,” said the registrar.

  Honor pressed her thumb onto an ink pad and then onto special paper for a thumbprint. “Index finger,” said the registrar.

  She held out her finger and gasped in pain and surprise as he pricked her with a needle. Quickly, he smeared the drop of blood on a plastic card.

  “Photo.” The registrar sat her down in a straight-backed chair and disappeared behind a large camera on a tripod. “Keep still,” he told her as he clicked the shutter. Then he pushed the buttons on what looked like a small adding machine. The machine spat out a slip of paper, which he gave her. “Here’s your number,” the registrar said. Her number was printed in gray ink: 571207. Head down, Honor left the room. She didn’t feel excited anymore.

  TWO

  HONOR’S PARENTS DID NOT MISS ANY MORE IMPORTANT deadlines. She made sure of that. When she turned twelve, Honor got her own Storm Emergency Kit with flares and a bottle of water and packets of energy crackers. The kit included a booklet called Youth Safety, with directives for Safe disposal of dangerous litter. “Dispose of needles in red biohazard bins. Dispose of shattered glass in blue glass bins. Dispose of leaflets immediately. Leaflets marked with the word Forecaster are dangerous to the community. Reading them is a crime. Keeping them is a crime. Fold them in half and then in half again. Drop them in the nearest white paper recycling bin.” When she turned thirteen, Honor went to the Corporation Health Office and received a pamphlet called Eart
h Mother’s Guide for Girls, which had drawings of flowers with stamens and pistils and also cross sections of beehives, wasps’ nests, termite mounds, and mole rat colonies. We are here on earth to produce without stinting and reproduce within limits, the book said. We give what we can, do what we must, and take only what we need.

  The year Honor turned thirteen was important in the Greenspoon family because it was also the year Quintilian turned three. At three, Quintilian was finally eligible to start school. That meant Pamela could get a job.

  Quintilian was a dreamy brown-eyed boy with short-cropped curls. He always had an imaginary story or game in his head and often bumped into things because he paid no attention to where he was going.

  Will and Pamela worried Quintilian wouldn’t get into the Old Colony School and that he would be sent to a special school for Special Children. Before Quintilian’s interview, Will and Pamela and Honor all sat with him and told him what to say.

  “Who cares for the earth?” Honor tested Quintilian.

  “Earth Mother,” Quintilian shouted.

  “What are her watchwords?”

  “Peas, dove, and toy,” Quintilian answered.

  “Stop it!” Honor said. “You know the answers.”

  But Quintilian just laughed at her. He thought he was funny.

  Honor was worried when Miss Blessing came to the house for the interview. Quintilian did not know the Corporate Creed by heart. But Miss Blessing did not question a three-year-old so closely. She asked Quintilian to draw pictures instead. When he drew a picture of his family, he drew five round smiling faces with stick legs and arms.

  “Who are all these people?” Miss Blessing asked him.

  “Mommy, Daddy, Honor, Quintilian . . .”