The Other Side of the Island

  “And who is this one?” Miss Blessing pointed to the largest face.

  “Earth Mother,” said Quintilian, looking at Miss Blessing with his dark, trusting eyes.

  Miss Blessing smiled. “What a sweet child,” she told Will and Pamela. “It’s a pity you did not give him back to the community.”

  Honor looked at her parents, but they did not answer this. Tense, they sat across from Miss Blessing and waited for her verdict.

  “We will do our best with him,” Miss Blessing said at last.

  On his first day of school, Quintilian was ready long before Honor. He didn’t cry like other three-year-olds when the bus came. He had been waiting to ride the school bus his whole life.

  “Pay attention to your teacher,” Pamela reminded Quintilian as he climbed the bus stairs.

  “Stay near Honor,” said Will, as if it were perfectly normal for a family to send two children to school.

  Quintilian sat next to the window and Honor sat on the aisle. She scrunched down and looked straight ahead when other students got on. She didn’t want to hear them ask why a girl from H was sitting with a little kid from Q.

  She’d been waiting for Quintilian to start school, but now that he was actually coming, she was embarrassed. As soon as the bus arrived at Old Colony, she took him by the hand and hurried him over to the teacher for year Q. She did not want to be seen with him.

  “Class,” said Mrs. Goldbetter that afternoon, “open your history books to page fifteen. Hildegard will recite today.”

  “North America was divided into three parts. . . .” recited Hildegard. “The Northern Lands were uninhabitable because of ice and snow. The Southern Lands were desert. The Midsection of the continent was more favorable, but the people there were Unpredictable. They built weapons; they practiced war; they committed so many Crimes against Nature that the climate overheated. Gas from factories, cars, and heating and cooling units damaged the earth’s atmosphere. Heat built up until the polar ice caps melted. The tides rose; dams and levees broke. Houses, businesses, and streets filled with mud. After the Flood, North America was no more. With the ceiling of the Polar Seas, Earth Mother Stabilized and Secured the Northern Islands that remain. The Northern Islands now enjoy New Weather, but the Corporation has not yet numbered them for resettlement. Future Planners are now mapping new cities in the Northern Islands. This artist’s drawing (facing page) shows a plan for a city called Security on an island in the Northeast. The Central Plaza displays the famous Arm, which broke from a larger idol known as the Statue of Liberty. The Arm holds a torch, which will light the plaza at night. . . .”

  Even as Hildegard recited at the front of the class, Honor imagined the other girls were whispering about Quintilian. She sensed them passing notes.

  At recess she was careful to stay far away from the small fenced playground where the littlest children ran and screamed.

  “Look what I found,” said Helix, running over.

  “Let me see. Is it rare?”

  “Hey, don’t grab. Finders keepers.” Helix’s fist closed.

  “Oh, come on, let me look,” said Honor. “Did you find this with your magnet?”

  “No. By hand. I think it’s silver.” Helix was trying to rub the mud off an ancient coin. He spat on it.

  “That’s disgusting,” said Honor. “Take it to the water fountain.”

  They went to the water fountain near the swings and washed the coin until it shone. There was a face on one side and a statue on the other. They bent over the coin, and on the face side they read the words UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, LIBERTY, IN GOD WE TRUST, and QUARTER DOLLAR. On the statue side were the words NEW YORK 1788 GATEWAY TO FREEDOM, the old-style date 2001, and the ancient legend E PLURIBUS UNUM.

  “Look, it still says God on it,” Honor said.

  “Where? Where?”

  “It’s in the small print.”

  “That’s how you can tell it’s from before the Flood,” said Helix. He held the coin carefully between his thumb and index finger.

  “What do you think you could buy with this?” Honor asked.

  “I don’t know, maybe a . . . book,” said Helix. “A big coin like this could buy a lot. That’s why it says e pluribus unum. That means ‘out of one, many.’ One coin could buy many things. What would you buy if you could buy anything?”

  Honor thought about this. “I would buy a . . . house on high ground.”

  “You can’t buy houses,” said Helix.

  “You said if I could buy anything.”

  “Then I’d buy a telescope,” Helix whispered.

  “That’s Not Allowed,” Honor said automatically, but she wasn’t really listening. She was gazing anxiously at the fenced area where the tiny boys were playing. Quintilian was there among them, but he looked like he was pushing another boy. Was he playing, or was he fighting? Where was the teacher? What if he got hurt? What if he got caught? Suddenly Honor sensed Helix watching her watching Quintilian. She turned away, embarrassed.

  The teachers blew their whistles. Everyone ran to line up under the trees. The faster the children lined up, the faster they could reenter the air-conditioned classrooms.

  “Here,” Helix said, and he pressed the coin into Honor’s hand.

  She was confused. “What about finders keepers?”

  But Helix had already run to get in line.

  At the end of the day, Honor waited for Quintilian to get on the school bus. Everyone else boarded, but Honor didn’t see Quintilian. The driver started up his engine and began closing the doors. He never waited more than a moment.

  Honor jumped onto the steps and blocked the closing doors with her body.

  “Wait! We’re missing somebody.”

  “Sorry,” said the driver, and he released the brake.

  At that moment, a tearstained, disheveled Quintilian ran up the bus steps. Honor grabbed his arm and charged inside. Swoosh. The door swung shut behind them. The bus lurched forward, and Quintilian and Honor stumbled down the aisle to their seats.

  “What happened to you?” Honor whispered, angry and dismayed.

  Quintilian’s clothes were ripped and muddy. He held out a red card from the office.

  “You got a red card? Your first day?”

  “Don’t talk to me!” Quintilian squeezed his eyes closed and covered his ears with his hands.

  “Why were you fighting? Don’t you know better than that?”

  “He called me a brother!” Quintilian said.

  THREE

  “MY MOM GOT A JOB,” HONOR TOLD HELIX AS SOON AS she saw him at recess the next day. She’d been waiting all morning to tell him.

  “But it’s an Undesirable job,” said Helix.

  Honor was hurt. “How do you know?”

  “My mother says you only get one chance to be an engineer. After that . . .”

  “After that what?” Honor demanded, hands on her hips.

  On Errand Day she found out. Will took Honor and Quintilian to see Pamela at the gift-wrapping department in the Central Store.

  The Central Store was the size of a city block, and its doors were so tall they seemed to reach the sky. Inside the store there were whole rooms just for school uniforms. There were entire floors stocked with food. Will and the children walked through aisles of canned vegetables and aisles of frozen chicken parts. There were shelves upon shelves of cereal boxes. However, all the vegetables were the same: green beans, corn, and sliced olives. All the chicken parts were breasts, giant breasts from the Central Chicken Factory on Island 221. All the cereal, thousands of boxes, was one kind of granola without raisins. In the Colonies, the selection of food for sale depended on what shipments had arrived that month. There was special food for high-ranking engineers and members of the Corporation, but everyone else had to buy what the Central Store offered.

  Despite this, Will said, “Maybe we’ll find something different this time.” They were walking through an aisle of jelly. As far as Honor could see, as high as the ceiling
were little jars of grape jelly. But Will was looking carefully. “Keep your eyes open,” he told Honor. “You never know.”

  Quintilian was running around. He kept darting up the aisle and bumping into other customers.

  “Stop him.” Honor was embarrassed.

  Will paid no attention. His eyes were fixed on a small jar on the bottom shelf. “Aha! Got one!” There it was, a tiny golden orange jar in the midst of all that purple. Will snatched it up. “Apricot preserves,” he whispered to Honor. There must have been an inventory error in the Central Computer. Something so rare was never intended for the general public, but there was the jar with a regular price sticker: four points, just like the grape jelly. The orderlies at the cash registers would never look at what was in the jar, only the price. If you found something like that in the Central Store, you could keep it. “This will be for Mommy’s birthday.”

  Will had a faraway look in his eyes. “I can’t even remember the taste of apricots,” he said.

  To Honor the Central Store was like a palace. When they took the elevator up to the seventh floor, it was like going up to a beautiful fairground. There were booths with fresh popcorn popping and lollipops on sticks. There was a booth that sold little Corporation flags in green and blue, and there was a photo booth where you could get your picture taken and then framed—or even inserted into a glitter globe filled with water. You shook the globe and glitter swooshed up over your photo like confetti.

  “Could we?” Honor begged, even though she knew they could not afford it.

  At the back of the seventh floor was the gift-wrapping booth. Pamela stood behind such a high counter that Will had to lift Quintilian up to see, and Honor had to stand on tiptoe. Honor shuddered. Several of the workers with her mother were skilled orderlies.

  Colorful sample boxes decorated the wall behind Pamela and the other workers. There were boxes wrapped with long curling ribbons and boxes wrapped for weddings in brown and silver, and some, for new babies, even had little toys or rattles tied onto the ribbons. Each sample had a number for customers to choose. Below, under the counter, were rolls of wrapping paper and ribbon.

  “Oh, could I have a piece?” Honor whispered to her mother. Pamela was standing with her scissors just about to cut from a roll of luscious gold satin, and, almost without thinking, she snipped an extra piece for Honor, who pocketed it before anyone saw.

  “I want one! I want one!” shouted Quintilian. Will set him down on the floor, but the supervisor came rushing over as Quintilian protested, “She got one.”

  “No free samples,” the supervisor said. She was a scrunch-faced woman with silver-rimmed glasses. “Turn out your pockets,” she told Honor.

  Honor simply handed over the ribbon. The supervisor took the snip of ribbon and measured it against the long steel ruler embedded in the counter. “Two points,” she told Will, and he had to take out his coupon book. Now he had two points less for everything else that week.

  Now that Pamela and Will were both working, Honor and Quintilian walked home by themselves from the bus stop. They trudged home together in the heat, and when Quintilian got tired, Honor played I Spy with him. “I spy, with my little eye, something that begins with a T.”

  “Tower!” shouted Quintilian, pointing to the neighborhood watchtower.

  “No, don’t point,” Honor whispered. “Never point at watchtowers. I meant tree. Now let’s try another one. I spy, with my little eye . . .”

  “I’m too tired,” said Quintilian.

  “Just a little farther,” Honor said. She felt for the key to the town house in her skirt pocket.

  By the time they got to the door, Quintilian was hopping, suddenly remembering he had to use the bathroom. Honor turned the key in the lock. They were blinded at first, entering the dark house after the white sunshine outside, but they did not turn on the lights. The lights were off to save energy and keep the heat down.

  Quintilian ran to the bathroom, and Honor checked the apartment as her father had taught her. She looked up and down. She glanced at the kitchen counters and the toy basket and then checked the trunks in the bedrooms to see if there had been a visit from the Neighborhood Watch.

  “Just look to see if something is missing or out of place,” her father had told her.

  “What should I do if something is missing?” Honor asked.

  “Nothing,” her father said quickly. “Oh, you don’t do anything.”

  “Shouldn’t I call Safety Officers?” Honor asked.

  “No, no,” her mother told her then. “Don’t call anyone.”

  “Why should I check the whole house if I’m not going to tell anyone when something is wrong?” Honor demanded.

  “You’ll tell us,” her father said. He was so serious about it that Honor usually did check. But as far as she could tell, nothing in the house ever disappeared.

  Honor poured two cups of milk, and she and Quintilian ate oatmeal cookies for their snack. The cookies contained a special chemical to prevent them from becoming soggy in the damp island air, and this chemical made them so hard they were difficult to bite or even break in half. In those days the oatmeal cookies had no raisins and little sugar because of Health Reasons, but the children were used to them.

  After snack, Honor sat at the table and did her homework. She no longer had time to play outside with the neighborhood girls. She had to solve word problems and copy research papers. She had to take home a volume of The Encyclopedia of Ancient Animals and copy the entire article on penguins. The emperor penguin was the size of a child. It was the largest penguin and lived in Antarctica. . . .

  While she worked at the table, Honor tried to keep Quintilian busy. She could not send him outside by himself. The one time she’d tried, he’d wandered off and the Neighborhood Watch had brought him back with a warning. His favorite game was cutting up the weekly newspaper with scissors and folding the pages to make hats and boats. No one could read the Colony News after he was done with it, but that didn’t matter, because the news was nearly the same each week and always good. Generally, the headlines read: New Five-Year Plan a Success or Litter: A Thing of the Past. Then there was a color chart on the front page to show how litter disappeared or how New Weather was spreading over the world.

  There were no weather reports in the newspaper. They were broadcast every hour from the tops of buildings in the City. Three short beeps, then a long one and a man’s voice with the climate advisories. From inside the house, Honor couldn’t make out every word, so the bulletins sounded something like: “. . . Colony Early Weather Warning . . . if this were an emergency . . . please . . . without delay . . . humidity will be . . . no chance of . . . otherwise unchanged . . .”

  The two of them were sitting in this way in the living room when Honor heard a knock. She ran to the door immediately and opened it wide, as children were taught, and two Safety Officers stepped inside. They were wearing green jumpsuits and they carried drawstring sacks. They had no orderlies with them, but they were holding a grim-faced dog by the collar. Quintilian jumped up. He was afraid of dogs. He would have climbed on the table if Honor had let him.

  “Lady of the house?” asked the first officer.

  “Not home, sir,” said Honor, holding Quintilian by the arm.

  “Both parents at work?” asked the second officer.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The dog was straining toward the kitchen. It was a brown search dog with vicious teeth, pointy ears, and yellow eyes.

  “Mind if we take a look?” asked the first officer.

  “Yes, sir,” whispered Honor, because she did mind, very much. People got searched sometimes because of Safety Measures. Neighbors had been searched a year before; that didn’t mean there was anything wrong. She kept telling herself this as she clutched Quintilian.

  The dog broke away, lunging for the kitchen, and the Safety Officers rushed after him. Honor heard them opening the cabinets, the dog panting, pots and pans clamoring onto the floor. Glass shattered.
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  “Watch the pieces,” one man warned the other. “Off. Get off,” he ordered the dog. Honor heard the crunch of the broken glass beneath heavy boots.

  The dog thundered up the stairs with the men behind. Honor could hear the scuffle and clatter of the dog’s sharp-clawed feet. She knew better than to follow, and she held Quintilian back. What were they looking for? Her heart raced as she thought of her mother’s drawing book and pencils underneath the frayed carpet, the seashells hidden in the light fixture. But when the men came down, their bags looked empty. The dog was dragging the plaid winter blanket in his mouth. The men tried to rip it away, but the dog wouldn’t let go until they threatened him with a stick. Even then, he circled and snarled at the old blanket until one Safety Officer dragged him outside. The other stood and filled out his paperwork. He looked hard at Honor.

  “They’re coming home when?” he asked her.

  “My parents?”

  “You’ll expect them when.”

  “Hour six,” she said.

  He wrote this down. Then he said, “It’s well past six now. Good night.”

  After the men left, Honor and Quintilian stood, frozen. Honor imagined the men striding down the walk, tramping down the cement steps past other houses, through the empty asphalt lot in front of the buildings. She pictured them jumping into their Safety Vehicle and speeding off. Only then did she let go of Quintilian. The two of them raced upstairs.

  Sheets had been ripped from the beds. The closets and trunks were empty and all the clothes heaped on the floor. The dog had worried the frayed carpet and gnawed the ends, but when Honor felt for it, she could touch her mother’s book. In the hallway, the light fixture was undisturbed. She sank down on the floor and rested her head on her knees. She strained to hear her father walking to the door with his keys jingling in his pocket, but she couldn’t hear anything. She prayed for her mother to come. How could they leave her and Quintilian all alone? If it was already past six, where were they? Don’t ever be afraid, she thought. That’s what they’re hoping for.