The Other Side of the Island (12 page)

Read The Other Side of the Island Online

Authors: Allegra Goodman

Tags: #Nature & the Natural World, #Social Issues, #Families, #Family, #Juvenile Fiction, #Individuality, #Fantasy & Magic, #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #Family Life, #Weather, #Peer Pressure, #Islands, #General, #Domestic fiction

BOOK: The Other Side of the Island
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FOUR
GRADUALLY, HONOR BEGAN TO SLEEP BETTER, AND
Quintilian’s nightmares stopped. Safety Officers did not search the house again. When the children came home in the afternoon, they didn’t jump at every little noise.
Life improved. Will was promoted at work, and at last the Greenspoons moved to a new house on higher ground. The house was an end unit with a little garden. The kitchen was big enough for a round table.
The previous tenants had disappeared and left their furniture. There was a green armchair and a couch with a pattern of palm leaves all over it. There were curtains at the picture window next to the front door.
“Don’t catch the curtain in the door!” Pamela was always telling Honor when she came in or out. If the curtain got caught, it could get grease stains from the lock. Will laughed at Pamela for fussing, but she insisted, “Now that we have them, we’re going to keep them nice; we’ve never had living room curtains before.”
Honor and Quintilian got separate rooms. Quintilian got a tiny bedroom of his own, and Honor got to sleep in the study attached to the living room. The room had a built-in desk and a shelf, and sliding doors she could close at night to shut herself off from the living room when she wanted to sleep.
Honor was proud of her father’s promotion and the new house. But when Honor looked at Will and Pamela, she felt helpless. They broke curfew more than once after moving. They went outside sometimes in the middle of the night. Honor asked them where they were going so late. “Stargazing,” said Pamela.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Honor asked.
“When you look up at the stars, you can see patterns,” Pamela said. “The Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, Orion’s Belt. Gemini. You can learn hundreds of constellations.”
“Your mother knows them all,” Will said proudly.
“Well, not all of them,” said Pamela, but she looked pleased.
“How can there be hundreds of constellations when there are seven stars in the sky at night?” Honor asked.
Pamela looked uncomfortable. “That’s just the overlay,” she said.
“Those stars are decorative,” Will reminded Honor. “We look for the real ones.”
“What real ones? Where can you see real ones?” Honor asked.
“Away from the City,” said Will.
“And how is that Allowed?” asked Honor.
“No one ever said it’s Not Allowed,” her father told her.
“It’s after curfew, so obviously it’s Not Allowed! You can’t just go off by yourselves in the dark.”
“We aren’t by ourselves. We go with the Thompsons,” Pamela said.
Honor shook her head. Her parents were difficult. They laughed at weather drills and water regulations. They even complained aloud about their volunteer work. “Why do we have to volunteer for the anti-litter campaign?” Honor’s father grumbled as he set off every evening on day three.
“Because everyone in the community has to combat litter,” said Honor, accurately reciting what she’d learned in school.
“Yes, but why do they call it volunteering if I am required to go?”
Honor worried about her father constantly. He said all the wrong things and he didn’t even care. She worried about her mother too. One day when Pamela was drawing, Honor saw a leaflet tucked inside her book.
Counter-Directives for a New World
1.
Cultivate your own fruit trees and eat fresh fruit each day.
2.
Find dark places and study the night sky.
3.
Try to remember something new each day.
4.
You have nothing to fear but fear itself . . .
—The Forecaster
“Where did this come from?” Honor demanded.
“I found it on the ground. In the City,” her mother said.
“You’re not allowed to collect these. You’re not supposed to bring these home!”
“I need the paper,” said Pamela. “I draw on the back.”
Honor snatched Pamela’s drawings and turned them over. “Keep a diary. Write down your thoughts . . .” On the back of each drawing, Honor saw the Forecaster’s words. She began ripping the drawings, one after another.
“No, Honor!” Her mother snatched her artwork away.
“You can’t keep those,” Honor protested. It was a crime just to read the Forecaster’s leaflets. If Safety Officers found them in the house, Honor didn’t know what would happen.
“Please get rid of them,” she begged her mother, but Pamela didn’t listen.
Honor felt her family was heading toward disaster.
“I want to know where you go,” she told her father.
“What are you really doing at night?” she asked her mother.
“Stargazing,” her mother insisted.
“Tell that to Quintilian; don’t tell that to me.”
Her parents said nothing.
“Why can’t you stay home?” Honor asked.
“We wouldn’t go if it weren’t important,” said her mother.
“Tell me!”
Her parents turned away from her.
“What you don’t know can’t hurt you,” her father murmured.
“At least give me some warning you’ll be home late,” Honor pleaded.
Her parents looked at each other. Then her father said, “Time for dinner.” The discussion was over.
However, on Errand Day, when the four of them went to the Central Store, Will and Pamela stopped at the photo booth.
“We’re getting our picture?” Quintilian exclaimed with delight.
“Honor,” said Will, “you get to pick a glitter globe.”
She couldn’t believe her luck as she stood at the booth where a sign said: PICK YOUR OWN ENCLOSURE. She stood a long time gazing at the globes. They were the size of mangoes, perfect little worlds, each filled with water and glitter. She couldn’t decide between the one with plastic palm trees, tiny pink flamingos, and the words Safe and Secure or the underwater scene with miniature fish and plastic coral. In the end she picked a different one altogether, a little red barn with a white picket fence, glitter green as grass, and the words Welcome to Our Country.
They paid twenty points and entered the photo booth one at a time for their portraits. Then they watched as their miniature full-length pictures emerged from the photo machine. In their photos, even Will and Pamela stood no more than half an inch high. A young woman in a white photo booth uniform cut out each image. She inserted the pictures in grooves in the black base of the globe and then took out a clear plastic Enclosure already filled with glitter, scenery, and water. She snapped the base and Enclosure together and gave the globe its first shake. There they were in miniature, the four of them smiling in their tiny farm. Quintilian grabbed the globe and shook it hard.
“Careful!” Will warned him.
“It’s guaranteed watertight,” the photo booth lady told them, “as long as no one drops it.”
“Don’t let him hold it,” Honor begged her parents. “He’ll drop it before we get out of the store.”
Usually Pamela just told Honor not to complain about Quintilian, but this time she listened. She took the glitter globe and put it in her purse.
At home, Pamela kept the globe. Honor was disappointed. Since she’d chosen the scenery, she’d thought it was her special present.
“Why did you buy it if you’re going to hide it?” she asked.
But the next afternoon, when she came home from school, Honor found the globe on her desk. Will and Pamela stayed out late that night, past curfew, past bedtime.
After Honor put Quintilian to sleep, she turned off the light in her room, lay down, and held the globe in her hand. She shook it and tried to make out the dim figures next to the little barn. Her eyes closed, and her fingers loosened. When she woke up in the morning, she was afraid she’d dropped the globe and broken it. Pamela came in and found Honor hunting under her bed.
“I put it away last night when I got back,” Pamela said.
Then Honor understood that her parents had left the glitter globe out for her because they’d planned to be away. She sat back on her heels. Her parents had listened to her. They were giving her warnings about when they would be gone.
 
She began to see that she was quite different from her parents. She understood how to get along where they did not. At school she’d learned that if you played by the rules, you did well. Ms. Lynch was her teacher that year, and she said there was a time and a place for everything.
School wasn’t hard, once you understood how to fit in. If you fit in, then you wouldn’t need thinking time or accident forms. In fact, you would never get in trouble. Honor saw all this, but her parents didn’t.
She decided that year she was going to fit in, even if they did not. She would be perfect. If she had a test, she would get all the answers right. If she had homework, she would earn the extra points for neatness.
Honor worked on her penmanship. Each letter was small and perfect on the page. Her printed words looked like ants marching along on the lines of her notebook paper. Gradually, she began to write even smaller. Now her words looked like aphids on the veins of a leaf. The ancient civilizations waged war against each other, Honor copied painstakingly. Their weapons were loud and violent. Their guns shot missiles called bullets with tremendous force. Bullets lodged in the flesh of victims or even blew off parts of their bodies. Other weapons included bombs, which caused explosions and fires. There were no Watchers to guard against wrongdoing. There were no tasers or compost bins. The Rule of Self-order was unknown. She got A’s in all her classes because her work was Accurate. Ms. Lynch said so.
Know your place. Do your job. Live in peace. That was the Rule of Self-order. Honor lived by that rule now. She did not think about the Northern Islands. In fact, she could not remember them at all. She thought only about her life in the Colonies and her work at school. She did not want to stick out anymore. She did not want to be unusual.
She decided she would change everything about herself that didn’t fit. That meant she had to stop being friends with Helix. None of the other girls in her class was best friends with a boy. They talked about the boys and giggled about them, but they weren’t friends with them; they were only friends with one another. So Honor decided she would tell Helix she couldn’t play with him anymore at recess.
“We can’t,” she told him. They were at his parents’ house sitting on the floor of his room, playing Truce. Quintilian was building with Gizmos on Helix’s bed. Gizmos weren’t just blocks. They had magnets inside so they clicked together. Some Gizmos were solid colored and some were clear so you could build cities and then build Enclosures all around them. They were Quintilian’s favorite toy, and Helix had thousands of them from when he was little—whole boxes and bins of Gizmos. “We’re too old for Archeology anyway,” Honor said.
Helix got up and took down his coin collection from the shelf on his wall. He had a whole collection of coins now. Quarters, nickels, dimes. He even had an ancient penny. “Why are we too old?”
“Because,” said Honor.
“Because what?”
“We’re thirteen,” said Honor. “When we spend all our time finding coins in the playground, we look odd.”
“Why does it matter how we look?” asked Helix.
“Because!” Honor burst out, frustrated. She was having trouble putting it into words. “You’re supposed to be playing ball with the boys,” she said. “My best friend is supposed to be a girl. We stick out.”
“You never cared before,” said Helix.
“If you stick out,” said Honor, “then sooner or later, you’re going to get in trouble.”
“If you don’t want to be friends anymore,” said Helix, “then fine.” He threw down his cards.
“Well, I do, but not . . .” Honor trailed off. “At school,” she said at last in a small voice.
“You want to be like them,” said Helix.
“No, I don’t,” said Honor, but that was exactly what she wanted. She wanted to be like the other girls.
“Hmm,” said Helix. “You’re stupider than I thought.”
“No, you are.”
“No, you.”
“No more fighting,” Quintilian said.
“Shut up,” said Honor.
“I’m telling Mommy you said a bad word,” said Quintilian, scrambling off the bed.
“Go ahead,” said Honor.
“Mommy!” Quintilian raced down the hall.
“Coward.” Helix glared at Honor as he scooped up the cards from the floor.
After that Honor and Helix didn’t play together. When their parents made them come along to each other’s houses, they wouldn’t even look at each other. Honor stayed near her mother. But Helix got the best revenge. He made friends with Quintilian. He taught Quintilian all the card games he and Honor used to enjoy and spent hours building Gizmo cities with him. Helix didn’t just ignore Honor; he took Quintilian away from her.
Honor told herself she didn’t care. She was busy all the time with homework and Heliotropes. And always at school she watched the other girls to learn how to be like them. She noticed how they combed their hair behind their ears and how they wore their sun hats far back on their heads. She copied the way they sat with their arms on their desks and the way they whispered about one another.
“Did you see Hortense had gum?” Honor told Helena as they cleared away their lunches.
Helena drew closer and Honor murmured, “She’s got sticks of gum stuck up her socks.”

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