The Other Side of the Island (18 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
She didn’t have to tell Honor twice. All the children at school knew to take their consequences quickly or the punishment would be doubled. While Ms. Lynch comforted Helena, Honor took a red card from the box on her teacher’s desk and marched to the principal’s office.
When she got there, she was surprised to find the door closed. She had never seen Miss Blessing’s door closed before. She knocked softly.
“Just a moment,” Miss Blessing sang out.
But she did not come to the door for a long time. Honor stood out in the hall until her legs got tired. She stood on one foot and then on the other. Finally, she sat down on the floor and waited. Then, all at once, the door opened. Helix ambled out, carelessly, as if going to Miss Blessing’s office were the easiest thing in the world. He didn’t look at Honor, but she heard him whisper, “Have fun.”
“Come in, Heloise,” said Miss Blessing. She glanced at the red card in Honor’s hand. “I am very sorry to see that.”
Honor took her seat across from Miss Blessing’s desk.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Miss Blessing asked. Her voice was so strange. Her words chimed like silver bells.
“I’m sorry,” said Honor.
“Is that the truth?” asked Miss Blessing.
“Of course it is,” said Honor.
Then suddenly, Miss Blessing’s eyes narrowed. She did not seem sweet at all. “Don’t get orphanish with me, young lady,” she said.
Honor was shocked. She had not known orphanish was a word that adults used.
“What do you say?” Miss Blessing demanded.
“I’m sorry,” Honor said.
“There is a way orphans become that is sullen,” Miss Blessing said. “When orphans become that way, they are Unhelpful and fall into bad mistakes. You may observe other orphans act that way. See that you don’t. Now,” Miss Blessing said, “tell me what you did.”
“Hester and Helena were saying—”
“But I didn’t ask what they were saying,” said Miss Blessing. “I asked what you did.”
“I wrinkled Hester’s uniform,” said Honor.
“And was that all?”
“The pocket ripped,” admitted Honor.
“Was that all?”
“Yes.”
“Then you will work in recycling for Mr. Sweeney three early mornings,” said Miss Blessing. “You’ll have an hour each day before your chores.”
“But I start chores at sunrise,” said Honor.
“Those who fight will lose some sleep,” said Miss Blessing.
Honor did not know how she would wake up on time. She had no alarm clock. She couldn’t sleep for fear she’d oversleep, and then when she did drift off, she’d wake with a start and stare at the clock on the wall, fearing it was now time. The colors of the night sky didn’t help, because heavy shades covered all the windows. At last Honor gave up sleeping altogether and sat up in bed. When the wall clock showed almost hour four, she dressed and pulled on her work overalls and walked outside.
The air was cool before the sun began burning through the atmosphere. The sky was still indigo. In two hours orderlies would begin the day shift, but now the school grounds were empty. Honor hurried to the recycling plant behind the gymnasium. The plant was built of cinder blocks. There were no proper windows, only places where the walls were built of glass bricks. Inside were separate sorting rooms for metal, glass, paper, and plastic. Ancient posters decorated the walls. They were printed with the legends DON’T BE A LITTERBUG! and REDUCE, RECYCLE, AND REUSE.
Honor heard a clanging, thumping sound inside the building. That was Mr. Sweeney smashing cans. He was an old white-haired man with bright blue eyes and gardening gloves. He stomped on the cans as though he liked his job.
“Let’s get to work,” said Mr. Sweeney when he saw Honor. “And you too,” he called over his shoulder.
Honor saw Helix leaning against the wall.
“The two of you can start in the paper room and fill the wheelbarrows with white.” He pushed a wheelbarrow toward Honor and one toward Helix and the two of them trundled the wheelbarrows to the door of the paper room. They left their wheelbarrows in the hall.
Honor stopped short in the doorway of the school’s paper room. She’d never seen so much paper in her life. The room was stacked high, almost to the ceiling, with newspapers, broken-down boxes, folded brown paper bags. The floor was covered with white paper scraps. She and Helix could barely take a step; they were knee-deep in white paper. Some of the white paper was printed all over, some was blank, some pieces were large, and some snippets were as thin as Honor’s finger.
“We have to collect all of this?” Honor asked. “How can we do this in an hour?”
“We can’t,” said Helix.
“But it won’t get done,” Honor said, almost despairing.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Helix. “It will never get done. Nothing ever does.” His voice was hard and careless, as if to remind Honor that they weren’t friends.
“I’ll shovel, you push,” said Helix. He took a great metal shovel and began filling the first wheelbarrow.
“I could shovel too,” said Honor.
“I doubt it,” said Helix. “You’re not strong enough.” He scooped a load of white scraps into the wheelbarrow. “And besides—there’s just one shovel.”
Honor tried to pick up piles of paper with her hands and carry them into the hall. The paper was heavy and slippery too. Her arms hurt. She tried to carry too much, and the paper slipped onto the floor. Stacking it up again, she cut her hand between her thumb and forefinger. The cut was small but painful. Tears started in her eyes.
Helix pretended not to notice. He said, “Wheel this down to the end of the hall and dump it in the bin while I fill the other one.”
“My finger’s bleeding,” she said.
“It’s just a paper cut.”
She hesitated, but then she did as he said and wheeled the full load of paper down to the end of the hall. By the time she came back, Helix had the second wheelbarrow almost full of white paper. Honor watched him shoveling the white scraps. Suddenly a memory returned to her. “The paper is like snow.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve seen it.”
Helix was shocked. Honor couldn’t help grinning at his startled face.
“You have not,” he said. “You have not seen snow.”
“I have,” she told him. “I saw it when I was little. We used to live in wild places.”
“Was it as white as this?” Helix kicked the white scraps at his feet.
Honor nodded. “Yes.”
“Was it like feathers?”
Honor tried to think.
“Was it soft like feathers? Or hard like crystals?”
Honor thought and thought, but she couldn’t remember. All she could picture was her father shoveling. The snow itself had no substance in her memory, just the color, pure white.
“How come you never told me you saw snow?”
“I’d forgotten. Anyway, it’s no longer Accurate,” Honor added hastily. “Now snow is eradicated in the Far North—”
“What do you mean, eradicated?”
“The Polar Seas are ceiled in the North and in the South,” said Honor. She was practically quoting from her climatology textbook. She’d copied the words so many times. “The North is Safe and Secure.”
“No,” said Helix.
“What do you mean?”
“The North isn’t secure at all. Enclosure does not extend beyond the Polar Seas. Enclosure has just begun. They’ve barely started.”
“How do you know?” Honor demanded.
“My father told me. Didn’t your father tell you?”
Then, deep inside of her, Honor remembered when her father had taken her down to the shore. Dimly she remembered what he had told her that night and how the water shone silver and the sand felt like warm honey on her hands. But she also remembered how dangerous his ideas were. Her father had thought she was afraid of the sea, but that was only part of it. She had been afraid because even as he spoke, she knew that she would lose him.
She did not want to make her father’s mistake and lose her life. Stubbornly, she shook her head at Helix. “If Enclosure were barely started, then none of us would be safe.”
“We aren’t safe,” said Helix. “We never were safe. And we aren’t going to be safe.”
“Stop!” Honor cried out. Without even thinking, she lifted her hand and slapped Helix’s face.
The two of them stood there stunned for a second. Helix’s cheek was red where Honor had struck him. He rubbed the place with his hand.
“Look what you made me do,” Honor said.
“What I made you do?” Helix asked.
“You’re a liar,” she accused him. “You’re the one making up stories that aren’t true.”
“How do you know?”
She threw up her hands. “Because the Northern Islands are now Enclosed. They are almost ready. They are being numbered. Earth Mother is building cities for resettlement. It’s in all the books.”
Helix was staring down at the drifts of paper on the floor. “Do you want to see something?” he said. “This paper we’re dumping—do you know where it’s from?”
Honor shook her head.
“It’s from books.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s from libraries. It’s from school libraries all over. These are the pages Miss Tuttle and the other librarians are cutting out.” He glanced toward the door. Then he took a fistful of scraps. “Look,” he said. He took a scrap and read, “‘When the red red robin comes bob bob bobbin’ along, along . . .’ No, that’s a bad example.”
He took another scrap, a sliver printed: “‘It was so easy to laugh in the springtime.’” Then another piece of paper, smashed so he had to unfold it: “‘. . . The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush / The descending blue . . .’ Look at these, they’re whole pages ripped from books. ‘Loveliest of trees, the cherry now . . .’” He rustled through the papers. “‘To Autumn,’” he read. “Look, this is from an old calendar.”
“Oh, a calendar? Does it have all the old months? Does it have July?” Honor was curious in spite of herself.
She puzzled over the words on the autumn page. “‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; / Conspiring with him how to load and bless / With fruit the vines . . .’ What does that mean?”
Helix shrugged.
“What’s thatch-eves?” Honor asked, staring at the page.
“It’s Old Weather,” Helix said. “How should I know?”
“But—”
“Shh.”
Mr. Sweeney’s footsteps grew louder in the hall and then died away again.
“Don’t you see?” Helix whispered to Honor. “They rip out everything about winter and cold and storms and even summer ending. Then they rewrite all the books.”
“How do you know they rewrite them? How do you know these aren’t just old books they’re throwing away?”
“I have proof,” Helix said. “But you have to swear you won’t tell.”
Honor nodded.
“Do you swear?”
“I swear,” she said.
Solemnly he took out some folded pages from his overall pockets. “I found these here.”
“Oh,” Honor exclaimed as she looked at them.
“You’ve read that book, I bet,” said Helix.
“The Wizard of Oz.”
“How does Dorothy get to Oz?”
“She falls asleep and dreams she goes there,” said Honor.
“Wrong!” said Helix. “Look at these pages they took out. There was a tornado and her house was swept away.”
“No!” Honor grabbed the pages, devouring the words with her eyes. There it was in black and white. Dorothy’s house was swept away by a tornado. “I can’t believe it.”
“See, they changed the book. They’ve changed all the books. They make the books up and they make the maps up too.”
Honor didn’t know what to say.
“Look where it says Dorothy’s name,” said Helix. “What’s her name in the school library book?”
“Dorothy Dale,” said Honor.
“But look what her name is here in the old version. Dorothy Gale.”
“Why would they change her name?” Honor asked.
“Because gale is a storm,” said Helix, and he pocketed the pages again.
“Don’t take those,” said Honor, horrified. “You’ll get in trouble all over again. Do you want to come here every day of your life?”
“But I like it here,” said Helix.
“Are you crazy? How can you like it here?”
“I like to read,” he said. “I like finding things.”
Honor looked down at the floor. She remembered how she and Helix had played Archeology when they were ten. “What happened to your coin collection?”
He shrugged. “It’s gone, with everything else in my house.”
“I kept the quarter for a long time,” she told him.
“Why?” he asked her.
“I wanted to.”
“Old coins aren’t good for anything,” said Helix. He kicked a pile of white pages at his feet. “These matter. Lies matter. Our parents—”
“What did they do?” Honor interrupted. “Why were they stargazing?”
“Shh. I hear him.”
Mr. Sweeney opened the door to the paper room. “You’re a couple of lazy kids, I can see that,” he said. “I’m separating you. Heloise, take the shovel and finish loading in here. Helix, into the metal room with me.”
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