Surviving Antarctica (2 page)

“I’ll pay you a dime. That’s all you’re worth.” The old woman’s teeth were the brown, unhealthy color of the endless smog that blanketed the city.

“Okay.” Polly tried to ignore the woman’s
rudeness. Once her mother had been unable to afford a television repairman, and her fear had made her grouchy, too.

The old woman flung the dime into Polly’s empty jar.

“There’s a basement sale on the corner of Broadway and Fifty-first that lists a used television along with an EduTV attachment,” Polly said.

“You’re sure?” The old woman shook a bony finger at Polly.

“I saw it on a bulletin board.”

“I want my dime back if you’re wrong,” the old woman warned her.

Polly shrugged and wondered how her father had worked at this job for thirty years.

A boy her age walked up. He had long, shaggy hair and a broken front tooth.

Polly tried to look serious, as a memorist should.

“I lost my Toss,” he said in a quavering voice.

Polly knew how he felt. She had lost hers, too.

“I was wondering, are there any other scholarships for kids advertised?”

“Why, yes,” Polly said. There had been one in the newspaper. It felt strange to realize that she hadn’t even thought about it for herself.

“What do you charge?”

“Oh, give me what you have,” she said. Charging a boy as poor as herself would make her feel bad.

He threw a nickel into her jar.

“So?”

“The Secretary of Entertainment is producing a
Historical Survivor
show with kid contestants.”

“What age?”

“Fourteen.” Polly’s exact age. The age when teleschool ended and only the rich, along with the lucky few who won their Toss, got to continue their education.

“Tell me more,” the shaggy boy said eagerly.

“It’s going to be a simulation of the Robert F. Scott expedition. Five kids need to make it to the South Pole with the supplies Scott had. There’s prize money.”

“Where do you apply?”

“The application is on EduTV.”

“Gee, thanks!”

As he jogged away, she couldn’t resist shouting, “Those
Historical Survivor
shows are dangerous!”

“What do I have to lose?” he called over his shoulder.

Polly listened to the clip, clip, clip of Mr.
Jones’s toenail clippers in the next stall and the shouts of a roving food vendor: “Hot dogs, hot dogs!” She watched swarms of ragged people passing by. What do I have to lose? Polly wondered.

Robert Johnson pressed his nose against the fence of Motorworld. For forty-five dollars a boy could spend the day at Motorworld driving any of its “thousands of vehicles specially outfitted for young teens.”

Peeking through the fence, which was all Robert had ever done, was free.

A kid his age was working the controls of a miniature red-and-black helicopter, which rose up and then settled back down on the landing pad.

A few Jaguars, Ferraris, and Corvettes sped around the track fast enough for the kid drivers to feel they were driving the real thing.

One trailer truck plodded along on the track. Behind the windshield, a boy’s face shone with excitement.

If Robert ever got the chance, he’d drive one of those race cars. But wishes were for babies. Wishes were for people of the twentieth century, not the twenty-first.

“Robert!” Joey Washington hollered at him
from across the bayou.

Robert turned away from the shiny vision of Motorworld.

“Come on and tell me where to look, Robert!” Joey shouted.

Last year a giant mud slide had submerged a parking lot a little to the east of Motorworld. Robert had dug up a pickup truck there. He could probably use some help dismantling it. “Meet me at the bridge!” he yelled back to Joey. The bridge was a water tower that had fallen across the bayou.

Robert dodged the mud-encrusted trash piled on the banks of the bayou until he came to the silver water tower. He climbed onto the trestle at its base and surveyed the smelly brown water passing underneath.

Joey was already there.

“Someday I’m going to break into that Motorworld and drive every car I want,” Joey said. He straddled the
H
of
HOUSTON,
the name inscribed on the fallen tower.

“You’re dreaming,” Robert said.

“You dream, too,” Joey said.

“I just scavenge.”

The boys heard a buzz. An ad airplane was circling overhead. A banner burst loose from its rear. It read: “
KIDS: TRY OUT FOR ANTARCTIC HISTORICAL
SURVIVOR. $100,000. APPLY BY AUGUST 14.
”

“You should do that, Robert,” Joey said.

“Has it ever snowed in Houston?”

“Naw, you’re a bayou man, but …”

“You got it. I’m a bayou man.”

“I’m stuck here,” Joey said sadly, looking at his dirty shoes. “But if anybody could get out, it would be you.”

Robert didn’t answer him. August 14 was this Saturday. He wondered if he could afford to take the afternoon off.

“If you do, remember us here in ol’ flooded Houstontown.”

“I’ll remember your lazy self for all my life,” Robert said. “Do you have any tools with you?”

Joey shook his head.

“Go home and get some tools, and I’ll meet you back on the bridge in a couple of hours.”

Joey walked off slowly, whistling. He was never in a hurry to do anything.

The ad plane circled again.

One hundred thousand dollars!

With one hundred thousand dollars, Robert could buy several motorboats and start a hauling business.

But he couldn’t remember: Was Antarctica north or south?

* * *

Billy Kanalski stared at the Compu-gametable. His father had designed the round table with a computer top. Every game in the world was in its memory. When a player selected his game, the colored board and game pieces appeared on the screen.

The table was a great idea, a cool invention. It was just that the toy companies were stupid losers who didn’t know a great game when its bright lights flashed in their fat faces.

At first the Compu-gametable had promised success. In those early days, Billy and his parents had vacationed in the largest indoor mall in the world and had once ridden in a white limo that was so long it had trouble turning corners. But those early days were over, and now Billy was hungry almost all the time.

Billy pushed a button and the table lit up with reds, blues, and purples. “What game do you want to play?” the table asked him.

I don’t want to play any game, Billy thought. I want to have lunch. I want to go to high school and college. Since he had lost his Toss and his father hadn’t been able to sell his invention, Billy couldn’t hope for further schooling.

Billy punched the button for Navigant. The fake starry background and bright purple compass appeared on the screen. It had been one of
his favorite games since he was a child. Players traveled across the globe, navigating by the location of the sun and stars, and using simulated compasses and a gauge capable of reading longitude and latitude. He had played the game so much that he no longer needed to consult the instruments.

A news bulletin flashed across the top of the screen: “Trying to top her popular
Alamo Historical Survivor,
the Secretary of Entertainment has announced a new
Historical Survivor
series. This one will involve fourteen-year-old kids. The MVP—the contestant voted Most Valuable Player—will get one hundred thousand dollars. All contestants …”

One hundred thousand dollars?

Billy’s mom and dad appeared at the door. Billy noticed first that his mom didn’t have a grocery bag in her arms, then that his dad still looked discouraged. “Hey,” Billy said. The map of the world lit up next to the purple compass. Idly, Billy’s finger traced a path south.

It was Grace Untoka’s turn to be “it.” She counted to one hundred in the central plaza of Pueblo Village, looked around for her cousin, and almost bumped into a family of tourists. The family all had cameras dangling from
their necks. The daughter wore a flowered shirt that matched her beret. “My parents want a photo of a Hopi. Can we snap your picture?”

“I’m an Iñupiat Eskimo, not a Hopi.”

The girl smirked.

Grace didn’t say anything. Hopis and Iñupiat Eskimos both had straight black hair. But the Hopis’ skin was reddish while the Eskimos’ was yellowish, and Grace’s cheeks were full, not hollow like the Hopi kids’.

“You sure look like a Hopi.”

Grace turned her back on the tourists. As she listened to the girl march away, she tried to calm her anger. Of course the girl mistook Grace for a Hopi. Grace was standing in the plaza of a pueblo in the middle of an Indian reservation in Arizona. Some days even Grace thought that she was a Hopi. But her grandfather had always reminded her, “You are an Iñupiat Eskimo with a proud six-thousand-year history.”

“Grace, I don’t want to play hide-and-seek anymore.” Her cousin Aleqa crept out from her hiding place. “Look what I found.”

Grace stared at the animal Aleqa held in her outstretched hand. Grace had raised baby kangaroo rats before. “It’s got a broken leg,” she said, noticing the naked bone.

“Eskimo, Eskimo, Eskimo …” Tommy Screechowl, one of her many tormentors, was shouting at her from behind an adobe building.

“Take it to my clinic,” Grace whispered to Aleqa, “and I’ll meet you there in just a minute.” She was sure that if presented with a choice, Tommy would chase her, not her smaller cousin.

“Okay.” Aleqa started down the path to the discarded refrigerator carton that housed Grace’s clinic. Right now her patients were a blind dog and a bald goat.

“You can’t catch me!” Grace called to Tommy.

His footsteps pounded the trail behind her.

Grace ducked into her family’s shack and almost knocked her mother down.

“Whoa! What’s wrong?” Grace’s mother put a pile of T-shirts and one old pair of sealskin socks on the table. “Those boys were after you again.” She shook her head.

It was a statement, not a question, and Grace didn’t have to answer. Years ago Grace’s family had been subsistence hunters in Alaska, roaming an area that was among the least populated on earth. Because there were so few people there, Congress had voted to turn her tribe’s land into a nuclear waste dump, and the
government had offered the tribe a deal. It would pay to move them to a Hopi Indian reservation in Arizona. They would be given a few acres of land and a tractor.

Grace had been born on the reservation. All she knew about the ways of the Iñupiat were what her grandfather, her parents, and the elders of the tribe had told her. But every day she was tormented and bullied by the Hopis for being an Eskimo and mistaken by the tourists for a Hopi. It didn’t seem fair.

Her mother hugged her. “I’m sorry. They’re just ignorant kids.”

A rock sailed through their one small open window and clattered onto her grandfather’s table. His tools and skinning knife crashed onto the floor.

Her mother screamed.

Grace knelt by the scattered objects. She missed her grandfather so much. He had died only a few weeks ago. Tommy Screechowl was lucky that her grandfather’s knife wasn’t broken.

Grace ran out the front door to look for Tommy.

Tommy smiled at her from behind the neighbor’s beat-up truck. When he was sure that Grace had seen him, he disappeared.

Grace returned to her mother, who was holding the rock.

“Those boys are getting worse and worse,” her mother complained.

Grace leaned over her mother’s shoulder. Her mother unrolled the piece of paper that had been wrapped around the rock.

“
Historical Survivor.
Set in Antarctica. For the first time, taking applications from kids,” Grace read slowly. She looked into her mother’s broad face. “I guess Tommy wants me to move to Antarctica.”

“That’s silly. There’ve never been any people in Antarctica.” Her mother turned away to finish the laundry.

Grace slipped the flier into her pocket. Antarctica. Even the name sounded white and clean.

“YOU LUCKY, LUCKY
kids.” The Secretary of Entertainment was beaming at Andrew, Polly, Robert, Billy, and Grace. “You have been chosen from a pool of 4,825 applicants.”

Polly sat with the other winning contestants around a long table at the Department of Entertainment in Washington, D.C. The walls of the room were lined with photos from
Civil War Historical Survivor, Bubonic Plague Historical Survivor
,
Titanic Historical Survivor
, and
Egyptian Pyramid Historical Survivor
, to name a few. Staring at the old-timey rifles, crushed and missing limbs, and pocked and bloated faces, Polly didn’t feel lucky at all.

Billy wondered what lies the other kids had told to be chosen. It was true that he was almost an Eagle Scout, but he wasn’t the snow-and-ice expert that he had pretended to be on his application. He had gone skiing only twice.

Andrew had a stomachache.

Robert had a million questions to ask the Secretary.

Grace wondered if snow still tasted good, as it had when her grandfather lived in the Arctic. Her parents had moved to the reservation just before Grace was born. Her father had died shortly after her birth, and her mother couldn’t remember what snow tasted like.

“You all know one another, don’t you?” the Secretary said.

Robert nodded. If you called shaking hands and saying “hi” knowing one another, he thought.

“And you’ve all seen our popular
Historical Survivor
series?” the Secretary asked.

Polly nodded. She hated the shows.

What a stupid question, Billy thought. Since the public schools had closed, every kid fourteen and under who wasn’t enrolled in private school was required by law to watch teleschool.

“Then you know that
Historical Survivor
can be dangerous,” the Secretary said.

Andrew thought of the Texans lying in bloody heaps all around the Alamo. But those were adults, not kids. Surely for kids the show would be different.

Robert guessed that of the five, he was the only one who understood danger.

Grace willed the idea of danger to become a snowball, and she tossed it away.