The Other Side of the Island (7 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
“The Flood destroyed the ancient world,” Honor recited to the class. “Where there were continents, only islands are left. Where there were archipelagos, only mountainous islands remain. After the Flood, and the wars that followed, Earth Mother organized the Great Evacuation to the remaining islands in the Tranquil Sea. Then the Earth Mother rose up and spoke. ‘What is freedom? What is choice? Words and only words. We need Safety. We need shelter from the elements. Without shelter all other words are meaningless.’ Earth Mother pledged to Enclose the Polar Seas. She pledged to establish New Weather in the North and reclaim the islands there, one by one. Finally, she pledged to make a new world in the islands of the Tranquil Sea, islands She numbered and named the Colonies.”
Honor stood before the class and recited these words perfectly. Mrs. Whyte beamed at her and applauded. Seeing that, all the girls in their seats clapped their hands as well.
“I’m proud of you,” said Mrs. Whyte.
Honor flushed with happiness.
“Today you’ve come prepared.”
This was true. Honor had studied diligently. But the real reason she recited so well was that the passage was not just words to her. After the storm, she understood her schoolbooks as she had never understood before. She believed them.
When Honor saw films in school, she had nightmares. She dreamed of those dead bodies with white puffy skin and bulging eyes. She dreamed of a wave so tall it rose as high as her own house. She struggled, but she couldn’t run. She couldn’t breathe. There was no escape.
“I don’t want to drown,” she cried to her father in the night.
“You aren’t going to drown,” he said.
“I want to move,” she sobbed.
Her mother held her. “We will. We will,” Pamela said. “We’ll move as soon as we can.”
“There’s a warning system on every watchtower,” her father reassured her. “Sirens would sound and then buses would come and drive us to the mountains.”
Honor gazed out the window into the great black night. “But what if the wave is Unpredictable?”
“Come with me,” Will said. He took her by the hand and led her downstairs in her nightgown.
“No, Will,” Pamela whispered. There was a curfew in the Colonies for Safety Measures. No one was allowed outside past hour eight. “It’s after nine,” she said.
“I don’t care,” he told her.
“She’s too young.”
“She’s ten years old, Pamela.”
“She isn’t ready.” Pamela stood near the door, almost blocking Will.
“She needs to know,” he said.
“Will!”
But he took Honor and brushed right past Pamela into the night.
Honor was afraid. Her father’s mood frightened her. She had never seen him oppose her mother like that. “Where are we going?”
“Shh.” Will rushed her through the unlit gravel lot in front of the town houses and gestured for her to follow him.
Since they’d moved to the island, Honor had never been outside after dark. The night was warm and sticky but mild, as if the sun had stopped to take a breath. The air was gentle on her face and shoulders. She wanted to look everywhere at once—at the stray cats scampering in their path, at the shining stars, the round moon so much brighter than she remembered. She’d heard from the neighbor kids what a bad place the moon was; that was where the worst people went, the crazy ones who didn’t fit. They had to live on the cold dusty moon in the lunatic asylum. “How can the moon be so pretty?” she asked her father. She had never expected it to shine so bright.
“It’s an overlay,” her father said.
“What’s an overlay?”
“A light show,” whispered her father. “The Corporation projects a moon and stars onto the sky above each city. They aren’t natural.”
“They’re perfect,” Honor protested. The stars sparkled. She wanted to touch all seven of them where they shone in a circle around the silver moon. “Can I look at them? Please?”
But Will was in a rush and didn’t answer. He glanced often at the tall watchtower, almost rebuilt. Any day now, Watchers would return to guard the neighborhood.
Will hurried Honor all the way down to the danger zone fenced off near the shore. He lifted a piece of sagging barbed wire so that Honor could climb inside the barriers.
“We’re going in there?” Honor asked, astonished. “But it’s Not Allowed!”
“Come on,” he said.
“We’ll get hurt!” She pointed to the red DANGER signs posted.
“You know I’ll keep you safe,” Will told her. She hesitated. “You still trust me, don’t you?”
She scrambled under the fence and he got down on his hands and knees and crawled after her.
Then she was terrified. She heard the sucking of the sea, the great dark mass of water and the crash of waves. She would have turned and run if her father hadn’t held her. She thought she might be sick. She had sailed over the ocean to the island on a Corporation ship, but on the EMS Serenity, no one was allowed on deck. All the passengers had stayed safe inside. Before that trip she had traveled everywhere with her parents in little boats, but she had not known then what she knew now.
Honor’s bare feet touched scratchy sand. Dry sea grass tickled like insects on her legs. The ocean swelled nearer and nearer. She almost screamed.
“No noise,” Will said.
“I want to go home,” she cried as Will half carried her to the water’s edge.
“Not yet,” her father said.
She closed her eyes and buried her head in his chest. “Look,” he told her. “I want you to look.”
“No,” she pleaded.
“I’m right here.”
“But the waves,” she said. She was trembling with fear. The water was going to swallow her up. Without realizing it, she began to pray. The words came rapidly as she had been taught in school. “Hail Mother, full of grace, the earth is with you, the sea is with you, the storms sink down before you . . . Teach us your ways, Mother, lead us and guide us . . .”
“Stop that!” Honor’s father set her down and shook her hard by the shoulders.
Honor opened her eyes in shock.
“Never pray to her.”
“Don’t you believe in Earth Mother?” Honor asked.
“No, I don’t,” said Will.
“Don’t you believe she’s real?”
“Oh, she’s real, all right,” said Will. “But I don’t worship her. I don’t trust her.”
Honor shrank back. “My teacher says Earth Mother is everywhere.”
“Everywhere we allow her to be,” said Will. “Don’t you see? When you pray to her the Corporation controls you.”
Honor did not see. She shook her head.
“Use your head, Honor. Use your eyes. Do you want Enclosure to Enclose you?”
“I want to be safe.”
“Yes, Earth Mother’s Corporation is counting on that. As long as you want to be safe, they win. They get to decide how many children families have and what those children will be called and where they go to school and what they think. They get to choose where people live and what people buy and wear. They control what people read. They try to control the weather. There are islands out there you can’t see.” Will pointed to the dark water. “Hundreds of islands like this one. Some are populated. Some are experimental islands for farming and for growing food. And some hold Weather Stations. Our regional Weather Station is on Island 364. The computers there run the clocks and the hourly broadcasts. They store all of our security information. Names, ages, job and school selection, possible criminal activities. The Corporation keeps data on all of us. Data on recycling patterns, food supply. The goal is to manage everyone.”
“No—the goal is to manage storms.” Honor was trying to get away from the water. She was pulling with all her might, but her father held her by the wrist.
“The world is big,” he told her. “Weather is complicated. Do you really think the Corporation should control it all? Do you want regulated skies and filtered light? Do you want every day to be the same as the one before?” He pointed at the ocean. “Don’t you see how lovely water is? The Corporation is an overlay like the seven stars and the moon,” he whispered in Honor’s ear. “Enclosure covers the Polar Seas, but she hasn’t covered the Northern Islands yet. Not at all. Why do you think everyone is still living in the Colonies? Why do you think the Corporation retrieved us and brought us here? Because the Northern Islands aren’t ready. They aren’t safe. She’s got these islands the way she wants them. She’s got everyone living under her control, but she hasn’t got the wild places. She hasn’t even got the other side of this island. She hasn’t got the whole world ceiled yet. Not the half of it.”
Together they looked out at the water. The ocean was huge and black in the distance, but up close on the sand the rippling waves looked silvery and clear. The sea was calm. There were no big waves, just little ones.
Will bent down and trailed his hand in the foam. “Touch the water,” he said.
“It’s Unsafe.”
“No,” Will said. “It’s beautiful.” He scooped up wet sand and water and poured it over her hands.
She began to cry. Her father’s ideas were dangerous. To call the wild ocean beautiful was crazy. To say don’t pray to Earth Mother—people who spoke like that got taken. They disappeared and never came back.
“Is this water going to hurt you?” Will asked.
“Let me go home.”
“Is this water going to hurt you?” he demanded.
The warm wet sand felt thick and sticky. She was afraid she couldn’t get it off. She stumbled back toward the fence and stepped on something sharp. She thought it was a stone.
Her father picked up the sharp object as they walked home. He picked up another and another. “These are broken shells,” he said. “You can dig with them, or you can just collect them and take them home.”
They were hurrying back to their house now. With each step, Honor felt a little safer. Her heart began to calm.
“We can’t take them home,” Honor said. “Then people would know.” She meant the Neighborhood Watch would know they had been to the shore.
“We’ll hide them,” said her father.
“But what if Mr. Pratt finds them?”
“Honor.” Will pulled her to a stop and stood facing her in the artificial moonlight. “I have to tell you something important. Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t ever be afraid. That’s what they’re hoping for.”
In the evenings after school, only Pamela met Honor at the bus. Will was working extra hours because Pamela had no job. She talked about getting a letter from the Employment Bureau, but Honor knew her mother would not be chosen. How could she fit behind a desk? She was too big. When the two of them trudged home in the heat, Pamela had to stop to rest. Sometimes they took shelter in the shade of a ruined hotel called the Paradise Sands. The hotel was not submerged like the ones past the barriers on the beach, but it was marked with red tape for demolition. In front a smooth driveway and grand stone steps rose gracefully to shattered glass doors. The steps were shaded by a broken metal trellis covered with sweet-smelling vines. Pamela and Honor often rested on those steps, and Pamela played number games with Honor to pass the time. She taught Honor how to count by threes and nines and twelves. And then she taught Honor other ways to count.
“You don’t have to count from one to ten the regular way,” said Pamela. “There are other ways of counting. For example, you could count like this: zero, one, ten, eleven, one hundred . . .”
“Why would you want to do that?” Honor asked.
“Why not?” asked Pamela. “It’s just notation. It’s just another way to count. You’ve learned arithmetic in base ten, but there are other bases you can try. Base two, base seven. It’s like a secret code. It’s fun.”
Honor liked the idea of a secret code. She learned how to count in base two. She practiced until she could count quickly, higher and higher: “Zero, one, ten, eleven, one hundred, one hundred one, one hundred ten, one hundred eleven, one thousand, one thousand one, one thousand ten.” Once she knew the pattern, it was easy, but she knew better than to mention base two at school.
One day, Honor and Pamela were sitting on the hotel steps when a cat walked past. They often saw cats in the neighborhood. The cats were small and sleek and lived wild by the shore, crawling under chain-link fences, killing rats, and sunning themselves beside empty swimming pools. This one was black with two white paws in front, and he leaped down from the stairs into a shady spot filled with trash. He disappeared quickly, but Honor noticed something bright in the litter pile of smashed-up lounge chairs and broken glass. It was a blue bag with a blue strap.
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