Children of Exile Read Online Free PDF

working himself up to a tantrum; with a little more air in his lungs, he could have become hysterical.
    â€œDon’t worry, Bobo,” I said, putting my arm around him. “There’s a mountain waiting for us at home, too. It’s just got a different name. Remembrance. Can you say that?”
    â€œâ€Šâ€™Membrance,” Bobo muttered, making the word sound sad and ominous.
    The plane jerked just then, seeming to jump a few feet higher in the sky for no reason. I’d never been on a plane before; was this normal? All around us, kids started shrieking. I expected the pilot or one of the other adults to speak over the intercom system and calm everyone down, but that didn’t happen.
    I unbuckled my seat belt and stood up.
    â€œEveryone! Everyone! Stop screaming!” I yelled in my loudest voice, trying to make it carry over shrieks and sobs and moans. I tried to figure out what a Fred might say. “We’re fine! It’s just turbulence! Planes do that sometimes. Just keep your seat belts on and everything will be okay!”
    I think some of the kids around me heard and settled down, but I was near the back of the plane; the kids at the front would have had to be terrified.
    I took a step toward the aisle.
    And then the PA system crackled to life. There was a sound like static, and then a man’s angry voice said, “Girl in the back, sit down and put your seat belt back on. How dumb are you? Do you want to be killed?”
    Did he just call me dumb? I thought numbly. Dumb? He did. He really did.
    â€œDumb” was one of those words that could only be used for objects or animals—a dog might be called, sympathetically, a “poor dumb beast.” Or someone who was really mad might say, “My dumb pencil broke.” But all the adults in Fredtown had drilled into us that we should never call another child dumb; no matter how furious we got, we were never allowed to blurt out, “Well, you’re just dumb!”
    Every now and then a kid slipped up, and that led to long, patient talks from one of the Freds about how awful it was to hurt another person’s feelings.
    How could an adult call someone dumb?
    I wanted so badly to go to the man on the PA system and explain, Yes, I know I’m putting my life at risk—a little bit—by taking my seat belt off and standing up. But I’m doing it for a good cause. I’m trying to soothe the little kids. That’s brave and kind, not dumb.
    I wanted to defend myself against that awful label, “dumb.” I thought that would have counted as standing up for my own rights. Not as being rude or disrespectful.
    Then I realized Bobo was tugging on my arm and screaming hysterically, “Rosi, don’t be killed! Please, please don’t die!”
    The little girl at the end of our row, six-year-old Aili, was screaming, “Don’t want anyone killed! Want to go back to Fredtown!”
    As far as I could tell, every kid on the plane was now screaming just as loudly as Bobo and Aili. Maybe even Edwy was. Maybe even I was. It was that word, “killed.” It was like a match put to the dry tinder of the worries and fears and sorrow of leaving behind our Fred-parents and everything we’d ever known. It was like the whole plane had been engulfed.
    I had to do something. I had to do something for all the kids, not just Bobo and Aili and the others near me.
    â€œShh, shh, don’t worry,” I told Bobo and Aili. I pulled myarm away from Bobo’s grasp. He cried even harder, but that couldn’t be helped right now.
    â€œEverything will be okay,” I told Bobo and Aili. “I’m going to fix this.”
    It took a lot of courage, but I stepped out into the aisle. I walked as quickly as I could toward the front of the plane, toward the little sectioned-off compartment where the adults—the non-Fred adults—were sitting.
    Kids screamed louder as I passed, but I