Restoring Harmony Read Online Free PDF Page A

the thirtieth,” she said.
    “Wow.”
    It’s not like eighty-nine is ancient exactly. We had a few old-timers on the island. But they mostly sat around and gossiped. I didn’t think any of them could walk two miles.
    “Are you as shocked by the U.S. as you are by my age?” Jane asked. I could hear the smile in her voice.
    “It’s different than home, that’s for sure,” I said. “We’re kind of insulated from the rest of the world because they cut back ferry service years before the Collapse. That forced us to form a self-sufficient community.”
    “No bread lines?” Jane asked.
    “What’s that?”
    She laughed. “It’s an old term, like soup kitchens. A place where hungry people can get a meal.”
    “Oh, we have poor people on the island, but the church makes sure they have enough to eat. We’re almost all farmers or fishermen, so food’s not really an issue.”
    “Are there many fish?” Jane asked, surprised. “I thought they’d been pretty much cleaned out by commercial fishing.”
    “After the Collapse, the big boats couldn’t get any fuel,” I explained. “So they stopped fishing. It’ll never be like it was because of all the pollution, but the fish have come back in surprising numbers. My family still doesn’t eat them, though, because my parents are worried about mercury.”
    “Yeah,” Jane agreed. “There’s a boy in my neighborhood who catches them and every once in a while he’ll bring me one. At my age, I’m not that worried about mercury. As long as it doesn’t have two heads, I fry that sucker up and enjoy it.”
    Jane cracked me up! We talked more about my home, and I told her about the men in suits in Seattle and how they’d pulled that man into the car. Jane explained that the police had ignored it because it probably had to do with illegal gambling.
    “But if it’s illegal, why didn’t they stop them?” I asked, confused.
    “Because the police are on the take-bribes,” she said, “to look the other way.”
    “Oh.”
    That didn’t really make me feel any better about what happened, but at least I didn’t have to worry about men jumping out of cars and grabbing me. At least, not if what Jane said was true. We fell silent, shuffling along the path. A burst of wind whipped a branch and the tips of the needles brushed my face; the smell of pine floated around me.
    Eventually, faint streaks of light began to turn the edges of the sky a dull gray. “Dawn already,” Jane said. “Boy, will I be glad to get home.”
    “Me too. But that won’t be for a while.”
    Only a few stragglers were behind us now, and as the sky lightened, a pinkish hue showed me that Jane’s mouth was hanging open, and her cheeks were flushed. Even with bare feet I’d been walking too fast. I immediately slowed down.
    “No, keep going,” she said. “You’ll miss your train.”
    “It’ll wait.”
    “I doubt it,” she argued. “You better hurry on ahead. You need to get off your feet.”
    My soles were caked with mud, and they were so cold I couldn’t feel a thing. I didn’t want to miss it, but I couldn’t leave Jane behind either.
    “Look,” she said, pointing. “You can see the train. You go and I’ll probably make it anyway.”
    “I don’t-”
    “Just go.”
    She gave me a smile and a shove, and I hugged her quickly and lumbered off as best as I could on my frozen feet. My hand felt empty and alone without her warm one enclosed in it, and my heart ached for home. Ahead of me there was a long platform crowded with people, and a tiny station with a cracked sign hanging at an angle that said OLYMPIA.
    The maintenance path sloped down to a concrete platform, and I hurried across it, hoping to get a seat. There were new passengers streaming through the station doors too, so the already-crowded train would be packed. I slipped my wiry frame through the crowd and placed myself by the door to one of the cars so I could jump on if I had to but I could also see if Jane was