The Other Side of the Island Read Online Free PDF Page B

metal detector,” Helix said.
    “How many points are they?” Honor asked.
    “I don’t know. Why? Are you poor?” Helix asked with sudden interest.
    Honor hesitated. Then she said, “Yes, I’m poor and I live by the shore.”
    “Are you a refugee?” asked Helix.
    Honor wasn’t sure what a refugee was, but she was too proud to let on. “Maybe,” she said. “I hate school,” she whispered.
    “You don’t have to be a refugee to hate school,” said Helix.
     
    The next day at recess Helix was looking for Honor. He dug into his pocket and took out a big magnet tied to a piece of string. “This one’s for you,” he said. Together they walked across the playground, trying to detect scrap metal. Honor found a rusty nail.
    “Beginner’s luck,” said Helix, and they kept walking.
    “Your father works for my father,” Helix said. “They work in the same building.”
    “The Central Computer Building?”
    Helix nodded. “What island are you from?”
    “I don’t think it had a number.”
    “You came from a numberless island?” Helix was fascinated.
    Honor nodded. “In the North.”
    “But nobody can live on a numberless island. You were evacuated, weren’t you?”
    “Yes,” said Honor.
    “What was it like? How did they find you? Did Retrievers come for you?”
    Honor didn’t answer.
    “Why were your parents sent here?”
    “The same reason everyone else was,” snapped Honor. The Colonies were the only islands with official numbers. They were the only islands where the Corporation permitted people to live.
    “But why to this island?”
    “For work,” Honor said.
    Helix looked at her skeptically. They were standing under a tree, but even in the shade the sun beat down on their shoulders. Their hair was wet with sweat under their sun hats. “If they were sent for work,” Helix said, “then why hasn’t your mother been chosen for employment?”
     
    “When are you going to get a job?” Honor asked her mother that night. She was sitting on the kitchen counter, and her parents were cooking chicken and rice in a pot.
    Pamela didn’t answer.
    “Everyone else has a job,” said Honor.
    Pamela looked at Will. Then she said, “Sometimes the Corporation has too many engineers in one place.”
    “They wouldn’t send you here if there were too many engineers on the island already,” Honor pointed out. “Don’t you want to find work?”
    “Of course I do,” Pamela said.
    “If you get a job, we could move. We could afford to live on higher ground.”
    “Yes, I realize that,” said Pamela. “I want a job very much. I have gone to the City every day and applied at every office.”
    “Then why won’t they give you one?”
    “Well, in my case,” Pamela said, “it’s because we’re going to have a baby.”
    Honor stared at her parents in horror.
    “You’re going to have a brother or a sister,” said Will. Honor gasped. Brother and sister were swear words.
    “We’re having the baby in month seven,” said Pamela.
    “How?” Honor demanded. She was dumbfounded. A mother, a father, and a child made a family. Families came in threes. She had never heard of a family of four.
    “The baby will be interesting,” said her mother, “and it will grow and go to school like you.”
    “No one at school has babies at home,” Honor said.
    For just a second her father looked angry. “What do you care?”
    “We aren’t like other people,” said her mother.
    “Who are we like, then?” Honor asked.
    Her parents laughed.
    Then Honor ran out the back door to the rocky place where her father had planted bananas, and she crouched down under their broad green leaves and cried.
    Her father came out after her, but she pushed him away. She kept crying until her mother bent down and whispered that she had to come inside. If she kept making so much noise, the Neighborhood Watch was sure to hear. She went inside and dried her tears. She sat silently at dinner.
    “I’m sorry we laughed,” her father