“No. Mother just wanted a course change.”
“Why?”
“She’ll tell us when she’s ready.”
HISAKO
Age six
I was already awake when Mom came into my room. “Get up, sleepy princess,” she said.
I kicked my legs to make the covers jump. The lump of scales and bristles on my feet didn’t move. “I’m a hostage!”
Mom covered her hand with her mouth and pretended to look surprised. “Oh, my!” she said. “How are you going to get to school if you can’t get up?”
“I don’t know!” I kicked my legs a little harder. Nibble raised his head and blinked at me. I lifted both my legs at the same time, raising him like a box on a fork truck. “I’m stuck!”
“Maybe I can help.” Mom gathered the sandcat in her arms and held him against her chest. He whistled happily. “Can you move now?”
I lifted my legs straight up, kicking my covers off and making the cuffs of my pajama bottoms slide up my legs. “I’m free!”
Mom smiled. “Do you need anything else?”
“A kiss.” I flung my arms out toward her. Mom laughed and leaned in to kiss me. I wrapped my arms around her neck and squeezed until Nibble squawked in the space between our bodies.
“Be careful. You don’t want to make him shed his tail again.” Mom rubbed Nibble’s cheek against mine. He was scratchy like a toothbrush, not soft like the cats the rich girls talked about.
I giggled and pulled away. Sandcat hair can be poisonous, but Nibble’s fur had been treated to make him safe. I could pet him, but Mom said I shouldn’t do that to any old sandcat I see.
Mom put Nibble back on the bed. “We need to get you ready for school, little mouse.”
“Can I bring Nibble?”
“You cannot.” Mom put a clean uniform on my bed and got my brush from the top of the bureau. “Put that on, and I will brush your hair.”
I made faces in the mirror while Mom yanked the brush through my hair. Mom’s hair was long, too, but not as long as mine.
She laughed at my expressions. “Be glad it isn’t curly. This would be a lot more painful.”
“Will my hair get curly?”
“That’s up to you.” She looked at my reflection over the top of my head. “My hair is not, and your dad’s hair is not. What would your science teacher say about that?”
“It’s not in my genes.”
“Is curly hair dominant or recessive?” Her reflection looked sad.
“I don’t want to talk about science now. Is it my birthday yet?”
“You know your birthday isn’t until next month.”
“And I’ll be seven.”
“How many days until your birthday?”
I did the math in my head. “Thirty-three.”
“How many hours?”
Gaul turned around in space every twenty-two and a half hours. “Seven hundred and forty-two point five.”
“Good girl.” She put the brush back on the bureau and kissed me on the head. “Say goodbye to Nibble, and we’ll get you some breakfast.”
Mom made pancakes and reminded me to eat them all up. There were kids in the central city who didn’t get a good breakfast every day, and I needed to honor them by eating well. My parents lived there before I was born, and that’s how they knew that.
We took the lift up to the rich floors and walked down the tunnel to the bus dock. “What will you do today?” I said.
“What I do every day.” Mom leaned against the wall. “I’ll work until it’s time to come home. Your dad will be here in time to walk you inside.”
“I could walk myself. All the other kids do.”
“I happen to know that all the other kids do not,” Mom said. “And it makes your daddy happy to walk with you and see you when you come home. Doesn’t that make you happy?” She put her hand on the back of my head and stroked my hair.
Seeing him there made me happy but sometimes it made me feel bad. Sometimes the boys on the bus teased me about him. They said his clothes made him look like someone from La Merde. “What’s La Merde, Mom?”
Her hand stopped moving on my head. “That’s not a nice word. Where did you hear it?”
Her voice made me scared and excited at the same time. She was upset because I knew something I shouldn’t. It was a secret word. I drew a circle on the window with my finger. “From a boy on the bus.”
“Don’t talk to that boy again, okay? And don’t use that word.”
“But what does it mean?”
“It’s a mean way to talk about the people in the central city.”
“The poor kids?”
“Yes. And we don’t say bad things about people just because they don’t have a lot of money, right?”
The door to the outside hissed open, and the bus snuggled into the hole. I let go of Mom’s hand as soon as the inner door opened.
“Have a good day,” she called after me.
The inside of the bus was as colorful as a magic carpet and soft as a cloud. It rocked a little as it wiggled free of the dock and floated up and away from my building.
I walked to the back to find my friend, Anki, so I could sit next to her. She was near a window, playing a game on her backpack. My backpack was only good for holding things, so I pulled out my reader. “Can I play, too?”
She shook her head. “It’s a new game. I just got it.”
Anki always had new things. Her backpack was new. Her game was new. She almost always had new clothes. She had the best toys, too.
The reader in my hand looked ugly and worn. I’d had it since kindergarten, and it still had stickers on it from back then. I put it away and slid closer to Anki. “What kind of game is it?”
She scooted closer to the window. “I’m playing with Greta.”
Greta was a girl in my class. She didn’t like to play with me and had never wanted to play with Anki, either.
“Let me see.” I tried to see the screen on Anki’s backpack, but she pulled it away. “I just want to look at it.”
“You can’t,” she said. “It’s mine.”
“I just want to see.”
Anki pushed me. It wasn’t a hard push, but it hurt my heart. She turned her back on me and sang too quietly for the other kids to hear, “Baby, baby, little La Merde baby. See the baby cry.”
I pulled her hair.
She screamed! The tangle field came on, pinning us to our seats. It made the light all weird and felt like tickles on my skin. I couldn’t turn my head, but I could hear Anki’s game beeping and her angry sobs. The other kids on the bus were whispering and giggling about us. The tangle field had been used on other kids, usually boys, but no one had ever used it on me. I was one of the good kids!
The tangle field held us in place after the other kids got off the bus. I could wiggle a little but not enough for me to scratch the itch on my cheek from where Mom had rubbed Nibble.
“Turn them loose,” a deep voice said over the bus intercom.
The light went back to normal, and I could move.
Anki swung around and glared at me. “You got me in trouble.”
I bit my lip.
The bus driver shooed us off the bus and into the school dock.
“What happened?” the owner of the deep voice said. It was Mr Brahl, the school principal. I had seen him at assembly but never up close. He had a thick mustache that looked like it would tickle his nose. “Did Anki slap you?”
I scratched my cheek. It felt hot and bumpy. “My sandcat–”
“She pulled my hair and tried to take my backpack!” Anki said.
“I did not!” She was such a liar! “I just wanted to see it.”
“Why did you pull Anki’s hair?” Mr Brahl’s mustache made his frown look even angrier.
I didn’t know what to say. It seemed silly now. Why had I gotten so mad? All she’d done was sing a song.
“I can watch the surveillance recording if you make me,” Mr Brahl said. “Why did
you pull her hair?”
I started crying. “I want my Mom.” Adults were usually nicer to crying kids, but it didn’t work on Mr Brahl.
“We’re going to be calling your mother, no doubt about that,” he said. “But I want to know why you thought it was okay to pull Anki’s hair.”
Mom had pulled my hair just that morning, while combing it, but she didn’t mean to. Then she stroked it until–
“She called me a La Merde baby, and she sang a song about it.”
Mr Brahl looked at Anki for the first time. “Did you do that, Anki? Did you call her that and make up a song about it?”
Anki turned red and nodded. Her chin quivered, and I knew she was about to try the crying thing. I could have told her it wouldn’t work.
“I can’t hear your head move, Anki,” Mr Brahl said. “Did you call her a name?”
“I did.” Her face scrunched up, and she started crying for real. That was better. She deserved it. If she had only let me play her dumb game, none of this would have happened.
Mr Brahl patted her shoulder. “Thank you for being truthful, Anki. You shouldn’t have done that.” He turned back to me. The look on his face made my stomach feel hot. “But that’s no excuse for what you did, Hisako. You girls are supposed to be friends. This isn’t how friends behave.”
Anki’s sobs turned to sniffles as he looked back and forth between us.
“I want the two of you to apologize to each other and give each other a hug,” he said. “Can you do that?”
I held my arms out, ready to forgive. I usually took the bus to Anki’s house once a week or so to play. I could try her game then. “I’m sorry I pulled your hair.”
Anki gave me a quick squeeze. She put her mouth close to my ear like she was going to tell me a secret. “You’re not my friend anymore,” she said. “Greta is.”
Mr Brahl put his hands on our shoulders and pulled us apart. “Good job, girls. Put your things away and get to class. Don’t let me see this happen again.”
Anki’s first class was at the opposite end of the school from mine. I watched her stupid backpack as it moved away from me and waited for her to wave. What did she mean we weren’t friends? We’d always been friends.
“Give her some space, Hisako. You hurt her feelings and that needs time to heal.” Mr Brahl patted me on the back again. “Get to class. I let Ms Gemunder know you’d be late.”
My first class every day was math. I had a special teacher named Ms Gemunder. She only taught math and only worked with gifted kids. Math was really easy, but I didn’t like it much. I wish I were gifted in something else, but all my other classes were the regular kind.
The kids all looked up when I came into the room, and Ms Gemunder waved me to my seat. There were only seven kids in my math class, all of them older than me. The oldest, Franco, was in fifth grade, but I got the right answer more often than he did. Franco was having a hard time keeping up. I had heard Ms Gemunder talking with his mom about moving him back into regular math class.
So far, calculus was pretty easy. I did all the practice games Ms Gemunder loaded into my reader. The kids in the special classes got all kinds of extra help like that. I took an extra math class on Saturdays, and my parents were supposed to give me problems to solve. Mom doesn’t know calculus, which is why she gave me easy stuff like the number of days until my birthday. She tried though. Dad didn’t try at all. He read me stories and poetry instead, which I liked better than math anyway.
“Hisako, can you help Franco out with the answer to this problem?” Ms Gemunder said.
I didn’t know what the problem was, because I wasn’t paying attention. I squirmed in my seat, embarrassed. The screen on my desk flashed to remind me. It was an easy one, and I solved it quickly. I said the answer, my face hot.
Ms Gemunder frowned at me. “I know this comes easier to you than to some of the other children, Hisako, but that is no reason to let your mind wander.”
Franco looked angry. It would have taken him a lot longer to solve the problem, if he could have at all. It wasn’t my fault I was smarter. I was just born that way. I looked back at the desk screen, determined not to mess up again. Ms Gemunder sent a report to my patron every day, Mom said, and too many bad reports would result in bad things. We might not be able to afford to keep Nibble!
Class lasted an hour, and Ms Gemunder dismissed us herself. We were supposed to take a five-minute break before going to our regular classroom, so I went to the fountain down the hall to get a drink. I was bending toward the water, when I felt a hand on my head. It pushed my face hard into the fountain! I pushed back as hard as I could, but the hand was too strong. My nose smushed into the metal bottom of the fountain. I took a deep breath to yell, but water came in and I choked. Then I peed myself! The hand let me go, and I fell on the floor.
It was Franco. He still looked mad. I was on the floor coughing. My face and pants were wet.
“You’re disgusting,” Franco said. “You splices think you’re so smart, taking up all the space in the good classes. But if you make me look stupid again, I’ll get you. You’ll never see it coming.”
He walked away, and I ran to my regular classroom to tell Mrs Marchand. She was at the board. She caught me by the arms and held me away from her. “Did you– Did you have an accident, Hisako?”
Anki laughed. “I told you she was a baby. A little hair-pulling pee baby.”
Mrs Marchand pushed a button on her desk. “We’ll get you to the nurse and get you cleaned up, Hisako.”
I wiped my eyes with my sleeve, but it was wet, too. “Franco pushed me into the fountain. He said he was going to– to– to hurt me.”
The door slid open. “Is she causing trouble again?” Mr Brahl said.
“She just came in like this,” the teacher said.
“She peed herself!” Anki yelled. “She’s a baby.”
“That’s enough, Anki,” Mr Brahl said. “Hisako, come with me.”
“Make sure you get her some clean pants!” a boy laughed. “She might need a diaper change.”
“Find out who said that,” Mr Brahl said, “and send them to my office.”
No one else said anything as Mr Brahl led me out of the classroom and down the hall to the nurse’s office. The nurse was a fat woman who I saw when she checked my hair for lice every week.
“What happened to you?” the nurse said.
“Get her cleaned up and find her some dry clothes,” Mr Brahl said. “I am going to go check the cameras. She said one of the older boys roughed her up.”
The nurse pulled a towel out of a cabinet and used it to dry my face and hands. She sent me into the bathroom with a t-shirt and a pair of shorts. “Take your clothes off and put them in this plastic bag. Then put on the gym clothes.”
“I don’t have any clean underwear,” I said.
“You can get a pair of disposables out of the dispenser in there. When it asks you what size you are, pick extra small.”
The bathroom had a line of smiling ducks halfway up the wall. I wanted to scratch their faces off. It was all Anki’s fault. If she had just let me play her stupid game, none of this would have happened.
I glared at the ducks as I took off my clothes, daring them to say something about my wet underwear, and put everything into the bag the nurse gave me. The disposable underwear was scratchy thin like paper, and even the extra small was too big. They sagged and drooped inside the shorts, which were too small. The shirt fell over everything like a dress. I padded barefoot back into the nurse’s office. “Where are your shoes?” she said.
“In here.” I held up the bag. “They were wet from…”
The nurse gave me a pair of slippers to put on. “You can wait here until Mr Brahl comes back. Do you like to color?”
She put a box of color sticks and a reader on the table. I looked for pictures of sandcats on it, but all it had were real cats, which were too expensive. Greta had one. When I showed her a picture of Nibble, she said he was an ugly l
izard and that I should get a real cat.
I was trying to make a picture of a real cat look like Nibble, when Mr Brahl came back in. The color was right, but I couldn’t hide the pointed ears and long tail. Nibble had no ears, and his tail was flat and stubby. Mr Brahl put my backpack on the nurse’s desk. “You’ve had quite a day, Hisako. First you pull Anki’s hair and now you start a fight with an older boy.”
“I didn’t start a fight!”
Mr Brahl held up his hand. “Franco said he got mad after you called him stupid.”
“I did not! He was mad because I’m better at math than him.”
“That’s not what he said, but I don’t have the recording to prove it either way.” Mr Brahl looked tired. “I’m sending you both home to cool off.” He spoke to the nurse. “Can you run her home?”
“Yes, Mr Brahl. But it may take some time.”
“Take the rest of the day. I won’t expect to see you back here until tomorrow morning.”
The nurse smiled and grabbed my backpack. “Let’s get you home, Hisako. Don’t dawdle.”
I followed her out to the dock and squeezed into a transit capsule with her. The capsule went on the road, so it took longer than usual. Then we sat in the capsule waiting for my father to get home.
“What’s taking so long?” the nurse said. “I sent a message just before we left school.”
“He works on a machine. Maybe he couldn’t hear it.”
“What about your nanny?” she said. “She should be here.”
I didn’t say anything. Some of my friends had nannies, but I didn’t.
The nurse opened the capsule door for me. “Go right inside. I hope you have a better day tomorrow.” She closed the door, and the capsule drove away, leaving me on the street.
From the window of my room, the ground looked pretty and clean, but really trash was everywhere, and the sidewalk was all broken up. There was a burned-out transit capsule lying on its side in front of the building.
A man was outside the capsule cooking something over the fire. It smelled like meat. He saw me and pointed to the meat roasting over the fire “You want a bite of this, little girl?” He smiled. He would have a hard time chewing food with so few teeth. “Come over here, and I’ll give you a piece. Show me what’s inside those shorts, and I’ll give you half of it.”
The Light Years Page 5