Children of Exile

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “I forgot,” I said. Our Fred-parents always wanted us to own up to our mistakes, but somehow that was easier back in Fredtown. Probably because our Fred-parents never glared at us so furiously. “I’m sorry. I was thinking about . . . other things.”

  I couldn’t tell her how worried I’d been about Bobo. Not without sounding like I didn’t trust her to take care of him.

  “She looks like a grown-up, but she acts like an idiot child,” the mother told the father, her voice mocking and angry. “Why, if we’d raised her, she’d know to use her head. She’d remember the things we told her.”

  I wasn’t used to being talked about as if I weren’t even there.

  I wasn’t used to being called ugly names. “Idiot” wasn’t just worse than “dumb”; it felt a thousand times worse.

  “I know it’s my fault,” I said, hanging my head. “Just tell me where to go at the airport and I’ll get both suitcases, all by myself.”

  I thought that was a good offer—I was being Rosi the Responsible again, just like back in Fredtown. But both the mother and the father recoiled.

  “You can’t go out by yourself now,” the mother said. “It’s almost dark.”

  “I doubt those suitcases are still there, anyhow,” the father said heavily. He sank into the chair I’d seen him in the night before. Then he turned toward the mother. “You know anything that isn’t nailed down gets stolen. Why didn’t you bring them home yesterday when you got the children?”

  “She didn’t tell me they had suitcases,” the mother said. “How was I to know?”

  I flinched.

  “And I didn’t know they wouldn’t just be brought to our house,” I said. My voice sounded weak and pleading. “That’s how things would have been done in Fredtown. That’s how things were done when we went to the airport there. A truck came around and picked up everyone’s luggage, so no one had to carry it. I’d never been anywhere before but Fredtown. I didn’t know anything would be different here—”

  “Don’t talk to us about that Fredtown!” the mother screamed.

  I saw her swing her hand back. I saw it coming toward me. But I didn’t move this time.

  She’ll stop herself, I thought. She wouldn’t ever really hit me. No adult does that.

  The palm of the mother’s hand slammed against my face. She’d slapped me. The mother—no, my mother—had slapped me.

  From inside Bobo’s room I heard a cry.

  “Rosi?” he called out. “Fred-mama?”

  I saw the mother’s face stiffen—outrage hardening over fury.

  “I’m right here,” I called to Bobo. I tried to keep my voice soothing and calm, even as my check throbbed.

  Bobo pushed his way past the hanging cloth in the doorway of our room. His eyelids drooped sleepily and his curls stuck out at odd angles. One of the curls was plastered to his cheek.

  “I had a nightmare,” he whispered. He blinked at the mother and father. “Oh.”

  Was his nightmare that we’d left Fredtown and our Fred-parents, and come here? Was it that the home we’d talked about and longed for our entire lives had turned out to be a terrible place? A place where people were broken and damaged and scarred, and his real mother could slap his sister—and might even slap him sometime too?

  “Nightmares aren’t real,” I told Bobo. I made my voice firm and convincing, to be a guarantee against the creepiest dream. “Remember how . . .” I wanted to say: Remember how Fred-mama and Fred-daddy told you that all the time? But the mother had slapped me just for talking about Fredtown. I didn’t want her to slap me in front of Bobo.

  I settled for, “Remember how many times I’ve told you that?”

  “You told me that,” Bobo parroted.

  He really wasn’t awake yet. He probably hadn’t heard the mother arguing with me.

  He probably hadn’t heard her slap me.

  She slapped me! echoed in my head. She really, truly, actually slapped me!

  I was numb. But I had to think about Bobo. I had to think about protecting him now more than ever.

  I crouched down in front of him.

  “Nightmares aren’t real,” I said again. “Here you are with your real mother and your real father—and me—and everything’s fine. . . .”

  I dared to glance up toward the mother. Her face was like a storm cloud, but she didn’t say or do anything.

  She wouldn’t hit Bobo, I told myself. She loves him more than she loves me, so she’d never hit him.

  But what could I do if she did?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Late that night a knock came at our door. We’d already eaten supper—a stiff, awkward event I was even less hungry for than lunch. I hadn’t complained about being forced to help with preparation and cleanup while Bobo was allowed to play. Now he was pretending a stick was a motorcar, and zooming it all around the floor. I sat in a corner with the book Fred-mama had given me to read on the plane. But I wasn’t reading that book even now. I was thinking hot, angry thoughts: If the mother asks me where this book came from, I’m just going to come out and tell her. And I’m going to tell her she has no right to blame me—or Bobo—for having good memories of Fredtown. It’s not our fault where we grew up. It’s not our fault we were taken there or brought here . . .

  I wasn’t used to having hot, angry thoughts in my head. I didn’t know what to do with them. So that knock at the door was a good distraction.

  That’s what I thought, anyway. The mother and father stiffened, and the mother clutched the father’s shoulder.

  “Nobody comes visiting this late at night,” the mother said.

  She’s scared, I thought, hearing her voice tremble. She’s scared of a knock.

  I didn’t want Bobo to hear her fear—or to be exposed to whatever she was afraid of—so I called softly, “Hey, Bobo, drive your twig-car over here and we’ll make a ramp for it to jump over.”

  I was behind the table. It was the farthest I could get from the mother and father and still be in the house with them. It was also the farthest corner from the door.

  But Bobo was already scrambling up joyfully, racing to the door, just like he always did anytime our bell rang back in Fredtown.

  “Whooo is it?” he called. “Which friend has come to play?”

  I saw the mother and the father both jump up, ready to stop him. But Bobo was clever with latches. He already had it unhooked and was pulling the door toward him.

  Edwy stood in the darkness on the other side of the door. And . . . he had our suitcases with him.

  “Edwy!” Bobo exclaimed, an expression like sunshine bursting over his face. Bobo had always loved Edwy.

  The mother and the father sprang up and stood on either side of Bobo. The mother even put her hand on Bobo’s shoulder and angled her body ahead of his, sending a clear message: Bobo is ours! Stay away from him!

  “I brought the suitcases for you and Rosi,” Edwy told Bobo.

  “Who are your people, boy?” the father growled. “And why did you have Rosi’s and Bobo’s suitcases?”

  Edwy’s eyes darted to the side.

  He’s going to lie, I thought. Edwy and I may have avoided each other for an entire year, but I still knew him really well.

  “I just saw nobody had picked these up yet,” he said, shrugging. “I thought I’d do Rosi and Bobo a favor.”

  “Humph,” the father grunted. As if he didn’t believe Edwy any more than I did. “And your people? Who are your parents?”

  Edwy has green eyes, like me, I thought. The mother did too, so maybe it was only kids with green eyes that the father didn’t like. Maybe the father had learned about genetics in school, like Edwy and I had, and he was asking about Edwy’s parents to figure out more about Edwy.

  Even thinking that seemed crazy, but I stood up and started inching toward the door. It felt like I might need to protect Bobo again.

  Or maybe Edwy.

  “I can’t say I’ve actually heard my parents speak their names,” Edwy said,
laughing the same way he always did in class back in Fredtown when he hadn’t done his homework. “They told me to call them Mother and Father.”

  I saw the mother elbow the father over Bobo’s head.

  “Then what’s your last name?” the father growled.

  “I know!” Bobo burst out. “It’s Watanaboneset! This is Edwy Watanaboneset! I remember, because Edwy makes a funny about how it should be ‘Want-a-your-bone-set-if-you-mess-with-me?’ ”

  I’d never heard Edwy make that “funny.” It must have been something he started in the past year. I couldn’t believe he’d said that around a little kid like Bobo.

  I was close enough to the door now to see the mother’s face go dark.

  “He’s a Watanaboneset,” she muttered.

  “That pack of thieves,” the father agreed, scowling just as bitterly.

  Don’t talk like that in front of Bobo! I wanted to scream. And, Edwy never even met his parents until yesterday! How can you be mad at him because of who his parents are?

  “Thank you for bringing our suitcases,” I said instead, stepping up behind Bobo. “That was a nice thing to do. You even figured out where we lived.”

  Edwy’s eyes met mine.

  “You know I’m good at finding things out,” he said. His words seemed to carry more weight than their actual meaning. He tilted his head, and I thought maybe that was supposed to be some sort of secret signal meant only for me. Maybe he’d found out something he couldn’t talk about in front of the parents and Bobo.

  Or maybe I was just imagining that. I wasn’t much good at reading secret messages in people’s eyes. Back in Fredtown, we hadn’t needed them.

  The mother looked back and forth between me and Edwy.

  “Okay,” she said. “We have the suitcases now. Hand them in. And then you can leave. It’s too late at night for honest people to be out and about. Or standing in doorways, talking.”

  “Fine,” Edwy said, shrugging again, as if he didn’t even notice that she had insulted him.

  He shoved the suitcases in through the doorway, and the mother shut the door on him so quickly, she almost smashed his fingers.

  “My toys! Thanks, Edwy!” Bobo said, falling upon his suitcase and knocking it to the floor. He began struggling with the zipper.

  I could barely watch, because the mother and the father turned on me.

  “Don’t ever speak to that boy again,” the mother said. “Stay away from him.”

  “He comes from a bad family,” the father said. “A very bad family.”

  “He’s my friend!” I protested, even though I wouldn’t have used that word to describe Edwy back in Fredtown. “He brought us our suitcases!”

  “His family probably stole them,” the mother said, scowling harder. “They steal everything. They probably took all the valuables out, and then he just brought you what they didn’t want.”

  I looked down at Bobo, who had his suitcase open on the floor and was already cradling his toy boat in his arms.

  “Bobo, are all the toys you packed in there?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Bobo said. He didn’t bother looking. I knew Bobo: As long as he had his hands on the toy he wanted at that particular moment, he could have a hundred others waiting to be played with, or none at all, and he’d be equally happy.

  “Bah, toys,” the father said. “It’s clothes people steal. Clothes and jewels and . . .”

  The mother reached for my suitcase.

  I don’t know what made me stop her. Nothing in my life in Fredtown had made me good at being secretive. I’d never wanted to hide anything from my Fred-parents. But suddenly I couldn’t bear the thought of the mother touching the clothes Fred-mama and I had folded together.

  “Look, I’ll go put my things away in my room right now,” I said, grabbing my suitcase before the mother had a chance to. “If anything’s missing, I’ll let you know. And we can make Edwy give them back.”

  “Nobody can make the Watanabonesets do anything,” the father muttered.

  “The Freds made them give up Edwy for twelve years, didn’t they?” I retorted, without even thinking about it.

  I believe if I’d been close enough to the mother, she would have slapped me again. But I’d already yanked my suitcase away, toward my room. I was already three steps away.

  I left the mother and the father just standing there, stricken.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Once I was in the room Bobo and I shared, I unzipped my suitcase and slowly began lifting each item out. Somehow I knew the mother and the father would leave me alone. And it felt almost like a sacred ceremony for me, touching the things I’d last touched in Fredtown.

  I didn’t want it to end.

  I piled books and school supplies in one corner, and clothing along the back wall. Here was the dress I’d worn the night of the school talent show; here were the heavy leggings I wore on the rare occasions when a cold wind swept down from the mountains into Fredtown. Here was the solar calculator I’d been so proud of receiving at the end of fifth grade—the Freds always said you had to prove you could work with numbers in your head before you could be trusted with owning a machine to do it for you. I’d always thought Edwy was better than me in math, but I’d earned my calculator first.

  I reached the bottom of the suitcase too quickly. Even after I emptied it, I kept it open. I knew I wasn’t missing anything—everything I’d put into it back in Fredtown was already out and arranged along the walls of my new room. It didn’t look like Edwy or his supposedly thieving family had stolen anything, and part of me wanted to go out and inform the father and mother of that. But I kept sitting there, kept running my hands along the suitcase’s wrinkled lining, just in case there was some tiny item I’d forgotten about.

  Something jabbed against my hand. It was something tucked under a loose edge of the lining. I tugged at the thing jabbing me—it was a piece of paper wrapped in on itself like a miniature cone.

  From my Fred-parents? I thought.

  My heart beat faster. Of course they wouldn’t have sent me back home—to a home they even suspected might still be dangerous—without giving me a way out. A safety net of sorts. This was probably some secret way of reaching them, some secret number to call in case of emergency. Never mind that I hadn’t seen a single phone since I’d left Fredtown. Never mind that there might be complications calling someplace so far away. I would be able to unwrap this paper and look at their message and get in touch with them right away. Because this was an emergency.

  My real mother slapped me! I could tell my Fred-parents. Something really bad happened here, and I think something bad might happen again! I’m worried about Bobo!

  And they would understand instantly. They would come and retrieve Bobo and me, and all the other kids, too. We could live the rest of our lives in Fredtown and we would always be safe.

  With trembling hands, I began unrolling the tiny paper. Finally it lay flat in my hand. There were words written on the paper, words in handwriting I recognized instantly.

  But the handwriting didn’t belong to either of my Fred-parents.

  It belonged to Edwy.

  ONCE EVERYONE IN YOUR HOUSE IS ASLEEP TONIGHT, SNEAK OUT AND MEET ME. THERE’S SOMETHING I HAVE TO SHOW YOU.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I don’t do things like this, I told myself. I’m not a sneaky person.

  It was night now, full dark. I was lying on the floor beside Bobo, and I could hear how his breathing had settled into the long, slow, contented pattern of sleep. I was pretty sure the mother and the father had fallen asleep too. Through the house’s thin walls, I could hear two faltering versions of snoring—one more of a gasping snort, one deeper and gruff-sounding. Even in their sleep, the parents sounded angry.

  And I was awake and trying to decide whether or not to sneak out and meet Edwy.

  Back in Fredtown, I wouldn’t have thought twice about Edwy’s note. I would have crumpled it in my hand and thrown it away. I would have thought,
Oh, that Edwy! Trying to get me in trouble, just like him!

  Back in Fredtown, Edwy wouldn’t have sent me a note like that. He would have known I couldn’t be tempted to follow it.

  But here . . .

  What if Edwy found out more about the bad thing that happened before and might happen again? What if sneaking out is the only way I can find out what I need to know to protect Bobo?

  Why wasn’t right and wrong as easy as it had always seemed back in Fredtown?

  I sighed—too loudly. For a moment Bobo’s breathing stuttered, and I was afraid I’d awakened him. Then he rolled toward me, hugged my shoulder in his sleep, and went back to breathing evenly.

  Maybe Bobo holding on to me should have made me think, I can’t sneak out now! I have to stay with Bobo!

  But his arm flung so trustingly across my shoulder reminded me how much he depended on me, how much my Fred-parents were relying on me to take care of him and all the other children. It wasn’t conceited to think that after the Freds had found out that none of them would be allowed to come home with us, I was their only hope. It was just . . . reality.

  Silently I eased Bobo’s arm off me and slid out from under the blanket. I didn’t want Bobo waking up and realizing I was gone, so I grabbed a pile of my clothes from beside the wall and stuffed them under the blanket in a vaguely Rosi-shaped way. The deception wouldn’t be very convincing if Bobo woke up and started talking to me—or if the mother came into the room and turned on a light. But it would trick anyone who glanced quickly and sleepily at the shape under the blanket. It would give Bobo something to cuddle against and feel comforted by until I came back.

  Home is turning me into a sneaky person, I thought.

  I tiptoed out of the room. After every step I paused and listened, because it wasn’t too late to turn back. What if the father’s enhanced hearing worked equally well whether he was asleep or awake?

  The snores from the back of the house kept coming, gruff and angry.