Children of Exile

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Cana and Bobo were still young enough that they believed in the tooth fairy. Unicorns. Magic. Things that adults and kids my age considered impossible.

  So somehow they didn’t seem as surprised.

  “Oh, he’s a spaceman,” Bobo said, nodding as if everything made sense to him now. “Or a spacewoman. Whatever. He’s from a planet where people looks like beetles. So the fake human face—is that kind of like his space helmet?”

  “Space people can’t breathe without their space helmets on,” Cana said in her wise little voice.

  She darted toward the Enforcer and began tugging on the part of his face that had fallen away. Maybe she hit some kind of latch or lever, because suddenly the man’s human face closed up again, hiding everything that resembled a beetle—the antennae, the horns, the shiny scales. His face seemed to be made of normal human skin again, but he was scowling, with ridges in his forehead, frown lines around his mouth. Now he looked human again. Human, but no less terrifying.

  His whole body convulsed. I saw what Cana had figured out: The man had stopped breathing when his human face was off.

  Was he still alive? Was the convulsing a sign that he was able to breathe again? Or a sign that he was dying?

  The Enforcer’s motion seemed to shake my parents out of their shock.

  “Oh! We have to make sure—,” my mother began.

  “That he gets back to his friends for help,” I said quickly, shooting a glance at Cana and Bobo. I couldn’t let them understand. I wasn’t even sure that I understood. But I was pretty sure my mother meant that this Enforcer had to die. Before he killed all of us. Or told someone else to.

  “I’ll take care of him,” my father said heavily. “I’ll—” He turned his head toward Bobo and softened his voice. “I’ll take him to friends.”

  Numbly, I watched my father pull the spaceman/Enforcer out into the street. I watched my mother and Drusa start to lift the broken door and place it back over the empty, gaping doorway, hiding our living room from the outside world once again. Just before they fit the splintered wood into the frame, I slid away from Cana’s grip and darted after my father. I barely managed to squeeze past the door and out into the darkness.

  “Wait!” I called after my father. “It’s not safe! The Enforcers who are out on patrol—they’re shooting people on sight—”

  “I’m not going far,” my father whispered to me. He hesitated, crouched down, his hands under the spaceman/Enforcer’s armpits. “There are people who would pay good money to have one of these Enforcers as a prisoner. So they can find out his secrets.”

  “But it’s dangerous out here,” I whispered. “You can’t see—”

  “Which means I’m safer in the dark than you are,” he whispered back. “It’s what I’m used to, anyway.”

  He began tugging on the spaceman’s unconscious body, dragging it away from me and our house.

  “Go back and take care of Bobo,” my father said. “He needs you.”

  It was true: Bobo did need me. Bobo could easily be traumatized by what he’d just witnessed if he didn’t get the right debriefing.

  But so could I. I had been traumatized. My mind was still reeling.

  These people aren’t real either . . . either . . . either . . .

  The words that Edwy had carved into the airplane seat still echoed in my brain. Now that I understood how unreal—or surreal—the Enforcers really were, Edwy’s words sent me back to another disturbing memory: the moment when Edwy and I had stopped being friends back in Fredtown. It was after Edwy had started lying, constantly coming up with mischievous little stories that made me distrust anything he told me. I’d been stung too many times by his pranks—he dyed the tips of my hair orange with Kool-Aid once; another time he threw a shaving-cream pie in my face.

  Then he came to me with a story about how he suspected something was really wrong with the Freds. His Fred-parents didn’t trust him anymore either, so they were always on guard around him. But he knew that Fred-mama and Fred-daddy trusted me. He wanted me to tug hard on one of their faces—really, really hard. He told me something strange might happen—something we could figure out together. He didn’t understand it, but he thought he’d seen something once when his Fred-parents didn’t know he was looking. He said he needed my help.

  You mean, you want me to get in as much trouble as you’re always in, I’d told him.

  Just talking to Edwy had made me uncomfortable after that. I hadn’t wanted to know anything he’d guessed. I hadn’t wanted to know anything bad or dangerous or suspicious about the Freds.

  I loved them.

  But now I stared into my real father’s face—my real, blind, scarred, maimed father’s face—and I wanted to see and know everything. I had to, if I ever had any hope of getting to safety with Bobo and Cana.

  “This Enforcer—and all the others, too?—they’re from another planet,” I began, my voice barely audible. Only a blind man accustomed to listening for the smallest of sounds could have heard me. “But . . . the Freds weren’t human, either. Were they?”

  My father winced, frozen in the act of dragging an alien.

  “That’s the only theory I ever heard that made any sense,” he said. “We never knew for sure—there’s not much we know about anything. After the war, nobody wanted to talk about any of it. Everyone shunned our town. None of us adults could leave. No one ever came here except that one missionary. And . . .”

  “And Freds,” I whispered. “And now . . . Enforcers.”

  My father barely nodded.

  “Those Enforcers are like the soldiers that roamed the street during the war,” he said. “I understand them. They use weapons and threaten to kill anyone who doesn’t obey. But how did the Freds do it? How did they know a woman was pregnant even if she hid for her entire nine months? How did they overpower everyone without weapons or threats? How did they take our children—the one thing everyone would have joined together to fight for?”

  He seemed to be gazing off into the distance. Then he turned his head back toward me. I knew he couldn’t see. But it still felt like we had a connection, his brown eyes on my green ones.

  We were thinking the same thing.

  “The Freds had to have been from outer space too,” he finished.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  “That’s all I know,” my father said. “Now get back inside. Quick. Before someone sees you.”

  Numbly, I squeezed past the splintered door once more and back into the house. My mind was reeling; my world was reeling.

  So everything the Freds told us was a lie? I wondered. They fooled us, they tricked us, they . . .

  My mother placed a bundle in my arms.

  “You have to go,” she said. “Now.”

  Her voice was strict—cruel, even—but I could hear the throbbing pain and sorrow buried in her words. Had that pain been hidden in everything she ever said to me? And I never fully understood until I found out that the Freds had deep secrets too?

  “I—Bobo and I need to say good-bye to our father,” I said dazedly. “I didn’t say good-bye just now. I—”

  “He’ll understand!” she insisted. Her green eyes, so like mine, glinted with pain in her ruined face. “He wants you to be safe. We can’t let anyone else find you here. And there’s already been such a commotion. . . .”

  Dimly I realized that lots of people had to have heard the Enforcer shooting our door off its hinges, then his gun going off when my parents and Drusa attacked him. Somewhere nearby a dog howled. More Enforcers would come soon. They’d follow the trail of whining and barking and howling dogs. They’d find the splintered door, the tracks left in the dirt road where my father had dragged the Enforcer away.

  “It’s not safe for you to stay here either!” I protested.

  “It’s not safe for you and Bobo and Cana if we don’t stay here, hiding the evidence,” she retorted. “And lying about where you’ve gone. Look.”

  She took me by the shoulders and turned me to
face Bobo and Cana, who were waiting beside Drusa. Their eyes were wide, watching me. Bobo had his shoes on now; he and Cana both had small bundles tied to their backs.

  They were ready to go. If anything happened to them before we left, it would be my fault.

  Of course, it would also be my fault if anything happened to them after we left.

  “We’ll go,” I said. “Good-bye, and . . .”

  I hugged my mother and she whispered, “Take care of Bobo. Take care of yourself.”

  It was hard to let go, even of my real mother, who I’d thought hated me. Maybe my father had avoided saying good-bye on purpose.

  There was nothing left to say. There was everything left to say. Even all the time in the world wouldn’t be enough.

  “Go now,” Drusa urged, shoving Cana and Bobo toward me. “You’ll have to sneak out the back window, over to the creek, then toward the mountains. . . . Oh, be careful. . . .”

  The two women propelled me out of the house, into the darkness of the backyard. Then they handed Bobo and Cana out to me over a windowsill. For the first few steps I took away from our house, away from our yard, I could still feel their hands on my shoulder, could still hear their voices in my ear: Go. . . . Be careful. . . . I could still hear my father’s voice saying, The Freds had to have been from outer space too.

  But then, as Bobo and Cana and I crept into an alleyway, chickens squawked at our passing and I realized I had to snap out of this numb daze. I couldn’t think about the Freds or the Enforcer’s beetle face right now. I had to think about avoiding danger—about watching for Enforcers on patrol and for dark-eyed people who hated green-eyed people like me. (What color were Cana’s eyes? I’d have to remember to look once we reached any type of light—knowing could mean the difference between life and death.)

  “How far do we have to walk?” Bobo asked in his normal, everyday loud voice.

  I had to keep Bobo and Cana quiet without terrifying them beyond belief.

  “It’s a long way,” I whispered back to Bobo. “But it will be more fun if we play a game. How about . . . the quiet game? If you can tiptoe in absolute silence between here and the creek, I’ll carry your bundles along with mine after that.”

  He fell for it. I wasn’t sure if Cana fell for it too or if she understood enough to be quiet anyhow. But both of them started taking exaggerated steps, placing their feet down without so much as snapping a twig or rustling a leaf.

  I was the one who made the first noise: letting out a quiet sigh of relief when I saw the first glint of the creek through the trees ahead. It would be safer along the water, away from people. We turned toward the ruins Edwy and I had visited only the night before, and that gave me more I had to avoid thinking about: Edwy, the wasteland I’d seen by moonlight, the children who had died there in the war.

  And it’s still not safe to think about the Freds, or the Enforcer’s beetle face, or what my mother and Drusa are doing to hide the splintered door or to brush over the place in the dirt where my father dragged the Enforcer’s body. . . .

  Bobo and Cana stayed quiet as we walked along the creek, even once we reached the darkness of the ruins. Maybe they’d forgotten that the silent game could end. Maybe they were just as scared and numb as I was. But I felt better with every step that took us farther from the lights of the town, farther from that nightmare place of Enforcers and guns and violence. Could I dare to hope that we really would escape?

  We were at the outer edge of the ruins when Cana tugged on my hand.

  “Is that a firefly following us?” she whispered.

  “What?” I whispered back. “Fireflies don’t follow people.”

  I could have told her I hadn’t seen a single firefly in our hometown. Fireflies belonged back in Fredtown, back with those carefree summer nights when our Fred-parents let us stay up late to run across dewy lawns, chasing the fireflies’ glow.

  Cana tugged on my hand again and pointed.

  “That one is,” she said.

  I turned just in time to see a dot of light behind us stop moving. It hovered in the air as if suspended, waiting for us to make the next move.

  Should I cry Run! to Bobo and Cana? Or Hide!?

  During the moment I hesitated, Bobo took a step back.

  “Hello, Mr. Firefly,” he called. “Can’t you come closer so we can see you better?”

  No! I wanted to scream. Bobo, you’re putting us in danger!

  But before I could grab his hand and take off running, the glow of light sped closer. And grew. And grew. In less than a second, I could see that it wasn’t just a pinpoint of light. It was a person.

  But it wasn’t an Enforcer. Or a murderous attacker bent on destroying all green-eyed people or all dark-eyed people.

  It was someone I knew.

  A Fred.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  “Mrs. Osemwe?” Cana asked. For it did indeed seem to be the principal of our school from back in Fredtown, moving toward us. The same woman who had passed out hugs the day we left.

  “I missed you!” Bobo squealed, letting go of my hand and launching himself toward her glow.

  But right at the point where he started to wrap his arms around her waist in a gigantic hug, his arms went right through her middle. He fell through her legs, landing on the ground.

  “Bobo, that’s only the image of Mrs. Osemwe,” Cana called, in the same patient tone that she would have used to explain the alphabet. “Like you might see on TV. Or in a movie projected on a sheet.”

  Once again, Cana had figured out something ahead of me.

  “Oh,” Bobo said. “Why didn’t you tell me that before I scraped my knee?”

  I knew Bobo expected sympathy and a hand up, and maybe even a piece of candy to take his mind off his knee. But I didn’t have time for that.

  “Mrs. Osemwe, you’ve got to stop glowing,” I said in a tone I never would have used with a grown-up back in Fredtown. “You’re going to call attention to us. That’s”—it had to be said, even if Bobo and Cana were listening—“that’s putting us in danger. It’s not safe.”

  “I only glow forward, not behind,” Mrs. Osemwe said, her voice tinny and distant, as if it came from a million kilometers away. “I am only darkness behind. I am hiding you.”

  “It’s true—I can’t see her anymore from here,” Bobo said. He rolled back toward me and Cana. Now it looked like he was playing a game that involved crawling around Mrs. Osemwe’s ankles. “Now I can.” He popped up his head behind Mrs. Osemwe again. “Now I can’t.” He giggled. “This is fun.”

  “Bobo, shh!” I snapped. “Someone will hear! Mrs. Osemwe—”

  “I put up a sound barrier around us too,” Mrs. Osemwe said. “Don’t worry.”

  Her voice still seemed distant, and I could hear a falseness in it that I’d never noticed back in Fredtown. Was it because this was only her image, not really her? Was it because she spoke in an accent different from that of my real parents and I’d gotten used to them in the past few days?

  Or was it because she was an alien and her real mouth and real face weren’t designed for human speech?

  I should have been relieved to see Mrs. Osemwe’s image, to have any link to the comfort and safety of Freds and Fredtown.

  But the sight of her calm, smooth, peaceful face just made me mad.

  I was running for my life. I was terrified that I might make some mistake that could lead to Bobo’s and Cana’s deaths. And my own. I’d learned that my real hometown was full of hatred and pain. I’d hit and kicked and punched—I’d fought—at a moment when I didn’t know what else I could possibly have done.

  I didn’t understand peace anymore.

  “Mrs. Osemwe, I didn’t think Freds were allowed to come home with us,” I said, and I sounded just as bitter and angry as Edwy ever did back in Fredtown.

  “We weren’t,” she said. “We aren’t. The intergalactic court ruled against all our appeals.”

  “But you can send an image,” I said. “Why d
idn’t you send an image of every one of our Fred-parents with us, right from the start? Why didn’t you do that to . . .”

  Guide us, I thought. Protect us. Keep us from making the kind of mistakes I made.

  Mrs. Osemwe frowned. I had never seen a Fred frown before.

  “Even sending an image is . . . bending the rules,” she said. “Exploiting a loophole.”

  “Bending rules is wrong,” Cana said, as primly as if we were sitting in the Fredtown school. “Almost as bad as breaking them.”

  “But we had to do something,” Mrs. Osemwe said. “You’re children. We couldn’t let you . . . the three of you . . .” She glanced toward Cana and Bobo, still sprawled on the ground by her ankles, and stopped. Had she been about to say “suffer”? “fail”? “die”? Would she have finished her sentence if I had been the only one standing before her?

  “I came to take you back to Fredtown,” she finished.

  I expected Bobo and Cana to jump up and down and cheer. I would have expected my own heart to leap with joy. I’d wanted to return to Fredtown ever since I’d left it.

  But neither Bobo nor Cana nor I moved.

  “Fredtown isn’t even on Earth, is it?” I finally asked.

  Mrs. Osemwe looked toward Cana and Bobo.

  “No,” she admitted. She flicked her gaze back to me and seemed to be trying to smile. “So, see, Rosi, you did get to be an astronaut traveling through space as you always dreamed. You just . . . didn’t know it.”

  If she expected me to clap gleefully and shout, Hurray! That’s so cool! like I would have when I was little, she didn’t know anything about me.

  “But how . . . ?” I said. “Why . . . ?”

  “We made you think it was just a plane ride back to your parents, because that was more appropriate for the humans you were rejoining,” she said. “But really there were wormholes, quantum travel, illusions. We Freds have technology that would have allowed us to zap you back here in no time flat, but the intergalactic court ruled that you needed more of a transition than that. More of a sense of distance.”