by Andrea White
Millicent’s mouth hung open. She was wiping a tear from her cheek. What she thought he’d done, threatening another kid with a knife, was probably the worst thing she’d ever seen in her life.
“Apologize!” Casey instructed Zert.
“I’m sorry,” Zert said.
“You’d better mean it,” Casey said. She shook her finger at first Beth, then Zert. “If I ever catch you two fighting again, the consequences are going to be much stiffer.”
Beth was bigger and stronger than Zert, and this world that they lived in was full of nooks and crannies. Zert knew that Beth didn’t need to jump him at school; she could ambush him from anywhere. But Beth’s head hung down, as if Zert had beaten her. She looked as if she didn’t want to have anything to do with him ever again.
He had been wrong about her. About all of them.
Beth wasn’t a violent girl, after all. She was like Lily Bridges at St. Lulu’s, whose parents had never let her watch a zombie flick or even one with any blood in it. Beth didn’t even know what violence was.
“You’ll both stay after school today,” Casey said again. She nodded her head so hard that her dragonfly earrings were in danger of falling off.
“Yes, Casey,” Beth and Zert said in unison.
“Zert, you just made things much more difficult for yourself here,” Casey told him. “And it’s too bad.”
But it was her unspoken words that stung. You’ve wrecked things. Not just for yourself but for your father too.
27
SACRED TRASH
Zert plopped down on the rise above the playground. The shadows of aspen trees fluttered above them. Their leaves rustled in the wind.
“I’m sorry you don’t like it here,” Millicent said, squatting next to him. Despite her outlandish outfit—her fuzzy purple shirt looked too fancy for her trash-overstuffed overalls—she reminded him of Melving Laird at St. Lulu’s, who had talked to everyone. Especially the kids whom nobody liked.
“What did Abbot do that got him kicked out?” Zert blurted out.
Millicent sighed, and her green eyes darkened. “It was during dinner. Abbot stood on the ledge over Pancake Rock one night. He yelled ‘Trash War’ and threw mongo at all of us.”
Trash wars were the thing kids his age did to get respect.
Millicent shrugged. “He ruined some good trash.”
Here, throwing trash was like throwing gold and jewels.
“Mary Kay Casey and my parents wanted him to be able to stay, but Don G. and some others got his family kicked out,” Millicent said.
“So you don’t know where Abbot went?” Zert asked.
She shook her head and looked into the distance. “I feel a little bad.” Then, she shook her head again and gazed down at her hands. Unlike Beth, she brushed her hair, but even her fingernails were black lines of dirt.
“What, Millicent? Tell me,” Zert said. He sensed that she wasn’t telling him something important.
“Zert’s a loser!” he heard. The words had boomed out from the playground below them.
Zert gazed down the slope. Beth stood at one end of the plastic straw and Ivy at the other.
“You’re a loser!” Ivy shouted back into the plastic straw before breaking down into giggles.
“Beth hates me,” Zert said to Millicent.
“It’s just that … you’ve seen so many things we haven’t,” Millicent said. She plucked a piece of grass and started tearing it into smaller pieces.
“When I first met her, Beth asked me a lot of questions,” Zert said. “I tried to explain. It’s just hard.”
“Beth’s in a tough spot.” Millicent paused. “Of course, she’s curious. Everyone is.” She paused again. “But her father thinks that learning about the BIG world will make us sad and jealous about stuff we’ll never have and that we’ll lose interest in the mission.”
John Gibson tore up the hill toward them, as though it were a fancy running track and not a trail lined with pebbles. He was barefoot. “I’ll race you up a tree, Zert. How about it?”
John couldn’t be feeling friendly. Not after what had just happened in art class. “Why are you asking me?” Zert said.
Millicent interrupted, “Not yet, John. He might hurt himself. It’s only his first week here.” She turned to Zert. “We scale the knots in aspen trees and see who can climb the highest.”
“It’s easy!” John said. His buck teeth poked out of his mouth when he smiled. It was a smile that meant its opposite. “Besides, you need to get ready for the rodeo”—he scowled at Zert—“unless you want me to beat you at everything.” He spat on the ground. “Don’t you dare ever threaten my sister again,” he muttered. “Loser.”
Before Zert could think of what to say, John ran off without a backward glance, yelling, “I challenge everyone to a tree race.”
“What rodeo?” Zert broke the awkward silence.
Millicent replied, “It’s after school next week. There are lots of contests: Worm Fishing, Archery, Fire Starting, the Catch-a-Greased-Roach Contest, Beetle Armor Fighting … But the hardest event is the Aspen Tree Race.” She laughed. “I’ve been climbing all my life, and my fingers start shaking after a minute. Aspens go straight up.”
First, the primitive abacus. Then, bloody rat skinning. Then, Zert had brought Paradise its first almost-stabbing. And now, greased roach contests and aspen-tree climbing. In Low City DC, at least, he had been good at zoink ball. In the Newest World, he’d never manage to even be average at anything.
Holly Cannon stepped on the clothespin to release the tomato soup can. As the can rolled down the rise, laughter floated out from inside the can.
At the bottom of the hill, Rudolpho tumbled out, wearing brown overalls that looked as if they had been made from drapes. He laughed as he tottered dizzily around. His glasses fell off. “Oh no,” he said as he knelt and began searching for them.
Rain Martin hooted and did a cartwheel. She wore a red cape that looked suspiciously like the corner of a pocket handkerchief. Or maybe a napkin.
Next to him, Millicent tore another blade of grass into smaller and smaller pieces.
“You don’t have to stay with me. Why don’t you go play with the others?” Zert said.
“I don’t mind,” Millicent said. She looked off into the distance, as if searching for the best way to explain something. “Beth and John lost their three older sisters because of the Nuclear Mistake,” she said after a few moments.
On Flade Street, the owner of Roadkill Restaurant, Majong Pyler, had lost his wife in the nuclear blaze. But he didn’t know anyone who had lost three family members.
“They died before Beth’s and John’s parents became Rosies … before Beth and John were even born. But the Gibsons really like Paradise.” Millicent shot Zert a long look before she stood up. “All Beth and John and the rest of them really want is for you to like it here too.”
He could work hard and try to control his temper, but if liking this place was what it took for him and his dad to be able to stay, well:
Impossible.
“The early pioneers saw the settlement of the West as a divine mission. We are more like them than not.”
—Millard R. Dix, A Second Chance
After school, Zert wiped Millard R. Dix’s silly quote from the rock that served as a blackboard and wrote: “I will not harm another Rosie.”
“Write it twenty times, please,” Mary Kay Casey said. If he closed his eyes, it could have also been the voice of his old St. Lulu’s teacher telling him to do something he didn’t want to do. Teachers everywhere had the same teacher voice.
His mother used to be a teacher before she married his father.
This whole upside-down world would make more sense if she were here. She knew how to make things better. She used to put a cold rag on his head when he had a fever. She tweezed splinters that he couldn’t even see out of his throbbing feet. She made sure the customers paid them today, not tomorrow. She could see through her brother.
She
was not like his dad, who tried so hard but who burned dinner in the Food Machine, even though that was supposed to be impossible. His dad, who let Uncle Marin trick them. His dad, who now believed that the Rosies were going to let them stay in Paradise when they weren’t.
Beth wrote on her side of the blackboard: “The BIG world is not all bad.”
She may have written the words, but she didn’t mean them. There was no way a girl who had never even seen one of the old flat movies would be able to appreciate the experience of watching a holomovie. No way a kid who grew up eating roach stew would understand how tasty meatloaf chips were. No way someone who had only lived in Paradise would ever be able to imagine Low City DC, alive with thousands of places to explore and be curious about. Beth didn’t understand one thing about the BIG world.
Zert finished his fifteenth line. Adults were always talking about how confusing it was to be a teenager because your body was growing and changing. Well, it was confusing to have your body shrink. Besides wanting to go back to Low City DC, the only thing he wanted now was to be left alone.
Through the clear walls of PeopleColor Schoolhouse, he could see Soap Liberty lying faceup on the ground. She looked as plain and homemade as ever. He squinted to see her better. Maybe it was just the angle of the sun, but the chunky thing that was supposed to be a torch looked like, well … a roach.
Mary Kay Casey had remembered the name of the artist who had designed the Statue of Liberty. His name was Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi.
You see, Mr. Bartholdi, there’s a group of tiny people, and we copied your work, but Lady Liberty is holding a roach. Do you mind?
Heck, yes, I mind, Mr. Bartholdi would say.
Zert wrote his last line and put the chalk down. I don’t blame you, Mr. Bartholdi. “Can I leave now?” he asked Casey.
“I want you kids to be friends. That’s got to be the plan. Understand?” Although Casey smiled, neither she nor the dragonfly wings dangling from the ends of her earrings looked happy.
Zert nodded.
“Yes, Teacher,” Beth said. For the past hour, she hadn’t met Zert’s gaze, not even once.
He was Abbot the Second. And that was fine with him. Not for the first time, he wished that his father wasn’t burdened with him. His father would fit in fine here.
If only he didn’t have a loser for a son.
28
A HIPPO SUNBATHING
The flimsy front door of their hut stood open. On Flade Street, they’d had a double lock. Here, they had double protection too. No burglars, and nothing to steal.
Dropping his backpack on the floor, Zert slipped off his shoes and dug his toes into the scratchy rug that he and his father had made from rat hide.
His father sat on the floor unlacing a boot, or a thing that was supposed to be a boot. It looked more like one of the misshapen cookies that his father used to bake.
There was this beetle on the trail. It was enormous, and it was just sitting there. If it’s still there when I return, I think I can catch it, Zert wanted to tell his father. He waited for his father to call out, How was school? Or Made any friends today? Or to ask him any of the other predictable questions that he asked at the end of the school day, even though Zert usually ignored him.
Zert walked over to him. “Are you OK, Dad?”
His father lifted his head. He wore his dark hair slicked back as always, but he hadn’t shaved for a few days and black stubble covered the lower half of his face. His father’s eyes looked moist.
“The boot I made is lousy,” his father said. He had on the convict outfit that he had picked up at Ellis Log, but it was covered in rat hairs.
Zert sat down on the fur carpet next to him.
“See?” His father held up the pile of leather. “I wore this around the cabin, and it’s already ripped.”
Zert took a deep breath. “Sorry, Dad.”
The boot collapsed into scraps when his father dropped it. “This village needs a cobbler. I suppose I could try something else, but if I can’t figure out just any work to do, the Rosies will think we’re useless and we’ll be voted out.” He fingered a scrap of boot.
“Why didn’t you think about this before we got here?” Zert asked.
Without looking up, his father mumbled, “I needed to get you away quickly.”
Zert started to argue, “You’re wrong,” but the sight of his father’s hands stopped him. His father’s fingers were fumbling to fit the pieces of leather together, as if they were a puzzle that was too hard for him. Blood clotted on his thumb where the needle had pricked him. He looked beat-up and pathetic, but he wasn’t giving up on his boots.
His father hadn’t given up on him, either.
His father hadn’t given up even in front of that holojudge. That judge had no mercy. If his father hadn’t acted, Zert might be locked up in Teen Jail right now, listening to that holobum whine.
His father collected the scraps of leather, stood up, and walked over to the open door. He held the pieces up to the light, studying them. “I need to figure out how to make the seams stronger.”
At this rate, there was no way his father was going to be able to make a pair of sturdy boots in time. In the end, his father’s extermination business had been a failure too. If they were going to succeed in the Newest World, it was up to Zert. But first, his dad needed bucking up. A for effort and all that.
“Dad, I want a pair of boots.”
His father smiled. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “This has got to work.” He headed back toward the desk. “The string is fine. I just need to double it,” he said to himself.
“Dad,” Zert said, “I saw a beetle on the trail. I’m going to go catch it.” He picked up a ball of string from the desk.
“Really?” his father said absentmindedly.
The string wouldn’t fit in Zert’s front pockets. Too many fishhooks. He found some space in one of his back pockets. “If I catch it,” he said, “would you help me build a corral?”
His father didn’t look up from his wannabe boot. “Sure.”
Zert couldn’t open a bug pet store. People around here grew bugs to eat, not to play with. “Cage & Father Ranchers. Established 2083?” He grinned.
“It’s a deal,” his father said.
Zert stepped outside. The temperature had dropped, and the tip of Zert’s nose was soon cool to the touch. As he tiptoed down the path toward the beetle, he realized that the snow, ice, and freezing cold of the wet season were right around the corner.
Zert snuck around the bend and came face-to-face with the beetle in the middle of the trail. The bug would look like a baby hippo sunbathing, except that its shell, glowing blackish green, was shiny like the hood of the newest lifter, not rough like animal skin. Its legs were bent in funny places and covered in brown hair. Its flat brown face was earless and noseless, and the color of its beady eyes matched its enormous shell.
It must have heard him coming because the beetle, which was larger than Zert’s head, fluttered its dark wings and took a step forward.
The beetle’s eyes, which didn’t seem to be able to move in their sockets, only stared straight ahead as Zert rushed over, slipped the noose around its head, and pulled it tight.
Batting its wings, the beetle took off and hovered above him like an insect version of a lifter. Zert tugged on the string, and the beetle landed in front of him. “Let’s go,” he said to the beetle.
Cribbie had once called him “a beetle brain.” This must have been just some empty BIG saying though, because there was nothing beetle-brained about this bug; the insect knew that it had been captured. As Zert headed back toward his cave, the beetle followed his lead and lumbered after him slowly and deliberately, as if its shell were made of iron.
With each step, the insect squeaked, a sound so soft that BIG Zert would have missed it. Was it complaining or talking to him? Or were its legs just rubbing against its sides as it moved? In a few weeks, he promised himself he’d find out the answer to th
ese questions and more.
Zert’s Bug Ranch. The finest stock of Brahman Beetles in the land.
In one of her lessons, Casey had said that a beetle mother chewed up food and fed it to her children for thirty beetle years. But what did beetles eat? For all he knew, it could be something incredibly common, like dirt.
Ahead of him, Millicent turned onto the path from a side lane. She was running. Unlike Beth, who ran like an athlete, Millicent ran like a kid on an errand.
“Millicent!” he called out to her.
Millicent stopped and faced him. She had a white apron on over her overalls and was carrying a bucket labeled “Hopper Feed.”
When she saw the beetle, she set the bucket down and came toward him. She patted the beetle on its curved back. “Nice one.”
The beetle’s eyes weren’t warm like a mini-wolf’s, but that was OK, because this beetle was going to be his supper someday. “Where should I put him?”
“My father can help you build a corral,” Millicent said.
“Really?” Zert asked. He yanked on the beetle’s leash in excitement.
“I’m sure he will. But you can ask him yourself,” Millicent said, stooping to collect her bucket. “He’s going to the giving circle to check the snare.”
“I’ll go find him after I show this beetle to my dad,” Zert said.
“I’ve got to go to the community center. To finish my chores,” Millicent said. “But I’ll come help you after I’m done,” she promised as she hurried off.
The kids all talked about the community center, but newcomers weren’t even allowed to know where it was.
“Thanks,” Zert called after her.
Flapping its layered wings, the beetle halted, like Chub used to do before Zert trained her.
Zert tugged on the string. “Come on, beetle. We’ve got a lot to do. Let’s go get started.”
29
WHERE THE ROACH AND THE CATERPILLAR ROAM
At the giving circle, the leaves had all been pushed aside. Deep scratches gored the earth. A gray rat, the size of a horse, lay by itself on the ground, its feet kicking and twitching.