Susan Pfeffer: Shade of the Moon

“Sarah Goldman,” she said. “That was my first earthquake. And my last, I hope.”

“Don’t count on it,” Jon said. “We’re near the New Madrid fault line. The geologists think the tremors are a good thing, letting pressure off. You’ll get used to them.”

“I don’t want to,” Sarah said. She took a bite of her lunch, then put her fork down. “I don’t want to get used to this lunch either. The vegetables are fresh. Why are they cooked so badly?”

“The woman in charge of the cafeteria was a tax lawyer,” Jon said. “Her brother’s on the town board. That’s how she got the job.”

“They should make her brother eat this crap,” Sarah said. “Make the punishment fit the crime.”

“We hang people here,” Jon said. “We don’t poison them.”

Sarah laughed. “I must sound horrible,” she said. “I’m sorry. This is all so new to me. Let me start over. Hi, Jon. Are you from Sexton?”

“From Pennsylvania originally,” he said. “Where are you from?”

“Connecticut originally,” she said. “Then we were relocated to North Carolina. Is your family in agriculture? Is that why you were settled here?”

“No,” Jon said. “We’re slips.” She was going to find out anyway, he figured. She might as well hear it from him.

“What’s a slip?” she asked.

“We slipped in,” Jon said. “We had passes for an enclave, so they had to let us in. We ended up here because it was the only enclave we knew about.”

“I don’t think we had any slips in our enclave,” Sarah said. “The whole town was a medical complex, much smaller than Sexton. My father’s a cardiologist. He was transferred to the White Birch clinic. That’s why we moved here.”

“My mother lives in White Birch,” Jon said. “With Miranda and Alex. My sister and her husband. Mom teaches high school there. I have an older brother too, but he doesn’t live around here.” It startled him to share so much about his family. In a matter of minutes, Sarah had learned more about him than any of his friends had in over two years.

“Do you live with your father?” Sarah asked.

Jon shook his head. “Dad’s dead,” he replied. “Lisa, my stepmother, and Gabe and I used the passes.”

“My mother’s dead,” Sarah said. “She died a couple of months ago. Then Daddy got transferred. It’s been hard on him. The clinic is terribly understaffed. There was a nurse there, but now it’s just Daddy and me. I do my afterschools there.”

“I play soccer for my afterschools,” Jon said.

“That’s your afterschool?” she asked. “Playing soccer?”

For a moment Jon was irritated. All the students did afterschools—four hours of work each afternoon—and he knew soccer seemed more like play than work to the kids who held what they thought of as real jobs. It didn’t help that the Sexton team played all its games on the road, so no one at home ever saw them.

But work was work, and Jon didn’t need to hear from some new kid who thought she knew it all that what he did wasn’t necessary. All the clavers knew someday the White Birch grubs would try something, and when they did, the clavers would be outnumbered. That’s why the enclave was so heavily guarded. That’s why on Saturday afternoons all the students spent their afterschools in judo and rifle practice.

The idea was to hold off that someday for as long as possible. Civilization depended on it. The grubs outnumbered the clavers throughout America, but they had no idea how to grow crops in a cold and sunless world. They had no idea how to treat illnesses with limited amounts of medicine. They had no idea how to run a government, a school system, a city, an army.

Jon knew how lucky he was to be a slip, and how lucky it was that Lisa had found a job in administration right away. Alex had sacrificed his three passes so that Lisa and Gabe and Jon could live in a safer environment, one with food and shelter and electricity. The kind of life Alex had taken for granted when he was seventeen.

Jon had had two years of intensive study of botany, chemistry, and physics. There was no point studying history when history no longer mattered. Instead he was taught civics, government, leadership. He played soccer, not for the love of the game but because he was an athlete and he represented the strength and the power of the enclave system.

“We train five days a week,” Jon said. “On Sundays we travel all around the state, for hours sometimes, to play. Coach says if we lose, it reflects badly on Sexton, on all the enclaves. It would make us seem weak, inferior. Winning shows the grubs who’s boss.”

“Grubs?” Sarah said.

“Yeah, grubs,” Jon said. “You must have had grubs in North Carolina.”

“You mean laborers,” she said.

“Is that what you called them?” he asked. “They’re grubs here. White Birch, all the towns around here are grubtowns.”

Sarah frowned. “That sounds so ugly.”

“It’s just a word,” Jon replied. “You don’t mind being called a claver. Why should they mind being called grubs?”

“I guess you’re right,” she said. “I mean, I do understand about the difference between us and them. Why we get to live in enclaves, in nicer houses, get better food, better everything.”

“It’s always been like that,” Jon said. “The rich always live better. Here, at least, people are rich because they have special skills. The botanists are rich, not some millionaire’s kid. And the grubs know how lucky they are to have jobs. Our domestics are grateful to be working in Sexton. I bet yours feel exactly the same.”

“I haven’t asked them,” Sarah said. “Maybe I will.”

“No,” Jon said. “Don’t. It’s better not to bring that stuff up.”

“If you don’t ask, then how can you know how they feel?” Sarah said. “Maybe you think they feel lucky because you don’t want to admit just how unlucky they are.”

“I’m not saying I know all the answers,” Jon replied, “but I trust the people in charge do. Have you seen the greenhouses? There are miles of them now and more going up every month. They weren’t here three years ago, and now they’re growing food for people all over the state. Including the kids at White Birch High.”

“Yes,” Sarah said. “But theirs is probably better cooked.”

“Couldn’t be worse,” Jon said. “They’re not saddled with a tax-lawyer chef.”

Sarah laughed. Jon liked the sound of it, just as he liked how she looked: sandy hair, green eyes. “Lunch tomorrow?” he asked.

“I can’t,” she said. “I won’t be in school tomorrow. I’m going into White Birch with Daddy, to help him set up the clinic. We’re opening on Sunday.”

“Monday, then?” Jon persisted.

“Will the food be this bad?” she asked.

Jon nodded. “Maybe worse.”

“How can I resist?” she said. “Lunch on Monday, with you.”

Jon got home to find Lisa putting Gabe to bed. He didn’t disturb her. Sunday was the only day Lisa had with Gabe. Like everyone else in the area, she worked Mondays through Saturdays. Everyone but him. Jon worked on Sundays, also.

Usually after a match Jon was in a good mood. Winning always felt good, and the bus ride back to Sexton was spent in celebration.

But not today. Of course Sexton had won. It was never a contest. The grubtown team was filled with guys who worked six days a week in factories or greenhouses. They had no time for practice. On Sundays maybe, in preparation for the match against Sexton, they played a little and drank a lot.

The Sexton team spent two hours daily on workouts and two more on soccer drills. They went to high school or college, and if they got drunk, they did it after the match was over.