Susan Pfeffer - Shade of the Moon

“I’ll bring you food,” Jon said.

“Jon, thank you,” Mom said. “We’re all right for the time being. Sit down. I want to talk.”

They sat on the bed. Mom reached out and touched Jon’s hand. “We may never see each other again,” she said.

“Mom!” Jon said. “Don’t say that.”

“I have to,” she replied. “Things are bad, Jon. Not the way they were before. Everything else—the earthquakes, the diseases, all of it—no one’s been at fault. We’ve suffered together. But what’s happening, what’s going to happen, is man-made. Sexton’s a bully, Jon. It’s a frightened bully. You know me. I’m the one who always believes if we can just hold out, things will get better. I don’t believe that anymore. Not after yesterday. The enclave will let us die. They’ll bring in new laborers and work them to death and then bring another batch in.”

Jon turned away.

Mom grabbed his arm and forced him to look at her. “I love you,” she said. “And I want you to know the decision to let you live with Lisa was one of the hardest I’ve ever made in my life. Harder than divorcing your father. Harder than letting Matt and Syl move away. Every day I’ve asked myself if I did the right thing, and I still don’t know. You’re healthier than you would have been here, and you’re better educated, and you have a real chance at a future. But I know it hurt you to live away from your family. I know you feel like I haven’t been there for you.”

“I’ve wanted things to be different,” he said. “Like they were before, back home.”

“We’ll never have that again,” Mom said. “It’s gone, not just for us, for everybody. We’re the lucky ones, Jon. Think of it. You have your brother and your sister. Gabe, too, and Lisa. Lisa’s been wonderful, and I want you to tell her how grateful, how eternally grateful I am to her. Love them, Jon, because they’re your family and they’re good, loving people. Your father loved you so much, and I love you so much. Never forget that.”

“I know,” Jon said. “I love you, Mom. And I need you. Promise me you’ll be all right.”

“All I can promise is that I’ll try,” Mom said. “Promise me you’ll try, also, Jonny.”

“I promise,” Jon said.

Mom kissed him and then got up. “The guard’s waiting for you,” she said. “Do whatever Dr. Goldman and Lisa tell you. Please see Miranda, and let her know I’m all right. I don’t want her to worry about me.”

Jon stood and embraced his mother. “We’ll make it through this,” he said. “I promise.”

“Go,” Mom said. “And remember how much I love you.”

Jon left Mom in the bedroom. He walked out of the apartment, down the stairs, past the dead bodies. The guard followed him as he walked.

In a couple of hours he’d be home. Back to the house in Sexton where there were domestics to look after him and always enough to eat. Back to the life everyone had sacrificed for so that he might have a home and food and a real chance at a future.

I’ll be good, he promised them all, he promised himself. I’ll make you proud.

Jon found Carrie in the kitchen when he went downstairs for breakfast.

“How do you like your eggs?” she asked. “Scrambled?”

“Yeah,” Jon said. “Where’s Val?”

“I don’t know,” Carrie said. She broke two eggs into a bowl, poured some goat’s milk in, and began beating them.

“I thought you and Val took the bus together Mondays?” Jon said.

“Look,” Carrie said, turning to face him. “I walk to Val’s house Monday mornings and we take the bus together. Only this morning I couldn’t. The guards herded us like cattle to the terminal. They frisked us before we got onto the buses, and I was stopped four times walking from the terminal to here. That’s all I know.”

“Did you tell Lisa you don’t know where Val is?” Jon asked.

Carrie poured the eggs in the pan. “Yes, I told her. She said I should assume Val wouldn’t be coming, and for the time being I should do her work as well as mine.”

Lisa had been in a terrible mood when Jon had gotten home the day before. She’d yelled at Jon because he hadn’t let her know he was all right. Then she said work was going to be a nightmare because, from what she was hearing, there were hundreds, possibly thousands dead in White Birch, and that meant any number of houses in Sexton would be without one or more of their domestics, and they’d be calling her to demand she replace the ones who were gone.

Jon began to eat. If Val was missing, then Carrie was their only domestic, at least until Miranda had her baby. And if Lisa had to send Carrie to some other claver’s home, then Miranda would be their only one, cleaning the house, doing the cooking, looking after Gabe and her own baby.

There’d be no avoiding her then. She’d sleep in the nursery and clean Jon’s room and make his meals and be some bizarre combination of his domestic and his sister.

It was one thing for Mom to tell him to love Miranda. It was another to want her in his home, reminding him, without saying a word, that he had all the advantages she didn’t, her baby didn’t.

And he’d never be able to forget Julie with her killer in his home.

He walked over to Sarah’s house, trying not to think about any of that. But Sarah’s mood didn’t make things better.

“They won’t let us open the clinic,” she said. “No one from Sexton is allowed into White Birch.”

“They’ve let the grubs come here,” Jon said. “Carrie’s here but not Val.”

“Two of our domestics are missing,” Sarah said.

“Missing isn’t dead,” Jon said.

“Yes it is,” Sarah said. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe not. I don’t know anything about them. They’ve been working for us, living with us for months, and I don’t know anything about them.”

“They don’t want you to know,” Jon said. “They hate us. We give them just enough food to live, and we make them do whatever we need, and they have no choice but to put up with it. The only thing left to them is a little bit of privacy.”

Sarah stared at him. “You’ve changed,” she said.

“Trust me,” Jon said. “I liked it the way it was. I liked having Val do all the housework and Carrie taking care of Gabe so I didn’t have to. I liked feeling it was okay for me to eat real food and have clean clothes and clean air to breathe. Okay? That’s how it was when I was a kid. Without the grubs, but all the rest of it: food and clothes and air. Then for two years I lived in hell. Everyone did, I know that. But I got offered a way out and I took it, and got food and clothes and clean air. I’m not going to apologize for liking it. You like it. We all like it.”

“Do you think someday everyone will have that?” Sarah asked. “Will there ever be enough for all of us?”

“I don’t know,” Jon replied. “Maybe someday if we figure out how to share. Mom thinks things are going to get worse around here, though.”

“Daddy won’t say it,” Sarah said. “But I can tell that’s what he thinks.”

“They’re afraid for us,” Jon said. “They have been for four years now. They don’t know how not to be afraid.”

“I’m afraid, too, Jon,” Sarah said.

Jon held her tight. “We’ll make it,” he said. “I promise you.”

But when they got to school, Jon began to doubt he could keep that promise, any promise. He’d never seen the school so heavily guarded. And none of the students were laughing, or even talking.

They were told to go directly to the auditorium. Luke saw Jon and Sarah and walked in with them.

The middle school students were there along with the high schoolers, seated in their own section. Jon looked around. Tyler wasn’t there, and neither was Zachary.