The Different Girl Read online

  What was it like to live with sixteen parents? If they were as different as Robbert and Irene, did that mean that some were also more like each other, were closer than the rest? Was there someone that Irene loved more than Robbert, or even more than us? I knew they did love one another because Irene would sometimes pat Robbert’s head when he said something cranky, just like she would pat ours when we said something smart. And sometimes Robbert would surprise Irene, by making tea when she hadn’t had time, or ask us to sing a song as a surprise, and Irene would smile.

  But they didn’t hold hands with each other the way they’d taught us to, even when they weren’t already carrying things like teacups or notebooks. Caroline once asked Irene why not, and Irene said, “That’s because we’re all grown up.”

  “Will we stop holding hands when we’re grown up, too?”

  “That will be up to you.”

  That was another time when Irene had patted someone’s head—that day Caroline—because she’d said something to make her smile, but now I had more of Irene’s smiles to compare with one another, and I knew her smile that day was like the smiles when we found her thinking about something else.

  • • •

  Robbert saw we were lined up, waiting. He slung his satchel over one shoulder and told us to walk in pairs and pay attention. I took Eleanor’s hand and we followed Robbert to the dock, or almost to the dock, because we stopped at the crest of the path, so we could see down all the way to the water. Robbert scuffed with his toe, shoving the red dirt into a little mound. He reached into the satchel and took out a sealed plastic tub, the kind we used to store uneaten food.

  “What’s that?” asked Eleanor.

  “Rice.” Robbert set the tub on the little mound and stepped away.

  From there we followed Robbert around the island in a wandering path—to the beach, through the meadow, and to the trees, in each spot leaving a plastic tub of rice. I hoped there wouldn’t be any extra dinner that night, because we wouldn’t have any tubs to store it. At each spot Robbert made a point of turning a circle with his eyes, studying the landscape. When we started up the hill to the cliffs, we saw Irene walking down toward us. She waved and the four of us waved back.

  “Any luck?” Robbert called.

  Irene shook her head. She had a plastic jug of water slung over her shoulder.

  “We’ve been putting out rice,” called Isobel.

  “We certainly have,” said Robbert. He took another tub from his satchel and looked for a place to put it. “How about some rocks?”

  Because we had done this on the beach with coral, we knew what he meant, and scattered to find rocks to make a pyramid so the tub of rice would be more visible.

  “I’ve got two more left,” Robbert told Irene. “I was thinking one on the cliff trail and one higher up.”

  “Why don’t you do those by yourself?”

  “Good idea. Nothing?”

  Irene shook her head. Robbert huffed through his nose. By then we were piling the rocks we’d found. We stepped back so Robbert could set down the tub.

  “These are for May, aren’t they?” I asked.

  “We don’t want her to go hungry,” said Irene.

  “Or thirsty,” said Caroline, pointing to the jug of water.

  “No,” said Irene. “Maybe I’ll leave this here, too.”

  She slipped the strap off her shoulder and set it down next to the tub.

  “Do we need another pyramid?” asked Isobel.

  Irene shook her head, then she clapped her hands. “All right—now I’m hungry. Let’s see what we can find for dinner.”

  She held out her hands for Isobel and Caroline, so once more I took Eleanor’s, and we fell in step down the hill. Eleanor looked back, and then so did I, just in time to see Robbert disappear around the turn.

  • • •

  Irene sent us on to the kitchen, while she went into the classroom. She joined us only a few minutes later, so whatever she needed to do hadn’t taken long. Once more we used a new recipe to make soup—dried vegetables, rice, and vegetable protein, but not as much of any as usual. “I’ve become a little fat,” Irene explained, and she patted her stomach with the flat of hand, making a whap sound.

  “Are we fat, too?” asked Eleanor. She was cutting the square of vegetable protein into strips, almost like noodles.

  “Of course not,” Irene replied. “You are all perfect. I remember being that big. It was a very nice size.”

  Isobel tipped a cup of rice into the pot. “If you keep eating less, will you be our size again?”

  “That would be nice, wouldn’t it? But that isn’t how it works.”

  “If we ate things would we get big as you?” I asked.

  “That isn’t how it works, either,” said Irene. “We’re a little different, even if we look the same, or look a lot the same. And everything eats something different—like some birds eat crabs, and some other things, like palm trees or grass, eat something else entirely, like sunlight. Like energy.”

  She patted Eleanor’s hair and scooped the strips of vegetable protein off the cutting board into the steaming water.

  “What about May?” I asked.

  “May needs to eat like me.”

  “Did you see her this morning? Do you know where she is?”

  “I didn’t, Veronika. I don’t.”

  “Do you know for sure she didn’t fall into the water?”

  Irene waited until the soup was simmering before she gave an answer. She poured water from the filter jug into a cup.

  “What do you think?” she asked me.

  I didn’t want to think, because I didn’t know for sure. I wanted Irene to know for sure and tell me. I shook my head. Irene turned to the others.

  “Someone must be able to think.”

  “I can think,” I said.

  “But now you don’t want to, is that it?” Irene turned to the others. “Isobel, why do you think Veronika doesn’t want to?”

  “Because of May,” said Isobel.

  “Because May and Veronika are special friends,” said Eleanor.

  I didn’t like everyone looking at me like I was different—because their looking made me different—but also because of Eleanor. Her words were a statement about me but held a question inside, and the question was why had I become different from her, and how that made Eleanor—and me, hearing it—both feel alone.

  “I am friends with everyone,” I said.

  “But there are people we can’t be friends with,” Caroline said. “Angry people, like Robbert said.”

  “May is angry a lot,” said Isobel.

  “May isn’t one of those people,” I told her. “They sank her boat.”

  “No, she isn’t,” said Irene. “But May is different from all of us, isn’t she?”

  “May doesn’t go to school,” said Isobel.

  “May doesn’t care,” said Eleanor.

  “She cares about some things,” said Caroline, “but not the same ones. She knows how to sit on the edge of a cliff or walk in the water, but not how to read or use numbers.”

  Suddenly I understood it. Of course May hadn’t fallen. My being frightened for her was just like our not paying any attention to the peak.

  “There are places we wouldn’t know,” I said. “Small places where you have to climb or squat or jump. That’s why you don’t think she fell.”

  Irene stirred the soup. “What do we do when we want to know something?”

  Eleanor answered before anyone else, though all of us knew. “To know why a bird flies you have to know what it wants from flying—if it wants to catch bugs in the air or crabs on the rocks. So to know where May went, we have to know what she wants from going.”

  “To be alone,” said Caroline.

  “Because she’s still sad,” said Isobel. “But how long does being sad last?”

  I turned to Irene. “Are you still sad about our parents?”

  Irene took a moment to answer. “Sadness can last yo
ur whole life, Veronika. But it doesn’t mean you can’t also be happy, too. We’ll give May as much time as we can—and hopefully that’s all the time she needs.” Irene tapped the spoon on the rim of the cooking pot and then set it to the side. She put the lid on the pot and lowered the flame to a flickering blue ring. “There. We’ll wait for Robbert and eat when he gets here.”

  • • •

  Over dinner no one mentioned May at all. Instead we were finally able to ask more questions about our talk with Robbert, which was better because now Irene could answer, too. But the most interesting part wasn’t even an answer to what we asked, but Irene talking instead about life in a place full of rain: what extra clothes she had to wear, how the air was damp, about rust and mold, about hats made of plastic, umbrellas, whole villages on stilts, not seeing the sun for weeks at a time—almost the exact opposite as our island—and about how many places where people lived had turned into islands, and how many older islands had disappeared. By the end of her story all four of us were quiet from how dangerous it must have been. When Eleanor said this out loud, Robbert leaned close to her, so we could see her eyes reflected in his glasses.

  “That’s exactly right, Eleanor. And that’s why we had to leave.”

  As I folded my smock for sleep I wondered if May would come wake me like before. I wondered what she thought in her hiding place, and if she thought of us—if she knew how much we thought about her or if she only cared about the rest of her life, the part that had disappeared in the storm.

  But when I woke it was the next morning, with Irene’s hand on my shoulder.

  “Are you with us, Veronika?”

  “I am, Irene,” I said. “Just like normal.”

  “Good girl. Get dressed now.”

  In the brightness of morning Irene’s world of rain seemed very hard to believe. Our walk with Irene was an exact repetition of our walk the day before with Robbert, where he’d laid out the plastic tubs of rice. One by one we visited the tubs, from the dock to the beach, to the meadow, and finally up the hill. The tubs were just where we’d left them, with the rice inside. Irene picked each one up and put it in her own satchel. But when we got to the spot on the cliff path—of the last tub we’d actually set down, since Robbert had done the final two farther up—the tub was gone, along with the jug of water.

  Irene had us make sure it hadn’t been taken by an animal—which really meant by one of the rats that lived in the palm grove—so we searched the tall grass around the path in every direction. No one found either the tub or the jug.

  “All right, then,” said Irene, and we kept walking up.

  • • •

  Robbert must have told her where he’d put the other tubs, because twice Irene had us wait while she went forward, first stepping closer than any of us would have liked to the edge of the cliff, and at a second spot climbing up the rocky peak in the direction of the aerial. Neither place had a plastic tub. We shouted out for her to be careful, especially on the peak when she went up on her toes to peer around, and her toes were perched on very small spaces in the rock. Finally she came back down. She brushed off her hands and told us not to worry. Then Irene cupped both hands around her mouth and aimed her voice up so it would carry.

  “There’s food waiting whenever you want, May! Don’t be afraid!”

  Then she took two of the other tubs of rice from her satchel and set them on the path, waving us to be still when we began to look for rocks to build a pyramid.

  It took us longer to walk back, since—because of how worried we’d been—all five of us held hands in a line. The path wasn’t always as wide as we needed and so sometimes one or even two of us had to push through the tall grass. By the time we reached the woods Irene had us back in groups of two and three.

  “What is May afraid of?” asked Eleanor.

  Before Irene could ask us what we thought May was afraid of, I said, “The angry people can’t be why she’s hiding now, because they aren’t here. She must be afraid of something that is on the island.”

  At once we began to think of possibilities. Birds? Crabs? Rats? Trees? Machines?

  Isobel looked up at Irene. “Is she afraid of you?”

  “She doesn’t need to be,” said Irene.

  “You saved her life,” said Eleanor.

  “She knows that,” said Irene. “She’s worried about something else, I think.”

  We waited for Irene to say more, but she only sighed. When we reached the courtyard she told us to wait while she went into the classroom. Even from where we stood we could hear the clicking of switches and Irene’s voice.

  “She is trying to call the supply boat,” said Caroline.

  “The boat is so late,” said Isobel. “Did they lose their clock?”

  “Maybe they lost their receiver,” said Eleanor.

  We heard Irene moving in the classroom, and then more switches.

  “Why would May be frightened of Irene and Robbert?” asked Eleanor.

  “What happened to make her frightened?” said Caroline. “She wasn’t before.”

  “Maybe May made a mistake,” said Isobel. “If she isn’t smart.”

  “She isn’t stupid,” I said, “just different.”

  “She calls us stupid very often,” said Isobel. “That is stupid.”

  When May had first arrived, Robbert and Irene had kept her away from us, and us away from her. We knew now May wasn’t one of the people who had caused the explosion, but had they known that when she arrived? Robbert had said the four of us would scare these people more than anything. I remembered how May had first seen my face and screamed.

  “They wanted to send her away,” I said. “On the supply ship. But now they can’t, because she’s seen us. They think she’ll tell people, and those people will get frightened and angry and then they’ll come.”

  “She would tell people,” said Isobel. “Even if she promised not to. She would get angry or scared and just spit it out.”

  “They’ll blow us up like the plane,” said Eleanor.

  “We’ll have to hide,” said Caroline.

  “We can’t let May go anywhere,” said Isobel.

  They were right, but I shook my head. “Then why is May hiding? She won’t be sent away. What does she think Robbert and Irene will do?”

  We looked up at the wheeze of the screen. Irene came to the top of the stair. In her hands was a folded bundle of white canvas, cut from May’s sail.

  “It’s time to test another idea,” she called, and lifted the canvas. “Caroline’s.”

  “A rain trap!” said Caroline.

  “And just in time,” said Irene. “Because there’s going to be another storm.”

  9.

  There was a time of the year when storms came more often, but two so close together was unusual. Irene called out for Robbert. When he called back, everyone had to search to find where the sound was coming from.

  “Under here!” he called again, and we saw him on his hands and knees behind the classroom steps. He made a big grunting sound and a large blue plastic barrel appeared. Robbert shoved the barrel into the courtyard—yelling for us to get out of the way—and then scrambled up in front of the barrel to stop its roll.

  Everyone spent the rest of the day setting up Caroline’s rain trap. First the barrel was cleaned with an orange powder that Robbert mixed with water, changing it to a bright gel he rubbed over the inside of the barrel. We thought he would then have to waste water to rinse it off, but he said that we could just filter any rainwater that the barrel caught—which we had to do anyway, because of the sky—and it would strain out the orange chemicals. After this everyone helped to hang the canvas on the slanted edge of the kitchen roof, which meant Robbert and Irene getting on the roof and all four of us holding the canvas as best we could down below. The roof made all kinds of creaking noises when they walked and both their faces got red while they worked, from the sun and the effort. Eventually they came down and we attached the ends of the canvas, which
had been tied into a tube with nylon rope, to the barrel. Irene cut a new plastic lid for the barrel. It had a hole for the canvas tube but was otherwise tight so the water wouldn’t evaporate (because that was the reason to make a rain trap).

  They went back on the roof to make sure of all the nails and ties. Irene reached toward Robbert and tapped twice with her hammer. He looked up, but she only nodded past him. I thought this was just like Caroline telling me where the plank had been buried, so even when Robbert didn’t turn to look—maybe he didn’t understand her signal—I did. I couldn’t see anything. Then I realized that Irene could see farther from the roof than I could from the ground. And because I was watching I saw that Robbert did look a minute later, even though he still didn’t say anything.

  I looked again and saw a dark shape in the grass that hadn’t been there before and I guessed it was May, the black of her hair just visible as she watched what we were doing. I wanted to wave, but didn’t, because neither Irene nor Robbert had done anything to let May know she’d been seen. Usually we all liked to be seen—because we liked being together—but Robbert and Irene wanted to look at May without her running away, even if she still planned to leave again after her peeking. But seeing May in the grass meant she hadn’t fallen off the cliff or into the ocean, and meant she’d walked by the new tubs of rice—that she’d at least had a cold breakfast instead of nothing at all.

  Worrying about May’s breakfast only made me worry more about the storm, because she didn’t know one was coming. I knew how dangerous it was to be caught outside, and I didn’t understand why Irene and Robbert hadn’t shouted that to her, to let her know. Of course in school they let us discover things for ourselves, so I supposed they were content to wait for the clouds to form, or even for the rain to start falling—so the decision to come back inside was one May made without anyone giving her the answer. But what if, once the rain started, May couldn’t come back even if she wanted? What if the rocks were too slippery? What if she got too wet? What if the wind blew her over? What if she fell and no one heard her call for help?