Children of Refuge

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  When that happened, I’d turn to Enu and say as loudly as I could—because I had to talk over the noise of Ref City and the voice in my head—“Hey, want to stop for barbecued ribs? Or would you rather get ice cream?”

  Then one day, long after I’d stopped expecting him, Udans came back.

  Enu, Kiandra, and I were still sleeping when he knocked at the door. So what if it was two o’clock in the afternoon? We’d been up most of the night.

  “I know the three of you are in there!” he called through the locked door. “Your bioscan sensors show exactly where you are!”

  Bioscan sensors? Huh?

  I stumbled to the door and opened it.

  Just a week and a half in Ref City made me see Udans differently. His clothes were ragged and countrified. His scars didn’t look tough and adventurous anymore, just ugly. He didn’t hold himself proudly enough.

  He really needs to get himself some swagger, I thought.

  “Your parents want to talk to you,” he said.

  I gasped.

  “They’re here? They came with you this time?” I asked.

  I heard a snort behind me.

  “He means by videoconference call,” Kiandra muttered, stumbling sleepily out of her bedroom. “So, Udans, are you sure the lines of communication with Cursed Town are actually open right now?”

  “The word is that authorities believe it will help morale,” Udans said.

  “Theirs, maybe,” Kiandra said under her breath. “Not ours.”

  “Think about what your parents have sacrificed for you—” Udans began.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Kiandra said with a scornful eye roll. “You’ve got to give us time to get ready.” Her gaze fell on me. “You. Clean all the pizza boxes and food wrappers off the couch.”

  “You’re not the boss of me,” I said, which was this great expression I’d learned from Enu only the day before. I wished I’d known to say that back in Fredtown.

  “Today I am,” Kiandra told me. “And . . . when you ordered clothes last week, did you get any suits?”

  I must have looked at her blankly, because she added, “Jacket, tie, button-down shirt . . .”

  “Of course not!” I said.

  I’d ordered athletic pants and shorts, T-shirts, and—in case it ever got cold—sweatshirts.

  She picked up a nearby laptop.

  “Then I’m ordering a suit for you now,” she muttered. “What are you—size twelve? Oh, whatever. We’ll use masking tape to make the sleeves look shorter, if we have to.”

  Kiandra was a little scary like this. I actually picked up a pizza box from the couch and started carrying it toward the trash.

  “Work faster!” she cried, even as she typed on the laptop with one hand and hit Enu’s door with the other. “Ten-minute warning to parental conference call!” she called in through his door.

  It was actually fifteen minutes later by the time the three of us sat down stiffly on the couch—now clear of all debris. The suit Kiandra had ordered for me had just arrived, and I was still stuffing my arms through the sleeves when Kiandra balanced her laptop on the coffee table and typed in some sort of code.

  “Three, two, one . . . ,” Kiandra muttered.

  And then her face lit up with the most radiant smile I’d ever seen.

  “Hello, dear father and mother,” she cooed.

  “Greetings,” Enu rumbled in his deepest voice.

  “Uh, hi?” I mumbled.

  I felt a hand at my back—Kiandra tugging down the hem of my coat so it didn’t bunch up. I could see the three of us reflected in the computer screen: Nobody would have known that we’d all been sound asleep just twenty minutes earlier. Kiandra had put on a sky-blue lace dress and wrapped a demure pink ribbon around her hair; Enu sat tall in a dark suit and deep purple shirt. He’d even slicked down his hair.

  My hair was slicked down too, which made me appear older. My suit was gray, but it was just as formal as my brother’s. I did kind of look like a miniature Enu. Or he looked like an overgrown version of me.

  Kiandra reached out and angled the laptop screen differently. The reflection vanished, and I could see my parents sitting in their living room together.

  Our mother seemed to have tears in her eyes.

  “All our children, all together,” she murmured. “All safe. I just had to be sure. . . .”

  “Of course we’re safe here in Refuge City,” Kiandra said soothingly. “And we’re all progressing so well in our studies. . . .”

  “Udans said you wished to speak with us?” Enu asked, making it sound as if he were eager to hear from our parents, as if he hadn’t awakened cursing them and complaining, Why would they want to speak to us now? What if we don’t want to talk to them?

  “It is enough just to see your shining faces, just to know you are safe and happy,” our mother whispered. But her eyes darted to the side.

  My father’s rocklike face stayed hard.

  “Yesterday I learned how to bake a cherry pie,” Kiandra said, her tone breezy and casual now.

  I started to say, Huh? When? Where? What did you do with that pie? Because as far as I’d been able to tell, she’d spent the entire day—and night—hunched over her laptop. That’s how she spent most of her time.

  Enu dug his elbow into my side in a way that wouldn’t show up on the webcam, because we were sitting too close together.

  “And that pie was delicious, wasn’t it, Edwy?” Enu asked. “Our sister’s great at baking!”

  Kiandra was usually so busy on her computer that I rarely even saw her eat. She was more likely to nibble on leftover pizza crusts from what Enu and I ordered.

  “We’re so proud of you,” our mother murmured. Her eyes glistened.

  “And Edwy and I love our business courses,” Enu said. “Maybe we can open a Refuge City subsidiary of your business in a few years.”

  A muscle twitched in our father’s cheek.

  “No need to worry about any of that yet,” he said. But even I could hear the pride in his voice.

  Enu and Kiandra are shameless, I thought. Shameless liars. What would they do if our parents showed up here expecting a home-cooked meal? Or . . . expecting to talk business with sons who haven’t paid attention to any class, to any schoolwork at all?

  Udans hovered just on the other side of Kiandra’s laptop. He nodded encouragingly at Enu, Kiandra, and me. He gave us a double thumbs-up.

  “And how are the two of you doing?” Kiandra asked our parents. “Is your health good?”

  She sounded every bit as solicitous as the most Fred-like adult in Fredtown. She sounded like she actually cared. But this was Kiandra. Kiandra who communicated by punching my arm almost as often as Enu did. Kiandra who wouldn’t normally have been caught dead wearing a ribbon in her hair. Kiandra who made fun of my parents constantly

  “Oh yes, yes,” our mother nodded blithely. “We are both fine.”

  What if our mother and father were lying every bit as much as Kiandra and Enu were lying? What if they were sitting there nodding and smiling while their lives were in danger?

  I remembered what Kiandra had said about Cursed Town being a dangerous place.

  I remembered that I didn’t even know if Rosi was in danger.

  Would my parents know? Would they tell me? Would they tell me the truth?

  It was funny. Back in Fredtown, where lying wasn’t allowed, I was a great liar. I loved lying. But now I could practically feel myself breaking out in hives from all the lies around me. It was like I’d suddenly become allergic.

  And it wasn’t just because the suit Kiandra had ordered for me was itchy.

  “Everyone is thriving here,” my father said, beaming from the computer at his three children.

  That did it. I remembered the burned-out, dead part of my parents’ hometown that Rosi and I had explored together.

  I remembered the rows of falling-down houses where most of the residents of Cursed Town lived. I was no expert on what houses should look li
ke, but even I could tell that the people in those houses hadn’t been thriving. Some of them maybe weren’t even surviving.

  I remembered that my parents’ hometown seemed so thoroughly cursed that that had become part of its name.

  Before Kiandra and Enu could stop me, I jumped to my feet.

  “Stop lying!” I demanded. “What’s the truth? Tell us!”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Enu and Kiandra yanked me back into my seat on the couch, but not before I’d managed to scream out, “What caused the war in Cursed Town? Why—”

  Enu clapped his hand over my mouth.

  “Edwy is . . . working on a project for school,” Kiandra said faintly. “And, you know. He wants to make sure all his facts are . . . accurate.”

  I squirmed against Enu’s grasp, but he was much, much stronger than me.

  “Your school requires a project about . . . about our town?” our mother moaned.

  I bit Enu’s hand, and that made him pull it away for a moment.

  “I just want to know the truth!” I cried. “What really happened?”

  On the computer screen my father sat up straight.

  “That’s my boy,” he said, as if I’d done something to be proud of. “Would that school of yours tell you what really happened to us? Would they tell the story the right way? You are all old enough to know.”

  Just past the laptop I’d seen Udans start to lunge for me, but now he pulled back. He started grimly shaking his head. On the computer screen our mother was doing the same thing.

  “We are old enough to know the truth,” I agreed with my father. “We’re old enough to know everything.”

  Beside me Enu seemed to be imitating our father’s technique of making his face as hard and emotionless as stone. I glanced toward Kiandra to see if she was doing the same thing, but she was reaching for a pad of paper nestled in the food wrappers of the end table. (It was off camera, so none of us had bothered to clean up that mess.)

  “I’ll take notes,” Kiandra said. “That way Edwy can just listen.”

  On the screen our father leaned forward.

  “You have to go back several generations to understand,” he said.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Kiandra murmured.

  I glanced at the notepad braced against her lace-covered knees. She was just doodling now, drawing a row of frowning faces with Xs for eyes.

  “Once there was a tribe of men too mighty to stay in one place,” our father intoned in a solemn voice. “Those were our ancestors.”

  Kiandra seemed to be writing more than our father had said. I glanced down; she’d scrawled, It was a tribe of men and women. The women were important too.

  She was still writing: . . . and, really, they were probably just too poor to own any land. So that’s why they became nomads.

  “Our people wandered the Earth, learning new customs and skills everywhere they went,” our father continued.

  Stealing, pillaging, slinking away in the dark of night . . . appeared on Kiandra’s notepad.

  “And our people were admired for their fierceness and beauty everywhere they went,” our father said. “But they were like chameleons. Their appearance as a people changed, depending on where they went. When they went to the north, their skin became lighter and their hair straighter. When they went to the south, their skin got darker and their hair curlier.”

  He’s making it sound all mysterious, but that’s what happens when people intermarry with other tribes with different traits. It’s genetics, not magic.

  “But always, our people were known for their striking green eyes,” our father said.

  Now, that was probably a genetic modification. Green eyes wouldn’t normally have been dominant, Kiandra wrote. But he’s going to act like everyone in our tribe had them, no matter what.

  “It was amazing,” our father continued. “Every child of our tribe had those stunning green eyes.”

  See? Kiandra wrote. They probably gave away any child without green eyes.

  I automatically touched my face, as if I needed to point to my own eyes. I’d never really thought about it—who cared about eye color?—but my eyes were greener than Enu’s or Kiandra’s.

  Does that mean my parents think I’m more valuable? I wondered. Because I’m more like our amazing ancestors?

  Any Fred would have been horrified that I was thinking that way. In Fredtown they’d said again and again (and again and again and again, until I wanted to puke) that it didn’t matter what anyone looked like. What was important about any human beings was what they thought, how they acted, what they did, how they treated other people. Things that weren’t just skin-deep.

  But I’d lived a day and a half in Cursed Town. I’d lived a week and a half in Ref City.

  I knew now: Outside Fredtown not everyone thought like a Fred.

  “After many a generation, after traveling for centuries and absorbing the wisdom and skills of the rest of the world, our ancestors decided to return to their homeland,” our father went on.

  Probably they were kicked out of every other land, Kiandra wrote. Because of the pillaging and stealing wives. Bad ancestors!

  My stomach twisted. What was wrong with Kiandra, that she had to make our father’s story into something awful? Maybe our ancestors had been noble and wise. Maybe they’d even been magical, with their extraordinary green eyes.

  “When our ancestors got back to their homeland,” our father said, “they found that outsiders had invaded and taken over.”

  Kiandra wrote something on her notepad, but I didn’t look at it this time.

  “Our ancestors nobly tried to share everything they had learned in their travels,” our father said. “They tried to show the interlopers better ways to grow crops, better ways to build houses, better ways to raise their children.”

  “But the intruders, they were stupid and cruel,” our mother said, adding to the story for the very first time. “They, they . . .”

  “They killed our people,” our father said. “Just because they were different. They killed my parents and grandparents. And my brothers and sisters.”

  I jerked back. It was that word, “killed.” Could people really kill other people? Was that what happened in a war?

  And how had my father skipped from talking about ancestors and ancient tribes to the death of his parents and grandparents and siblings? To his generation, just one generation before mine?

  I couldn’t look at Kiandra’s notepad. I couldn’t look at Kiandra or Enu. I couldn’t even look at my mother and father, on the computer screen right in front of me.

  “O-kay, then,” Enu said. “You answered Edwy’s question. Thanks. I’m sure that’s all he really needed to know. I bet you two have lots of things to do today—we’ll be so happy to talk to you the next time. . . .”

  Enu squeezed my arm, as if that could stop me from asking any other questions. He needn’t have bothered. I couldn’t speak. If I’d opened my mouth, I might have thrown up or wailed.

  “That was not the end of the story,” our father said sternly. “It was only the beginning. This went on for years, a raid here, a raid there, always ending in bloodshed. And then—”

  “Oh dear,” Kiandra interrupted, her voice unnaturally loud. “I think there’s something wrong with our connection. The sound is going in and out. . . .”

  The sound wasn’t going in and out. But Kiandra reached for the computer as if she needed to fiddle with the volume control or some other setting.

  “If something happens and we get cut off, remember,” Enu said, “just remember, we love—”

  Kiandra touched something on the keyboard, and the screen went black. Enu stopped speaking and sagged back against the couch.

  “What was I saying?” he asked. “Oh, right—we don’t care about you at all. You’re nothing to us.”

  “They’re so awful,” Kiandra said. “Always wanting to prove their side was right in the war . . .”

  My parents’ image was gone, s
o I didn’t have to look at them anymore. I still couldn’t look at Kiandra or Enu. I didn’t want to look at anyone or anything.

  But Udans leaned down in front of us, his eyes meeting mine, and I couldn’t look away. His face was as rocklike now as my father’s had ever been. His scars seemed etched into his skin. My stomach heaved. Those scars probably had been etched into his face during the war. With a knife. Or a sword. Or bullets.

  “You three are the most selfish, ungrateful children I have ever seen,” he said.

  Enu jumped to his feet. For a minute I thought he was going to punch Udans. Instead he just glowered at Udans, practically nose to nose.

  “We don’t care about our parents’ stories, Udans,” Enu said. “We don’t care about yours. The past has nothing to do with us.”

  Kiandra grabbed my face and jerked it toward her, so she and I were eye to eye.

  “Don’t ask questions like that ever again,” she commanded.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was nighttime, and I couldn’t sleep.

  I told myself it was just because I’d stayed up so late the night before and then slept until two p.m. Really it was because every time I closed my eyes, I could see my parents’ anguished expressions. I could see the scars on Udans’s cheek. I could see Enu face-to-face with Udans, hatred and disgust crackling between them. I could see Kiandra telling me to stop asking questions.

  And, whether my eyes were open or shut, I could still hear my father saying bleakly, They killed our people. Just because they were different. They killed my parents and grandparents. And my brothers and sisters.

  “The past has nothing to do with us,” I whispered, quoting Enu. “You’re nothing to us.”

  And now it was like I could hear all the Freds I’d ever known gasping at that: a son being rude and disrespectful about his parents. It seemed to go along with what Udans had said to me on our way to Ref City: That’s just how life goes and There’s nothing you can do. The Freds would have had fits about all of it.

  Or would they? I thought, bolting upright.