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workhouse?” History book pictures from the early 1900s of old factories appeared in my mind. The child laborers—child slaves really—always looked half starved and exhausted.
    “Yes. FDO—Federal Debt Ordinance—169, option D, allows children of a certain age to help reduce their family’s debt by spending some time at an FDRA workhouse.”
    “What happened to options A through C? I thought families were supposed to be able to choose. I’ve heard stories, but I know of only one person for sure—a girl from Lakeview Middle School—who’s had to go to aworkhouse. Most families choose supervised spending. Why didn’t
my
family get to choose?”
    “Oh, Matt,” she laughed and patted my arm again. “I know you overheard me tell your mother that I don’t know why this option was chosen for your family.” She leaned in close, twitching her eyebrows, and whispered, “Trust me. You’ll like option D. FDRA workhouses are fabulous places to live—especially for kids like you.” Her last word came out with a puff of air that tickled my ear. I leaned back until my head bumped against the glass.
    “Wha . . . what’s FDRA?”
    “It stands for Federal Debt Rehabilitation Agency. It’s where I work. We oversee those participating under FDO 169-D.”
    She went on and on about how amazing this workhouse was and how much I was going to love it there. After a few minutes I tuned her out. One thing I knew for sure, no place could be as much of a paradise as she seemed to think the workhouse was. I stared out the window. Soon we were speeding down the freeway, heading for the city. Honey Lady pulled out a case she’d brought with her from the front seat. It contained a portable movie player for me and a laptop for her. I only half watched the movie as my mind planned my next move. They were dead wrong if they thought I’d skip along happily to some slave-labor camp.No way, suckers. Just like Nana, I wasn’t about to go without a fight.
    My movie was nearing the end when Gorilla Man pulled the limo onto an exit ramp. He had to stop at a light at the end of the ramp. That’s when I made my move, yanking on the door handle with all my might. My muscles burned with the effort, and I slammed my shoulder into the door—again and again. It didn’t budge. I’d thought that when Honey Lady climbed in back with me, maybe she’d left the doors unlocked. She hadn’t. It didn’t matter. I kept slamming.
    “Matt.” Honey Lady slid her arms around me, coaxing me away from the door. How could arms be so strong and so soft at the same time? She drew me in close, like a mother comforting her upset child. She whispered soft sounds into my hair and rocked me for just a second, enough for me to unclench my fingers and let go of the door handle. “You’re going to be okay.” The mother in her disappeared and the sales-pitch woman returned. “I’m so excited for you. We’re almost to the workhouse. Just wait until you see it. You’re very lucky, you know. Six months ago you would have had to take an airplane to a workhouse in the east. Now they’re building them all over the place. Some people still have to travel much farther than you’ve had to—since our workhouse serves the entire Midwest area.”
    I wriggled out of her grasp and turned back to the window, calculating the average number of windows for the buildings we passed. It wasn’t hard, since we had to drive slowly because of the traffic, and the buildings we drove by were small—eight floors, max. The really big skyscrapers stood clustered together in the distance. A few flower beds and trees appeared every once in a while between the buildings. I even saw a small park. Green and space nudged out steel and cement more and more as we drove.
    “There it is,” said Honey Lady.
    Even though I tried to keep my eyes sulkily staring at the piece of lint on the floor by my shoe, I couldn’t stop myself from glancing out the window on Honey Lady’s side of the car,