Read The Other Side of the Island for Free Online

said.
    “A baby is wonderful,” said Pamela. “You’ll see.”
    “We’ll find a better house. We aren’t going to live here forever, you know,” her father said.
    Her parents didn’t understand. After the baby, her family would never fit in. Other families were three, and hers would be four. Other families were the right number, and hers would be too big.
     
    Honor decided she wouldn’t tell anyone at school about the baby. Not even Helix. But he surprised her. They were standing on a picnic table and taking turns jumping off. They laid sticks down on the ground to measure how far they jumped.
    Honor was poised to jump off the table when Helix said, “I heard my father say your mother is going to have a baby.”
    Honor had been so close to jumping that she lost her balance and fell in a heap in the dirt. “Now look what you made me do.”
    “Sorry,” said Helix, and he climbed onto the table for his turn.
    She scrambled back up. “No, it’s still my turn. That doesn’t count.”
    “Is it true?”
    “Shh.”
    “It’s a secret?”
    “Don’t tell anybody.”
    “Why?”
    From her perch on the table Honor watched as Helena, Hortense, and Hiroko strolled past. “Because I have enough trouble already! I live by the shore. No one will come to my house.”
    “You can come to our house,” said Helix.
    Honor thought he was just feeling sorry for her. “I don’t want to,” she said.
    “Yes, you do.”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “We have a sprinkler pool.”
    “I’ll ask my parents,” Honor said.
     
    Honor could keep the baby a secret at school, but at the town houses, everyone noticed that Pamela was getting bigger. Honor was glad that none of the neighbor children went to the Old Colony School.
    Sometimes before dinner she played with the girls from the other town houses. They were children of the island’s First People, girls with tanned skin and brown eyes. Their names were Felicia, Gina, and Hattie. Honor envied their smooth black hair.
    There were basketball hoops in the paved lot in front of the town houses. Honor and the other girls played basketball, and a group of boys kicked a soccer ball. They played a wild game called Forecaster where one boy pelted the others with a ball. The game was Not Allowed, because the word Forecaster was Unacceptable. Whenever the boys got caught by the Neighborhood Watch, they had to rake and sweep and break down boxes for recycling.
    “Do you know what you are saying when you use the word Forecaster?” Mr. Pratt demanded once. “The Forecaster is a madman. He’d drown you as soon as look at you. He worships Old Weather. He thinks the world was better off before. And all he wants is for you to disobey. Take these brooms and sweep the steps.” He gestured to the cement stairs from the empty lot to the town houses.
    The boys hung their heads and accepted their punishment, but after some weeks had passed, they played Forecaster again. The girls could hear them using the F-word as they slammed the ball into each other. “I’m gonna forecast you!” At a safe distance, a cluster of little girls jumped rope. If the little girls found a bit of chalk, they’d draw hopscotch squares on the asphalt. They’d play clapping games, chanting:
    Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack
All dressed in black, black, black
With silver buttons, buttons, buttons
All down her back, back, back
She asked her mother, mother, mother
For fifty cents, cents, cents
To see an elephant, elephant, elephant
Jump the fence, fence, fence
He jumped so high, high, high
He reached the sky, sky, sky
And didn’t come back, back, back
Till the Fourth of July, ly, ly.
    The girls had seen pictures of the elephants that had once roamed the wild grasslands, but no one knew exactly what July had been on the old calendar. The older girls argued about it. Hattie thought July had been a summer month at the end of the year, but Honor was sure July had been a winter month. Why else would Miss Mary be buttoned