Free The Other Side of the Island by Allegra Goodman Page B

Quintilian didn’t like the song and screamed louder than ever.
    Pamela walked up and down with him until he finally drifted off. Then Honor couldn’t sleep. She stayed up worrying, afraid the Neighborhood Watch would find Will after curfew. Mr. Pratt and Mrs. Pratt were always on the lookout. Pamela sat next to Honor on the bed and drew pictures. Fluidly, Pamela drew animals with a pencil. Cats and horses seemed to come alive on paper. She practiced for hours, filling every scrap she could find. But Honor kept glancing at the window. Where did her father go at night? “Why is he late?” Honor asked.
    Pamela never answered that question.
     
    When Honor was eleven, she got a new teacher, Miss MacLaren, and her class visited the school library once a week. Although owning books was Not Allowed, borrowing books from the library was Encouraged. Once a week Honor borrowed a school library book to bring home. She read about the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz. She read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, a book about four children who teamed up with a lion to save the world from winter. And she read The Secret Garden, about a little girl and boy who planted flowers that never died.
    Honor loved the school library, but she was also afraid of it. The floors were polished wood, and they creaked. The bookcases were high and set close together. In the center of the room Miss Tuttle, the small, golden-eyed librarian, sat watching everyone like a cat. Miss Tuttle had long thick hair she stroked back now and then away from her face. She powdered her face white, and her small hands and cheeks were puffy. Whenever classes came in, Miss Tuttle was working at her desk marking books and cutting out paragraphs with scissors. No one talked, because Miss Tuttle needed to concentrate. She bent over her work and every once in a while lifted up a page to admire the cutouts she had made—so many small and large rectangles in some places that the paper looked like lace. Then she swept the cuttings into her white recycling bin.
    Every week, all the children in year H, both boys’ and girls’ classes, filed into the library, and each child picked out a book from the low shelves close to Miss Tuttle’s desk. Honor and Helix often looked at the medium and higher shelves, but they knew better than to touch books up there. Once, when Miss Tuttle was bent down over her cutting work, Helix whispered, “I dare you.”
    Honor hesitated. Then she reached out and touched the edge of a dark blue book on the upper shelf. Instantly, Miss Tuttle said, “No, no, not for you. Those are for older children.”
    “How did she see me?” Honor whispered to Helix.
    “She sees everything,” he said. “If you ever try to hide a book from her, she’ll find it. And if you . . .”
    “Silence is golden,” said Miss Tuttle.
     
    That same day, two boys, Hawthorn and Hector, began pushing and shoving in the back of the library. Hector was an orphan. His parents had been taken, and so he slept at school with the other orphans in the Boarders’ Houses. Everyone was supposed to treat orphans kindly, but they were scheming children. They always had a hungry, jealous look about their eyes. The girls in Honor’s class called this look orphanish. The truth was, orphans always wanted whatever anyone else had. Hector was fighting with Hawthorn because he wanted Hawthorn’s book.
    “Class, please come to the front,” said Miss Tuttle, but the boys were too busy squabbling to listen. Miss Tuttle did not rise from her chair. She pushed a small red button with her finger. Bing! At once, as if by magic, a pair of doors opened at the back of the library. The doors opened wide to reveal a great dark cavern of a storage room. All the children stood transfixed. Hawthorn and Hector stopped fighting and stared in awe at the blackness. Then the doors swept closed again and Miss Tuttle beckoned the boys forward with the others. “There is no fighting,” she said. “Fighters