“What is it?” cries Gina Abraham excitedly. “What are we doing?”
“I wanted to talk about…important things,” Janey says. “Forbidden things. I didn’t know how else to get us together without some adult looking on.”
The girls glance around at one another as the silence lengthens and they wait for her to say more. Then Mary says, “Go on, get behind the altar.”
Janey rolls her eyes. “I’m not Pastor Saul,” she says.
“What?” calls a girl from the back, and then more softly, “What did she say?”
“See,” says Mary. “We’ll hear you better if you’re higher up.”
“But it’s stupid,” says Janey.
“If you have something to say,” says Vanessa, “and you want us all to hear it…”
Janey unfolds her spindly body and walks up to the altar, almost as tall as the pastor but slender as a blade of grass. When she speaks from behind the podium, her faint voice is suddenly strong and echoing. With a start, Caitlin wonders if Pastor Saul’s sermons are really deep and thundering, his voice driven by otherworldly power, or if it’s simply a result of the way the church is structured. Janey coughs. “I…thank you for coming here. I just wanted to—I was talking with someone before she died. And she was talking about leaving the island. Maybe going to the wastelands, but I thought, maybe there’s another island. Another island to go to.”
A voice whispers, “What does she mean?”
“What I mean is what if we’re not the only one? If you can go on an island and avoid the scourge, surely others did too.”
Caitlin thinks of another island, perhaps with a similar church, perhaps with a red-haired girl admonishing the others at midnight.
“I mean, the world is big, right?” Janey asks. Caitlin sees Vanessa, who knows all about the world, nodding.
“Mr. Abraham showed us on a map,” says Letty. “He said the island wasn’t on it, but told us where we were.”
“And for all we know, there’s more world, not even on that map.”
There’s silence as everyone ponders this uncharted world. The littlest girls, already bored, have started a game to see who can jump the farthest. Cheers and whoops carry from one corner of the room, providing a jarring score to Janey’s words.
“But Pastor Saul says that everyone else got stuck in the war,” pipes up Wendy Balthazar.
“Well, what if he doesn’t know everything about the entire world?” snaps Janey. “He’s a pastor, not an ancestor. Or God.”
Wendy shakes her head at her sister to indicate her disapproval of Janey’s comment.
“Why would we be the only ones to escape the war?” Janey continues. “What’s so special about us?”
“The ancestors,” Nina says. “They had foresight.”
“Well, maybe other people’s ancestors had foresight.”
There’s a collective gasp, and then a mutter. The ancestors aren’t just ancestors, they’re the ancestors, chosen by God to start a new society. Janey slams her fist into the altar so hard that Caitlin wonders if she’s dented it. “Are you seriously saying it couldn’t ever happen anywhere else?” she asks. “That it’s impossible anyone else might have survived?”
“She’s right,” says Vanessa. The others quiet and turn to her. “There must be pockets of people somewhere, on islands, in valleys…places where the scourge didn’t reach, or didn’t reach as badly. I mean, we can’t be sure, but it wouldn’t make sense for us to be the only ones.” Caitlin isn’t sure what a valley is, but she trusts Vanessa.
“It doesn’t have to make sense,” says Paula Abraham nastily. “It’s the ancestors. And God.”
“Other islands,” continues Vanessa as if Paula hadn’t spoken, “and they might be completely different.”
“What do you mean?” asks Fiona. “Different how?”
“However you like,” says Vanessa thoughtfully. “It depends on where they are. Different plants and animals and weather. Hotter, colder. Different trees, or no trees.”
“What do they carve out of, then?” demands Paula.
“I don’t know, I don’t live there,” Vanessa replies, and everyone laughs.
“What if on that island, it never gets warm enough for a summer?” asks Letty, and someone else says, “What if there aren’t any dogs or cats?”
“What if women wear pants and men wear dresses?” says Fiona, and everyone laughs louder.
“What if nobody ever gets married, or knows who their father is?” says Millie Abraham.
“What if there aren’t any men at all?” says Wendy.
“Then there’d be no babies,” answers another voice.
“What if,” says Lana Aaron, who is only six but more alert than her shrieking, tumbling counterparts, “what if the children are head of the family, and the parents have to do what they say?”
“What if they’re all defectives, and they all live in one big defective family?”
“This isn’t time for storytelling,” insists Janey, although the ideas keep whizzing through the air, each girl eager to add her own. “This is a time to ask serious questions.” Her voice becomes louder. “If there are other islands, where things are done differently, can we go there? Or can we change things here?”
There is a blank silence. “Change what?” ventures Nina.
“Change anything. Not just dogs and dresses. Change things that matter.”
Another silence, and then a few girls turn to mutter to one another. “Like what?” asks Nina again.
Janey sighs. “If you could change anything about the island, what would it be?”
There’s a pause. “More cookies,” someone whispers, and a trail of giggles blows through the group like wind on grass.
“Think about it,” says Janey, slamming her hand into the altar again. “What if we didn’t have to get married? What if we didn’t have to obey our fathers?” A spark in her eyes. “What if we could make it like summer all the time? Wouldn’t you like that?”
The silence this time is full of doubt.
“But,” says Fiona, “what about the ancestors?”
“What about them?” demands Janey.
“Well,” says Fiona, as if explaining something to a very small child, “we live this way because the ancestors tell us to. So we don’t fall to the darkness below.”
“But then,” says Vanessa, over another girl who is trying to speak, “what’s the use of thinking about it? What if we didn’t have to obey our fathers? That would be nice, but the truth is that we have fathers and they make us obey them—with their fists if they need to.” Caitlin can feel everyone’s eyes on her and wishes she would shrink into the ground.
“It would be nice to have summer all the time,” continues Vanessa, “but we don’t. We never will—the frost comes at the end of summer, and we have to go home. Otherwise we’d freeze or starve. They’re going to make us get married whether we like it or not. We’re small and they can force us to do anything they want.” Her voice is grating and bitter. “And our mothers would help them. And when we are mothers, we’ll feel the same way, no matter how much we think we won’t. You want us to lead some kind of revolution?”