The girls look at one another helplessly, unsure what the word means. Even Janey looks puzzled.
“We have no weapons, nothing. We’re like a herd of goats plotting to overthrow the humans that keep them. It’s laughable. What’s the point of thinking about it differently?” Vanessa’s teeth are bared. Caitlin feels the room deflating, shrinking back.
“Because,” says Janey, “they can’t stop us from thinking. They can force us to do anything they want, but they can’t stop us from thinking. And maybe if we think, we’ll think up a way to…” She pauses, sighing. “Amanda is dead. You know that. But she was seeking a different way. A way to leave to another place. Amanda—” She stops herself, actually biting her lip to stem the flow of words. She glances at Mary, who shakes her head almost imperceptibly.
She stares around the room. “Think about it. Think if it was different.”
There’s a snort from a corner of the group, and someone whispers, “What if on the other island, it’s your summer of fruition all the time?” There are giggles and groans of disgust.
“What if all there is to eat is spinach?”
“What if the freaks in the wastelands invade and kill everyone?”
“What if all there is to eat is cake?”
The chorus of what-ifs continues, and Janey looks tired. “This isn’t the point,” she says, but the idea has run away from her, galloping around the room like a playful dog. She looks sad, and frustrated, but also unsurprised. Caitlin wants to go comfort Janey, tell her she understands, but she isn’t sure she does understand. Inching closer—invisible as ever—she hears Janey murmur to Mary, “They’re too young. The adults keep them too young. Or too stupid.”
Mary puts an arm around Janey and says, “They’re how the adults made them. You told me that.”
Caitlin wants so badly to be different, someone not young or stupid, so she might grasp the significance of what Janey is saying. But Vanessa made more sense. What difference would it make, if there were other islands? They can’t get there. They can’t talk to the other islanders to get ideas. The other islanders aren’t going to come beat the adults until they agree to whatever Janey wants.
Janey walks over to Vanessa, looking intent. Everyone falls silent, and so Janey’s whispered words are clear, echoing off the walls. “You have your books, and your cleverness, and your wanderer father,” Janey says softly. A muscle near Vanessa’s ear twitches, but she doesn’t say anything. “You need to remember,” Janey continues, “that one day soon, unless something changes, something big, you’re going to bleed, and marry, and raise two children, and die, just like everybody else. Nothing will be any different.”
“You think I don’t know that?” hisses Vanessa in a sharp fury. “And what about you? You’re a freak, an overgrown freak, and you think that will save you. Well, I’ve seen you with no clothes on—you’re getting close and soon you’re going to bleed like the rest of us.”
They stare at each other, anger flaring in Janey’s ice-gray eyes and mirrored in Vanessa’s rich hazel ones. Suddenly Janey slumps. “Then we’re both doomed, aren’t we?” she says with a crooked smile, looking like she’s going to cry.
Janey moves away, and Vanessa puts her head in her hands. Walking over to Mary, Janey whispers something to her, and they leave up the long staircase. The girls fall back to talking, telling the story of the other island, where people live in snow houses or grass houses, and they eat spinach always or never, and they have cats as pets or cats have people as pets. Faces are filled with mirth, alarm, confusion. Nobody leaves until the sky starts blushing with dawn, and then Caitlin feels dizzy as she hurries back home.
The next day at school, Mr. Abraham rails about how lazy and slow the girls are. Yet at recess, the girls who made it to the church fly around to the others like bees, depositing reports of what was said and gathering disbelief and confusion.
Despite the strangeness of what Janey said, and all the unanswered questions, the girls walk a little bit taller for the next week or so. They feel a little more satisfied leaving the dinner table. They know something. Or, at least, they might know something. Slowly, the doubters begin to believe in other islands, simply to have something new to believe. Something dark and mysterious, something exciting. Something forbidden.
Caitlin still whimpers and cries before Father, sits hunched and shivering in the classroom, wanders alone at recess, but she feels just a little bit different. She knows others can see it too; girls who used to tease her for her smallness, her shyness, her ugliness, now meet her eyes like she’s a person.
Caitlin can tell Janey’s not done. She still looks angry and deep in thought most of the time, as if she’s heading toward something that needs to be beaten into submission.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Vanessa
For the next few days, all the girls can talk about is the Other Island. To Vanessa, this shows that their perspective is weak, for there could be dozens or even hundreds of islands. She still feels depressed by the prospect, as it leaves her as impotent as she’s ever been, but the other girls adore the concept. Each has made up an island in her head and claimed it as her own.
Letty’s is cold all year round and covered in snow. People live in snow houses and eat squirrels and winter berries. There’s no summer, but it doesn’t matter, because only the children are brave enough to go out into the cold. They hunt and gather while parents and babies huddle inside.
Nina’s island is up in the sky, floating. If you get too close to the edge you might fall off and smash into bits.
Rosie’s island has only women, and they can have babies without men, just by deciding to. The mothers farm, cook, carve, and hunt while the daughters take care of littler daughters. At night they go to a special part of the woods, where they sing and tell stories, and then sleep in a big pile together. There’s always someone awake to watch for danger while the others sleep.