Children of Exile by Margaret Peterson Haddix Page B

me. We were in a strange place, even if it was supposed to be home now. She was a stranger, even if she was supposed to be our mother.
    Did she expect me to yank my hand away from my own brother? To shove him away?
    â€œHe’s only little,” I said. “Little children need—”
    Her hand darted out in a flash. I jerked back so the palm of her hand wouldn’t collide with my face.
    â€œDon’t you tell me what my own child needs,” she said. “Don’t you sass me.”
    She looked at her hand, still raised; she looked at Bobo between us. She let her hand drop.
    She almost slapped me, I thought. Would she have slapped me if I hadn’t moved?
    I reeled back, slammed by my own thoughts even though I’d dodged the slap of her hand. No adult had ever struck me—certainly not Fred-mama or Fred-daddy. Little kids, yes: There’s that phase at two or three where some kids feel powerless, and they lash out by biting or hitting. The Freds had told me again and again how to deal with that: Older kids and adults must never, ever, ever hit back. Kids need to learn as soon as possible that hitting isn’t the answer.
    My face burned, stinging almost as badly as if I really had been hit. I blinked back the tears that sprang to my eyes. And yet what I kept thinking was, Did Bobo see that woman try to hit me? Oh, please, let it be that he didn’t see that. Don’t let him know what happened. What almost happened. Don’t let him ever think that an adult might hit him.  . . . Don’t let him be damaged by this. . . .
    I looked down, and Bobo’s head wasn’t turned toward me. His face and his eyes were pointed straight ahead. Maybe he hadn’t heard what the woman and I had said—maybe for him it just blended in with the sound of children crying around us. Maybe he hadn’t felt me jerking away from the woman.
    I looked back at the woman. We had a procedure in Fredtown: Whenever you felt that someone had wronged you, you talked it over with a trusted adult, and then you talked it over with the person who’d offended you. And then, after all that, if you still felt the slightest bit upset, you repeated the whole process again and again, until you were just tired of being mad.
    Edwy was the only person I’d ever been mad at that I hadn’t done that with.
    But I couldn’t tell this woman, You wronged me just now, because Bobo might hear. I couldn’t say, You hurt my feelings and gave me the impression that you don’t value my viewpoint, that you don’t value me. I couldn’t say anything.
    Fredtown felt farther away than ever.
    Bobo stopped walking.
    â€œThat looks like a mask,” he said. “Why would a building wear a mask?”
    He pointed to a structure far ahead of us, which I had taken for the airport terminal. Maybe it was a row of stores instead. But I’d never seen stores like this: Where there should have been windows displaying the most tantalizing wares, this structure had interlocking metal bars across the front, keeping everybody out.
    The metal bars didn’t look like a mask to me. They looked like a cage.
    â€œAll the stores are shut down,” the woman said. “It’s a holiday. The day we get our children back. The day we’ve been waiting for for the past twelve years.”
    She shot a glance at me, as if she was daring me to argue.
    â€œBut to put a building in a mask  . . . ,” Bobo said. He could be like a dog with a bone sometimes. When he got an idea stuck in his head, it was the hardest thing in the world to talk him out of it. His expression brightened. “Is there going to be a party? Does everyone get to wear a costume?”
    â€œYou talking about those metal gates?” the woman asked. “That’s so the stores don’t get robbed while the owners are away. That’s all. It’s because of thieves.”
    â€œPeople