The Other Side of the Island by Allegra Goodman

breathe. There was no escape.
    “I don’t want to drown,” she cried to her father in the night.
    “You aren’t going to drown,” he said.
    “I want to move,” she sobbed.
    Her mother held her. “We will. We will,” Pamela said. “We’ll move as soon as we can.”
    “There’s a warning system on every watchtower,” her father reassured her. “Sirens would sound and then buses would come and drive us to the mountains.”
    Honor gazed out the window into the great black night. “But what if the wave is Unpredictable?”
    “Come with me,” Will said. He took her by the hand and led her downstairs in her nightgown.
    “No, Will,” Pamela whispered. There was a curfew in the Colonies for Safety Measures. No one was allowed outside past hour eight. “It’s after nine,” she said.
    “I don’t care,” he told her.
    “She’s too young.”
    “She’s ten years old, Pamela.”
    “She isn’t ready.” Pamela stood near the door, almost blocking Will.
    “She needs to know,” he said.
    “Will!”
    But he took Honor and brushed right past Pamela into the night.
    Honor was afraid. Her father’s mood frightened her. She had never seen him oppose her mother like that. “Where are we going?”
    “Shh.” Will rushed her through the unlit gravel lot in front of the town houses and gestured for her to follow him.
    Since they’d moved to the island, Honor had never been outside after dark. The night was warm and sticky but mild, as if the sun had stopped to take a breath. The air was gentle on her face and shoulders. She wanted to look everywhere at once—at the stray cats scampering in their path, at the shining stars, the round moon so much brighter than she remembered. She’d heard from the neighbor kids what a bad place the moon was; that was where the worst people went, the crazy ones who didn’t fit. They had to live on the cold dusty moon in the lunatic asylum. “How can the moon be so pretty?” she asked her father. She had never expected it to shine so bright.
    “It’s an overlay,” her father said.
    “What’s an overlay?”
    “A light show,” whispered her father. “The Corporation projects a moon and stars onto the sky above each city. They aren’t natural.”
    “They’re perfect,” Honor protested. The stars sparkled. She wanted to touch all seven of them where they shone in a circle around the silver moon. “Can I look at them? Please?”
    But Will was in a rush and didn’t answer. He glanced often at the tall watchtower, almost rebuilt. Any day now, Watchers would return to guard the neighborhood.
    Will hurried Honor all the way down to the danger zone fenced off near the shore. He lifted a piece of sagging barbed wire so that Honor could climb inside the barriers.
    “We’re going in there?” Honor asked, astonished. “But it’s Not Allowed!”
    “Come on,” he said.
    “We’ll get hurt!” She pointed to the red DANGER signs posted.
    “You know I’ll keep you safe,” Will told her. She hesitated. “You still trust me, don’t you?”
    She scrambled under the fence and he got down on his hands and knees and crawled after her.
    Then she was terrified. She heard the sucking of the sea, the great dark mass of water and the crash of waves. She would have turned and run if her father hadn’t held her. She thought she might be sick. She had sailed over the ocean to the island on a Corporation ship, but on the EMS Serenity, no one was allowed on deck. All the passengers had stayed safe inside. Before that trip she had traveled everywhere with her parents in little boats, but she had not known then what she knew now.
    Honor’s bare feet touched scratchy sand. Dry sea grass tickled like insects on her legs. The ocean swelled nearer and nearer. She almost screamed.
    “No noise,” Will said.
    “I want to go home,” she cried as Will half carried her to the water’s edge.
    “Not yet,” her father said.
    She closed her eyes and buried her head in his chest. “Look,”