Beautiful Blue World Read Free Page A

of our currency—plus twenty a week more while you served.
    You would be provided with room and board for the duration of your service and, at eighteen, your university education.
    Room and board—that meant you would no longer be at home.
    Across the bottom were lines for name, date of birth, and permission from both parents. And the sentence “I understand that applying to sit the test commits me to service should I be selected.”
    I scrunched up the paper and crammed it into my book bag.
    I would show it to Mother and Father because I had been asked to, but I didn’t want to sign up. I wouldn’t go away from home.
    Several of the boys were excited; on the way out, they mentioned flying aerials and boot camp and seeing some action and finally getting to take part. They’d been wishing the minimum age for the army was lower. They were tired of their fathers and older brothers being away while they could do nothing to fight the shortages or defend Sofarende.
    Megs remained in her seat, studying the form. When she noticed me waiting, she folded it carefully, and put it inside her bag.
    —
    Megs, Kammi, Eliza Heller, and I left school together. We got to the end of the first block, and I started to slow.
    “What is it?” Megs asked.
    I shook my head at her and spoke to my sister instead. “Kammi, go home this way. Go straight there, okay?”
    Kammi would be happy and safe with Eliza. It wasn’t unusual for them to walk together. The two grabbed hands and started toward home.
    Megs studied me as I watched them go.
    “I want to see what happened,” I said. “During the night, I mean.”
    “
Should
we go over there, though?”
    “Were you told not to?”
    “No.”
    “Me neither. Just not to take Kammi.”
    Megs bit her lip, considering.
    “I just want to know. I just want to know what we’re hiding from.”
    She nodded. We headed east.
    —
    In the still-rising dust and smoke, our shoes crunched on the cobbles. Overnight, they’d been covered in gravel.
    Megs reached for my hand, and I took hers, glad for the warmth of her fingers.
    There was no sign of what had been two rows of houses.
    Of homes.
    Of families.
    Just heaps and heaps of rubble, as if someone had knocked down a mountain.
    Only a few blocks from where we lived. It could have been our street.
    Maybe it would be, tonight.
    We continued up the center of the street as if on a strange conveyor, afraid to stop, afraid to hurry.
    Spots of orange emerged in the gray: helmets and vests of rescue workers. They shouted to each other.
    They were still finding people.
    Still moving rocks and charred timber to open pathways to the basements.
    But they were also carrying stretchers covered with sheets.
    A row of these stretchers lay on the ground.
    A woman ran up to the men in orange vests.
    “Have you seen my son? My son? My son and his children, they live on this street!”
    Lived.
    There was no more street.
    Nobody lived here anymore.
    The woman ran on to the next set of rescue workers.
    “My son! My son!”
    Her words stabbed me behind my breastbone. My eyes followed her frantic path up the street.
    “Mathilde?”
    Megs was tugging my arm.
    “Mathilde, we should go home.”
    —
    I hung up my coat and scarf, tossed my shoes into the row by the door, and thundered upstairs.
    I opened my math textbook and answer booklet on the small desk in our room. I sharpened my pencil, found my extra eraser, and wrote the assignment heading.
    And then I just sat there, tapping the pencil.
    I closed my eyes.
    I could hear Mother’s voice, pleading with the rescue workers:
My husband, have you seen him, he’s on Street Safety Patrol? My husband!
    I wrapped my arms around myself as if to shut out her imaginary screaming; I rocked back and forth. Sweat beaded on my upper lip.
    The voice changed to be Father’s as he climbed through rubble in an oddly orange, smoky dawn:
My wife, my daughters! We lived here, on this street!
    “Big!”
    The shock of the strength of his