The Shade of the Moon by Susan Beth Pfeffer Read Free Book Online

says if you look hard enough, you can still find some. Five quarters. We’ll be
     able to talk for fifteen minutes.”
    “Isn’t there a line?” Jon asked. “Usually someone’s shouting at you to get off the
     phone.”
    “I’m using one in a bad neighborhood,” Mom replied. “People are too scared to use
     it.”
    “Is that safe?” Jon asked.
    “I’m fine,” Mom said. “The neighborhood isn’t really that bad. Just a lot of drunks
     who’ll be spending their quarters on potka, not pay phones. So tell me, Jon, how did
     your week go?”
    “It was okay,” Jon said. “Mom, I don’t like the idea of your being in a bad neighborhood.
     Why don’t we just say hello, and you can call me next week, at your regular phone
     booth.”
    “There isn’t any place in White Birch that’s really safe,” Mom said. “Remember, back
     home, how I’d make sure the doors were locked all the time? I can’t even do that here.
     None of the doors have locks.”
    “I know, Mom,” Jon said. All the locks were removed when laborers had been moved into
     White Birch. That way, the people who used to live in White Birch couldn’t use their
     homes as barricades. Once the grubs were resettled, no one saw much point in giving
     them locks and keys. Grubs didn’t have anything worth stealing.
    “I hope Alex and Miranda leave,” Mom said. “I’d rather never see my grandchild than
     have her grow up in a place like this.”
    “White Birch is a lot better than most of the grubtowns I’ve seen,” Jon said. “There
     are schools and the clinic. Police, too, for protection.”
    “Police,” Mom said. “I lost another of my boys to the mines this week. He was arrested
     for public intoxication. Thrown into jail and carted off to the mines. Half the men
     in this town are publicly intoxicated, but the police only take the young ones, the
     ones who’ll last a little longer in the mines.”
    “We all need the mines,” Jon said. “You use coal to heat your apartment, Mom. Where
     do you think it comes from? The coal fairy?”
    “I don’t know you anymore,” Mom said. “I don’t.”
    “You know me, Mom,” Jon muttered.
    “I never see you,” she said. “I see Matt more often than I see you. You’re a bus ride
     away, Jon. But you never visit.”
    “I play soccer most Sundays,” Jon said.
    “Then quit the team,” Mom said. “Get a different afterschool. Something where you’ll
     do some good.”
    “I’m not quitting the soccer team,” Jon said. “It’s the only thing I have.”
    “You have family,” Mom said. “You have a roof over your head and food to eat and a
     school where you can get a real education. You have a future. My students don’t have
     any of that. They get just enough food to keep them alive, just enough education so
     they can be trained for their jobs. It’s an outrage. And you say the only thing you
     have is soccer. I don’t know you anymore, Jon. I don’t know who you’ve become, what
     the enclave has made you. Matt, Miranda, they haven’t lost who they were. If anything,
     this whole experience has made them better, stronger.”
    Jon listened as Mom took a deep breath.
    “I know I spoiled you,” Mom said finally. “You were the baby in the family. And back,
     back when things got bad, well, I put all my hopes on you. Matt and Miranda let me,
     but I shouldn’t have done it. It gave you a sense of entitlement, and living the way
     you do has only exacerbated that. So a lot of it is my fault. Not all of it, though.
     You’re old enough, Jon, to see the world as it really is, not the way you want it
     to be.”
    There was nothing Jon could say. It was her choice. She had her world, Matt, Miranda,
     Alex. She had her students. She no longer had him.
    “I’m getting off now,” she said, understanding his silence. “I have better use for
     these quarters.”

     
    Sunday, May 17
     
    “Look at ’im,” Tyler said in drunken indignation.
    Jon looked at the old man