Holding Wonder

"Ethically correct!" Anger surged in me, stung to life by my disappointment. "Most correct! I pushed a lady to get into a jerkie. I rode the J-line all by myself to Nowhere. I ran barefoot across all the green I could. I squished mud between my toes. I looked at a stranger. And talked to him. And I picked-" I scrabbled in my pocket. A moist, greenish-black thread caught under my probing nails. I pulled my hand out and looked. The flower was crushed and dead. Only the tip of one petal curled coolly white from the ruin. "It was most secret and most lovely," I whispered forlornly.
My fingers cupped the flower protectively out of sight, and I pushed my hand down into my pocket.
Dad turned on the telaworld and reached for the ear. "Don't forget your appointment at ten tomorrow."
"And if I don't choose to remember?" I flared. Three pairs of astonished eyes focused on me. "Why should I go to Guidance?" I asked. "They'll only try to change me-to make me conform! I don't want to change! I don't want to conform!" I struggled with breath and tears.
"Let's truth it!" I felt my face pinking with more defiance. "We're non-conform-everyone of us! That's our whole trouble!" Chis doubled his hands into fists and Mother pinked slowly and painfully. Father just looked at me for a moment, then he said quietly, "Yes, we are non-conform. That is our problem. But so far we have either truthed it or kept still. Our fantasies we have plainly labeled fantasies-"
"And so have I," I said as quietly as he. "When I am fantasying. And I think that silence sometimes is the worst kind of untruthing." I turned away and went to Wardrobe. I undressed hurriedly, clutching my dress back from the renov to rescue the moist mashedness of the white flower.
I was still staring defiantly at the top of my slot when the lull-tone finally faded, thinking I was asleep. Then I heard the click of Chis' slot and knew he was above me. Slots are supposed to be completely contained, of course so that no one intrudes on another, but long ago Chis and I discovered a long thin crack at one end of our slots. We could whisper there and hear each other. Would he? Or did he think me untruthing, too. Or maybe he just didn't care-
Then I heard, "Twixt!" in a voiceless, small explosion. I could picture him twisted all around in his slot because the crack is at his foot. He's a boy and has to take the upper, and it is so old that the bedcovers pull out from only one end, but I can change where I put my head in mine. That week I had changed my pillow to the opposite end.
"Yes?" I breathed back at him, sitting up cautiously to get my mouth closer to the crack.
"It's true, isn't it?" he hissed.
"True," I said flatly.
"With green and water and trees?" His whisper was hungry.
"True," I said. "And little units far away, low, with sky between-"
"There's no J-station like that in two hours around," he breathed back at me.
"There has to be!" I felt my whisper threaten to become a voice. "Or else I was farther than that away. I was too. I saw my shadow slide up the J-tower. Up over the I!
"Twixt!" He almost broke into speaking. "If you saw your shadow in the afternoon, the sun was in back and the J-tower was east-" he fell silent.
East? Whoever uses directions any more except on maps instead of up and down and left and right. You just get the right transport and it goes where you want. And what has east to do with where my shadow was sliding-
Then Chis spoke again, very carefully. "Twixt, where was the river then, the flowing water-left or right?"
"I-I-" I visualized again the slim sliding of such a tall, tall shadow. "Left," I said. "On my left."
There was a brief breathy silence. "Listen, Twixt," his voice was urgent. "I bet I know what happened to you. You know the grid for J-stations? The same distance between, all the time? Well, it isn't always so. Sometimes there's a non-conform off-J in between. No station. Just an off and on for some reason or other. You have to have the destination code 'relse you don't even know there's an off there. You musta punched a non-conform off-J."
"But where is it?" I whispered back. "How'll I ever find it again? Because I'm going to find it."
"I'll find it for you," came his confident answer. "I know more about J-lines than anyone in the whole-the whole megapolis! I've hopped more hi-speed freight glides and stowed in more jerkies-'
"Chis!" I was horrified. "Jerkies alone? And you're not twelve yet!"
"Twelve!" His voice dismissed the whole idea of rules and permits. "But, Twixt, I think I know where that river is! If it was on your left and you were facing a J-tower in the afternoon-I'll find it. I'll find it if it takes until-until I'm twelve!"
His voice was gone, but I could almost see him so brighted that he shone in the dark! I wasn't very dim myself! And he's lust stubborn enough – do it," I thought admiringly.
"And then we'll bring the J-line destination code to Mother and Dad and take them there. Then they'll see. They'll believe then. And Dad will put in for locale amends and we'll go! We'll leave this huge external skeleton. We'll be tall, standing there in the green. We'll all strip off our pneumonosoles
and-"
I hugged myself in delight. "And then foof to you, Engle Faucing! Fooof!" I thumped back down on my pillow, starting the lulltone again. How had he got into my dream? I felt the delight melt from my face. The lulltone was a background for my unspoken, mouth-framed words, Most secret-most lovely. And I closed my eyes so the wetness wouldn't turn to tears.
Then I hurried back to the wonder, with a twinge of guilt for having roared poor Dad. I had untruthed by silence, myself, drinking that gonky chartreuse just because the other kids did. But I could change now. I felt as though I had split a hard, crippling casing clear up my back. Fresh air was flowing in. I was growing out. At last! Something worth being brighted for! Something to put together day by day until it became a shining, breathing somethingelse! Oh, wonder! Oh, wonder! And all we have to do is find Nowhere.
YOU KNOW WHAT, TEACHER?
Miss PETERSON looked resignedly around the school yard. Today was a running day. The children swept ceaselessly from one side of the playground to the other, running madly, sometimes being jet planes, sometimes cowboys, but mostly just running. She shifted a little as an angle of the wire fence gouged into her hip, sighed, and for the fourth time looked at her watch. Two minutes less of noon recess than the last time she had looked.
"You know what, teacher?" Linnet's soft little voice spoke at her elbow. "You know what my mother thinks?" "What does your mother think?" asked Miss Peterson automatically as she weighed the chances of getting across the grounds to one of the boys-who was hanging head down from the iron railing above the furnace-room stairs-before he fell and broke his neck.
"My mother thinks my daddy is running around with another woman." Miss Peterson's startled eyes focused on Linnet's slender little face.
"She does?" she asked, wondering what kind of answer you were supposed to give to a statement like that from a six-year-old.
"Yes," said Linnet; and she was swept away by another running group that left its dust to curl around Miss Peterson's ankles.
Miss Peterson passed the incident along to Miss Estes in the brief pause between loading the school buses and starting after noon duties.
"Piquant detail, isn't it?" said Miss Estes. "It might do some of these parents good if they knew just how much of their domestic difficulties get passed on to us."
"It's a shame," said Miss Peterson. "I've thought for some time that something was wrong at home. Linnet hasn't been doing well in her work and she's all dither-brained gain. She'd be in my upper group if she could ever feel secure long enough."