The Rules Have Changed by Lesley Choyce

Author:Lesley Choyce [Choyce, Lesley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781459826847
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Published: 2021-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

As I walked home, some things started to make a bit more sense. Not everyone went along with this New Order. It still seemed impossible that things had changed so much since my family had been off traveling. But I had read enough history to know that fear and prejudice in the past had led entire nations to move in really terrible directions. Like so many others, I’d thought stuff like that couldn’t happen here. But apparently it could.

And I hated what had happened to my home.

Still, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to be one of Ming and Gina’s so-called Dogs. From what I’d seen of school, the system was set. The rules were hard and fast. And I wasn’t sure anything was going to change it back to the way it had been. I especially wasn’t sure I had the nerve or the ability to help make the change. Maybe Gina and Ming and all those others were just kidding themselves. They’d get caught, and they’d get punished. God only knew how many punishment levels there were. Better to just think of the alternative. Convince my parents we’d made a bad decision coming home. We still had a boat moored in the harbor. All we had to do was pack up, motor out to sea and sail away.

Those days on deck in the south came back to haunt me again on this cold, dark day with another nasty wind blowing dust and litter down the street. Days on deck with a soft sea breeze, me lying there reading a book.

My parents had used the money from selling our nice little house for the trip. I missed the old place sometimes. I missed my old bedroom. I missed my posters on the wall. Posters of tropical islands, crystal-clear lagoons, a nighttime sea lit up with plankton. On our travels, those images from my walls had become the images of my everyday life. How lucky was that? But then we had decided to come back.

Now I was walking up the stairs to our crappy second-floor apartment in a rundown brick building, dreaming of nothing but escape. I opened the door and walked in.

My father was bent over at the kitchen table, holding his head in his hands. My mom had her hand on his shoulder. When they heard me come in, he looked up, and I could see he’d been crying.

“Your father’s had a rough day,” my mom said.

She was the rock of our family. My dad was pretty tough too. But he showed his emotions more than she did. Once he’d had a good cry, he’d bounce right back. Give a little speech and start working on a solution. But this seemed bigger.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Harbor patrol impounded our boat,” my dad said, blowing his nose and pulling himself back together.

“Why?” I asked.

“They say it’s because of taxes,” Mom said. “We didn’t file our income tax forms while we were gone.”

“But we didn’t have any income,” I said.

“No, but that doesn’t seem to matter,” my father said.

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