The Forbidden Flats by Peggy Eddleman

Author:Peggy Eddleman [Eddleman, Peggy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-98133-2
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2014-09-23T00:00:00+00:00

I stood next to Isha for a moment, nibbling on my cheese.

“Your necklace reminds me of someone,” she said, startling me.

“My birth mom—Anna—she used to live here,” I said.

The woman smiled and looked up at the bricks of the building above us that formed the ceiling. “Anna. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that name.”

“You knew her?”

“I did. I became a substitute mom of sorts after hers died. She was a beautiful girl. Smart, too. She looked like you.”

I smiled, trying to hold in all the emotion I could. She knew my birth mom!

Isha asked what we were doing in the ruins, and I told her everything about the Bomb’s Breath lowering and our trip. I didn’t know why. There was something about her that made me feel as though it was okay to share, and I didn’t want to stop talking. As though telling all of this to her was somehow like telling it to my birth mom.

When I finished, she studied me, her blue eyes intense and perceptive. Almost as if I didn’t need to tell her anything, and she’d know it all just by watching me. Then she said, “Come here. I have something of Anna’s that I think you should have.” She motioned toward the main door we had come through.

I looked at the infirmary door, wondering if I should leave with Isha or go back in with the others. But she had something that was once my birth mom’s. How could I not go? I walked alongside her as we left through the door covered in dirt on the outside, and walked a slight incline up a tunnel that ran perpendicular to the one we came in through. The walls were dirt, like the others, and smelled damp. I wondered if that was normal, or if it was only because of all the rain.

Isha slid open another dirt-looking door and walked us into a room that wasn’t so different from the main room. Except this room was filled with beds. They were all in a chaotic order—as though maybe they were arranged in groups for families. I stared for a minute, picturing my birth mom’s bed, Luke’s bed, and my grandpa’s bed arranged in here in a little U shape for their family.

Isha and I walked over to a bed along the back wall, and she lifted up the edge of the blanket. “Can you do me a favor and pull out that box?”

I got on my knees and reached for a square box six inches tall and more than a foot wide, then placed it on the bed. Isha sat next to it, and I sat down, too, the box between us. She pushed some trinkets to one side so she could remove a thick book with a hard cover, along with a thin notebook.

“Did you know your birth mom was an expert on rocks?” she asked.

I nodded. “Luke told me she loved them.”

“The thing about your birth mom, though, is that she didn’t love rocks because they were pretty or shiny.

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