5
The next morning, during gym class, Daniel gets smacked in the face by a volleyball. His glasses fly off his nose, and everyone laughs as he stumbles around looking for them.
As I watch Daniel frantically searching under the bleachers, I remember how upset Mama was when her glasses broke last year. It was impossible to find a doctor to make her new ones. She ended up having to order a pair from overseas.
The teacher hurries over to help Daniel. She wipes the lenses of the glasses with the edge of her shirt until they’re clean, and hands them back to him. Daniel slips them on and then stares at the scuffed gym floor.
“Look! Four-Eyes is gonna cry!” Krysta says with a snicker, quietly enough that the teacher can’t hear her. For a moment I can’t believe that she’s my best friend.
“What’s ‘Four-Eyes’ mean?” Anton asks.
“My dad said it’s an old word for someone with glasses,” Krysta explains, “back when people still wore them.”
Everyone nods silently, and I can tell what they’re thinking. That Mayor Perez must know what he’s talking about.
“Now no one wears them,” Krysta adds.
“No one,” Eileen echoes.
I swallow, wondering if they remember that Mama has glasses too, but they’re all still looking at Daniel, so I guess they only mean him.
When he appeared in our class halfway through third grade, Daniel was too skinny and talked a little funny, and his socks were longer than everyone else’s. It was obvious he’d never had a sip of Amber in his life. Now his elbows don’t poke out as much as they used to, and he barely talks anymore—plus he has his ration card like everyone else—but the kids still won’t leave him alone.
By the time Daniel comes back over to the volleyball court, everyone’s using his new nickname when the teacher isn’t paying attention.
“You’re up, Four-Eyes,” Krysta calls when it’s time to rotate servers. She tosses Daniel the ball and then turns to me. “What do you think, Mira? Think Four-Eyes can serve it over the net this time?”
I realize this is what she meant about protecting me from Daniel. She’s giving me a chance to show the other kids that even though Daniel and I have to do our project together, even though we’re both too scrawny and too average, we’re nothing alike. I have no choice but to take it.
“Four-Eyes? No way,” I say. Even though I’ve been told I don’t have an accent, suddenly my voice doesn’t sound right in my ears. “He couldn’t serve himself a sandwich.”
I don’t know where the words come from. But the kids nearby laugh, and Krysta cackles more loudly than anyone else.
“Can’t serve himself a sandwich,” Eileen repeats. “Good one, Mira!”
I suck in a breath and focus on adjusting my socks so that they don’t creep up past my ankles like Daniel’s do. So that they’re the same length as everyone else’s. Anything to avoid seeing the look on Daniel’s face. Because I’m sure he hates me as much as I hate myself right now.
During snack time, I crunch on my apple slices while the other kids eat chips and cookies and other “edible chemicals” that Tata is always complaining about. A few kids take out little bottles of Amber and swig them down with their juice.
I’m not allowed to be in the room during Miss Patel’s lessons on the uses of Amber, so I always go to the library while the other kids learn about the rules of magic. According to Krysta, though, most kids take their Amber doses in the morning at home, but it’s okay to have your dose in school as long as you don’t share it with anyone. Apparently, taking anything but the exact dose for your age and weight can be dangerous.
Back home, people talked about Amberland as though it were a fairy-tale kingdom where wizards cast magical spells. At first, I was disappointed that the magic came from what looked like cough syrup and that you couldn’t conjure things or make yourself disappear, no matter how hard you tried. But Amber makes you stronger and healthier and smarter. It makes you a better version of yourself. Maybe that’s all the magic you need.
What will it be like to take Amber every day? Not to mention the extra rations that my family will get to use for whatever we want? I imagine myself braiding my newly thick, glossy hair and swinging it over my shoulder the way Krysta does. I imagine everyone in school knowing that Yuli is the best at dancing, Eileen is the best at math, and I’m the best at writing. I imagine mixing some of the Amber in with the soil in Tata’s garden and making the flowers grow so big that he’ll have to smile when he sees them. Then maybe he won’t mind that I’ll have to stay in Amberland surrounded by “monsters.”
After snack is over, it’s time for our history lesson again.
“Since the Amber Centennial is coming up next month,” Miss Patel says, “we’re going to be talking about the history of Amber.” She goes to the board and writes Centennial = 100-Year Celebration in tall, loopy letters. “A century ago, people all over the country were digging for oil and hoping to strike it rich. Can anyone tell me how the search for oil led to the discovery of Amber?” When no one answers, Miss Patel clicks her tongue. “Didn’t anyone do the reading?”
I did, of course. I pored over every word, as if the magic described in our textbook could somehow trickle off the page and soak into my skin. I guess because the other kids all have Amber pumping through their bodies, they don’t care as much about the history of it.
Usually I only raise my hand after Krysta does. Once she gets an answer right, then the rest of us can have a turn. But today Krysta is doodling something in her notebook, clearly bored by the topic, so the silence drags on and on.
Finally I raise my hand and say, “An oil drilling company struck a vein of Amber and discovered that it flowed under the entire country.”
“Exactly,” Miss Patel says. “It was like a deep underground river. All people had to do was drill down far enough, and they could tap into it. That’s when what we now call the Amber Rush started, and this country changed practically overnight.”
She goes on to tell us things that the textbook glossed over. How people from other parts of the world came in droves to get their bit of magic. Everyone scrambled to find more veins of the Amber, named for its deep orange color.
“Some people were forced off their land to make way for Amber drilling,” Miss Patel continues in a somber voice. “Meanwhile, the country’s borders were suddenly bursting. Immigrants were arriving at a rate no one had seen before. Soon people were worried. What if the Amber rivers ran dry?”
“So what happened?” Anton asks.
“Changing the laws was a slow process, but eventually it became easier to strike oil than to be granted entry into what came to be known as Amberland,” Miss Patel answers.
“But people still make it into the country now, don’t they?” Krysta asks, glancing over at me.
“Yes, some,” Miss Patel says. “The government is extremely selective.”
Eileen raises her hand. “My dad says that we should close all the borders. Why should other people get our Amber?”
I grip my pencil hard. I’ve heard Eileen say things like this before, and I know she doesn’t mean me. But it still hurts to hear it.
“There are others who think like your father,” Miss Patel says. “But the reality is, sometimes we need people with specific skills that we don’t have.”
“Like scientists,” I find myself saying, even though I should know better than to speak twice during one class.
Blend in. Don’t get noticed.
“Yes, Mira,” Miss Patel says with a smile. “Like your mother. In other countries, scientific study is at a different level than it is here.”
“You mean our science is worse?” Anton asks.
“Not exactly,” Miss Patel says, clearly choosing her words carefully. “We’ve put a lot of money into Amber research, while other countries have focused on different fields. If we weren’t able to use Amber, our science and our medicine and even our technology would be… less advanced than in some other countries.”
“But why wouldn’t we be able to use Amber?” Eileen asks. “I mean, it’s, like, our right to use it.”
“Yes, of course,” Miss Patel says. “That’s why rationing has become so important in the past decade, so that everyone has access to Amber. Westbrook has some of the strictest rationing rules in the country, thanks to our mayor.”
All eyes turn to Krysta, who smiles proudly, as if she’s somehow responsible for her father’s work. “He wants to make sure there’s enough for everyone,” she says.
I can’t help noticing Eileen rolling her eyes. She might be a Krysta wannabe, but that doesn’t mean she always agrees with her.
Suddenly I think of the signs at the protest. SAVE OUR AMBER. Is it already happening? Is the magic drying up like people during the Amber Rush feared? What if the Amber runs out before I even get to taste it?