Neal Shusterman - The Dirt on Our Shoes

Walden Pond Press is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Walden Pond Press and the skipping stone logo are trademarks and registered trademarks of Walden Media, LLC.

The Dirt on Our Shoes 2013 by Neal Shusterman

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

EPub Edition AUGUST 2013 ISBN: 9780062289698

FIRST EDITION

Y our hands are filthy, your hair is filthyTanner, you cant come to school like this, surely you must know that?

Principal Hammond leaned back in his chair, perhaps hoping to distance himself from the unfortunate aroma of Tanner Burgesss clothes. Through the window behind him, Tanner could see the star field in constant motion; points of light swept past, like the heavens themselves were scrolling through his file, just as relentlessly as the principal did.

Are you even listening to me, Mr. Burgess?

Tanner sighed, and forced himself to meet the mans eyes. I could barely afford drinking water this month, Mr. Hammond. There was no way I could pay for water to bathe with.

The principal grimaced in something between disgust and pitytwo emotions Tanner couldnt stand. What about your neighbors? Surely they could lend you

No one lends anymore. People are conserving for when we finally arrive on Primordius.

Yes, I suppose they are. The principal looked down at Tanners file. But were not here to talk about your hygiene, are we?

Tanner couldnt help but grin. I suppose not.

Simulating a spin-quake and setting off the schools evacuation protocol is not a laughing matter.

I didnt simulate anything. I just tricked the schools computer.

Regardless, you disrupted the days studies and caused unnecessary strife. If we were back on Earth you would be expelled.

Into space?

No, expelled from school. The principal sighed through gritted teeth. But since there are no other schools for you to go to, thats not an option, is it?

Oh well.

Tanner had enjoyed watching the other kids race out of the school, in comical, ill-fitting radiation suits. All those clean-cuts with their sweet-smelling hair and superior attitudes climbing over one another to save their own lives. Kids like Ocean Klingsmith, who thought he was Gods gift to the universe.

Were the ones bringing humanity to the stars, Ocean once told Tanner. Youre just the dirt on our shoes.

It was particularly entertaining to watch Ocean run.

Principal Hammond continued to flip through Tanners file, going Tssk and Pfft with everything he read, like a tire losing air. Tanner looked past him and out the window again. There were few windows in the hull of the Transtellar Biologic Incapsulation craftor T-Bin for short. Glass was fragile and allowed too much energy to escape. A window on space was a perk reserved only for those in the highest positions. Principal Hammond, whose office was at the front end of the great rotating drum, was one of those people. No doubt the window was intended to give anyone sitting in the principals office the illusion that the man in the chair, with the heavens spinning behind him, was an integral part of the awe-inspiring view. The irony was that it had the opposite effect. It made Hammond seem small and insignificant by comparison.

The principal closed Tanners file. He suspected the man might have sent the file, and Tanner, out of an airlock, if one were readily available. Your defiance of authority is bad enough, but Im even more concerned about the habitual conflicts you have with your peers.

They always start it.

Of course they do.

Why wash with water? Tanner thought. He could bathe in the sarcasm dripping from the man. He decided it was time to keep his mouth shut and accept the lecture, or pep talk, or analysiswhatever Hammond wanted to call it. None of it changed a thing. The colonists on board were all supposed to be enlightened equalsbut after sixty-seven years in space, the social structure had taken on a very particular pecking order. Kids like Tanner, for whom daily survival was a struggle, were treated like the dregs of humanity. Creating waves was the only thing that made life bearable. It wasnt just that he enjoyed the mayhem, thoughhe had enjoyed the challenge of hacking the schools computer. He was, by his very nature, a problem solver. Yet when others looked at him, all they saw was a problem.

Listen to me, Tanner, Hammond said. When we arrive on Primordius, survival will depend on us being a close-knit community. You cant afford to be an outsider. Do you understand?

Tanner nodded but kept his true feelings on the matter to himself. For his entire life, hed been an insider, stuck within the steel walls of a rotating drum hurtling through space. His whole world, and the world of everyone he knew, was nothing more than a small farming town shoved into a cylinder less than a mile in diameter. Once they landed, hed truly get to be an outsider. And it would be wonderful.

In Tanners farmhouse, there was a sticky note on the refrigerator from his father that read At the Doctorshome before dinner. The note had been there for over a year. His fathers chest pain that day was not gas, as he had thought. He was not home for dinner then, and would never be home for dinner againbut Tanner kept the note on the fridge, because it kept alive the notion that his father was still on his way back. Besides, if anyone could return from the dead, it would be Tanners father. He was a problem solver, too.

Having lost his mother when he was a baby, Tanner had been on his own since his fathers death, just before his thirteenth birthday. Now he was fourteen but sometimes felt much older. Perhaps back on Earth a kid would not be allowed to be on his own, but here on T-Bin, no one seemed to mindor more accurately, no one cared. Hed plow his two-acre farm, plant it, and harvest it on his own. When he had water to irrigate, that is. Nowadays between limited water and limited time, he could only work half an acre, leaving him with very little to sell or trade. Still, there were those who had less than hewhich is why he always saved something to bring Morena Beausoleil and her grandfather, whose farm had failed entirely. Today, Tanner chose some choice veggies to bring thempotatoes, onions, and broccoliwhich made up the bulk of his cropsthen he headed out into the hollow, cylindrical world he called home.

Tanner supposed that T-Bin might appear quite impressive to someone who hadnt spent a lifetime there. On the outside, it just looked like a giant revolving tin can, but once inside, an Earth-dweller would be stunned by the surreal sight of ordinary farmland clinging to the inner shell, all held in place by centrifugal force. If you looked forward, the land curved upward in front of you, and if you followed it, youd be looking at an upside-down farm above your head, nearly a mile away, before the land came back around to meet itself behind you.