CHAPTER 6
THE SCHOOL THAT DOESN'T EXIST
That morning, Raka found a sheet of paper beneath the reading center's door.
The paper had no name on it.
No signature.
Only one sentence, written in black ink:
RETURN THAT BAG.
Raka read it once.
Then again.
He didn't tell the others right away.
He slipped the paper into his pants pocket.
Not because he wanted to hide anything.
He just didn't want to scare them.
At least, not yet.
But Jali saw it anyway.
“What paper?”
“Nothing.”
“If it's nothing, why'd you put it in your pocket?”
Raka said nothing.
Jali held out his hand.
“Give it.”
“No.”
“Then there is something.”
Sari, who was tying her hair, turned around.
“What is it?”
Jali pointed at Raka.
“He's hiding a secret.”
“I'm not.”
“Liar.”
Raka pulled out the paper.
Sari read it.
Her expression changed.
Bimo took it.
Then Ucup.
Ucup spelled it out slowly.
“Re... turn... that...”
He stopped.
“Bag.”
Jali looked at Raka.
“We're famous now.”
“This isn't the time to joke.”
“I am serious.”
“Serious about what?”
“Someone actually sent us a letter.”
Sari folded the paper.
“This isn't a letter.”
“Then what is it?”
“A threat.”
Jali fell silent.
Raka looked at Ms. Laras.
The woman was standing near the bookshelves.
She saw the paper.
Then she took it.
“Don't keep it.”
“Why not?”
“Because we don't know who wrote it.”
“Then what do we do?”
“Don't be afraid.”
Raka furrowed his brow.
“How?”
Ms. Laras gave him a faint smile.
“Fear can't always be made to disappear.”
She handed the paper back.
“What we can do is refuse to let fear stop us from thinking.”
Raka tucked the paper into his notebook.
The sentence sounded simple.
But he knew that from that day on, their lives would never be as simple as before.
They still went to pick through the garbage.
Just as usual.
Because a threat didn't make rice any cheaper.
Garbage Mountain still stood.
The trucks still arrived.
People still threw things away.
And the five children still needed money.
That day, they went to the shopping district.
Raka walked in front.
Sari carried her notes.
Bimo carried his small bag.
Jali chatted with Ucup.
“When you're rich someday, what are you going to buy?”
Ucup thought about it.
“A house.”
“A big one?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“So it's easier to clean.”
Jali laughed.
“Turns out you're realistic.”
“What about you?”
“I'll buy a restaurant.”
“To eat at?”
“To eat for free.”
Sari cut in,
“If everything's free, your restaurant will go bankrupt.”
Jali fell silent.
“Good point.”
Raka smiled.
They stopped behind an electronics store.
Bimo immediately found several cables.
His eyes lit up.
“These are good.”
“Can we sell them?”
“Yes.”
“What if you fix them?”
“They'll be worth more.”
Bimo put the cables in his bag.
Then he found an old laptop.
Its screen was cracked.
Several keys were missing from the keyboard.
He turned it over.
“This can still work.”
Jali laughed.
“According to you, everything can come back to life.”
Bimo replied,
“If people can change, why can't things?”
Raka looked at him.
The answer sounded strange.
But it also made sense.
Bimo carried the laptop with him.
At noon, they returned to the reading center.
Ms. Laras was writing something.
“What did you find?”
“Not bad,” Raka said.
Bimo showed her the laptop.
“This.”
Ms. Laras examined it.
“Can it be fixed?”
Bimo nodded.
“Try.”
He sat down at the table.
A small screwdriver came out of his pocket.
He unscrewed the bolts one by one.
Jali stood behind him.
“What if it explodes?”
“Don't stand so close.”
Jali took three steps back.
Bimo gave a small smile.
A few minutes later, the laptop turned on.
The screen was cracked.
But it could still be used.
Ucup clapped.
“Bimo's amazing.”
Bimo lowered his head.
“It's nothing.”
Ms. Laras looked at them.
“If you went to school, you might like classes like this.”
Raka turned to her.
“School?”
Ms. Laras nodded.
“Yes.”
Raka fell silent.
Jali looked at Ms. Laras.
“Does school cost money?”
“Some schools don't.”
“What about uniforms?”
“There usually are uniforms.”
“Books?”
“There are books.”
Jali thought about it.
“What if you don't have shoes?”
Ms. Laras smiled.
“We can find some.”
Sari sat up straighter.
“What if we're already too old?”
Ms. Laras looked at her.
“No one is too old to learn.”
Sari lowered her head.
Raka watched her.
He knew Sari desperately wanted to go to school.
But he also knew the reality.
If they went to school, who would work?
If they didn't work, who would buy their food?
There was no simple answer.
That afternoon, Ms. Laras began teaching them.
There was no blackboard.
No students' desks.
They sat in a circle on the floor.
Ms. Laras wrote down some numbers.
“If you sell five kilograms of plastic for three thousand rupiah per kilogram, how much is that?”
Sari answered immediately.
“Fifteen thousand.”
“Good.”
Ms. Laras looked at Raka.
“You?”
Raka thought.
“Fifteen thousand.”
“Why?”
“Because five times three is fifteen.”
“Good.”
Jali raised his hand.
“What about six kilograms?”
“Eighteen thousand.”
“What about a hundred kilograms?”
Sari answered,
“Three hundred thousand.”
Jali whistled.
“Whoa.”
Ms. Laras smiled.
“Now we're going to learn something more important.”
She picked up two plastic bottles.
“Which one is worth more?”
Ucup pointed at one of them.
“The big one.”
“Not necessarily.”
Ms. Laras held up the two bottles.
“This one is clear PET.”
She pointed to the other bottle.
“This one is mixed plastic.”
Sari immediately paid attention.
“So the type matters more than the size?”
“Exactly.”
Ms. Laras then showed them some cardboard.
“It's the same with this.”
Raka began to understand.
All this time, they had picked through the garbage based on what they could see.
But there was knowledge behind everything.
Types of plastic.
Quality.
Weight.
Moisture content.
Cleanliness.
Prices.
The market.
They had never known any of it.
They only knew how to take.
Now they were beginning to understand.
The days that followed were different.
In the mornings, they picked through the garbage.
In the afternoons, they studied.
In the evenings, they went back to work.
At night, they sometimes discussed the company documents.
Sari began taking notes.
She wrote down the prices of every item.
Bimo repaired the laptop.
Jali learned to read more fluently.
Raka practiced math.
Ucup learned to spell.
They had no uniforms.
No classrooms.
No teacher standing in front of a blackboard.
But they learned every day.
Ms. Laras called it school.
Jali called it the school that didn't exist.
“Why doesn't it exist?”
“Because it doesn't have a building.”
“Then we do have a school.”
“Where?”
Jali pointed at the floor.
“Right here.”
Ms. Laras smiled.
One afternoon, Sari was studying the documents from the black bag.
She found an interesting page.
“Ms. Laras.”
Ms. Laras came over.
“What is it?”
“These are residents' names.”
She pointed to a list.
There were dozens of names.
Health codes appeared beside them.
Sari recognized one of them.
“This is Mr. Darto.”
Ms. Laras stopped.
Mr. Darto was one of the residents of Bantar Mayang.
An old waste picker who had been sick for a long time.
“He coughs a lot.”
Ms. Laras nodded.
“For a long time.”
Sari read further.
“There's a note here...”
She stopped.
“What?”
“It says the cause was the condition of the residential area.”
Ms. Laras took the document.
Her eyes moved quickly across it.
Then her expression grew more serious.
“Where does it say that?”
“Down here.”
Sari pointed.
There were several residents' health reports.
But the cause of the illnesses was almost always attributed to the condition of the residential area.
Not the waste.
Not the landfill.
Not the dumping routes.
Raka came closer.
“So they're blaming the residents?”
Ms. Laras didn't answer right away.
“It seems so.”
Jali, who usually talked nonstop, was silent instead.
Bimo looked at the screen.
“There’s another file.”
He opened it.
An internal report.
Inside was a sentence:
THE RISK OF RESIDENT COMPLAINTS CAN BE MANAGED THROUGH SOCIAL PROGRAMS AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATION.
Raka read it slowly.
“What does that mean?”
Ms. Laras answered,
“It means they were more concerned with managing complaints than solving the cause of them.”
Raka stared at the screen.
For the first time, he understood that injustice didn't always come in the form of someone shouting.
Sometimes it came in the form of a neat sentence on a piece of paper.
Signed.
Stamped.
Stored in a cabinet.
Then forgotten.
That night, Sari refused to go to sleep.
She sat in front of the reading center.
Raka approached her.
“Why?”
“I want to go to school.”
Raka sat beside her.
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
Sari looked at the road.
“If I go to school, who will help you guys?”
Raka didn't answer.
“I want to learn,” Sari continued.
“You're learning now.”
“It's different.”
“How?”
“If I went to school, maybe I could read all of this.”
She pointed toward the reading center.
“Maybe I could understand why they did that.”
Raka looked at her.
“You can.”
“It's not enough.”
“Nothing is enough.”
Sari gave a small smile.
“Do you want to go to school too?”
Raka looked up at the sky.
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
“Often.”
Sari laughed.
“Why didn't you say so?”
Raka shrugged.
“I'm afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid to hope.”
Sari fell silent.
The sentence hung between them.
Because they both knew:
Hope was expensive for people who lived from day to day.
If you hoped too high, the fall could hurt.
The next day, Ms. Laras gave each of them a notebook.
They weren't new.
Their covers were all different.
But the pages were still blank.
“What are they for?” Ucup asked.
“For writing.”
“Writing what?”
“Anything.”
Jali opened to the first page.
“Can I draw?”
“Of course.”
Bimo immediately wrote down a list of electronic components.
Sari wrote numbers.
Raka wrote down the names of routes through the landfill.
Ucup drew a chicken.
Jali wrote:
TODAY I LEARNED THAT A BIGGER BOTTLE ISN'T NECESSARILY WORTH MORE.
He showed it to Ms. Laras.
“Is it good?”
“Very good.”
“Does that mean I'm smart?”
“A little.”
“Why only a little?”
“So you don't get cocky.”
Jali laughed.
Toward evening, Raka found something.
A black car drove past the reading center.
This time, it didn't stop.
But its rear window was slightly open.
Raka saw Dimas.
The man looked in their direction.
Then the car continued on.
Raka stood.
He watched until the vehicle disappeared.
Sari came over.
“Him again?”
Raka nodded.
“So they haven't stopped.”
“No.”
Sari held her notebook.
“Raka.”
“What?”
“If they're really afraid of what's in that bag...”
Raka looked at her.
“Maybe we need to find out before they do.”
Raka nodded.
But there was something they still didn't understand.
They weren't playing a guessing game.
They were touching something that had been protected for years by money, power, and fear.
And the more they learned, the harder it would be for them to go back to being five waste-picker kids no one paid attention to.
That night, Ms. Laras hid the black bag farther inside.
Beneath the wooden floor.
Behind a wooden plank.
In a place known only to her and the five children.
Before they went to sleep, Ms. Laras said,
“Tomorrow, we'll start reading everything from the beginning.”
Raka asked,
“Why?”
“Because if we want to talk about the truth, we have to know what's true.”
Raka nodded.
Outside, Garbage Mountain looked black beneath the sky.
They didn't yet know what they would find.
But for the first time, the five children who had never attended school began to understand that knowledge could be more powerful than money.
And they had just opened the first page of the most dangerous lesson of their lives.