Margaret Haddix: Among the Free

"No, no, that wasn't the Population Police coming back that night — that was all of us who'd been taken away by the Population Police. We'd gotten free and we were bringing food back to our village. Eli tried to send someone after you, to get you to come back," Aileen said, "but no one could find you."

"Oh," Luke said, blinking. He remembered how the wind had seemed to call, Lu-uke. Lu-uke, and how he'd thought it was a trick. "I was so used to being in danger, to having to be scared. I never thought that it might be… safe… to come out of hiding."

Something about the way he said that made the crowd laugh, but it was friendly laughter. He hoped.

"So," Luke said, "then I saw the news on TV in another village, and I came here. And everybody else was so happy, but I just couldn't be sure…."

He told about seeing the signs in the secret room, and overhearing the conversation between Oscar and Aldous Krakenaur.

"No! That's not true!" someone yelled from the crowd. "Oscar Wydell is not a — a collaborator!"

"Shut up!" someone else yelled. 'Aren't the signs evidence enough?"

And then lots of people in the crowd began shouting at each other and arguing. Some of the security guards at the front started to reach for their guns, but then they glanced at the camera and shrugged, as if to say, It's not our problem what people say. Who can stop them?

Luke took a step back from the microphone. He shook his head dizzily, trying to understand what was happening. He'd lost the crowd's attention. But he couldn't tell if that was because most of them believed him or because most of them were on Oscar's side. He could do his trick of closing one eye and then the other, and the sides seemed to jump back and forth.

Oscar's side is winning. . no, mine. . no, Oscar's. .

"Ah, the lovely sounds of free speech," Philip Twinings said beside him.

"They're just arguing," Luke said, still dazed. "The whole crowd is fighting."

"Yes, but they're using words, not bullets," Philip said. "So much better than the stupefied silence of the past few hours. Or the past thirteen years."

"You opposed the Population Police, then," Luke said. "Why didn't you say so? Why did you let all those speak' ers blame third children, all morning long?"

Philip Twinings sighed. His ancient eyes seemed to hold decades' worth of pain.

"I did sabotage the microphone, last night," he said. "But this morning — I was afraid. Things seemed to have changed. I was in exile for a very long time. I didn't want to go back. And — I was only one person."

"Sometimes one person is enough," Luke said.

"Yes," Philip said. 'And sometimes it takes a kid to show adults the truth."

Luke started to tell Philip, "You did help me — you made sure I got a chance to talk. You risked your life too." But he broke off because the crowd's uproar had reached a fever pitch. A group of men seemed to have come to a conclusion.

"We'll just get Oscar out here! He'll tell you!" Luke heard one of them shout.

"You do that! I want to hear what he has to say for himself." someone else hollered back.

Luke watched the men rushing back toward the Population Police headquarters.

"Perhaps you should leave, young man," Philip said softly. "For your own safety."

'Are you leaving?" Luke asked.

"No. Of course not."

"Neither am I," Luke said.

He remembered way back in the fall, after the Grants had died, how he'd longed for a day of truth, when he and his friends could stand up proud and tell the whole world their true names, their true stories. He hadn't revealed his name, but he'd told everything else. No matter what happened, he was glad he'd done that. He had no intention of hiding again, of cowering back in the stables, dreading every approaching footstep. He was done with that life.

Jenny whinnied behind him, and he went to stand beside her and stroke her mane.

"It's all right, girl," he said. "Don't be afraid. I'm not afraid anymore."

He understood now how the old woman in Chiutza had been able to look so peaceful facing the gun; how Jen could have gone off so bravely to her rally. They'd made their choices. They'd been free.

And now so was he.

The mob that had rushed into the Population Police headquarters came rushing back out.

"He's gone!" the men were yelling. "Oscar ran away!"

Out of the corner of Luke's eye, he saw the three former Population Police officials scrambling away from the screening committee table. He saw them slipping into the shadows, sneaking out the back door. He saw the security guards walking away from their posts. He saw the Oscar supporters in the crowd shrugging or slumping — giving up.

It was over.

Luke's friends showed up that afternoon, while he was with a crowd pulling down the signs opposing third children. The words their fault came off in his hands, and he was tearing them to bits when he heard a familiar voice behind him.

"Need some help with that?"

He whirled around to find Nina, Trey, and Mr. Talbot standing there, and they ran to him, hugging and exclaiming.

"Where were you guys?" he asked. "I kept looking for you—"

"When the Population Police fell, we all went to Mr. Hendricks's house. We kept thinking you'd join us there. We didn't think there was anything else to worry about," Nina said apologetically.

"But we turned on the TV this morning and heard the speeches and saw the signs — we came as fast as we could," Mr. Talbot said. "We just didn't know what we could do."

"Then we turned on the radio in the car and heard this crazy kid telling his life story," Trey said. "You were great, Lee — you really were."

The fake name sounded more jarring than ever, after everything Luke had been through. He looked around at the people tearing down the signs; at the noisy, still-arguing crowd; at Philip and Simone and Tucker standing before the cameras interviewing people again.

"I'm free now," he said. "You can call me Luke."

He remembered how baffled he'd been all along, trying to understand freedom. In the beginning, all he'd wanted was a chance to run across his family's front yard or ride in the back of the pickup truck to town, the way his brothers did. He'd seen how the Chiutzans acted like freedom just meant getting to shoot anyone they wanted to shoot; how Eli and the others in his village thought they were free because they were ready to die. He'd watched the people celebrating at Population Police headquarters as if freedom were just a matter of getting free food.

But he understood now that freedom was more than that. In one sense, he'd been free all along.

"Is it safe to talk like that?" Mr. Talbot asked, glancing around anxiously. "Have you heard — did they catch Aldous Krakenaur?"

"No," Luke said. "He escaped with Oscar."

"Then he could come back," Trey said. "He could get the Population Police back together, consolidate his power again—"

"We're making sure that doesn't happen," Luke said. He pointed at a bunch of people gathered around a table someone had pulled out onto the grass. "That group is talking about writing a new constitution to guarantee everyone's rights." He pointed to another table at the other end of the yard. "They're talking about how to distribute food fairly until the next harvest." He watched a man and two women setting up another table nearby. "I'm not sure what they're going to talk about at that table, but this is our new government. The people."

His friends stared at him in amazement.

"Good grief," Mr. Talbot said. "We've gone from ideologues to idealists."

"Don't you think it will work?" Luke asked.

Mr. Talbot peered around at the crowd. Luke could see how he might be doubtful: Most of the people at the tables were pretty young; they were dressed in ragged clothes and had shaggy hair. They didn't look like a government.