Margaret Haddix - Among the Betrayed

"We thought so," Percy said.

Silence again. Then Matthias added softly, "So are we."

Nina held her breath. The last time she'd confessed to being an illegal child, and heard someone else confess the same to her, it had led to Population Police arresting her at breakfast. She stared hard at the trees around her, as though any one of them might be hiding a Population Police officer, just waiting for the right moment to grab her. But nothing happened. No one moved.

"It's funny, isn't it," Nina said. "The reason they made third children illegal was because of food. There wasn't enough after the drought and the famines. But someone always found food for me when I was illegal. Now I've gone through two different fake I.D.'s, and I've run out of food. I'm legal now — I've got a card to prove that I'm legal — and I'm going to starve to death. We're all going to starve."

She knew now why the last few days had seemed like such a vacation. It had been a vacation — from reality. None of them had wanted to face the truth: It wasn't enough to escape from the Population Police. It wasn't enough to have fake I.D.'s. They were still doomed. It was easier to swing in the trees and skip rocks than to think about the fact that they had nothing to keep them alive once the food sack was empty.

"Nobody's going to starve," Percy said. "We'll figure out something. Don't you know any way to find out how to grow a garden?"

Nina started to say no, but then she remembered how she'd thought of a garden in the first place.

"There's a kid," she said. 'At the boys' school. Lee Grant. He was the one who knew about gardens. If we could find him…"

Nina explained how she and her friends had met with the group from the boys' school. Somehow the whole story came tumbling out this time — how she and Bonner and Sally had thought they were so big, meeting guys in the woods. How she'd fallen in love with Jason. How he'd betrayed her.

The other three were silent for a long time after she finished.

"So can you trust this Lee Grant or not?" Percy asked. "Was he working with Jason?"

"I don't know," Nina said, miserable again. "He seemed okay. But…" She didn't finish the sentence:

Jason seemed okay, too. I thought he was a lot better than okay. How can I trust my own judgment ever again?

"One of us will have to sneak into the school and find this Lee, and see if we can trust him," Matthias said.

"Maybe he could even give us some food from his school," Nina said. "Maybe they feed the boys better than they feed the girls."

She felt more cheerful now. Everything could work out. She waited for Percy or Matthias to volunteer to be the one to sneak into the boys' school. Matthias was closer to Lee Grant's age — if Matthias pretended to be a new student, he'd be more likely to get placed in the same classes as Lee. But Nina thought Percy was smarter — he would know what to do, how to trick Lee into telling him everything.

But neither Percy nor Matthias spoke up. Surprised, Nina looked from one boy to the other — and discovered they were both staring at her.

"Well?" she said. "Which one of you is going to do it?"

Percy waited a while longer, then shook his head in dis' gust, as if he couldn't believe Nina hadn't figured everything out.

"You're the only one who knows what this Lee Grant looks like. You're the only one he knows, the only one he'd be likely to trust. It's got to be you," he said.

"But I'm a girl!" Nina said. "It's a boys' school!"

"You can tuck your hair up in my cap," Percy said. "You can wear Matthias's clothes. You can pretend."

Nina gawked at him. She imagined herself in Matthias's ragged shirt and patched jeans, standing amidst the Hendricks boys in their fancy clothes. She'd be noticed in an instant, thrown out in a flash.

"You don't understand," she said. "I'm not like all of you. I've never had to… to live by my wits. If anyone stops me, I won't know what to say. That's why. ." At the last minute, she managed to stop herself from spilling every-thing.

That's why I didn't know what to do when the hating man asked me to betray you. That's why I almost did betray you.

Instead she finished lamely, "That's why someone else should go instead of me. You can't trust me."

"We trust you," Alia said softly.

How could Nina disagree with that?

U t was dusk. The way the shadows slanted through the * trees reminded Nina of a dozen other dusks she'd spent in the woods, when she and her friends had sneaked out to meet Jason and his buddies. Once again she was crouched behind a tree, watching and waiting. Once again she was listening for the snap of a twig, the approach of danger. Once again her heart was pounding in her chest, her every nerve ending was alert with the thrill of the risk she was about to take.

But this time she was preparing to sneak out of the woods, not into it. She pulled Matthias's cap a little lower over her eyes and peeked around the tree. She had picked dusk as the safest time for her mission. She was hoping that the boys' school, like the girls' school, had dull indoc' trination sessions in the evening, which students slept through or sneaked out of. Surely she could spy on the indoctrination session, locate Lee Grant, and pull him aside as everyone was leaving. She hoped. She'd been mak' ing plans all day long.

What she hadn't counted on was how much the shad' ows spooked her. Not just the shadows in the trees, but the shadows that stretched across the long, long lawn between the woods and Hendricks School for Boys. If she was going to find Lee Grant, she'd have to run across those shadows, out in the open, out where someone might see.

It had been one thing to walk across the Harlow School lawn to the woods with Sally and Bonner on either side of her, giggling nervously all the way. She knew now that they had not actually expected to face real danger — only some pale imitation of it, nothing that couldn't be waved away with an I.D. card.

Nina knew she had been frightened, too, walking out in the open with Alia after they were questioned by the two policemen on the bridge. But Alia had rescued her so mag' ically from the policemen that Nina knew she had a false sense of confidence — no matter what happened, Alia or Percy or Matthias could save her.

But the other three weren't going into Hendricks School with her now. She was completely alone.

Now I know why Gran believed in Cod, Nina thought.

Cod? Can you help me, too?

Nina inched forward, to the edge of the woods, then threw herself into a desperate run across the lawn.

She reached the side of the building more quickly than she'd expected. She realized she'd kept her eyes squeezed shut for most of her run. She was lucky she hadn't smashed into the building. She turned around and looked back and couldn't believe she'd come all that distance, through all those shadows. She took a deep breath and clutched her fingers on to one of the bricks in the wall of the school, as if that could hold her steady.

"A door," she whispered to herself. "I need to find a door."

Sliding the palms of her hands along the wall, she moved forward, looking ahead. By the time she reached the corner, her fingertips felt ragged from the rough bricks. She didn't seem to be thinking very well. Had she missed noticing a door? Or was there one entire side of the school without any entrance at all?

Rather than turning around, she turned the corner. And there was solid metal, with a metal knob sticking out. A door and a doorknob. Just what she'd been looking for.

Without giving herself time to lose her nerve, she grabbed the knob, turned, and pulled.

A dark hallway gaped before her. She stepped into the school. The door slid shut behind her.