Margaret Haddix - Among the Betrayed

"Did you tell the Population Police anything about us?" Percy was asking. His question brought Nina back to the present, back to the cold, dripping jail cell and the six eyes staring at her and the horrible choice she was going to have to make.

"Just that you were hungry and cold down here," Nina said. It really wasn't even a lie. 'And I told the man who was asking questions that you all thought they were liS' tening to everything we said down here. He laughed and said that was ridiculous."

"Why did you say that?" Matthias asked furiously. "If they know we know, now we can't say anything to trick them."

Nina was getting confused, but she thought she knew what he meant.

"Well, it hasn't done any good so far, has it?" she chal-lenged. "You're still stuck down here, and they haven't fed you, and they haven't even given you soap to wash your face!"

"They haven't killed us, either," Alia said softly. Nina stared at the younger girl.

When I was six, I wouldn't have known to say something like that, she thought.

I was still a baby, playing with dolls and dressing up in the aunties' old clothes, pretending to be a princess. And I had four old ladies treating me like a princess.

"I'm sorry," Nina said. "I didn't mean to do anything wrong."

But she'd let the hating man think she was going to spy for him. She'd eaten his food, and that was like… like tak' ing blood money or something. She hadn't refused anything. She hadn't screamed and hollered and told him that the Population Police were wrong. She hadn't demanded that he set Matthias and Percy and Alia — and herself — free.

Nina bent her head down, too ashamed to look at the others.

A scraping sound behind her saved her from having to say anything else.

"Food!" Alia said delightedly.

The guard was opening the door. He tossed in a dark bundle, then shut the door and retreated.

Alia reached the bundle first. She grabbed it up and took it over to the boys. Matthias held the candle so they could all see in.

"Ooh, Nina, look!" Alia squealed. "There's one, two, three, four, five. . eight slices of bread! They've never brought more than six before!"

"There's one more of us now, silly," Percy said. "We still get two each."

"Oh," Alia said.

Nina moved over with the other kids, feeling like she'd crossed some invisible line. She squatted down with them and peered into the bag. It held the same kind of hard black bread she'd had for her first meal in prison. There wasn't even any butter or apples to go with it. After her feast with the hating man she couldn't pretend to want this bread.

"You know what?" she said with studied casualness. "I'm not really hungry. Why don't you all take my slices, too?"

They all stared at her.

'Are you sure?" Alia asked. "I don't think they feed us every day."

"That's okay. You take it," Nina said.

They didn't need any extra urging. In seconds the three kids had gobbled up all the bread. Nina did notice, though, that Matthias had a strange way of dividing up Nina's share of the food: Alia got a whole slice, and Matthias and Percy split the other one. Nina's full stomach ached, watching the others eat so hungrily.

When they were done, they searched for any dropped crumbs and ate those as well. Nina hovered beside them, pretending to look for crumbs, too. Then they all sat back, happily sated. Nina sat down beside Alia, and Alia leaned over and gave her a big hug.

"Thanks, Nina. I hope you don't get hungry later. I think that was the best meal I ever had."

Nina could have brought Alia fresh, beautiful rolls, but she hadn't. Instead, she'd let the little girl have old, moldy, practically inedible black bread just because Nina herself was too full of the Population Police's fine meal to pretend to want it. And now Alia was thanking her.

Nina felt guiltier than ever.

Days passed. Nina had no idea how many, because nothing happened with any regularity. Sometimes the guard brought food; sometimes the guard pulled one of them out for questioning. Sometimes Matthias decided they could light the candle for a few minutes — but only for Alia, only when he thought she needed it.

Nobody knew when any of those things would happen.

Other than that, they could measure their time in the prison-cave only by how many times they got sleepy or thirsty or needed to go to the bathroom.

None of those needs were easily satisfied.

Their "bathroom" was just a corner of the cave they all avoided as much as they could. It stank mightily.

They had no bedding at all, not a single pillow or blan-ket Sleeping on wet rock only left Nina damp and stiff and more tired than ever.

And when they were thirsty, they had to go to the dampest part of the cave and lick the wall. The guard never brought water. Matthias got the idea to keep one of the cloth bags the food had come in, in order to soak up as much water as possible. (He told the guard they'd dropped the bag over in the bathroom corner. "He won't come in here and check," he argued in a barely audible whisper. And he was right.) Matthias put the bag at the bottom of the damp wall, where the water dripped constantly. When the bag was saturated, he carefully squeezed the water from the wet cloth into Alia's waiting mouth, and then Percy's, and then a few precious drops into Nina's. Nina choked and spit it out. "Yu-uck!" she screamed. "What?" Alia asked.

"It tastes terrible," Nina complained. The water was unpleasant enough licked straight from the wall — it tasted like rock and sulfur and, distantly, some kind of chemical Nina couldn't identify. But from the cloth bag the water tasted like rock and moldy bread and old, rot' ting, dirty bag. Maybe even somebody else's vomit as well.

"It's water," Matthias said. "It'll keep us alive." Nina didn't say anything else. But after that, she went back to getting her water straight from the wall, a drop or two at a time, and let the others squeeze all the water from the cloth for themselves.

Nina suspected that the other three kids had had a much rougher life than she before they were captured by the Population Police. They didn't seem to mind the darkness like she did; they didn't seem to mind the lack of food. They didn't complain about the stench of the bathroom corner. (Well, they all smelled bad themselves anyway. So did Nina.)

Nina tried as much as possible to sit close to the other kids — for body warmth and to keep the guard from tattling on her again. And maybe to learn something. But several times she woke up from a deep sleep and found that they'd moved to another side of the room and were whispering together.

"There was a draft over there," Alia would say. "We got cold, but you looked comfortable. We didn't want to wake you."

It sounded so innocent. Maybe it was innocent. But it still made Nina mad.

I will betray them, she'd think.

That'll show them. And I won't care at all.

That was when she'd moan something like, "Oh, I miss my family so bad. Who do you miss?"

Even Alia wouldn't answer a question like that.

And later, facing the hating man, Nina would be glad for the other kids' silence. Because, with his piercing blue eyes glaring at her, she knew she wouldn't be able to keep any secrets. She felt like he knew she really was an exnay. She felt like, if he asked, she'd be forced to tell him Gran's full name and address. Whether she wanted to or not, she'd describe every single one of her aunties down to their last gray hair, and give their civil service ranks and departments.

Fortunately, he never asked about who had hidden her.

He just asked about Alia, about Percy, about Matthias.

"Give me more time," Nina would beg. "I don't know them yet." (Though, secretly, Nina thought she could spend centuries in the prison-cave with them and still not know anything about them. Percy was like a rock, hard and unyielding, revealing nothing. Matthias was no more talkative than a tree. Even Alia, who looked like the weak spot on their team of three, was quiet more and more, polite and nothing else.)