But it was no use. They were dragging her away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Nina tried to dig her heels in, to hold back. She tried to yank her arms out of the boys’ grasp. She remembered them both as skinny, wimpy kids—like little rabbits beside Jason’s brawn. But somehow they’d developed muscles. Even squirming was useless.
Lee and Trey half pulled, half carried Nina past the school and down a driveway. Then they turned down a path. A stone cottage loomed ahead of them. Nina made one last attempt to jerk away from the boys, but they only tightened their grip.
“Where are you taking me?” Nina demanded.
“To Mr. Hendricks,” Lee said abruptly.
Nina wondered who Mr. Hendricks was. It had never occurred to her that Hendricks School might have been named after a real person. Was there a Mr. Harlow, too? A Mrs. Harlow?
Nina didn’t know how she could wonder such things at a time like this. They were in front of the cottage now, and Lee was pounding on the door.
“Mr. Hendricks! Mr. Hendricks! We found the thief!”
The door opened. Nina, looking straight ahead, didn’t see anyone there. Then she looked down, like the boys were doing.
A man in a wheelchair sat before them.
“Indeed,” he said.
Lee jerked on Nina’s arm, drew her into the house.
“And what do you have to say for yourself, young lady?” Mr. Hendricks asked when all three kids stood before him in the foyer.
Nina opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
“Surely you have something to say, some defense to give,” Mr. Hendricks said.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Nina blurted. “I don’t know whose side you’re on.”
Mr. Hendricks chuckled.
“Then I guess you’ll have to tell me the truth,” he said.
Everyone waited. Nina kept her teeth clenched firmly together. It was all over now. This Mr. Hendricks would undoubtedly call the Population Police, and she’d be arrested all over again. This time, she was sure, the hating man wouldn’t give her any more chances to prove herself. The only thing Nina could hope for now was that somehow Percy, Matthias, and Alia could avoid being caught, too. Somehow she’d have to warn them. . . .
“So, you’re not talking?” Mr. Hendricks said. “Perhaps my young friends here might tell me what they observed, and we’ll go from there.”
“Sir,” Lee began. “We caught her eating our corn. And she was putting lots of our vegetables into her bag there.”
Nina realized she still had the old, smelly burlap bag slung around her neck. Quickly, before anyone might ask how one girl could possibly eat all that food, she said, “I was hungry. Very hungry.”
“Ah,” Mr. Hendricks said. “Now we hear an excuse.” He squinted, seeming to look far off into the distance. He shook his head, ever so slightly, his thick white hair barely moving. “Boys, I believe I can handle this situation by myself now. Why don’t you take her into the living room and then go resume your posts?”
Nina wondered what “resume your posts” meant. Both boys nodded. Lee tugged on Nina’s arm and muttered, “Come on.”
Once they were in the living room—the fanciest place Nina had ever seen, crowded with heavy wood furniture—Lee half shoved Nina toward a couch. Nina realized she’d probably never see Lee again.
“Lee,” she whispered. “You probably won’t believe me, but . . . I didn’t try to betray you. I didn’t know what Jason was doing. Would you . . . would you tell the others? So they can remember me the right way?”
Lee didn’t say yes or no, only backed away. Nina couldn’t even be sure that he’d heard her. She didn’t expect anyone to think too highly of her—she wasn’t Jen Talbot, hero for the cause of third children everywhere. But she hoped that Sally and Bonner, at least, wouldn’t live the rest of their lives thinking of her as a traitor. She hoped that if the Hendricks School boys and the Harlow School girls ever started meeting in the woods again, they wouldn’t pass down stories of Jason and Nina, equally deceptive, equally evil.
After Lee and Trey left, Mr. Hendricks rolled into the living room. He pulled the wooden door mostly shut behind him.
“Now,” he said. “Perhaps you’ll be a bit more forthcoming without an audience.”
Nina’s gaze darted around the room, taking in the unlatched door, the thick glass in the windows, the picture frames and heavy knickknacks on the tables. She was looking for an escape. Maybe a weapon, too. What would happen if she threw a ceramic bird at a man in a wheelchair? Could she hit him? Would it do any good?
Nina looked Mr. Hendricks over carefully. Despite the white hair, he was hardly old and decrepit. She even suspected the wheelchair was just a fake, meant to deceive her into thinking she could overpower him easily. Probably he was as strong and muscular as Lee and Trey. Probably . . .
Nina’s glance reached Mr. Hendricks’s feet—or rather, the empty space where his feet should have been. He didn’t have any feet.
He can’t chase me, Nina thought. If I can escape . . .
But he would call for help. He’d have a search party ready in a matter of minutes.
But minutes are all I need to warn Percy, Matthias, and Alia. . . .
“Well?” Mr. Hendricks said.
Nina sprang up from the couch, grabbed the back of the wheelchair, and dumped it forward, spilling Mr. Hendricks to the floor. She dashed out the living room door, out the front door, down the front steps. She worried about running into Lee and Trey—where were their “posts,” by the garden?—but her feet flew so quickly, everything was a blur. She couldn’t watch for them or anyone else.
Before she knew it, she was crashing into the woods, toward the glade where she’d left the others waiting for food.
“Percy! Matthias! Alia!” she called. “I have to warn you. . . .” The words wouldn’t come quickly enough between her gasps for air.
Alia popped out from behind a tree.
“Nina!” she scolded. “You’re making too much noise. Someone will hear you!”
“It . . . doesn’t . . . matter,” she panted. She stopped running, caught her breath. She saw that Matthias and Percy were staring out at her from the shadows behind a bush. “They caught me. I escaped again, but they’ll probably be looking for me soon. I had to warn you. . . .” She took another deep breath. Her brain still felt starved for oxygen. “This isn’t a safe place anymore. You’ll have to go somewhere else. But you can. You guys are smart.”
“Nina,” Alia protested. “Come with us, then—”
“No,” Nina said. “I’d be . . . dangerous to you. They know to look for me now. I probably don’t have much time. But I wanted to tell you . . . the hating man. In prison. He put me in your cell to betray you. He wanted me to tell him all your secrets. And I might have. If we hadn’t escaped, I—”
“But you didn’t,” Matthias said. “You didn’t tell the Population Police anything.”
“I wanted to,” Nina said. “Jason betrayed me, and I wanted to hurt someone else. And I wanted to save my life. . . .”
“It’s all right,” Alia said, stepping closer.
“And I don’t blame you for never trusting me,” Nina continued. “I wasn’t trustworthy. Even that first night in the woods, when I was supposed to be sitting sentry, I fell asleep.” It was such a relief to confess that, even that. “I never really trusted you, either. The last time I had friends, they didn’t help me at all when I was arrested. So I thought . . .”
Nina was crying. Between being caught and running away—and, probably, because of having nothing to eat in days but vegetables—she felt dizzy and light-headed. But it was important for her to tell the others everything. All her stories spilled out. Probably the others could make no sense of what she said. Tales of playing dolls with Aunty Zenka were all mixed up with tales of meeting the Hendricks School boys in the woods with Sally and Bonner.
“I want you to know my real name, too,” Nina said. “It’s E
lodie. When you remember me, remember Elodie.”
The woods were dark when Nina finished talking. She was just lucky she hadn’t been found immediately. She couldn’t see the others’ faces, couldn’t tell what they thought of her stream of words. But for practically the first time since she’d been arrested, Nina was sure she’d done the exact right thing. The others were going to be safe now. And she’d told them the truth.
“You should go now,” she said. “Oh—here.” She pulled the grungy food bag from around her neck and handed it to Alia. “There’s not much in it because . . . well, something’s better than nothing, isn’t it?”
The tears flowed down her face. She reached down and drew Alia into a hug. Percy and Matthias stepped forward, too, and threw their arms around both girls. All four kids stood together, swaying slightly, holding one another up.
Nina had her eyes shut, squeezing out the tears. But through her tears she suddenly saw a glimmer of light off to the right. She pulled away from the hug, stared off toward a flashlight bobbing in the woods. Then she saw other flashlights, circling closer and closer.
“They’re looking for me!” she hissed. “Go on! Hide somewhere far away from me.”
Nina didn’t have time to make sure that the others had moved out of sight. For, seconds later, a flashlight shone right in her face and a booming voice cried out, “Nina Idi! Fancy meeting you here!”
It was the hating man.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Terrified, Nina turned to run. But something clawed at her arm, something held on to her leg. She tumbled forward, sprawled across the ground.
“Let go of me!” she roared, though it must have been a vine tangled around her ankle, must have been a branch scratching against her arm. Nina tried to scramble up, but it was too late. The flashlight shone in her eyes; when the hating man’s voice came again, it was practically in her ear.
“Nina, Nina, Nina,” he said. “It’s all over now.”
Nina struggled to sit up. It was Percy who was holding onto her arm, Matthias who was holding onto her leg.
They had betrayed her, too. They were turning her in to the hating man.
Alia stepped up beside the boys, smiling at Nina. Nina’s eyes swam with tears. Not Alia, too. Nina couldn’t take the thought that Alia had betrayed her as well.
“No,” Nina moaned. Then she screamed, “No!”
Nina didn’t care who heard. Behind the hating man she could see the shapes of perhaps a dozen people, all with flashlights shining right at her. Their faces were completely in shadow, impossible to make out.
Alia leaned into the circle of light with Nina.
“You’re safe now,” she said happily. “You passed the test.”
Nina shook her head violently, not wanting to believe the evidence in front of her eyes.
“Alia, run,” Nina whispered. She wasn’t sure which she wanted more—for the little girl to be safe, or for Alia merely to prove that she was scared, too, and hadn’t helped betraying Nina. Alia didn’t move. Nina hoped she just hadn’t heard. “Alia, you have to escape. That man is from the Population Police. He’s the hating man!”
“No, he’s not,” a familiar voice called out from the shadows. “He only pretends to work for the Population Police. He’s Mr. Talbot. Jen Talbot’s dad.” Lee Grant stepped forward and bent down beside Nina. “Remember who Jen Talbot is?”
“Of course I do,” Nina snapped. “She’s the hero for the cause of third children everywhere. Jason used to tell us about her all the time. But . . .”
She wondered suddenly if that was a lie, too, if there’d never been a Jen Talbot, or if she hadn’t been a hero. Dazedly Nina looked around at the faces circling her. Everyone came forward, crowding close. Percy and Matthias lifted Nina up to see, instead of holding her back. Lee and Trey and a few other Hendricks School boys stood in a clump off to the right.
The hating man—Mr. Talbot?—cleared his throat.
“It’s true, what Lee said,” he began. “I am a double agent working for the Population Police, but only in order to double-cross them. Back in the spring I faced a dilemma. A boy at Hendricks School for Boys told the Population Police he knew of several shadow children at the school who were using fake identities and pretending to be legitimate. If this boy managed to convince the Population Police that he was telling the truth, I knew several children would die. Thanks to young Lee Grant over there, as well as some quick-thinking administrators, we managed to foil his plan.
“But this boy—Jason, as you all know—said he had an accomplice at the girls’ school. Nina Idi. You. We arrested you as well. But the longer I spent interrogating you, the more convinced I became that you were truly innocent and actually knew nothing of Jason’s plan. But I couldn’t be entirely sure, and it was a matter of life and death that I be absolutely, one hundred percent certain.”
“Yeah. My life. My death,” Nina grumbled, still too dazed to think straight.
“And many others’,” Mr. Talbot said. “You knew the truth about dozens of kids.”
Every girl at Harlow School, Nina thought. And lots of boys at Hendricks. I knew they were all former shadow children. Did everyone really think that I might betray them?
“About the same time, a Population Police informer in the capital had turned in three kids who were involved in manufacturing fake I.D.’s,—Percy, Matthias, and Alia. I figured they were safer in prison than out on the streets, for the time being. Their protector, Samuel Jones, had been killed in the rally for third-children rights in April.”
“That’s who ‘Sa—’ was. You almost said his name once,” Nina said, almost to herself.
“He took in third children,” Alia whispered. “When our parents abandoned us. He raised us. He took care of us.”
“I thought you said God took care of you,” Nina scoffed. She sounded just like Aunty Lystra at her most skeptical.
“Who do you think Samuel was working for?” Alia said.
Nina kept shaking her head, as if she could deny everything she heard.
“Percy and Matthias had promised Samuel to stay away from the rally to protect Alia,” Mr. Talbot said. “So they alone were spared, and they alone were still around to be betrayed. Then later, in prison, they agreed to help me give you a test, to see which side you were really on. If you had betrayed them, we would have known you couldn’t be trusted. If you protected them . . . we’d save you.”
Nina gasped, finally beginning to make sense of his words. If the hating man didn’t really believe in the Population Police’s cause—if he was a double agent working against them—then everything was backward.
“So, if I’d double-crossed them, trying to save my own life . . . you would have killed me?” Nina asked.
“Yes,” Mr. Talbot said.
Nina thought about how close she’d come to betraying the others, how miserable she’d been in prison, how willing she’d been to do almost anything to save herself.
“I didn’t do it,” she said. “I could have, but I didn’t.”
“But you didn’t refuse to betray them, either,” Mr. Talbot said. “You weren’t committing yourself either way. We had to add a more dangerous part to the test.”
Nina couldn’t figure out what he meant. Then she remembered the guard, Mack, sprawling across the table, his ring of keys sliding right toward Nina.
“You let us escape,” Nina accused, as if it were a crime. “You let me get the keys and have a way out, and made me think I was figuring out everything on my own. Why, I bet . . . I bet Mack wasn’t even sick.”
Mr. Talbot chuckled. “No, but he put on a good act, didn’t he?”
“And then”—Nina was still putting everything together—“the other three kids knew that I might offer to help them escape. Why wasn’t that enough? Why didn’t you trust me then?”
She thought about the past—was it weeks?—of sleeping outside, of living on stale, moldy food or dirty raw vegetables. Could she have avoided all that?
/> “We still weren’t sure about you,” Percy said in his usual logical tone. “It was possible that you were only taking us along because you were scared to go on your own. You might have just been using us.”
Nina remembered how unconcerned the others had been when they ran out of food, how little they had cared about making plans for the future. No wonder. They were waiting on her. Waiting on her to prove herself.
“When we met the policemen by the river—,” she said.
“That was part of the test,” Mr. Talbot said. “Those weren’t policemen. They were people working with our cause.”
“And I passed that test?” Nina asked.
“Sort of,” Mr. Talbot said. “You didn’t try to turn the others in. But we still weren’t sure of your motives.”
Nina shivered, thinking about how closely she’d been watched all along. Every time she complained about their rocky, uneven “beds” in the woods. Every times she griped about the dirty vegetables.
“I bet the rest of you were getting food somewhere else,” she said.
“Not much,” Alia said in a small voice, looking down. She looked back up at Nina, her eyes flashing. “I thought you were good. I wanted to tell. But these guys”—she pointed at Percy, Matthias, and Mr. Talbot—“they said I had to wait until you told us everything. Until you told us that you were supposed to betray us to the Population Police.”
“I did that tonight,” Nina said wonderingly. She looked around again at the circle of people, the circle of light in the dark woods.
She remembered how panicked she’d been, running out to the woods only minutes earlier. She hadn’t been thinking at all of saving her own life. She’d only wanted to save Percy, Matthias, and Alia.
But she hadn’t cared that much about them back when she first met them, when she offered them a chance to escape, when she saw the fake policemen by the river.
“You gave me a lot of chances,” she said to Mr. Talbot.
“I thought you deserved them,” he said. “You didn’t deserve what happened to you before.”
Nina remembered the day she was arrested, how nobody had spoken out on her behalf as she glided forward in the dining hall. She remembered how much she’d trusted Jason, and then he had betrayed her. No, she hadn’t deserved that. Nobody did. What she deserved was the way Gran and the aunties had loved her, the way they’d hidden her even though they might have been killed for it. But Alia, Percy, and Matthias hadn’t deserved being betrayed, either. They hadn’t deserved weeks in a dark prison cell, weeks sleeping outdoors on rocks and twigs and itchy leaves. But they’d endured all of that, willingly, for her. They’d agreed to endure all of that before they even knew if she was good or bad.