Among the Betrayed Read Free

going to do it,” Nina’s other roommate, Bonner, argued.
    Sally was tiny and golden haired, and Bonner was tall and dark and big boned, practically burly. Since Nina was medium height and medium weight, with medium brown hair, she always felt like the link between the other two. When they walked down the hall together, Nina was always in the middle. When the other two disagreed, Nina was always the one who suggested a compromise. Having both the other two oppose her made Nina feel a little desperate.
    â€œLook, they want to talk about shadows,” Nina said. Even in the dark she could tell that both of her friends froze at the sound of that one word. Harlow School was full of secrets that everyone knew but almost never discussed. At the beginning of the school year, when Nina was still horribly homesick, she’d amused herself by imagining Aunty Rhoda, her most practical aunt, materializing in the dining hall at breakfast or lunch or dinner, and marching up to the front of the room to lay out the truth for everybody:
    â€œFact: Every single one of you girls is a ‘shadow child’—athird or fourth or maybe even fifth child whose very birth was illegal because the Government doesn’t allow people to have more than two kids.
    â€œFact: All of you came here with fake I.D.’s certifying that you are somebody else, somebody the Government thinks has a right to exist.
    â€œFact: Anyone with half a brain could see you’re all pretending. Half the time the blond, Swedish-looking girl forgets to answer to the name, Uthant Mogadishu. And she’s not the only one. All of you cower at any mention of the Government. All of you tremble any time the door opens.
    â€œConclusion: So why don’t you all just drop the little charade and talk about it? Tell one another your real names. Talk about your real families, not the pretend brothers and sisters and parents you’ve probably never even met. Compare notes on how you managed to hide, all these years, before you got a fake I.D. Console one another about the difficulties of coming out of hiding, instead of lying in bed each night sobbing silently, pretending you don’t hear your roommates crying, too.”
    But of course Aunty Rhoda was miles away, and Nina wasn’t brave enough to stand up and make that speech herself. Still, with Sally and Bonner, in the dark of their room at night, she’d dropped hints, and they’d dropped hints, too. All school year it’d been like following the trail of bread crumbs in the fairy tale—Nina had never learned very much at any one time, but by spring she knew thatSally had two older sisters and a house by the seashore and parents who were working with the Underground, attempting to overthrow the Government. And Bonner had a brother and a sister and a huge extended family of aunts and uncles who all lived in the same apartment building and took turns taking care of Bonner.
    â€œThey want to talk about shadows,” Bonner repeated. “Right. So do the Population Police. What if it’s a trap?”
    â€œWhat if it isn’t?” Nina hissed. “What if this is our only chance?” She prayed the other two wouldn’t ask what it was a chance for —she’d never be able to explain. Maybe Sally and Bonner had never gotten to the point, in hiding, where they wanted to scream at the four walls around them. Maybe they hadn’t read and reread and re-reread all the fairy tales where princesses were released from magic spells and evil enchantments. Maybe they’d never thought, even at Harlow, Oh, please, there’s got to be more. This can’t be all my life is.
    â€œLook, you can take your I.D. card with you into the woods,” Nina said. “The Population Police can’t do anything to you if you have your I.D. card. And we don’t even have to talk to these boys. We can just hide behind the trees and watch them. Just come with me.