But there was Alia, wading back toward Nina, carrying two plastic cards in her hand. Nina gaped, strained her neck to see what Alia was holding. Alia drew even with Nina, slipped her fingers into Nina’s hand, and pulled her along.
“Don’t look so surprised,” Alia hissed out of the side of her mouth. “Let me do all the talking.”
That wouldn’t be hard. Nina was so stunned, she didn’t think she even had a voice anymore. For she’d glimpsed the cards in Alia’s hand, and they looked like ordinary I.D.’s. One was stamped, SUSAN BROWN. The other said, JANICE BROWN.
And they contained Alia’s and Nina’s pictures.
No—Nina looked again—it wasn’t really their pictures. But the resemblance was so close, Nina was sure the policemen would be fooled. As long as she and Alia didn’t make any mistakes.
Alia held the I.D.’s as carelessly as if they were just some pretty leaves she’d picked up off the ground.
They reached the shore, and still Alia marched forward, Nina trailing by a few steps. The brush growing at the water’s edge poked her ankles and pricked her feet. She stepped gingerly, half stumbling. Alia’s strong grip held her up.
“It’s illegal to swim in that river,” one of the men said sternly. “That’s Government property. We could arrest you for trespassing.”
Alia held out the I.D.’s for his inspection. He took them, glanced at them quickly, then handed them to the other man.
“Well?” the first man said. “Aren’t you scared of being arrested?”
“Oh, please don’t arrest us,” Alia said, her little-girl voice sounding even more sweet and childish than ever. “We’re going to visit our grandmother, and we slipped in the mud. We couldn’t let her see us like that. We thought we could just wash off quickly—we didn’t know we were breaking any laws. We’re sorry.”
“Where does your grandmother live?”
“Terrazzine,” Alia said confidently. Nina had never heard of the place.
“Doesn’t your sister talk?” the second man said, handing the I.D. cards back to Alia. Alia stuffed them in her pocket.
“No, sir,” Alia said, just as Nina was opening her mouth to answer. Nina closed her mouth and hoped nobody had noticed. “My sister’s mute, sir. And not quite right in the head, if you know what I mean. I have to take care of her, my mother says.”
“Well, you’re a brave little thing,” the first man said. “We’ll let you off, this time. But you be careful, and stay on the road from now on, you hear? We’re not far from the Population Police prison, you know. I’ve been saying for years, if any of those prisoners escaped—”
“I know, sir,” Alia said, seeming to quell a shiver of fear. “My mother has told us about the prison.”
The policemen turned in one direction, and Alia and Nina went the other way. Nina noticed for the first time that Alia had her boots and Nina’s looped around her neck, tied together by the shoelaces.
“Here. Let’s put our shoes back on, Janice dear,” Alia said, a little too loudly.
Dumbly Nina stuck out first one foot and then the other, and let Alia cram her stockings and boots on. She heard a car roaring away behind her. The policemen were gone.
Nina sagged against a tree in relief.
“What . . . how did you—”
“Shh,” Alia said. “Sometimes they come back and check out your story. It’s not safe for you to talk yet. But keep walking.”
She tugged on Nina’s hand, and Nina obediently kept pace beside the younger girl. They were walking down the middle of the road now, in plain sight, for anyone to see.
“Can’t you explain as we walk?” Nina grumbled, trying not to move her lips.
“Nope,” Alia said.
The sun beat down from overhead. The woods fell away alongside the road, and they walked past scattered houses and scraggly fields. This was countryside Nina had seen twice before—coming to school and then leaving it—but she’d been inside a car and numb with fear both times. She was beyond numbness now. Her mind kept replaying her moments of terror—the water pulling her under, the policeman yelling, “Come out and show us your I.D.!” And Alia coming to her rescue.
“When it’s safe to talk,” Nina said quietly, “when we meet up with Percy and Matthias again, the three of you are going to tell me everything. And . . . and I’m going to tell you everything, too.”
Alia flashed her a look that Nina couldn’t read. It might have meant, “Quit talking.” It might have meant, “You’re crazy if you think we’re telling you anything.”
But it also might have meant, “All right. It’s time to share.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Alia and Nina had reached the driveway to Harlow School for Girls before Alia deemed it safe to talk.
“Is that your school over there?” Alia asked quietly when they rounded a bend in the road.
Nina stared out at the expanse of grass and the imposing three-story brick building. The school had no windows—that had seemed so natural from the inside, when Nina wasn’t used to seeing out windows anyhow. But from the outside the lack of windows looked odd, as if the building were supposed to be a monument or a memorial, not any place that people could live.
“That’s it,” Nina said. “And the woods are behind the school.”
She pointed. Alia nodded and detoured around the school, skulking behind bushes and shrubs.
“What about Percy and Matthias? And . . . and our food?” Nina didn’t want to seem more concerned about her food sack than the two boys. But it was hard not to be, what with her stomach growling.
“They’ll find us,” Alia said confidently.
A few minutes later they entered the coolness of the woods. Alia sat down on a stump, and Nina sank onto the ground beside her. She took off her boots and rubbed her sore feet.
“How far do you think we walked?” Nina asked.
“Couple of miles,” Alia said.
“How did you know how to get here?”
“There aren’t that many roads in use anymore,” Alia said. “Percy thought this would be the right way.” She looked around the woods and said cheerfully, “This is a nice place.”
“I guess,” Nina said doubtfully. She watched a spider climb into her boot. Were spiders poisonous? Would she survive the Population Police prison, a near drowning, and the long escape only to die of a spider bite?
Alia reached over and shook the spider out of Nina’s boot. The spider scampered away.
“Thanks,” Nina muttered. She wondered if she’d ever get used to being outdoors. It didn’t seem natural not to have four walls around her, a ceiling above her head, and a solid floor beneath her feet. Jason had always teased the kids who were scared of the woods. No, no, she chided herself, don’t think about Jason ever again. Still. The woods were unpleasant enough now, in the warm sunshine. What would they be like when it was raining, or when winter came?
Alia obviously didn’t care. She began whistling, sounding as carefree as a bird. Her whistle evidently tricked birds, too, because one called back to her, “Tweet-tweet,” in answer to her “Tweet-tweet-tweet.”
And then Nina realized it wasn’t another bird, but Percy and Matthias. They stepped up quietly behind her.
“Safe?” Alia asked.
“Safe,” Matthias answered.
The boys sat down beside Nina. As if they’d all agreed ahead of time, Percy opened the food bag and handed out what seemed to be a feast: a box of cereal, a box of raisins, and an apple for everyone. Nina didn’t object. Matthias raised his apple like he was making a toast: “To our new home,” he said.
“To roughing it,” Percy said.
“To Nina’s idea,” Alia said.
Nina looked from face to face, then raised her own apple and said, “To my new friends getting us here safely.”
Eating required full concentration. Chewing and swallowing was such a joy that no one spoke until they were down to the cores of their apples, picking out the last bits of flesh from amo
ng the seeds. Then Nina said what she’d worked out during her long, silent walk with Alia.
“The three of you are used to roughing it,” she said. “I don’t know where you lived before you were arrested, but it was outdoors. And I don’t know how, but you made fake I.D.’s for third children. That’s what Percy and Matthias went to get last night when we were running away. When you brought back the flashlight.”
Nina waited while the other three exchanged glances. Alia nodded, ever so slightly at the other two.
“Yes,” Percy said softly. “You’re right.”
“Why didn’t you tell me we had I.D.’s?” Nina asked. “We could have gone somewhere else if we didn’t have to hide. Somewhere with walls and a roof and a floor.”
“Where?” Matthias asked. “I.D.’s aren’t food. They aren’t rent money. They aren’t adults to answer nosy questions from the Government. I.D. cards are just pieces of plastic.”
Nina shrugged. Before she was arrested, she’d never lacked for food or shelter or adult care. All she’d ever missed was a legal identity. She tried a different tack.
“I could have given everything away when the Population Police saw me,” she said. “Since I didn’t know you’d made an I.D. card for me, I was about to scream and run. Then they would have known—”
“You thought those guys were Population Policemen?” Percy asked incredulously. “Population Police would have known to look for runaways. Those guys were just local cops. Minor league. They probably hate the Population Police as much as we do.”
Nina tried to absorb this news. “But—”
“Look, the Population Police wouldn’t tell anyone else that someone had escaped from their prison. It’d be like . . . like a blow to their pride. They like everyone to think that they’re invincible, impossible to beat. So it’s just Population Policemen looking for us. And if they ask the local cops, the local cops won’t tell them about seeing two girls on the northbound road out of the city. That’s why we’re safe,” Matthias said.
Nina wondered how he could sound so sure.
“We lived on the streets before,” Alia said softly. “In the city. We know how things work.”
Nina tried to imagine it. No wonder the other three had always looked so grubby. But how had they managed it? How had they gotten food? How had they avoided being arrested years ago?
“Who took care of you?” Nina asked.
“God took care of us,” Alia said. “We prayed to him and he took care of us. Just like we prayed in prison and he sent us you to get us out.”
Nina had heard of God before. Gran, for one, had prayed back home, even though Aunty Lystra made fun of her for it.
“That’s one thing the Government’s right about,” Aunty Lystra had said. “If there were a God out there who really cared about us, do you think we’d be living like this?” “This” seemed to encompass everything from the leaky roof to the weevils in the flour to the long line at the store for cabbage.
“You believe what you want to believe, and I’ll believe what I want to believe,” Gran always answered. “I, for one, see a few miracles around here.”
Nina had liked the way Gran’s eyes rested on her when she said that. Even when Nina was too tiny to understand the word “miracle,” she’d liked it, liked the way Gran talked about God.
But she didn’t understand how God could take care of three little kids alone on the streets.
“I’m thirsty,” Percy announced, with a warning glance toward Alia. “Let’s go find some water and explore a little.”
The other three scrambled up. Nina pulled her boots back on and followed, thinking hard.
They hadn’t told her everything, after all. And so she hadn’t said a word about her past, either.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The days that followed the kids’ arrival in the woods were strangely like a holiday. The sun shone down on them—just warm enough, not too hot—and they had fun hiking around, exploring. They slept under the stars each balmy night. Nina did not exactly forget Jason’s betrayal and the nightmare of prison, but all the horrors she’d experienced seemed far in the past. She worried less and less about being caught again. When she opened her eyes each morning to see gently waving branches and a mosaic of maple leaves against the sky, it didn’t seem possible that she could be imprisoned in a dark underground room ever again.
For their part, Percy, Matthias, and Alia seemed perfectly happy to treat their time in the woods as one long vacation. They didn’t talk about prison; they didn’t talk about their lives before prison. They climbed trees; they skipped rocks in the stream; they drew pictures in the dirt with twigs.
Then one morning Nina reached her hand into the food bag for breakfast and closed her fingers on—nothing. She reached farther down, her stomach suddenly queasy with hunger. She brought up a small, battered box of cereal and an empty peanut shell. She laid those on her knees and reached in again.
Nothing. Truly nothing. Not even a moldy biscuit crumb remained in the sack.
“We don’t have any more food!” Nina gasped.
The others paused in the midst of their own meals. Percy held a half-eaten oatmeal bar up to his mouth; Alia froze with an apple against her lips. Matthias kept chewing his cereal.
“What?” he said, his mouth full.
“We’re out of food!” Nina repeated. “What you’re eating now—that’s all we have!”
“So is your garden ready?” Percy asked casually. “You said you could grow a garden here.”
Nina gaped at him.
“I didn’t . . . I meant . . .” What had she promised, in desperation, back in prison when they were planning their escape? Were the others really counting on her to provide all their food? Why hadn’t they mentioned it before now? “I—Alia, give me the seeds from that apple.”
Obediently Alia dug her fingernails into the middle of the apple and handed Nina three grimy brown seeds. Nina scratched in the dirt by her feet and dug three holes, side by side. She placed a seed in each hole. Then she patted dirt back over the seeds until they were hidden from sight.
“There,” she said. “At least we’ll have more apples.”
“How long does it take?” Percy asked.
Nina stared down at the dirt, hoping something might happen right away. She suspected it took longer than a few minutes for an apple tree to grow. Probably a lot longer. And for an apple tree actually to produce apples . . .
“I don’t know,” she said miserably. She had a feeling it might take days, weeks, months. Years. “I don’t know anything about growing food,” she confessed. “I just thought we could . . . figure something out once we got here. This is better than being in prison, isn’t it?”
“They fed us in prison,” Alia said in a small voice.
“And they were going to kill us,” Nina countered harshly.
Alia looked down at the ground. Percy and Matthias looked at each other. Nina couldn’t stand to see them exchanging glances once again.
“Look, I’m just a kid,” she pleaded. “I don’t know anything about anything. My gran and the aunties—they always took care of me. Then when I got to school—well, it wasn’t like they really wanted us to think for ourselves there. There was always food, three times a day. We didn’t have to know where it came from.”
The other three didn’t say anything for a moment. In the silence, Nina could hear the wind shifting direction in the trees.
“You never told us about your gran and the . . . the aunties?” Alia finally said. “You didn’t tell us about your school.”
“I didn’t know if I could trust you,” Nina admitted. “I’m a third child. An illegal.”
“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 t
he 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.