“It’s the procedure we developed for dealing with new boys,” jackal boy said. “And new girls, over at Harlow School for Girls. We’ve discovered it’s hard for shadow children when they first come out of hiding — they’re overwhelmed, traumatized. Think about it. They’ve spent their whole lives thinking it’s death to be seen, and suddenly they’re expected to interact with others all day long, to sit through classes with dozens of other kids, behave normally. They freak out.”
“Did you?” Luke asked, trying to picture jackal boy as the new kid, just come out of hiding, scared of everything. Hisimagination failed him.
“Me?” Jackal boy sounded surprised. “Sure. It was tough. The problem was, lots of exnays got so panicked, they’d do something really dumb — stand up and chant their real name, start screaming, ‘Don’t look at me! Don’t look at me!’—you know, totally lose it Now, Hendricks has a lot of disturbed kids, anyway—”
“It does?” Luke asked.
“Haven’t you noticed?” Jackal boy sounded amazed. “The autistic kids — the ones who rock and won’t look you in the eye — the phobic kids, we’ve got all sorts of troubled cases in there. Ever meet Rolly Sturgeon?
“I thought friends were supposed to be nice to you,” Luke said bitterly “Maybe that’s a word I don’t understand, either.”
“Being too nice to an exnay from the start only causes trouble,” jackal boy said. “They break down. They get weepy. They’re so happy to find a sympathetic ear that they tell everything, no matter who else can hear. No, exnays need the kind of friend who can toughen them up. Like I did for you.”
Was that what had happened? Luke felt as overwhelmed and confused as he had his first day at Hendricks. Listening to jackal boy was like it used to be listening to Jen: They were both so sure of themselves, it was hard for Luke to figure out what he thought on his own.
“How can you tell if a new kid is an exnay or not?” Luke asked, stalling.
“We give them a test,” jackal boy said. “When they’re ready, we leave a door open and make sure they see it, we stare them right in the eye — we know exactly how an exnay would respond, compared with a typical agoraphobe, or a typical autistic kid.”
“You’ve got everyone figured out, huh?” Luke said.
“Sure,” jackal boy asked. “Can’t you tell?”
Luke couldn’t answer that question. He was feeling panicky again. In a minute, he was going to have to make a decision. With Jen, it had been easy — he’d trusted her right away. But he was older now, more suspicious. He knew that she had been betrayed.
And he could be, too.
“So you gave me the usual test,” he said tentatively “Did I pass?”
“Depends on what you call passing,” jackal boy said. He sounded cagier now, like he wasn’t sure whose side Luke was on.
Luke had run out of questions. Or — he had lots of questions, but none of them would help him decide whether to trust jackal boy and his friends with his secret It would be so nice to be able to tell. But was it worth risking his life for?
Had he already risked his life by following them into the woods?
Luke didn’t like thinking things like that. He missed Jen all of a sudden. She was always good at turning his fear into a joke.
“Did you know Jen?” he asked jackal boy abruptly.
“Jen?” jackal boy said, his voice suddenly exuberant “Jen Talbot? You knew her, too?”
Luke nodded. “She was my, um, neighbor. I went over to her house whenever I could,” he said.
“Wow,” jackal boy breathed. “Come onl”.
He grabbed Luke’s arm and pulled him back through the woods, all the time marveling, “I can’t believe you really met her. In person. It’s incredible. She’s legendary, you know—”
The low-hanging tree limbs didn’t seem so frightening now Luke and jackal boy simply ducked. Together. A couple times jackal boy held a branch out of the way so Luke could go first. A couple times Luke returned the favor. Jackal boy kept rushing Luke along. They burst back into the clearing where everyone else was still sitting, not even talking. They appeared to have nothing to do but wait for jackal boy
“Listen, you all!” jackal boy announced. ‘This is unbelievable! He knew Jen. He went to her house and everything!”
There was a flurry of questions—”What was she like?” “Did she tell you about the rally?” “How did you know her?” Someone produced a bag of cookies and they all passed it around, like it was a party.
It was a party. It was a party where they were accepting Luke into their group. Just because he knew Jen.
Luke did his best to answer all the questions.
“Jen was — amazing,” he said. “She wasn’t scared of anything. Not the Population Police, not the Government, not anyone. Not even her parents.” Luke thought about how strange it was that Jen’s father worked for the Population Police. Mr. Talbot was like a double agent, trying to help third children instead of killing them. But he hadn’t been able to prevent his own daughter’s death. He’d just barely managed to keep the Population Police from finding out that she had been his daughter.
Luke didn’t want to talk about Jen’s death, just her life.
“She spent months planning the rally,” he said. “It was her statement, ‘I deserve to exist We deserve to exist’ She wanted as many third children there as possible. Out of hiding. She thought the Government would have to listen. She took everyone to the steps of the president’s house…” Luke remembered the fight they’d had when he’d refused to go. And how she’d forgiven him. He stopped talking, lost in grief
“The Government killed everyone at the rally,” Nina finished for him.
Luke nodded blindly. He couldn’t ignore Jen’s death. He choked out, “Jen was a true hero. She was the bravest person I’ll ever know. And someday — someday everyone will know about her.”
The others nodded solemnly.
After that, somehow, he was able to tell happy stories about Jen. He had the whole crowd laughing when he described how Jen had dusted for his fingerprints the first time he’d gone to her house.
“She wanted to make sure I was..“ Luke hesitated. He had been about to say “another shadow child, like her.” But that wasn’t how he wanted to reveal his secret, just letting it slip out like it didn’t matter. He finished lamely, “She wanted to make sure I was who I said I was.”
“So,” jackal boy said, lounging against a tree. “Who are you, anyway? What’s your real name, ‘Lee’?”
Luke looked at the circle of faces surrounding him. Jackal boy’s question had silenced the laughter. Or maybe it was Luke’s sudden stammering. Now everyone was watching Luke expectantly. An owl hooted somewhere deeper in the woods, and it was like a signal. Finally It was time to tell.
“L—” Luke started. But the word stuck in his throat All those nights he’d whispered his name, all those times he’d longed to speak his name aloud — and now he couldn’t.
Some of the dry cookie crumbs slid back on his tongue and he started coughing, choking. One of the other boys had to pound him on the back before Luke got his breath back.
“Lee Grant,” Luke said, as soon as he could speak again. His urge to confess was gone. “My name is Lee Grant”
“Sure,” jackal boy kidded him. “Whatever you say”
And then Luke felt foolish. Jackal boy had revealed his real name. Why couldn’t Luke reveal his?
