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:
'One of us will have to sneak into the school and find this Lee, and see if we can trust him,' Matthias said.
'Maybe he could even give us some food from his school,' Nina said. 'Maybe they feed the boys better than they feed the girls.'
She felt more cheerful now. Everything could work out. She waited for Percy or Matthias to volunteer to be the one to sneak into the boys' school. Matthias was closer to Lee Grant's age — if Matthias pretended to be a new student, he'd be more likely to get placed in the same classes as Lee. But Nina thought Percy was smarter — he would know what to do, how to trick Lee into telling him everything.
But neither Percy nor Matthias spoke up. Surprised, Nina looked from one boy to the other — and discovered they were both staring at her.
'Well?' she said. 'Which one of you is going to do it?'
Percy waited a while longer, then shook his head in dis' gust, as if he couldn't believe Nina hadn't figured everything out.
'You're the only one who knows what this Lee Grant looks like. You're the only one he knows, the only one he'd be likely to trust. It's got to be you,' he said.
'But I'm a girl!' Nina said. 'It's a
'You can tuck your hair up in my cap,' Percy said. 'You can wear Matthias's clothes. You can pretend.'
Nina gawked at him. She imagined herself in Matthias's ragged shirt and patched jeans, standing amidst the Hendricks boys in their fancy clothes. She'd be noticed in an instant, thrown out in a flash.
'You don't understand,' she said. 'I'm not like all of you. I've never had to… to live by my wits. If anyone stops me, I won't know what to say. That's why. .' At the last minute, she managed to stop herself from spilling every-thing.
Instead she finished lamely, 'That's why someone else should go instead of me. You can't trust me.'
'We trust you,' Alia said softly.
How could Nina disagree with that?
U t was dusk. The way the shadows slanted through the * trees reminded Nina of a dozen other dusks she'd spent in the woods, when she and her friends had sneaked out to meet Jason and his buddies. Once again she was crouched behind a tree, watching and waiting. Once again she was listening for the snap of a twig, the approach of danger. Once again her heart was pounding in her chest, her every nerve ending was alert with the thrill of the risk she was about to take.
But this time she was preparing to sneak out of the woods, not into it. She pulled Matthias's cap a little lower over her eyes and peeked around the tree. She had picked dusk as the safest time for her mission. She was hoping that the boys' school, like the girls' school, had dull indoc' trination sessions in the evening, which students slept through or sneaked out of. Surely she could spy on the indoctrination session, locate Lee Grant, and pull him aside as everyone was leaving. She hoped. She'd been mak' ing plans all day long.
What she hadn't counted on was how much the shad' ows spooked her. Not just the shadows in the trees, but the shadows that stretched across the long, long lawn between the woods and Hendricks School for Boys. If she was going to find Lee Grant, she'd have to run across those shadows, out in the open, out where someone might see.
It had been one thing to walk across the Harlow School lawn to the woods with Sally and Bonner on either side of her, giggling nervously all the way. She knew now that they had not actually expected to face real danger — only some pale imitation of it, nothing that couldn't be waved away with an I.D. card.
Nina knew she had been frightened, too, walking out in the open with Alia after they were questioned by the two policemen on the bridge. But Alia had rescued her so mag' ically from the policemen that Nina knew she had a false sense of confidence — no matter what happened, Alia or Percy or Matthias could save her.
But the other three weren't going into Hendricks School with her now. She was completely alone.
Nina inched forward, to the edge of the woods, then threw herself into a desperate run across the lawn.
She reached the side of the building more quickly than she'd expected. She realized she'd kept her eyes squeezed shut for most of her run. She was lucky she hadn't smashed into the building. She turned around and looked back and couldn't believe she'd come all that distance, through all those shadows. She took a deep breath and clutched her fingers on to one of the bricks in the wall of the school, as if that could hold her steady.
Sliding the palms of her hands along the wall, she moved forward, looking ahead. By the time she reached the corner, her fingertips felt ragged from the rough bricks. She didn't seem to be thinking very well. Had she missed noticing a door? Or was there one entire side of the school without any entrance at all?
Rather than turning around, she turned the corner. And there was solid metal, with a metal knob sticking out. A door and a doorknob. Just what she'd been looking for.
Without giving herself time to lose her nerve, she grabbed the knob, turned, and pulled.
A dark hallway gaped before her. She stepped into the school. The door slid shut behind her.
If Nina's heart had been pounding before, it was beat' ing away at triple time now. Every nerve ending in her body seemed to be screaming, 'Alert! Alert! Danger! Danger! Turn around and go back to safety!'
Nina was surprised her brain could still override the warning, could still make her feet slide forward. She stum' bled but didn't fall, and kept moving.
The dark hall ended in a T with another dark hall. Nina turned right at first, hesitated, then turned around. Over the pounding in her ears she could hear shrieks and screams coming from the opposite direction. Somewhere down that hall boys were laughing and yelling at the top of their lungs.
It didn't sound at all like the indoctrination lectures Nina was familiar with — some dry, dusty old teacher droning on uselessly at the front of the room. This sounded like… like fun.
Nina crept back toward the noise, picking up speed when she realized there was no way anyone could hear her footsteps over all that commotion. Finally she reached a lit doorway that was obviously the source of all the noise. She peeked cautiously around the corner, sticking her head out just far enough to see past the doorframe.
It was a huge room, like the dining area back at Harlow School for Girls. Nina saw tables and chairs stacked against the wall — this probably was the dining room for the boys' school, but it'd been converted tonight, with boys running around chasing dozens of rubber balls across the floor.
'Kick it here!'
'No, no, I'm open!'
'Throw me the ball!'
Nina closed her eyes and slipped back out of sight around the corner of the doorframe. The boys' game had thrown her back into a memory from years before:
It was summertime. The apartment was stifling, so Aunty Lystra yanked up the windows behind the blinds, letting in little, useless whispers of breeze. But the open windows also made the noise from the street below
