Among the Betrayed

distinct for the first time in Nina's memory. She heard little-kid voices chanting, 'One potato, two potato, three potato, four. .' She heard the thud of something — a rope? — and jumping feet hitting pavement, and voices singing, 'Mama called the doctor and the doctor said…' Nina stood in the middle of her hot little apartment, and an expression of wonder broke over her face. 'There. . there are other kids out there,' she stammered in amaze' ment. 'And they're playing. They're being loud, and it's okay. Nobody's yelling at them. Can I…' But the question died in her throat, because she saw the answer in Gran's eyes, in the eyes of every single one of her aunties. Other kids could play outside together and be loud. Nina couldn't. Nina would never be allowed to be like other kids.

Nina slid weakly to the floor.

How was it that the boys at Hendricks School were allowed to have fun? Nina remembered how the Harlow girls had sat like little mice through all their classes, squeaking down the hall in terror, ready to dart back into hiding at the slightest threat. It had taken Nina days to get up the nerve to whisper to Sally and Bonner in the dark of their room at night. She couldn't imagine yelling with them, throwing her voice across a crowded, brightly lit room.

But that was what the boys were doing.

Nina turned her head and looked again. This time she held back her sense of astonishment enough to peer at faces. Was Lee Grant in that group of wild, screaming boys?

Nina's eyes skipped from boy to boy — too small, too tall, too dark, too fair…. Was she even capable of remembering what Lee looked like?

Then someone yelled, 'Good, good, just pick it up faster,' and she recognized the voice. Maybe. She snapped her gaze over to the boy who had yelled. He was standing off to the side, swinging his arms and directing the other boys. He looked taller than Nina remembered Lee being, but maybe he had grown in the past few months. Something else was different about him, too — she couldn't quite tell what it was, but the difference was great enough that she hesitated, wondering if she'd made a mistake. Maybe this boy looked more relaxed than the Lee she remembered, maybe he grinned more confidently.

She didn't remember ever seeing Lee grin before. She couldn't imagine the Lee she'd known cheering so proudly, 'That's it! That's it! You scored!'

Or slapping another boy's back so triumphantly.

Nina drew back from the door, shaken. She sat still for a long while, letting the noise from the boys' games spill over her.

She couldn't do it.

She couldn't go up to this strange boy to ask for help. He wasn't the boy she remembered — even if he was Lee Grant, she hadn't known him well enough, or he'd changed too much for her to trust him. This boy positively swaggered — he seemed as overconfident as the hating man.

Or Jason.

Nina moved farther from the door, creeping backward down the hall. She reached the other hall she'd come down and practically crawled to the door to the outside. She raised her body only high enough to turn the knob, and dropped out to the ground.

The last light of dusk was slipping away now. The woods were one huge shadow off to the left. Nina couldn't bear the thought of facing Percy, Matthias, and Alia now. Blindly she inched straight out from the school, toward another clump of shadowy plants. Maybe she could hide there, tell the others about her cowardice in the morning.

Nina reached the edge of the shadows. Something squished beneath her feet, and she wrinkled her nose in disgust. Then she sniffed.

Tomato. Suddenly the air around her smelled like tomato.

Nina reached down, groping in the dark. She felt prickly stems, delicate flowers, pointy leaves. And then she felt small, round balls. She jerked on one of the balls, pulling it off the plant. She brought the round ball up to her mouth, bit into it cautiously.

The taste of fresh tomato exploded in her mouth. Nina dropped the tomato in amazement. She took off running for the woods, forgetting all caution in her delight.

'Alia! Percy! Matthias!' she yelled. 'I found a garden! We're saved!'

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

They came back with the flashlight, all four of them. None of them was cautious. They shone the light from plant to plant—'Look at all the tomatoes!' 'And cab' bages—' 'Are those green beans?' Matthias made a wondrous discovery when he tripped over a root and accidentally upended a leafy plant. A huge potato hung from the bottom of it, pulled from its hiding place in the dirt. After that, Nina pulled up other plants and found more potatoes. They gobbled them raw and didn't care. They also found underground carrots, which they ate without even cleaning.

When they'd feasted until they were full, Percy shone the light around at the toppled plants, the discarded stems, the footprints in the dirt.

'Someone's going to know,' he said.

Nina raked her fingers through the soil, erasing a foot' print.

'We'll cover our tracks,' she said. 'Like we did in the woods.'

They went back and forth, carrying all the uprooted If plants out to the woods to hide. They buried the smashed tomatoes they'd carelessly knocked to the ground; they picked up every stray leaf and discarded stem.

'There,' Percy said, letting one last clod of dirt filter through his fingers, covering one last trampled plant. 'Is this how it looked before?'

Nina shone the flashlight back and forth. The globes of red and green looked eerie on the tomato vines. The leaves of the remaining potato plants cast shadows over the holes they'd covered so carefully.

'I don't know,' she said doubtfully. It was hard to remember what the garden had looked like in the begin- ning; she'd been so hungry and so overjoyed at the prospect of eating. 'I think next time we'll have to be more careful.'

She traipsed back to the woods with the other three kids. All of them were subdued suddenly, worn out after their burst of excitement.

After that, one of them went to the garden every night and picked a day's worth of food. They tried to pick no more than one tomato from each plant and dig up no more than one potato from each row. They stayed away from the cabbages because picking a huge cabbage head would leave a gaping hole that anyone might notice. But there was still plenty of food to eat. Nina just wished some of the plants grew bread or fruit — she was getting sick of vegetables.

'If we could even cook the potatoes—,' she complained one evening over raw green beans.

'Someone would see the fire,' Matthias said. 'They'd find us.'

Percy shrugged. 'At least we have food.'

Nina sighed. She wished one of the others would gripe even once — about the discomfort of sleeping on roots and itchy leaves, about the rain that had fallen on them half of one night, about the muddy taste of the water they drank from the stream. But the way they acted, you'd think the woods was a palace, you'd think the raw vegetables were gourmet food. She wondered yet again about their lives before the Population Police had captured them.

'What did you eat in the city, when you were living on the streets?' she asked.

'Same kind of food as everyone else,' Percy said, brush' ing dirt from a carrot.

'Sometimes we'd find doughnuts in the garbage outside a bakery,' Alia said dreamily, as if that were one of her dearest memories.

Nina shuddered. 'Didn't you make any money from selling fake I.D.'s?' she asked. 'How did you manage to do that, anyway?'

'Let's just say it was a nonprofit operation,' Matthias said. 'Anybody mind if I have the last potato?'

Nina could tell when she'd had a door slammed in her face. Matthias had as good as said, 'Don't ask any more questions.' She did, anyway.