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  For Meredith

  CHAPTER ONE

  You were supposed to wake up from nightmares.

  That’s what Nina kept telling herself as she cowered on the floor of her concrete cell. All her life she’d had horrible dreams about being captured by the Population Police. Sometimes they carried shovels and scooped her up like trash on the street. Sometimes they carried guns and prodded her in the back or pointed at her head.

  But she always woke up before anyone pulled a trigger.

  Once she’d even dreamed that the Population Policeman who came for her was wearing Aunty Zenka’s ruffled lace nightie, complete with a nightcap. For months after that dream Nina refused to give Aunty Zenka a goodnight kiss, and nobody understood why. Nina wouldn’t say, because then everyone would laugh, and it wasn’t funny.

  Nina knew she was right to be terrified of the Population Police. They were the bogeyman and the Big Bad Wolf and the Wicked Witch and the creep-show monster and every other villain she’d ever heard of, all rolled into one.

  But like the bogeyman and the Big Bad Wolf and the Wicked Witch and the creep-show monster, the Population Police belonged in stories and nightmares, not real life.

  Now Nina banged her head against the cement wall beside her.

  “Wake up!” she ordered herself desperately. “Wake up!”

  The banging made her head ache, and that didn’t happen in dreams, did it? In dreams nothing hurt. They could flog you until your back bled, and you didn’t feel a thing. They could tie your feet together so you couldn’t run, and the ropes didn’t burn at all.

  Nina’s wrists and ankles were rubbed raw from the handcuffs and ankle cuffs that chained her to the wall. The skin had been whipped from her back; even the slightest touch of her shirt against her spine sent pain shrieking through her body. One of her eyes seemed to be swollen shut from the beating.

  Everything hurt.

  But it had felt like a nightmare, being arrested, Nina told herself stubbornly.

  She savored the dreamy quality of her memories, as if her arrest had been something good—not the worst moment of her life. She couldn’t even remember the Population Policemen coming into the dining hall or calling her name. See? See? Didn’t that prove it hadn’t really happened? She had just been sitting there eating breakfast, rejoicing over the fact that she’d gotten three whole raisins in her oatmeal. And then suddenly the entire room was deathly quiet, and everyone was looking at Nina. She could feel all those eyes on her; she dropped her spoon. Oatmeal splashed on the girl beside Nina, but Lisle didn’t complain, just kept staring like everyone else. And it was those stares, not the sound of her name, that had made Nina rise, and go forward, holding out her wrists to be handcuffed.

  Which name did they call? Nina wondered. Nina or . . . or—

  No, she wouldn’t even think it. Sometimes in dreams the Population Police could read your mind.

  Nina went back to remembering, remembering how the other girls sat like dolls on a shelf while Nina walked down the endless aisle between the tables. The familiar dining hall had somehow turned into a canyon of eyes. Nina did not turn to the right or to the left, but she could feel all those eyes following her, in silence. Those eyes were like dolls’ eyes, as blank as marbles.

  Why didn’t anyone defend me? Nina wondered. Why didn’t anyone speak out, plead, beg, refuse to let me go?

  She knew. Even if it was just a nightmare—it was, wasn’t it?—she knew that everyone would have been too terrified to make a peep. Nina knew she would have been too terrified to speak, too, if it had been someone else dazedly gliding toward the man with the medals on his chest. Someone else being arrested. (Why was it her? How had they found out? Why was she the only one they knew about? Stop, she chided herself. Nightmares never make sense.)

  She remembered how hard it had been to keep her feet moving—up, down, right, left, closer, closer. . . . She couldn’t protest or defend herself, either. Opening her mouth, even just enough to let out a whimper, would have released hysterics.

  Please don’t kill me! I’m only a kid. I didn’t want to break any laws. It’s not my fault. Oh, and please don’t take Jason. . . .

  Now, in her jail cell, Nina clenched her teeth, afraid that she might still let those words spill out. And she couldn’t. Someone might be listening. Someone might hear his name. Whatever she did, she had to protect Jason. Jason and Gran and the aunties. And her parents, of course. But she could hold her tongue about all the others. It was Jason’s name she wanted to wail, Jason she wanted to call out to.

  Jason, do you know where I am? Did you worry when I didn’t show up at our meeting place in the woods? You’re so brave. Can you . . . can you rescue me?

  She was being so silly. This was just a dream. In a few minutes the morning bells would chime, and she’d open her eyes in her swaying top bunk at Harlow School for Girls. Then she’d brush her teeth and wash her face and change her clothes and maybe, just maybe, get four raisins in her oatmeal at breakfast. . . .

  She remembered her arrest again. She remembered reaching the front of the dining hall, facing the policeman. At the last moment, right before the policeman snapped the metal cuffs on Nina’s wrists, she had noticed another man standing behind him, watching Nina just as intently as all her classmates were. But all her classmates had gone glassy-eyed with fear, their gazes as vacant as dolls’. This man’s dark eyes said everything.

  He was furious. He hated her. He wanted her to die.

  Nina gasped. She couldn’t pretend anymore. She remembered too much. She couldn’t have dreamed or imagined or made up that look. It was real. Everything that had happened to Nina was real. She had real handcuffs on her wrists, real scars on her back, real fear flooding her mind.

  “They’re going to kill me,” Nina whispered, and it was almost a relief to finally, finally give up hope.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Why?”

  The word exploded in Nina’s ears, and she jerked awake. Then she jerked back because a man’s face was just inches from hers, yelling at her.

  “Why did you betray your country?” the man demanded.

  Nina blinked. She was doomed anyway—why not argue? “Betray my country?” she could sneer. “What kind of a country thinks it’s a betrayal just to be born? Was I supposed to kill myself out of loyalty? Out of patriotism? How is it my fault that my parents had two babies before me?”

  But anything she said would betray her mother and Gran and the aunties—everyone who’d kept her hidden, everyone who’d kept her alive.

  She didn’t speak.

  The man sat back on his heels. It was dark in Nina’s prison cell; she thought it was probably the middle of the night. The man’s silhouette was just a dim shadow in front of her. He’s a shadow and so am I, Nina thought. She was still groggy enough that that seemed funny.

  Then the man turned his head and murmured, “Now.” Instantly the entire cell was flooded with harsh, too bright light from the one bare electric bulb overhead. Nina squeezed her eyes shut.

  “I know you’re awake,” the man said softly. “You can’t hide.”

  Nina stiffened at that word, “hide.” He knew. Of course he knew. Why else had she been arrested? She thought she’d resigned herself to dying, but suddenly she was drowning in panic. Was this
it? Was the man about to shoot her? Or was he going to take her somewhere else to die? How did the Population Police kill illegal children?

  Nina opened her eyes a crack because it was better to see her killer than to cower sightlessly, expecting a gunshot at any moment. But seeing gave her another jolt: She recognized the man. He was the one who’d been there when she was arrested, staring at her with those hate-filled eyes.

  Weakly Nina closed her eyes again. It didn’t matter. She still had the man’s image imprinted in her mind. He was tall and muscular and richly dressed, like someone on TV. His dark hair waved back from a high forehead. He looked powerful, just as Jason always looked powerful. But Jason had never once looked at her with such hatred.

  Nina remembered something Gran always said: “If looks could kill . . .” Looks can kill, Gran, Nina wanted to say. That look’s going to kill me.

  The man chuckled.

  “I don’t care if you talk or not,” he said. “Your cohort already told us everything. He cracked like an egg. I just thought you’d like the chance to tell us your version. Maybe your friend lied a little to save his own skin. To make himself look a little better and you, well, a lot worse. Guiltier. You know?”

  The man was practically crooning in Nina’s ear; his face was so close to hers that she could feel his breath on her cheek. Nina could barely think. What was the man talking about?

  For a minute Nina didn’t even understand the words he’d used—“cohort”? What was that? Then she remembered all the mystery novels Aunty Lystra had read aloud back home, on nights when the TV wasn’t working. The detectives in those books were always accusing people of being “cohorts in crime.” Cohorts were partners, helpers. Did he mean Gran and the aunties, who were cohorts in hiding her?

  Nina barely managed to keep herself from gasping. No! she wanted to scream. You didn’t catch them. You couldn’t have! Tears began streaming down her face, silently.

  But the man hadn’t said “cohorts” and “they” and “them.” He’d said “cohort.” “He.” “Him.”

  Nina knew only one him.

  No, she corrected herself desperately. I met other boys from Hendricks School. Just because I didn’t really know them, that doesn’t mean they didn’t betray me. In fact, it makes it more likely that they turned me in.

  Nina thought about the guys she and her friends had sneaked out to meet in the woods at night. As a group, they were as skittish and timid as rabbits. She couldn’t imagine any of them having the nerve to speak to the Population Police.

  Except one.

  No! The denial slammed through her brain. Maybe she even screamed it aloud. Even if you forgot that Jason loved her, even if you forgot that he’d kissed her, secretly, by moonlight—he was an illegal third child, too. All of them were, all the kids who met in the woods. Even if they wanted to, it would be too risky for any of them to betray her.

  Maybe it’s my father, Nina thought bitterly. Maybe Gran was wrong and he did know I was born, did know I exist. Maybe he thought he’d get a reward for turning me in.

  Nina opened her eyes, angry enough now to face the hating man without flinching.

  The man was smiling.

  “Oh, Scott—or should I say Jason—had some very interesting tales for us,” the man said cheerfully. “He made you out to be quite the operator.”

  Nina screamed. The sound echoed in her tiny concrete cell, one long wordless howl of rage and pain.

  When she stopped screaming, the man was gone.

  CHAPTER THREE

  If morning came, Nina had no way of knowing it. She sat for hours, stiff and sore and heartbroken, huddled under the harsh light of the one bare bulb.

  People always say that death’s the worst thing that can happen to you, she thought. It’s not.

  She wished the man had just killed her and been done with it. She could have died—well, not happily, but at least with something to clutch on to, something to believe in: Jason loves me. Oh, Jason, my beloved, good-bye! In the time since her arrest, she realized, she’d begun picturing herself and Jason as the kind of tragic, star-crossed lovers who inhabited Aunty Zenka’s favorite books and TV shows.

  Gran and the other aunties always made fun of Aunty Zenka for liking those books and shows.

  “Oh, give me a break!” Nina could remember Aunty Lystra complaining one evening when Aunty Zenka was reading aloud by candlelight. “Why doesn’t the beautiful, vivacious heroine just tell Jacques, ‘Hey, you’ve got incurable TB. Life’s too short to hang around watching you die. Ciao!’ ”

  “Because they’re in love!” Aunty Zenka had protested. “And love is—”

  “A load of garbage,” Aunty Lystra finished for her. Aunty Lystra worked for the sanitation department. She was always comparing things to garbage.

  Nina had felt sorry for poor, sentimental Aunty Zenka, who could get misty-eyed in the first seconds of one of her shows, with the first sentence of one of her books. But now Nina thought Aunty Lystra must be right. Aunty Lystra would think Nina had been a fool to trust Jason in the first place.

  But he was so nice to me, Nina defended herself. And he was so strong and handsome, and he knew so much. . . .

  For the first time Nina thought to wonder: How had he known so much? He’d known that the woods were a safe place to meet. He’d known about Harlow School for Girls. He’d known the exact right time of day to slip a note under the front door of the school, when the girls were walking to class. So a girl, not a teacher, would find his note.

  Nina had been that girl. She lost herself, remembering. Two months ago, in the hallway at Harlow School, she’d scooped up a folded-over page that other girls had walked right past. She’d held the cream-colored, heavy-weight paper in her hand for a long moment, daydreaming about what it might be. She’d known it was probably nothing interesting, nothing that concerned her: a notice about electric rates, maybe, or a government edict about the size of spoons in the school kitchen. But as long as she didn’t open it, she could imagine it was something exciting—like Cinderella’s invitation to the prince’s ball, perhaps. And since she was the one who’d picked it up . . .

  The suspense had been too much. Nina had slid her finger between the edges of paper, breaking the seal. Carefully she’d unfolded the page and read:

  To all Harlow girls who are concerned about shadows:

  Please join the like-minded students of Hendricks School for Boys for a meeting at 8 P.M., April 16, halfway into the woods between our schools.

  Nina had never heard of Hendricks School. She had never been in the woods—any woods. Except for the day she came to the school, she’d never been outdoors at all. She was a little worried about the word “shadows.” Did it mean what she thought it meant? Was this dangerous?

  But Nina didn’t really care. She knew instantly that she was going to that meeting. She would have gone if the note had said, “To all Harlow girls who are concerned about hammers.” Or “fruit flies.” Or “pencils.” Or “prehistoric civilizations’ development of canals and aqueducts”—the subject she’d just ignored in her last class. Nina felt like she’d been waiting her entire thirteen years to receive this invitation.

  Convincing her friends was a little harder.

  “We’re not supposed to go outside,” Sally said timidly when Nina whispered her secret after lights-out that night.

  “Nobody ever said that,” Nina argued, trying to keep her own panic out of her voice. If her friends refused to go, would she have the nerve to go alone?

  “They never said, ‘Don’t brush your teeth with toilet water,’ either, but that doesn’t mean I’m 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.

  “Look, 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:

  “Fact: Every single one of you girls is a ‘shadow child’—a third 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.

  “Fact: 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.

  “Fact: 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.

  “Conclusion: 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 that Sally 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.