Among the Hidden Quotes

“Why?” he asked at the supper table that night. It wasn’t a common question in the Garner house. There were plenty of “how’s” […] Even “what’s” […] But “why” wasn’t considered much worth asking. Luke asked again. “Why’d you have to sell the woods?”

Luke’s dad harrumphed, and paused in the midst of shoveling forkfuls of boiled potatoes into his mouth.

“Told you before. We didn’t have a choice. Government wanted it. You can’t tell the Government no.”

And somehow, after that, he didn’t mind hiding so much anymore. Who wanted to meet strangers, anyway? Who wanted to go to school […]? He was special. He was secret. He belonged at home—home, where his mother always let him have the first piece of apple pie because he was there and the other boys were away. […] Home, where the backyard always beckoned, always safe and protected by the house and the barn and the woods.

Until they took the woods away.

He could have told her then about the vents—he didn’t see how anyone could object to him looking out there—but something stopped him. What if they took that away from him, too? What if Mother told Dad, and Dad said, “No, no, that’s too much of a risk. I forbid it”? Luke wouldn’t be able to stand it. He kept silent.

She jerked. “—but I cleaned that chicken al—oh. Sorry, Luke. You need tucking in, don’t you?”

She fluffed his pillow, smoothed his sheet.

Luke sat up. “That’s okay, Mother. I’m getting too old for this any”—he swallowed a lump in his throat—“anyway. I bet you weren’t still tucking Matthew or Mark in when they were twelve.”

“No,” she said quietly.

“Then I don’t need it, either.”

“Okay,” she said.

She kissed his forehead, anyhow, then turned out the light. Luke turned his face to the wall until she left.

“Am I just supposed to sit in this room the rest of my life?”

Mother was stroking his hair now. It made him feel itchy and irritable.

“Oh, Lukie,” she said. “You can do so much. Read and play and sleep whenever you want… Believe me, I’d like to live a day of your life right about now.”

“No you wouldn’t,” Luke muttered, but he said it so softly, he was sure Mother couldn’t hear. He knew she wouldn’t understand.

If there was a third child in the Sports Family, would he understand? Did he feel the way Luke did?

Luke felt strange about the joke, anyway. Of course he’d never poison anyone, but—if something happened to Matthew or Mark, would Luke have to hide anymore? Would he become the public second son, free to go to town and to school and everywhere else that Matthew and Mark went? Could his parents find some way to explain a “new” child already twelve years old?

It wasn’t something Luke could ask. He felt guilty just thinking about it.

He thought about returning home—trudging up the worn stairs, going back to his familiar room and the walls he stared at every day. Suddenly he hated his house. It wasn’t a sanctuary. It was a prison.

She ran to a phone, Luke following breathlessly. She dialed. Luke watched in amazement. He’d never talked on a phone. His parents had told him the Government could trace calls, could tell if a voice on a phone was from a person who was allowed to exist or not.

“Dad—” She made a face. “I know, I know. Call the security company and get them to cancel the alarm, okay?” Pause. “And might I remind you that the penalty for harboring a shadow child is five million dollars or execution, depending on the mood of the judge?”

She rolled her eyes at Luke while she listened to what seemed to be a long answer.

“But you’re a third child, too,” Luke protested. “A shadow child. Right?”

He suddenly felt like it might be easy to cry, if he let himself. All his life, he’d been told he couldn’t do everything Matthew and Mark did because he was the third child. But if Jen could go about freely, it didn’t make sense. Had his parents lied?

“Don’t you have to hide?” he asked.

“Sure,” Jen said. “Mostly. But my parents are very good at bribery. And so am I.”

“Don’t tell me your family believes that Government propaganda stuff,” she said. “They’ve spent so much money trying to convince people they can monitor all the TVs and computers, you know they couldn’t have afforded to actually do it. I’ve been using our computer since I was three—and watching TV, too—and they’ve never caught me.”

“Haven’t you learned? Government leaders are the worst ones for breaking laws. How do you think we got this house? How do you think I got Internet access? How do you think we live?”

“I don’t know,” Luke said, fully honest. “I don’t think I know much of anything.”

In the evenings, spooning in his stew or cutting up his meat, Luke felt pangs of guilt now. Perhaps someone was starving someplace because of him. But the food wasn’t there—wherever the starving people were—it was here, on his plate. He ate it all.

“Luke, you’re so quiet lately. Is everything all right?” Mother asked one night when he waved away second helpings of cabbage.

“I’m fine,” he said, and went back to eating silently.

But he was worrying. Worrying that maybe the Government was right and that he shouldn’t exist.

Luke looked at the stack of thick books on the Talbots’ kitchen counter. They looked so official, so important—who was he to say they weren’t true?

“No, of course I wouldn’t rather hide,” Jen said irritably. “But getting one of those I.D.’s—that’s just a different way of hiding. I want to be me and go about like anybody else. There’s no compromise. Which is why I’ve got to convince these idiots that the rally’s their only chance.”

“When I was little, Mom used to take me to a play group that was all third children,” Jen said. She giggled. “The thing was, it was all Government officials’ kids. I think some of the parents didn’t even like kids—they just thought it was a status symbol to break the Population Law and get away with it.”

“Jen, can’t you understand? I do want it to work. I hope—”

“Hope doesn’t mean anything,” Jen snapped. “Action’s the only thing that counts.”

“I still can’t go. I’m sorry. It’s something about having parents who are farmers, not lawyers. And not being a Baron. It’s people like you who change history. People like me—we just let things happen to us.”

“They shot her,” Jen’s father said. “They shot all of them. All forty kids at the rally, gunned down right in front of the president’s house. The blood flowed into his rosebushes. But they had the sidewalks scrubbed before the tourists came, so nobody would know.”

“Did she really think the rally would work?” he said.

“Yes,” Luke assured him. Then, unbidden, the last words she’d spoken to him came back to him: We can hope—after she’d told him hope was worthless. Maybe she knew the rally would fail. Maybe she even knew she would probably die. He remembered the first day he’d met her, when she’d cut her hand to cover the drops of blood on the carpet. There was something strange in Jen he couldn’t quite understand, that made her willing to sacrifice herself to help others. Or try to.

“I only work at Population Police headquarters. I don’t agree with what they do. I try to sabotage them as much as I can. Jen never understood, either—sometimes you have to work from inside enemy lines.”

“Before [the famines], our country believed in freedom and democracy and equality for all. Then the famines came, and the government was overthrown. There were riots in every city, over food, and many, many people were killed. When General Sherwood came to power, he promised law and order and food for all. By then, that was all the people wanted. And all they got.”

Luke squinted, trying to understand. This was grown-up talk, pure and simple.

Luke felt a strange sense of relief, that it wasn’t truly wrong for him to exist, just illegal. For the first time since he’d read the Government books, he could see the two things being separate.

Maybe he could succeed where Jen had failed precisely because he wasn’t a Baron—because he didn’t have her sense that the world owed him everything. He could be more patient, more cautious, more practical.

But he’d never be able to do anything staying in hiding.

[…]

I want a fake I.D. Please.

Luke could tell his father’s words came out painfully, but they still stabbed at him. Maybe part of him had been secretly hoping his parents would forbid him to go, would lock him in the attic and keep him as their little boy forever.

“I’m doing this for you, too, Jen,” he whispered, too softly for Jen’s dad or the bug to hear over the car’s hum. “Someday when we’re all free, all the third children, I’ll tell everyone about you. They’ll erect statues to you, and name holidays after you…” It wasn’t much, but it made him feel better. A little.