Shadow Child Term Analysis

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.

“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.”

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.

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.