Among the Betrayed (14 page)

“That's who ‘Sa—' was. You almost said his name once,” Nina said, almost to herself.

“He took in third children,” Alia whispered. “When our parents abandoned us. He raised us. He took care of us.”

“I thought you said God took care of you,” Nina scoffed. She sounded just like Aunty Lystra at her most skeptical.

“Who do you think Samuel was working for?” Alia said.

Nina kept shaking her head, as if she could deny everything she heard.

“Percy and Matthias had promised Samuel to stay away from the rally to protect Alia,” Mr. Talbot said. “So they alone were spared, and they alone were still around to be betrayed. Then later, in prison, they agreed to help me give you a test, to see which side you were really on. If you had betrayed them, we would have known you couldn't be trusted. If you protected them . . . we'd save you.”

Nina gasped, finally beginning to make sense of his words. If the hating man didn't really believe in the Population Police's cause—if he was a double agent working against them—then everything was backward.

“So, if I'd double-crossed them, trying to save my own life . . . you would have killed me?” Nina asked.

“Yes,” Mr. Talbot said.

Nina thought about how close she'd come to betraying
the others, how miserable she'd been in prison, how willing she'd been to do almost anything to save herself.

“I didn't do it,” she said. “I could have, but I didn't.”

“But you didn't refuse to betray them, either,” Mr. Talbot said. “You weren't committing yourself either way. We had to add a more dangerous part to the test.”

Nina couldn't figure out what he meant. Then she remembered the guard, Mack, sprawling across the table, his ring of keys sliding right toward Nina.

“You let us escape,” Nina accused, as if it were a crime. “You let me get the keys and have a way out, and made me think I was figuring out everything on my own. Why, I bet . . . I bet Mack wasn't even sick.”

Mr. Talbot chuckled. “No, but he put on a good act, didn't he?”

“And then”—Nina was still putting everything together—“the other three kids knew that I might offer to help them escape. Why wasn't that enough? Why didn't you trust me then?”

She thought about the past—was it weeks?—of sleeping outside, of living on stale, moldy food or dirty raw vegetables. Could she have avoided all that?

“We still weren't sure about you,” Percy said in his usual logical tone. “It was possible that you were only taking us along because you were scared to go on your own. You might have just been using us.”

Nina remembered how unconcerned the others had been when they ran out of food, how little they had cared
about making plans for the future. No wonder. They were waiting on her. Waiting on her to prove herself.

“When we met the policemen by the river—,” she said.

“That was part of the test,” Mr. Talbot said. “Those weren't policemen. They were people working with our cause.”

“And I passed that test?” Nina asked.

“Sort of,” Mr. Talbot said. “You didn't try to turn the others in. But we still weren't sure of your motives.”

Nina shivered, thinking about how closely she'd been watched all along. Every time she complained about their rocky, uneven “beds” in the woods. Every times she griped about the dirty vegetables.

“I bet the rest of you were getting food somewhere else,” she said.

“Not much,” Alia said in a small voice, looking down. She looked back up at Nina, her eyes flashing.
“I
thought you were good. I wanted to tell. But these guys”—she pointed at Percy, Matthias, and Mr. Talbot—“they said I had to wait until you told us everything. Until you told us that you were supposed to betray us to the Population Police.”

“I did that tonight,” Nina said wonderingly. She looked around again at the circle of people, the circle of light in the dark woods.

She remembered how panicked she'd been, running out to the woods only minutes earlier. She hadn't been thinking at all of saving her own life. She'd only wanted to save Percy, Matthias, and Alia.

But she hadn't cared that much about them back when she first met them, when she offered them a chance to escape, when she saw the fake policemen by the river.

“You gave me a lot of chances,” she said to Mr. Talbot.

“I thought you deserved them,” he said. “You didn't deserve what happened to you before.”

Nina remembered the day she was arrested, how nobody had spoken out on her behalf as she glided forward in the dining hall. She remembered how much she'd trusted Jason, and then he had betrayed her. No, she hadn't deserved that. Nobody did. What she deserved was the way Gran and the aunties had loved her, the way they'd hidden her even though they might have been killed for it. But Alia, Percy, and Matthias hadn't deserved being betrayed, either. They hadn't deserved weeks in a dark prison cell, weeks sleeping outdoors on rocks and twigs and itchy leaves. But they'd endured all of that, willingly, for her. They'd agreed to endure all of that before they even knew if she was good or bad.

Nina's eyes filled up with tears, but they weren't tears of fear or panic or sorrow now. They were tears of joy.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and the words seemed to encompass everyone in front of her—Percy, Matthias, and Alia, Mr. Talbot, even Lee and Trey. But the words were more powerful than that. Her whisper seemed to fly through the night, through the dark. Somewhere, far away, she could even imagine Gran and the aunties hearing her, too.

N
ina stood beside Lee Grant, pulling corn from a row of stalks.

“Leave the small ears to grow,” Lee cautioned. “We only need enough for the feast tonight.”

“Only?” Nina laughed. “There'll be twenty people there!”

“Forty ears, then,” Lee countered. “That's not much. Back home, when my mom was canning corn, we used to pick—”

“What? Forty million?” Nina teased.

In the days since she'd been caught, she'd been staying at Mr. Hendricks's house with Percy, Matthias, and Alia. But she'd spent a lot of time with Lee and already listened to dozens of “back home” stories. She didn't know what it was like at Harlow School for Girls, but at Hendricks, boys were not pretending so much to be their fake identities. They were telling the truth more.

Nina jerked another ear from a stalk.

“Anyway, forget forty ears,” she said. “If you're figuring two per person, that's only thirty-eight. I don't think I'll
ever be able to eat corn again, not after the way you scared me in the garden last week, midbite.”

“More for me,” Lee said, clowning a selfish grab around all the corn they'd picked so far.

Nina wondered if this was how normal children acted—children who'd never had to hide. She guessed she'd have a chance to find out now. She, Percy, Matthias, and Alia were being sent on to another school, one where third children with fake I.D.'s mixed with firstborns and secondborns. That was why they were having a feast tonight, a combination of a celebration and a farewell.

“Given how things happened, Harlow School is probably not the best place for you anymore,” Mr. Hendricks had told Nina.

Nina had had another flash of remembering that horrific canyon of eyes, watching her walk to her doom.

“I . . . I think I can forgive the other girls,” she had said. “Now.”

“But are they ready to forgive you?” Mr. Hendricks asked. “No matter how much you reassure them, how much the officials reassure them, there will always be someone who suspects that you just got off, that you really were working with Jason. They haven't . . . grown up like you have.”

And Nina understood. She wasn't the same lovesick, easily terrified child she'd been at Harlow School. That was why she liked talking to Lee now. He'd grown up a lot, too. The other boys looked up to him. They didn't even call
him Lee anymore. He was mostly L.G.—and they said it reverently.

Nina still called him Lee. She didn't like too many things changing.

“Nina,” Lee said now, slowly peeling back the husk of an ear of corn to check for rot. “Before you leave tomorrow, there's something I've been wanting to tell you.”

“What?”

Lee tossed the ear of corn onto the pile with the rest. It must have been okay.

“I've been thinking about Jason,” he said.

Nina stiffened just hearing that name. She might be able to forgive her friends at Harlow, but she wasn't ready to forgive Jason.

“So?” she asked.

“Well, I was thinking about what I heard him say on the phone to the Population Police that night he was turning everyone in. He made it sound like you were working with him.”

“I know,” Nina said. “That's how I ended up in prison.” She couldn't keep the bitterness out of her voice.

In one clean jerk Lee pulled another ear from another stalk.

“But I don't think Jason was saying that to get you in trouble. He didn't expect to be arrested, to have you arrested. He meant for the illegal third children with fake I.D.'s to be arrested. I think . . . I think he was actually trying to save you.”

Nina reeled backward, stunned beyond words. Lee took one look at Nina's face and kept explaining.

“Don't you see?” he said. “It wouldn't have made any sense for Jason to say you were working with him if he wanted to get you in trouble. He thought he—and you—were going to be rewarded. He was . . . he was maybe trying to protect you from ever being turned in by anyone else. See, if years from now someone accused you of being illegal, he could pop up and say, ‘Nina? How could Nina be an exnay? She helped turn them in!' ”

Lee did such a good job of imitating Jason's voice that Nina could almost believe. But only almost.

“Jason was doing something wrong. Evil. He wanted innocent kids to die,” she said harshly. She pulled so hard on an ear of corn that the whole stalk came out of the ground.

Lee frowned but didn't say anything about his precious cornstalk.

“Yeah. Believe me, I was pretty mad at Jason myself. But I'm just saying—I don't think he was all bad. I think he, um, really liked you. And that was why he was trying to save you.”

Nina stood still, trying to make sense of Lee's words. It flip-flopped everything she'd thought for the past few months. How could she accept Lee's explanation? How could Jason have been so evil yet tried to save her?

For a minute she almost believed. Then she remembered.

“Mr. Talbot had a tape,” she said dully. “Of Jason confessing. And he was lying and saying it was all my fault, that I was the one who wanted to turn in the exnays.”

“Oh, Mr. Talbot could have faked that tape,” Lee said. “I've seen him fake pictures.”

“But it was Jason's voice,” Nina said. “I heard him. I heard the tape!”

Lee turned back to the garden.

“Go ask him,” he said with a shrug.

Nina stood still for a moment, then she dropped her corn and took off running. Hope swelled in her heart. She burst into Mr. Hendricks's cottage and dashed into the living room, where Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Talbot were conferring.

“The tape,” she said. “Of Jason betraying me. Lying. Was it real?”

Mr. Talbot turned around slowly, looked at her blankly.

“You had a tape,” she repeated breathlessly. “In prison. Of Jason saying it was my idea to betray exnays, my idea to turn them in to the Population Police. Did he really say that? Or did you fake the tape?”

Mr. Talbot blinked.

“Does it matter?” he asked.

“Of course it matters!” Nina shrieked.

Mr. Talbot raised one eyebrow.

“Why?” he said.

Nina had so many reasons, they jumbled together.

“If he didn't betray me, if he was really trying to help
me—then he really loved me. Then Aunty Zenka was right, and love is everything, and the world's a good place. And I can be happy remembering him. But if he betrayed me—how can I think about the time we had together without hating him? How can I ever trust anyone, ever again?”

“You've believed for months that he betrayed you,” Mr. Talbot said. “And you still trusted Percy, Matthias, and Alia. You've been acting like you trust Lee and Trey and Mr. Hendricks and me. Don't you?”

“Yes, but . . .” Nina couldn't explain. “Maybe I shouldn't trust you. You've lied to me a lot.”

Nina was surprised when both Mr. Talbot and Mr. Hendricks burst out laughing.

“It's not funny,” she protested.

Mr. Talbot stopped laughing, and sighed. “Nina, we live in complicated times. I would have loved it if that first time I talked to you in your prison cell, I could have come straight out and said, ‘Here's the deal. I hate the Population Police. What about you?' And it would have been great if I could have been sure that you would give me an honest answer. But—can you really see that happening? Don't you see how muddy everyone's intentions get, how people end up doing the wrong things for the right reasons, and the right things for the wrong reasons—and all any of us can do is try our hardest and have faith that somehow, someday, it will all work out?”

Nina looked down at her hands, still splotched with mud from the garden. She looked back up.

“Was the tape fake or not?” she asked again.

Mr. Talbot looked straight back at her.

“It was fake,” he said quietly. “Some of our tech people spliced it together.”

A grin burst out over Nina's face. “So Lee was right. Jason did love me,” she whispered in wonderment.

Mr. Talbot and Mr. Hendricks exchanged glances in such a way that Nina felt like she was back with Percy, Matthias, and Alia.

“So that's enough for you?” Mr. Talbot asked. “It doesn't matter that Jason was trying to get other kids killed? You don't care about the evil he did as long as he loved
you?”