Among the Betrayed

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.

"Do you think you could start doing that again?" she asked. 'And I could help you. Why didn't you think you could go back to the city and live on the streets again? I could come with you — we could work together…. Maybe we could even find doughnuts again." She grinned a little at Alia. Suddenly it all seemed possible — even eating doughnuts out of the garbage. The woods and the raw veg-etables were only temporary. They had to make some plans beyond the next day. When the garden died… when winter came… they had to be ready.

"We were arrested when we lived in the city, remember?" Percy said harshly. "Someone betrayed us. We don't know who. So — we can't go back. We wouldn't know who to trust."

Nina blinked back tears she didn't want the others to see. She stood up.

"I'll go to the garden tonight," she mumbled. "It's my turn."

Listlessly she threaded her way between trees, stepped out onto the lawn that led to the garden. She'd forgotten the flashlight, but it didn't matter. It was still early for a trip to the garden. The shadow from the boys' school was only beginning to stretch across the lawn. The red toma-toes gleamed in the last glow of twilight.

"Tomatoes, potatoes, beans, and carrots," Nina muttered to herself. By comparison, even doughnuts plucked from a trash Dumpster sounded good. She reached the edge of the garden and picked her first vegetable: a cucumber, just for variety's sake.

Knowing that someone had betrayed the other three kids made her feel worse than ever. Even if their story came out only in bits and pieces, she felt more like she understood them now. No wonder they hadn't wanted to trust her in the beginning, when the hating man first put her in the prison cell with them. Maybe she should tell them about the rest of her story, after Jason betrayed her. Maybe she should tell them about the hating man wanting her to betray them. Maybe then…

Nina didn't know what would happen if she told the others everything. Maybe it would just give them some-thing to betray her with.

The world seemed to contain entirely too many betrayals.

Nina pulled an ear of corn from one of the stalks at the edge of the garden. She pulled back the husks, wondering if the cob inside actually contained something worth eat-ing. None of the corn so far had been edible, but Nina still had hope. She brought the tiny nubs of grain up to her mouth, bit, and chewed thoughtfully. Not bad. She looked toward the next row of cornstalks, hoping for bigger ears.

Then she froze.

There in the cornstalks, his face distorted with anger, a boy stood glowering at her.

"You!" he hissed. "You're the one who's been stealing from my garden!"

"No, wait, I can explain—"

But the boy rushed forward, grabbed her by her wrists. Another boy joined him from behind and clutched Nina's right arm. Nina looked from one to the other. She recog~ nized them both now.

"Lee! Trey!" she screamed. "Don't you remember me? I'm Nina. I used to meet you in the woods—"

"Yeah. And then you helped Jason try to betray us," Lee snarled back.

"I didn't! I didn't!" Nina screamed.

But it was no use. They were dragging her away. toes gl

"Tomal to herself, trash Dumps the garden and'-for variety's sake.

Knowing that s<