Luke leaned forward slowly, moving a fraction of an inch at a time, until he could just barely see around the door.

Inside the room was a chair and a desk and a big apparatus that Luke vaguely recognized as a computer. And at the computer, typing away furiously, sat a girl.

Luke blinked, thrown off. Somehow he'd never thought about the Sports Family's third child being a girl. She was mostly facing away from Luke, and she wore jeans and a gray sweatshirt not much different from what the Sports Family brothers always wore. Her dark hair was almost as short as Luke's. But there was something about the curve of her cheek, the tilt of her head, the way her sweatshirt clung or didn't cling to her body"all of that made Luke certain she wasn't like him.

He blushed. Then he gulped.

The girl turned her head.

"I"" Luke croaked.

Before he had a chance to think of another word, the girl was across the room and had knocked him down. Then she pinned him to the floor, his arms twisted behind his back, his face buried in the carpet Luke struggled to turn his head to breathe.

"So," the girl hissed in his ear. "You think you can sneak up on a poor, innocent, unsuspecting girl, who's home all alone? Guess n.o.body told you about our alarm system. A call went out to our security guards the minute you stepped on our property. They'll be here any second."

Luke panicked. So this was how he'd die. He had to explain. He had to escape.

"No," he said. "They can't come. I""

"Oh, yeah?" the girl said. "Who are you to stop them?" Luke raised his head as much as he could. He said the first words that came into his mind. "Population Police." The girl let go.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

Luke sat up, checking his arms to make sure she hadn't broken anything.

"You're lying," the girl said.

But she made no effort to tackle him again. She crouched, looking puzzled for a few moments. Then she grinned.

"I got it! You're another one. Great code word. I'll have to think about using that for the rally."

Now it was Luke's turn to squint in confusion.

The girl giggled.

"I mean, you're another shadow child. Right?"

"Shadow"?" Luke wondered why his brain seemed to be slowing down. Was it just because she seemed several miles ahead of him?

"That's not the term you use?" she asked. "I thought 'shadow child' was universal. But, you know, an illegal, someone whose parents broke Population Law 3903. A third."

"I"" Luke couldn't bring himself to confess. He'd broken so many taboos today, leaving the house, standing in the open yard, talking to a stranger. Why did one more violation matter?

"You can say it," the girl coaxed. "'I'm a third child.' Why should there be anything wrong with that?"

Luke was spared having to answer her, because she suddenly sprang to her feet, exclaiming, "Oh, no! The alarm!"

She raced down the hall and around the corner. Luke followed to find her jerking open a closet door, then punching b.u.t.tons on a panel of colored lights.

"Too late. Drat!"

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.

"Oh, you know. These things happen." Another pause. "Yeah, yeah. Love you, too. Thanks, Dad."

She hung up. Luke wondered if he should run back to his house immediately, before the Population Police really did show up.

"They can find you now," Luke said. "Just from the phone""

The girl laughed.

"They say. But everybody knows the Government's not that competent."

Luke started inching toward the back door, just in case.

"But there really was an alarm?" he asked. "And you have security guards?"

"Sure. Doesn't everyone?" the girl took another look at Luke. "Oh. Maybe not."

She winced apologetically as soon as she'd said that. Luke decided to ignore the insult.

"Do the security guards know you're here?" he asked.

"Of course not," the girl said. "If they came, I'd have to hide. Personally, I think my family just has the alarm system to make sure I stay in the house. They don't know I can disable it. But""she gave him an evil grin""I set it off sometimes just for fun."

"That's fun?" Luke asked. He'd thought another third child would understand him, be just like him. This girl sure wasn't. "Aren't you scared the guards might find you?"

"Not really." The girl shrugged. "And see, doing it on purpose every now and then helped us today"my dad didn't really even ask why the system needed to be stopped. He just thought it was me making trouble again."

In a twisted way, she kind of made sense. But trying to figure everything out made Luke's head hurt. He glanced toward the door. If he could just get safely home, he'd never complain about being bored again. Here, he felt as baffled as Alice in Wonderland from one of the old books in the attic. Or"he remembered something he'd read in a nature book"maybe he was like the prey of a snake that hypnotized its victims before it ate them. He didn't think the girl would hurt him, but she might keep him confused and fascinated until the Population Police or the security guards or someone else arrived.

The girl saw where he was looking.

"Am I scaring you?" she asked. "Shadow kids can be so jumpy. You're safe, you know. How about if we start over? Would you care for a seat, uh"what's your name, anyway?"

Luke told her.

"Nice to meet you," the girl said, shaking his hand in a way that made him feel like she was kind of making fun of him. Then she led him to sit down on a couch in the room he'd first entered. She perched beside him. "I'm Jen. Really, it's Jennifer Rose Talbot. But do I look like a Jennifer?"

She shook her head and spread out her arms as if Luke should understand something from her rumpled sweatshirt and messy hair.

Luke frowned.

"I don't know," he said. "I don't know any Jennifers. Just Matthew and Mark and Mother and Dad." He knew his parents' real names were Edna and Harlan, but he wondered if he shouldn't keep that secret. Just in case. Probably he shouldn't have even mentioned Matthew and Mark, but he was surprised into it, thinking suddenly about how there was a world full of people outside his house, with a world full of different names he'd never heard of.

"Hmm," the girl said. "Then I have to explain"a Jennifer's supposed to be, like, really girly and prissy. So the joke's on Mom. She wanted some frilly little girl she could put in lacy dresses and sit in the corner. Like a doll." She paused. "Are Matthew and Mark your older brothers?"

Luke nodded.

"So you've never met anyone outside your immediate family?"

Luke shook his head no. Jen looked so amazed, he felt he had to defend himself.

"And you have?" he asked, with almost the same taunting voice he sometimes used with Mark.

"Well, yeah," she said.

"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." She grinned wickedly. Then she squinted at Luke. "How did you know I was a third child? How did you know I was here?"

Luke told her. Somehow it seemed important to start with the woods coming down, so it turned into a very long story. Jen interrupted frequently with questions and comments""So you've never been away from your house except to go to your backyard or barn?"; "You've stayed inside for six months?"; and "Gosh, you must really hate these houses, huh?" And then, when he got to the part about seeing her face in the window, she bit her lip.

"My dad would kill me if he knew I'd done that. But the mirrors were messed up, and Carlos bet me I didn't even know what the weather was outside, and""

"Huh?" Luke said. "Mirrors? Carlos?"

Jen waved away his questions.

"Luke Garner," she announced solemnly, "you have come to the right place. Forget that hiding-like-a-mole stuff. I'm your ticket out".

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

"Want any more potatoes, Luke?" Mother offered that night at supper. "Luke?" Her voice got more insistent "LUKE?"

Luke jerked his attention back to his family. Mother was holding the bowl of mashed potatoes out to him.

"Er"no," Luke said. "No thanks. I've still got some."

"More for me!" Mark crowed.

Luke tuned them out again. He'd barely eaten his first serving of potatoes, he'd been so busy thinking about his secret visit to the Sports Family house. He couldn't believe he'd dared to go. Just the thought of his run through their yard made his heart beat fast, remembering fear and pride. He'd really done it.

And then meeting Jen was"amazing. There was no other word for it. He was so overwhelmed with wonder at everything he'd seen at her house, everything she'd told him, that he started to say, "Did you know that Jen""

At the last minute, he clamped his teeth shut, holding the words in. He thought he'd burst. He could feel his face flush red with the effort of keeping still. He bent his head low over his plate so n.o.body would see. How could he ever manage to keep Jen secret? But he had to, because if he told, they'd forbid him to go back.

And he had to go back.

"We'll set up a signal," Jen had said. "Something I can see""

"But you don't have vents to look out like I do," Luke protested. "You can't look out the windows."

"Oh, when the mirrors work, it's not a problem. Look." She took him over to a window near the sliding-gla.s.s door and showed him a mirror that reflected a wide view of the Talbots' backyard and the landscape beyond. It showed just the corner of the Garners' barn, but when Jen turned it a bit the entire Garner house came into view. Luke wondered if his parents could set up the same kind of system. Then he looked at the mirror again and decided it might be expensive. And, anyway, how would he explain where he'd gotten the idea?

"So, let's see," Jen said. "A signal. I've got it"how about if I look out every morning at nine, and if you can come over, you shine a flashlight at me. I'll shine one back if everything's safe."

"We don't have any flashlights," Luke said. "Not that work, I mean."

Jen frowned.

"Why not?"

"We haven't had any batteries in, I don't know, four or five years," Luke explained. In fact, he felt proud even to remember what a flashlight was.

"Okay, okay," Jen said. "No flashlight, no computer""

"Oh, we have a computer," Luke said. "My parents do. And I think it still works. But it's in Dad's office in the front of the house, and I'm not allowed in there. And, anyhow, I'd never be allowed to touch the computer." He remembered once when he was very young, maybe three or four, and he'd followed Mother into Dad's office while she was cleaning. The rows of letters on the computer keyboard had looked like a toy to him, and he'd reached one finger up and tapped the s.p.a.ce bar, over and over again. Mother had turned around and freaked out.

"They can find you now!" she'd screamed. "If they were watching""

And for weeks after that, she'd hidden him even more carefully than ever, locking him in his room when she had to go outside.

Jen rolled her eyes.

"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. How about a candle?"

"What?" It took Luke a minute to realize she was talking about the signal again. "The candles"they're all in the kitchen, and I'm not allowed""

Jen mimicked the words as he said them: ""to go in there."

"They've got you on an awfully short leash, don't they?" she asked.

"No. I mean, yes. But they're just trying to protect me""

Jen shook her head. "Yeah, I've heard that one. Ever hear of disobeying?"

"I"" Luke started defensively. "I'm here, aren't I?"