Read Online Among the Brave by Margaret Peterson Haddix - Free Book Online

regretfully.
    Trey was more convinced than ever that Mark was a lunatic.
    Trey loaded everything into a mud-covered pickup truck back in the scary barn. Mark stuffed the papers into a slit in the seat—”Just in case we get stopped,” he muttered. The food from the Talbots’ house went into battered bushel baskets in the back. Mark covered the top of each basket with a layer of moldy-looking potatoes.
    He was admiring his work when someone pounded on the door of the barn. In a flash, Trey dived under the truck
    "Mark!" a voice called from outside. “Mother says you’ve got to come in to bed now.”
    “Just a minute," Mark called back.
    From his hiding place under the truck. Trey could see the door open. Another boy stepped into the barn.
    “What you doing out here anyway?” the boy asked.
    “Loading the truck for Dad to take to town. So’s he can take the potatoes to market,” Mark said. Trey was amazed at how calm Mark sounded, how even he kept his voice, how easily he lied.
    The other boy snorted.
    “Dad ain’t going to town,” he said. “The way things are going, Dad ain’t never leaving home again. And neither are we.”
    “You’ve been sneaking out to see Becky,” Mark said. “You’re risking your life to go visit your stupid, ugly girlfriend.”
    The other boy didn’t deny it. He didn’t even defend his girlfriend. Trey couldn’t see anything of him but his bare feet. The feet shifted awkwardly.
    “So?” the boy said.
    "So what do you see when you go?” Mark asked. His voice was low now, almost hypnotic. “You seen any soldiers or anything? Policemen? Anybody tried to stop you?”
    “I walk four miles there and four miles back, from Becky’s house,” the other boy said. “Through the cornfields. Ain’t no soldiers or policemen hiding out in the cornfields.”
    “Oh,” Mark said, almost sounding disappointed that the other boy hadn’t run into dozens of police officers, scads of soldiers. Mark, Trey decided, was smarter than he looked. He was trying to prepare for his trip by pumping the boy for information.
    But Mark and Trey wouldn’t be able to walk through cornfields to get to the Grants’ house.
    “Don’t you go tattling on me,” the other boy warned.
    “I won’t,” Mark said.
    Apparently satisfied, the boy walked out of the barn.
    Mark bent down and whispered to Trey
    “I’ve got to go in now. Matthew—my brother—he’d tell Mother and Dad if I didn’t. We need some sleep anyhow. I’ll come back at dawn and then—and then..
    “And then we leave,” Trey whispered back.
    “Reckon so,” Mark said roughly. In the shadows, Trey could barely see his face. “I’m sorry I can’t invite you into the house so... you know. You’ll be okay out here, won’t you? You won’t—won’t go nowhere or nothing, will you?”
    “Where would I go?” Trey asked.
    And then Mark went away, taking the light with him. In the dark, Trey twisted around uncomfortably on the hard packed-dirt floor.
     
    I should have told Mark I’d go back and sleep at the Talbots’ house and he could come and get me there in the morning. I could have slept in the lap of luxury tonight; instead of on dirt.
     
    But the Talbots’ house seemed scarier than ever now. He’d seen the gleam of greed in Mark’s eye when Trey had said that Mrs. Talbot had abandoned all her possessions and didn’t care about getting them back. There had to be dozens of others, even greedier, who wanted what the Talbots had had. Trey could close his eyes and imagine hordes descending upon the Talbots’ house: boys in flannel shirts, like Mark; men in uniform, like the Population Police; new Government bureaucrats in suits and ties.
     
    And Trey was afraid of them all.
     

     
    Chapter Eleven
    It felt like the middle of the night when Mark was back, shaking Trey by the shoulders.
     
    “Here, put this on,” Mark muttered.
    Groggily Trey accepted a flannel shirt, thick with quilting—almost a jacket, really. He