Among the Brave by Margaret Peterson Haddix

can do it!” when he was trying to catch a football or hit a Wiffle ball, back at Hendricks School. All the times Mr. Hendricks had murmured, “You know, you really are an incredibly intelligent boy,” when he sent Trey on errands. All the times his own father had nodded and smiled and said, “Yes, yes, that’s right You’ve learned this perfectly,” when Trey recited his daily lessons, back home.
    Trey kept shuffling forward, kept quelling his panic, kept trying to plan, kept listening to the encouraging echoes in his mind.
    And then suddenly he found himself at the front of the line, before a phalanx of tables that blocked the entrance-way to the Grants’ gates.
    “I.D. card, please,” a man growled.
    Trey willed his hands not to shake as he reached into his pocket and pulled out the plastic card. He laid it on the table between him and the man.
    “Thavis Jackson,” the man read in a bored voice.
    Trey winced at the sound of the name that belonged to him, but wasn’t his. He braced himself for the man to squint at the picture and compare it with Trey’s face. And what if the man decided to test the I.D.2 Trey had heard there were special chemicals, certain types of acids that would burn through a fake I.D. but leave an authentic one unscathed. They were expensive, so they weren’t used often, but what if the Population Police chose to use them now, on Trey’s card? Should he be braced to run, just in case?
    But the man just tossed the I.D. to another man.
    “Squad 3-C,” the man announced, and the first man wrote something down on a pad of paper.
    “Go on in,” he said, lifting a hinged section of the table for Trey to pass through. “Report to the first room on the right, and they’ll issue your uniform.”
    Trey hesitated.
    “Don’t I get my I.D. back?” he squeaked.
    “You’re part of the Population Police now, kid,” the man said, chuckling. “You don’t have any other identity anymore.”
    “But—” Trey knew better than to argue. He knew he shouldn’t do anything that would fix his name or face in anyone’s mind. He shouldn’t do anything that would attract attention in any way But how could he just walk away and leave that I.D.? It was the only thing his mother had left him with. What hope did he have without it?
    The man didn’t hear him.
    “Next,” he called, as the second man added They’s I.D. to a huge stack in a box under the table.
    Trey stood still, trying to decide whether to speak up again or not.
    “Ya going to go in or get out of my way?” somebody snarled behind him. “‘Cause I’m hungry. Haven’t et in three days. I’m hoping they feed us first thing.”
    Trey swallowed hard.
    “Go in,” he said. Leaving his I.D. card behind, he stepped past the table and through the gates of the Grants’ former estate.
    The surge of other new Population Police recruits carried him along the driveway and up the stairs through the Grants’ front door. Until he was past it, Trey didn’t even think to look for the spot on the driveway where the huge chandelier had come crashing down, killing Mr. and Mrs. Grant and endangering Lee, before Trey rescued him.
     
    I was brave here before, Trey told himself. I can be brave again.
     
    He kept walking.
    When the press of bodies around him finally parted, Trey found himself inside a huge room he barely recognized. Surely he’d stood here before, the night of the Grants’ fatal party, but the room looked totally different now. They remembered silks and satins and shimmering glass; now the room was filled with racks and racks of gray uniforms.
     
    “Size?” a man asked Trey.
    “Um, I don’t know. I think I’ve grown since the last time I. . .”
    “Never mind,” the man said, thrusting a uniform into Trey’s arms.
    The fabric felt scratchy against Trey’s skin. The Population Police emblem stared up at him from a sleeve of the uniform: two circles interlinked, with a teardrop shape beneath. They had heard all sorts of