Among the Brave by Margaret Peterson Haddix Page B

toilet, and stuck his head and shoulders through the hole in the wall. It wasn’t comfortable, and he had very little wiggle room. But he did fit.
    Thinking hard, he backed out and then climbed in again, this time feet first.
     
    Ill be too heavy. The air duct will collapse under my weight, he worried, but this fear didn’t bother him much. As long as the duct didn’t collapse loudly, and didn’t fall too far, it would still be a safe place to hide.
     
    He slid both feet in, then his torso and chest, and the duct showed no sign of giving way. At the last moment, he reached down and pulled the Population Police uniform in after him. He didn’t think the Population Police officials had kept track of which uniform went to which recruit, but he didn’t want to take any chances or leave any evidence behind.
     
    What if I can’t put the grille back on from the inside? he wondered. But this fear too was needless. He pulled the grille down on its hinges and, by reaching back out through the holes, managed to reattach all but one of the clasps. Nobody would notice one out-of-place clasp, he assured himself.
     
    Breathing hard, Trey scooted backward down the duct so nobody would be able to see his face at the grille.
    Someone was rattling the doorknob again. This time, whoever it was started pounding on the door, too.
    “Come out now!” a voice yelled. “This instant!”
    This voice sounded more official. It might even have belonged to the officer who’d punched Trey before.
    Trey held his breath.
    Moments later, he heard a splintering sound. Through the narrow range of view the grille provided, he could see the bathroom door swing open.
    “There’s nobody in here!” the official-sounding voice cried out in disgust.
    Then Trey heard a yelp of pain, which probably meant that the official was punching whoever had summoned him to the bathroom.
    But nobody put his face up to the grille to look for Trey. Nobody seemed to notice he’d disappeared. Nobody called out, “Travis Jackson! Come out of hiding right now!”
    Trey breathed a huge but silent sigh of relief.
    He was safe.
    He congratulated himself on his brilliance. Mr. Hendricks is right, he thought. I am a genius. He felt as triumphant as if he’d just single-handedly defeated the Population Police.
     
    Maybe I can, he thought. And depending on where the duct led, he might have just discovered a way to save Mark and Lee and the others.
     
    Chapter Eighteen

    Trey slid down the duct backward, dragging the Population Police uniform behind him. It was slow going, because he had so little room to maneuver, and because he was terrified of making any noise. More than once the buttons of his flannel shirt scraped against the metal duct, and then he froze, horrified at the thought that someone might be about to rip the duct apart, screaming out, ‘Aha! You! We know everything now! You’re not Travis Jackson! You’re about to die!”
     
    No, they’ll just think that the Grant house has mice, Trey comforted himself. They’ll put out poison, and I can avoid that.
     
    Trey knew he wasn’t thinking very rationally. But he kept inching onward, feet first That began to bother him. He wished he had eyes on his toes. What if he was about to kick out another brass grille? What if he were about to slide out into another room—one less innocuous than the bathroom? What if he was at this very moment slipping past some sort of opening that anyone could see? Trey kept turning his head and looking back over his shoulder, but that gave him a terrible crick in his neck, and he could barely see past his own body anyway. And there seemed to be nothing but darkness ahead.
    He kept going.
    When it seemed as though he had been crawling backward for hours, he hit a metal wall where he’d expected open air. Was he disoriented, crawling crooked? No—the wall extended on, straight and smooth, totally blocking his path. Had he reached a dead end? How could a duct just end like that? He