\"I don't think it's fair we've got to do Luke's chores now,\" Luke's other brother, Mark, grumbled. It made his stomach feel funny even trying. He had a hard time thinking about himself in connection with the smashed fly or the dead pig, gone stiff in the sun. Death was a fly that stopped buzzing when the swatter hit it. Death? Death was what happened to the runt pigs who got stepped on by their stronger brothers and sisters. No one had ever told him exactly what would happen if anyone saw him. Luke wasn't sure what the gesture meant, but he knew it wasn't good. They see you-\" He waved his fork violently. \"Then? You gotta stay away now! Everybody and his brother's going to be tramping around back there, to see what's going on. He slammed his handlocalhost/Users/birksray/…/Haddix, Margaret Peterson - Among The Hidden - (v1.0) [.html].htm 2/95ġ2/6/11 Haddix, Margaret Peterson - Among The Hidden down on the table. \"And then, when those people move in, I have to stay away from the windows?\" Luke asked, though he knew the answer. Even from deep inside the kitchen, Luke could tell the trees were missing because everything was brighter, more open. Their absence made everything look different, like a fresh haircut exposing a band of untanned skin on a forehead. Some hung at weird angles from their former lofty positions in the sky. Or had stood-Luke knew from a sneaked peek right before supper that half the trees were now toppled. \"It'll all be city people.\" If he'd been allowed, Luke would have gone over to the kitchen window and peered out at the woods, trying for the umpteenth time to picture rows and rows of houses where the firs and maples and oaks now stood. At twelve, he knew better, but sometimes still pictured the Government as a very big, mean, fat person, two or three times as tall as an ordinary man, who went around yelling at people, \"Not allowed!\" and \"Stop that!\" It was because of the way his parents and older brothers talked: \"Government won't let us plant corn there again.\" \"Government's keeping the prices down.\" \"Government's not going to like this crop.\" \"Probably some of the people who live in those houses will be Government workers,\" Mother said. \"But the Government's not going to live in the houses,\" Luke protested. \"The Government didn't ask us if we wanted houses there.\" She pursed her lips as she slid the bowls of soup onto the table. \"We wouldn't have sold the woods if we hadn't had to,\" she said, ladling out thick tomatoey soup. That had taken all the defiance they had in them. They had defied the Government once, with Luke. You can't tell the Government no.\" Mother came over and gave Luke's shoulder a reassuring squeeze before turning back to the stove. \"Why'd you have to sell the woods?\" Luke's dad harrumphed, and paused in the midst of shoveling forkfuls of boiled potatoes into his mouth. There were plenty of \"how's\"-How much rain'd the backfield get? How's the planting going? Even \"what's\"-What'd Matthew do with the five-sixteenth wrench? What's Dad going to do about thatlocalhost/Users/birksray/…/Haddix, Margaret Peterson - Among The Hidden - (v1.0) [.html].htmġ2/6/11 Haddix, Margaret Peterson - Among The Hidden busted tire? But \"why\" wasn't considered much worth asking. It wasn't a common question in the Garner house. \"Why?\" he asked at the supper table that night. Maybe never again as long as I live.\" He turned and walked into the house, as silently as a shadow. He reminded himself, \"I will never be allowed outside again. He laid his hoe down gently, and savored one last moment of feeling warm soil beneath his bare feet. He took one extra breath of the fresh air, scented with clover and honeysuckle and-coming from far away-pine smoke. But on this day, the day they began taking the woods away, he hesitated. Even as a toddler, barely able to walk in the backyard's tall grass, he had somehow understood the fear in his mother's voice. Now.\" He had never disobeyed the order to hide. Then he heard his mother call out the kitchen window: \"Luke! Inside. 12/6/11 Haddix, Margaret Peterson - Among The Hidden Among the Hidden Margaret Peterson Haddix ALADDIN PAPERBACKS CHAPTER ONE He saw the first tree shudder and fall, far off in the 1/95 distance.
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