Convincing her friends was a little harder.
"We're not supposed to go outside," Sally said timidly when Nina whispered her secret after lights-out that night.
"Nobody ever said that," Nina argued, trying to keep her own panic out of her voice. If her friends refused to go, would she have the nerve to go alone?
"They never said, 'Don't brush your teeth with toilet water,' either, but that doesn't mean I'm going to do it," Nina's other roommate, Bonner, argued.
Sally was tiny and golden haired, and Bonner was tall and dark and big boned, practically burly. Since Nina was medium height and medium weight, with medium brown hair, she always felt like the link between the other two. When they walked down the hall together, Nina was always in the middle. When the other two disagreed, Nina was always the one who suggested a compromise. Having both the other two oppose her made Nina feel a little desperate.
"Look, they want to talk about shadows," Nina said. Even in the dark she could tell that both of her friends froze at the sound of that one word. Harlow School was full of secrets that everyone knew but almost never discussed. At the beginning of the school year, when Nina was still horribly homesick, she'd amused herself by imagining Aunty Rhoda, her most practical aunt, materializing in the dining hall at breakfast or lunch or dinner, and marching up to the front of the room to lay out the truth for everybody:
"Fact: Every single one of you girls is a'shadow child'—a third or fourth or maybe even fifth child whose very birth was illegal because the Government doesn't allow people to have more than two kids.
"Fact: All of you came here with fake I.D.'s certifying that you are somebody else, somebody the Government thinks has a right to exist.
"Fact: Anyone with half a brain could see you're all pre-tending. Half the time the blond, Swedish-looking girl forgets to answer to the name, Uthant Mogadishu. And she's not the only one. All of you cower at any mention of the Government. All of you tremble any time the door opens.