Luke Garner is a shadow child who has never been to school, never had a birthday party, or stayed the night at a friend’s house. Well actually, Luke has never had a friend. Hiding Luke is the number one priority for the Garner family, considering he is an illegal third child. Here, families are only allowed to have two kids, and if they disobey, or break, the law, there will be serious consequences. Since the woods were cut down, the place that Luke can hang out and not be seen, he is now stuck hiding in his room slash the attic. His only window to the outside is a vent., which is not a lot to work with.
After the families move into the mansions that were built where they cut down the woods, Luke spies on them. When Luke’s mom goes to work
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All this time alone soon eventually pays off. Once he meets Jen, the things he’s reading becomes more interesting. He learns about the government and the famines, and other stuff. Luke soon learns that some people have different ways of expressing themselves, which makes Luke come to the conclusion that no one in his family would be able to handle constantly hiding all the time as well as he does:
• Dad would get grumpy
• Mom would try to make the best of it, though you can see the sadness in her eyes
• Matthew would be quiet, but would look sad all the time
• Mark would gripe so much that he’d make everyone miserable
But is Luke good at hiding because his personality was used to hiding all the time, or did being locked up for so long make him into the careful, sensitive guy that he is?
Luke’s family may love him, but he gets treated as an outsider, but they can’t help it. They have to hide any evidence that Luke ever existed, just in case they have an unexpected visitor. Ouch, right? When Jen asks Luke if he thinks his brothers would ever turn him into the Population Police, he takes time to realize that it seems as if they had outgrown him.
For Luke, he has to grow up without his parents. But in the end, he becomes his own person, though separated from his family, he gets freedom, and becomes Lee