Fake ID

Often in Fake ID Nick encounters authority figures in situations that should imply mutual trust, but repeatedly Nick discovers that these authorities cannot be trusted. The foremost authorities in Nick’s life, of course, are his parents—as a teenager, Nick should be able to rely on the people whose main job it is to protect and care for him. However, his father demonstrates from the beginning that he is untrustworthy. In each of the previous WITSEC placements, James engaged in illegal behavior that forced the family to relocate; in Stepton, James again disappears mysteriously at night, clearly up to something nefarious. Similarly, rather than making the best of the situation for Nick’s sake, Donna openly nurses a growing discontent with their circumstances and the desire to leave the witness program. Her bitterness at having to be sequestered in Stepton brings even more instability into Nick’s life. Nick works diligently to solve the mysteries of Whispertown and Eli’s murder before he is forced to depart with his mom. To his chagrin, Nick’s mother leaves without him, abandoning her son to escape her unhappiness.

Stepton’s local government officials and law enforcement officers are also deeply untrustworthy. Mayor Burke has been skimming millions in WITSEC money from the federal government. Hoping to hide his embezzlement, Burke brings Nick’s father to Stepton to cover his trail with some creative accounting. Meanwhile, as part of a Southern good-ole-boys network in the town, the cops ignore any crime committed by Zach and his friends while Sheriff Hill hauls Nick in for questioning and betrays his clear racism. This is why when Nick and Reya hear Dustin and his father engaged in a lethal fistfight, they refuse to call the police. Nick cannot even trust Deputy US Marshall Bertram, his WITSEC handler, who summarily dismisses Nick’s mother from the program with a shrug when she runs away—Bertram is only interested in keeping tabs on James, his witness, and cares little about protecting innocent people affiliated with him.

As Nick comes of age, however, he learns that sometimes circumstances call for relying on authority figures he cannot fully trust. Sheriff Hill, the bigoted officer who apparently hates Nick, turns out to want to collect enough evidence to put Dustin behind bars for murder. Despite his hatred of the man, Nick must share all he knows with Hill. Similarly, Nick must at least partially forgive his father so they can work closely to search for his mother. At the end of the novel, Nick thinks of James as an accomplice rather than a dad, but their mutual goal to reform the family shows that the relationship has space to improve.

Nick is not the only one struggling with trust. Reya learns that everything Nick has told her about himself is untrue. She trusts him implicitly: He helps solve her brother’s murder and even saves her life, but Eli’s secret trove of data exposes Nick’s cover story as deception created by WITSEC. Moreover, he lies to her about what he knows, keeping secrets in their shared investigation. While Nick learns to let people he once mistrusted in, Reya discovers that she cannot have a relationship with a liar, however good his reasons.