Among the Imposters (2 page)

He didn’t dare. The way the last ten minutes had gone, Rally would probably rip the note to shreds before Luke even had it completely out of his pocket.

And Jen’s dad had acted like, it was secret. If Ms. Hawkins wasn’t supposed to see it, there was no way Rally could be trusted.

Rally hit Luke on the shoulder.

“Tag! You’re it!” he hollered, and took off running. Panicked, Luke chased after him.

Three

Luke managed to keep up with Rolly only because Rolly slowed to a dignified walk when he began passing classrooms instead of sleeping quarters. But it was a fast dignified walk, and Luke was terrified that Rolly might dart around a corner unexpectedly and disappear. Then Luke would be totally lost. So Luke dared to jog a little, hoping to keep pace.

A tall, thin man with a skimpy mustache came out of one of the rooms as Luke passed by.

‘~Th’o demerits, young man,” he said to Luke. “No running allowed. You know the rules.”

Luke didn’t, and didn’t have the nerve to say so.

Rolly smirked.

The thin man went back into his classroom. Luke knew he’d have to risk asking Rolly a question.

~Wha—” he began. But just then Rolly opened a tall, wooden door to one side of the hall and slipped through. Luke’s reflexes weren’t fast enough. The door shut behind Rolly and then Luke had to fumble with the knob. It was ornate and gold, and had to be turned

further to the right than all the doorknobs at home.
Home...

For the second time in less than an hour, Luke was overcome with an almost unbearable wave of homesickness.

Stupid,
Luke chided himself
How can you be homesick for doorknobs?

Blinking quickly, he shoved on the door and it gave way Blindly, he stepped in.

He was at the back of a huge classroom. Boys sat in row upon row upon row, dozens of them, it seemed to Luke, all the way to the front of the room. There, the tall, thin man who’d just given Luke demerits was writing on the wall.

Or was it the same man? Luke squinted, confused. Oh. There was a door at the front of the room, too. That was the door the man had used. But had Luke and Rolly really walked so far between the doors? Suddenly, Luke wasn’t sure of anything.

Luke scanned the row of boys in front of him, looking for Rolly He was supposed to stay close to Rolly, so that’s what he’d do. But now he couldn’t even remember if Rolly had brown hair or black, short or long, curly or straight. He’d really never looked that closely at Rolly, just followed him and gotten beat up by him. Any of the heads in front of him might belong to Rolly

The man at the front of the class turned around.

‘And the Greeks were—sit down—” he interrupted himself impatiently

He was looking at Luke.

“M-Me?” Luke squeaked. “W-Where should I sit?”

His voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. There was no way the man could have heard him, all the way at the front of the room. Probably the boy sitting a foot away hadn’t even heard him. But suddenly every boy in the room turned around and stared at Luke.

It was awful. All those eyes, all looking at him. It was straight out of Luke’s worst nightmares. Panic rooted him to the spot, but every muscle in his body was screaming for him to run, to hide anywhere he could. For twelve years—his entire life—he’d had to hide. To be seen was death. ‘Don’t!” he wanted to scream. ‘Don’t look at me! Don’t report me! Please!”

But the mqscles that controlled his mouth were as frozen as the rest of him. The tiny part of his mind that wasn’t flooded with panic knew that that was good—now that he had a fake I.D., the last thing he should do was act like a boy who’s had to hide. But to act normal, he needed to move, to obey the man at the front and sit down. And he couldn’t make his body do that, either.

Then someone kicked him.

‘Ow!” Luke crumbled.

Rough hands jerked him backwards. Miraculously, he landed on the corner of a chair, barely regained his balance, and managed not to fall completely. He slid to his right and was solidly in the seat.

‘Thank
you,” the man at the front said with exaggerated,

mocking gratitude. ‘See me after class. As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, the Greeks were quite technologically advanced for their time....

Then Luke could no longer hear the man’s words over the buzzing in his ears. His heart kept thumping hard, as if it, at least, still thought Luke would be wise to run. But Luke resolutely gripped the edge of the chair. He was acting normal now. Wasn’t he? The boys who had been staring at him slowly began turning back to face the teacher again. Luke wiped sweat from his forehead and looked around for whoever had kicked and pulled and shoved him. Had they been trying to help him? Luke desperately wanted to believe that. But all the boys near him were looking at the teacher, nonchalantly as though Luke weren’t even there. And if they’d been trying to help, wouldn’t they be trying to catch Luke’s eye, to get him to say thanks?

Luke really didn’t know. He knew how his family would act—Mother and Dad, Matthew and Mark. Mother and Dad would never kick him, and his older brothers would be poking him now, taunting him, ‘Want us to kick you again?”

The only other people Luke had ever met before today were Jen’s dad—who was practically as big a mystery as the boys sitting beside him now—and Jen. And Jen would...

Luke couldn’t bear to think about Jen.

A bell rang suddenly and it was such an alarming sound that Luke’s heart set to pounding again.

“Remember! Chapter twelve!” the teacher called as all the boys scrambled up.

Luke meant to go see the teacher, as he’d been instructed. This had to be the end of the class. But the tide of boys swept him out the back door of the classroom before he quite knew what was happening. By the time he got his feet firmly on the ground, and felt like he might be able to break away he was around a corner and down another hall. He fought his way back to what he thought was the original hallway But then he couldn’t figure out which way to turn. He looked all around, frantically searching for either the teacher or Rolly—as nasty as he’d been, Rolly was at least sort of familiar. But all the faces that flowed past him were strangers’s

Of course, the way Luke’s mind was working, both Rolly and the teacher could have paraded past Luke five times and he might not have even recognized them.

The crowd in the hall was thinning out. Luke began to panic again.

‘Get to class,” an older boy standing nearby ordered him.

“Where?”
Luke said. “Where’s my class?”

The boy didn’t hear him. Luke thought about asking again, louder, but the boy seemed to be some sort of guard, someone in charge, like a policeman.

Like the Population Police.

Luke put his hand over his mouth and veered away down another hall. Another bell rang and boys started running, desperate to get into their classrooms. Hopelessly, Luke followed a group of three or four through a doorway into another classroom. At least, he thought it was another classroom. For all he knew, he might have circled around and gone into the same one all over again. Maybe that was good. Maybe after class this time, he could make it up to talk to the teacher— It was a short, fat man who stood up to talk this time.

As confused and panicky as Luke felt, even he could tell it wasn’t the same teacher.

Luke hastily sat down, terrified of drawing attention to himself again. He resolved to listen carefully this time, to pay attention and learn. He owed it to everyone—to Mother and Dad, to Jen’s father, even to Jen herself.

It was ten minutes before he realized that the man at the front was speaking some other language, one Luke had never heard before and didn’t have a prayer of understanding.

Four

When the bell rang after this class, Luke didn’t even try to go against the crowd. This time the flow of traffic carried him to a huge room with tables instead of desks, and bookshelves instead of portraits on the wall. All the other boys sat down and pulled out books and paper and pens or pencils.

Homework. They were doing homework

Luke felt brilliant for figuring that out. How many times had he watched his older brothers groan over math problems, stumble over reading assignments, scratch out answers in history workbooks? Matthew and Mark did not like school. Once, years ago, Luke had been peering over Mark’s shoulder at his homework, and noticed an easy mistake.

“Isn’t eight times four thirty-two?” he’d innocently asked. ‘You wrote down thirty-four.”

Mark stuck out his tongue and pushed so hard on his pencil that the lead broke.

‘See what you made me do?” he complained. “If you’re so smart, why don’t you go to school for me?”

Mother was hovering over them.

“Hush,” she said to Mark, and that had been the end of it.

Luke’s family didn’t dwell on what they all knew:

Because Luke was the third born, he was illegal, violating the Population Law with every breath he took and every bite of food he ate. Of course he couldn’t go to school, or anywhere else.

But here he was, now, at school. And it wasn’t Matthew and Mark’s little country school, but a grand, fancy place that only the richest people, Barons, could afford. Rich people like the real Lee Grant, who had died in a skiing accident. His family had concealed his death and secretly given his identity card to help a shadow child come out of hiding.

Couldn’t everyone tell that Luke was an impostor?

Luke wished the real Lee Grant were still alive. He wished that he, himself, were still at home, hiding.

“Young man,” someone said in a warning voice.

Luke glanced around. He was the only one still standing. Quickly he slipped into the nearest vacant chair. He didn’t have any books to study or work to do. Maybe this was the time to read the note from Jen’s dad.

But as he reached into his pocket he knew it wasn’t safe. The boy across the table from him kept looking up, the boy two chairs down kept whispering and pointing. Though Luke kept his head down, he could feel eyes all around him. Even if no one was looking directly at him, Luke felt

itchy and anxious just being in the same room with so many other people. He couldn’t read the note. He could barely keep himself from bolting out of his chair, running out the door, finding some closet or small space to hide in.

And then everybody would know that he wasn’t really Lee Grant. Everybody would know that all he knew was how to hide.

Luke forced himself to sit still for two hours.

When a bell went off again, everyone trouped down a hall to a huge dining area.

Luke hadn’t eaten since breakfast at home—his mother’s lightest biscuits and, as a miraculous farewell treat, fresh eggs. Luke could remember the pride shining in her eyes. as she had slid the plate in front of him.

“From the factory?” he had asked. Eggs usually were not available for ordinary people, but his mother worked at a chicken factory, and if her supervisOrs, were in a good mood, s~fnetimes she got extra food.

Mother had. nodded. “I promised them forty hours of overtime in exchange. Unpaid.”

Luke had gulped.

“Just for two eggs for me?”

Mother had looked at him.

“It was a good trade,” she’d said.

Remembering breakfast gave him a lump in his throat as big as an egg. He wasn’t hungry

But he sat down, because all the other boys were sitting. Instantly another boy turned on him and glared.

“Seniors only,” he said.

“Huh?” Luke asked.

“Only seniors are allowed at this table,” the boy said, in the same kind of mocking voice that Mark always used with Luke when Luke had said something dumb.

“Oh,” Luke said.

“What are you, some kind of a lecker?” another boy asked.

Luke didn’t know how to answer that. He was so eager to get up, he tripped and crashed into the next table.

“Juniors only,” a boy said there.

Luke tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but it had grown even bigger.

He went from table to table, not even bothering to try to sit- down. At each table, someone said in a bored voice, “Sophomores only,” or “Freshmen only,” or “Eights only”... Luke didn’t know what he was, so he kept moving.

Finally he reached an empty table and sat down.

A bowl of leaves and what looked like germinating soybeans sat in front of him. Was this supposed to be food? The other boys were eating it, so he did, too. The leaves were clammy and bitter and stuck in his throat.

Luke let himself think about potato chips. Nobody was supposed to have junk food, because of the food shortages that led to the Population Law. But Jen had given him potato chips when he’d gone over to her house, secretly, at great risk. He could still taste the salt, could still feel the crisp chips against the roof of his mouth, could still hear