Among the Imposters (3 page)

Jen saying, when he protested that potato chips were illegal, “Yeah, well, we’re illegal, too, so why don’t we enjoy ourselves?”

Jen. If Jen were here now, she wouldn’t put up with bitter leaves and tasteless bean sprouts for supper. She’d be standing up, demanding decent food. She’d go to any table she wanted. She’d march up to the person in charge—the headmaster?—and say, “Why won’t anyone tell me what classes to go to? What are demerits? What are the rules, anyway? You’re not running this school very well!” She’d punch Rolly right in the eye.

But Jen wasn’t there. Jen was dead.

Luke bent his head low over his food. He stopped even pretending to chew and swallow.

After supper everyone was herded into another vast room. A man stood at the front talking about how glorious the Government was, about how their leaders’ wisdom had kept them all from starving.

Lies,
Luke thought, and marveled that he had the will even to think that.

Finally another bell rang and the other boys scattered. Luke walked uncertainly up and down strange halls.

“To your room,” a man warned him. “Lights out in ten minutes.”

Luke was so eager to get to his room, he actually found his voice.

“I-I’m new. I don’t know where my room is.”

“Well, then, find out.”

“How?” Luke asked.

The man sighed, and rolled his eyes.

“What’s your name?” he asked, slowly, as though Luke might be too stupid to understand the question.

“L—” Somehow Luke couldn’t bring himself to claim his fake identity. “I know my room number. One fifty-six. I just don’t remember where it is.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” the man growled. “Up those stairs and around the corner.”

Even with the man’s directions, Luke got turned around and had to search and search. By the time he finally saw the engraved 156, his legs were trembling with exhaustion and his feet were blistered from walking in the stiff, unfamiliar shoes. Luke was used to going barefoot He was used to sitting in the house all day, not walking up and down stairs and through labyrinth-like halls.

He stepped through the doorway and headed straight for his bed. It had a spread on it and looked like all the others now. All Luke wanted to do was fall into it and go to sleep and forget everything that had happened that day.

“Did you ask permission?” someone barked at him.

Luke looked around. He was so tired, he hadn’t even noticed that seven boys were sitting on the floor in a circle, playing some sort of card game.

“Per-Permission?” he asked.

One of the boys—probably the one who’d spoken— threw back his head and laughed. He was tall and thin, and older than Luke. Maybe even as old as Luke’s brother

Matthew, who was fifteen. But Matthew was familiar, known. Luke couldn’t read this boy’s expression. He had a strange cast to his dark eyes, and his face was oddly shaped. Something about him reminded Luke of the pictures he’d seen in books of jackals.

“Hey!” the boy said. “They sent us a voice replicator. Amazingly human-like form. Voice is a little off, though. Let’s try another one. Repeat after me: ‘I am an exnay I am a fonrol. I am a lecker. I don’t deserve to live.’”

Most of the other boys were laughing now, too, but quietly, as if they didn’t want to miss Luke’s answer.

Luke hesitated. He’d heard those words before: Rolly had called him an exnay and a fonrol, and someone had called him a lecker at dinner. Maybe they were from that foreign language the short, fat teacher had been speaking. Luke had no idea what the words meant, but he could tell that they were probably bad things. Thanks to Matthew and Mark, he could spot a setup.

Luke shook his head.

The jackal boy sighed in exaggerated disappointment.

“Broken already,” he said. He stood up and knocked his fist against Luke’s side the way Luke had seen his father tap on the engine of broken tractors or trucks. “You just can’t get good junk nowadays.”

Luke pulled away He stepped toward his bed.

Jackal boy laughed again.

“Oh, no, not so fast. Permission, remember?. Say, ‘I am your servant. 0 mighty master. I shall do your bidding

forever. I will not eat or sleep or breathe unless you say it is to be ~

The boy moved between Luke and his bed. The others leaned forward, menacingly.
Like a pack of jackals,
Luke thought.

Jackals were nasty, vicious animals. Luke had read a book about them. They tore their prey limb from limb sometimes.

These were really boys, not jackals, Luke reminded himself. But he was too tired to fight.

“I am your servant,” he mumbled. “I—I don’t remember the rest.”

“Why do they always send us the stupid ones?” the jackal boy asked. He looked down at Luke. “Bet you don’t even know your own name.”

“L-Lee,” Luke whispered, looking down at his shoes.

“Lee, repeat after me. ‘I—’”

“I——”

“Am—’”

“Am—”

The jackal boy fed him each word and Luke, hating himself, repeated it. Then the boy made him touch his elbow to his nose. Cross his eyes. Stand on one foot while reciting, “I am the lowest of the low. Everyone should spit on me,” five times. The lights flickered and went out in the middle of this ordeal, and still the jackal boy continued. Finally he yawned. Luke could hear his jaw crack in the dark.

“New boy, you bore me,” he said. “Remove yourself from my presence.

“Huh?” Luke said.

“Go to bed!”

Meekly, Luke slipped beneath his covers. He was still wearing his clothes—even his shoes—but he didn’t dare get back up to take them off The unfamiliar pants bunched up around his waist, and he silently smoothed them out. Touching his pocket reminded him: He still hadn’t read the note from Jen’s dad.

Tomorrow,
Luke thought. He felt a little bit of hope return. Tomorrow he would read the note, and then he would know how to find out what classes to go to, how to deal with boys like Rolly and his roommates, how to get by. No—not just to get by. Luke remembered what he’d hoped for, leaving home—was it only that morning? It seemed so long ago. He’d been thinking about making a difference in the world, finding some way to help other third children who had to hide. Luke didn’t expect the note from Jen’s dad to tell him how to do that, but it would give him a start. It would make that possible.

All he had to do was go to sleep and then it would be tomorrow and he could read the note.

But Luke couldn’t sleep. The room was filled with unfamiliar sounds: first the other boys whispering, then breathing deeply, in sleep. The beds creaking when someone turned over. Some vent somewhere blowing air on them all.

Luke ached, missing his room at home, his family, Jen.

And his own name. He felt his lips draw together.

“Luke,” he whispered soundlessly, in the dark. “My name is Luke.”

He waited silently, his heart pounding, but nothing happened. No alarm bells went off, no Population Police swooped in to carry him away. His feeling of hope surged, even more than the fear. His name was Luke. He was nobody’s servant. He was not the lowest of the low. He was Dad and Mother’s son. He was Matthew and Mark’s brother. He was Jen’s friend.

Or—he had been.

Five

Luke didn’t get a chance to read the note from Jen’s dad the next day. Or the next. Or the next.

In fact, an entire week went by with him resolving every night in bed, “Tomorrow Surely I’ll find a way to read the note tomorrow.” But the next nightfall found him still stymied.

At first, he thought there was an easy solution. The bathroom, for example. He could go in, shut the door, read the note.

But none of the bathrooms at Hendricks were like the bathroom at home, closed-in and private. The Hendricks bathrooms were rows of urinals and commodes, right out in front of everyone. Even the shower was communal, just an open, tiled room with dozens of spigots sprouting from each wall.

Luke could barely bring himself to lower his pants with everyone watching, let alone read the note. He always lingered until most of the other boys were gone, but he never found a bathroom that fully emptied out Finally, after three days had passed and he was getting desperate, he resolved to wait in the bathroom for as long as it took, regardless of bells or classes. The bell rang for breakfast and still he remained, pretending to be very concerned with scrubbing his face.

Finally it was just Luke and another boy, standing by the door.

“Out,” the boy said.

The boy was mean-faced and muscular. Luke’s legs trembled, but he didn’t shut off the water.

‘I’m not done,” Luke mumbled, trying to sound nonchalant, unconcerned. He failed miserably

The boy grabbed Luke’s arm.

“Didn’t you hear me? I said OUT!” The boy jerked so hard on Luke’s arm that Luke felt pain shoot through his whole body. Then the boy shoved Luke out the door. Luke landed in a heap on the hallway floor. A hall monitor looked down at him in disgust

“You’re late for breakfast,” he said. “Two demerits.”

Luke feebly looked from the hall monitor to the other boy, who was now standing menacingly in the bathroom doorway. Then he understood: They were alike. There were guards in all the bathrooms, as well as in all the halls. He couldn’t read the note in either place.

He wondered about trying to read the note in his room. He would get there first at bedtime, he decided. The first several days this was impossible because, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t ever remember which way to go. Left at the top of the stairs, then right, then right, then left? Or was it right, then left, then left, then right? Most nights, it was a miracle if he found the room at all before lights out Though that was just as well, because it reduced the amount of time that jackal boy could spend tormenting him.

Finally, in the middle of Luke’s second week at Hendricks, he sat at the back of the hall during .the evening lecture, so he was the first one up the stairs. Holding his breath, he counted off the turns. Right—yes. Right—yes. Left. And there—yes! Room 156.

Luke rushed in past the ball monitor. He slipped behind the door, out of sight, and jammed his hand in his pocket And heard, “So my servant’s reporting for duty early tonight, eh?”

It was jackal boy, lounging on his bed.

Luke had to bite his lip to keep from screaming.

That night jackal boy was crueler than ever.

Luke had to repeat, “I am a fonrol,” fifty times. He had to hop up and down on one foot for five minutes. He had to do one hundred push-ups. (He’d never seen anyone do a push-up before. All the other boys howled with laughter when he stammeringly confessed, “I—I don’t know how.”) He had to push a marble across the floor with his nose.

Lying in bed that night, Luke despaired. His shoulders ached from the push-ups; his side was still bruised from being thrown out of the bathroom.

I’l
l
never get to read the not4
he thought
I’ll never be alone

It wasn’t just that he wanted to read the note. It was maddening to always be around other people, to know that his every action might be observed, to never have a second of privacy.

How could he long to be alone, and feel so lonely, all at once?

Six

Luke got by.

It wasn’t really that hard, as long as he didn’t let himself want anything.

As long as he didn’t linger in the bathroom or halls, as long as he sat down promptly when he entered a classroom, as long as he didn’t try to eat at the wrong table, nobody bothered him except jackal boy. And jackal boy’s torture was bearable, even at its worst

The problem was, Luke couldn’t always stop himself from wanting more.

He wanted home and he wanted his family and he wanted Jen alive again. And he wanted all the third children to be free, so he didn’t have to go around pretending to be someone else anymore.

Those were impossible dreams, little fantasies that he played with in his mind in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep.

The glow of those fantasies always made reality seem even bleaker the next morning.

But everything else he wanted seemed impossible, too.

He wanted to be able to climb into bed each night without even looking at jackal boy—without saying, “I am the dumbest lecker alive,” a hundred times, without doing a single push-up, pull-up, sit-up, or toe-touch. Once during a nightly session, he dared to mumble, “Leave me alone,” to jackal boy. But when Luke looked up, jackal boy was laughing hysterically.

“Did you—did you say what I thought—you said?” he sputtered between laughs. “‘Leave me alone.’ Oh, that’s a good one, you stupid fonrol. You going to make me? Go ahead. Make me.”

Jackal boy had his fists up, a taunting grin smeared across his face. Behind him, their other roommates gathered, eager for a fight. Eager, it seemed, to help jackal boy pound every shred of courage out of Luke.

Luke sized up the height and weight difference just between him and jackal boy. Never mind the rest of the boys. Nobody had to swing a single punch. Luke’s courage was already gone.

At least jackal boy tortured Luke only once a day.

Three times a day, in the cavernous dining hall, Luke longed for food that tasted good. Mouthing bitter greens and mealy bread, he dreamed of Mother’s stews, her biscuits, her apple pies. He could remember the exact sound of her voice asking him, “Want to lick the bowl?” whenever she made a cake. And then the taste of sweet batter.

He could remember every detail of the one time that he and Jen had made cookies together. They’d used special