Among the Imposters (6 page)

I gave something away, just then,
he thought.
Now they’ll know.

But he didn’t know who “they” were.

Twelve

Luke made himself wait an entire week before he went back to the woods. But in that time, no matter how closely he paid attention to everything, the mysteries only seemed to multiply.

For example, by the end of the week, Luke was even more baffled by the lack of windows than ever before. Because he’d discovered: There wasn’t a single window in the entire place.

To learn that, Luke had to make himself figure out the floor plan of the entire school. He had to be sure that he peeked into every classroom, every sleeping room, every office. One morning at breakfast, he even pretended to get turned around and plowed straight into the kitchen. Two cooks screamed, and Luke was given a stern lecture and a record ten demerits, but he found out what he wanted to know: Even the kitchen lacked windows.

Why? Why would anyone build a windowless school?

Luke wondered if there’d been something unusual about his family’s house, that it had had windows, and he’d just accepted it as the norm. But, no—all the houses and

schools and other buildings Luke had seen in books had had windows. And when the Government built Jen’s neighborhood, all the houses there had windows. And Jen’s family and their neighbors were Barons—if Baron houses had windows, why didn’t Baron schools?

Luke couldn’t figure out the other boys, either. There were rocking boys in most of his classes, he realized now. Several times, Luke practically hypnotized himself staring at them. But they seemed harmless enough.

The boys who worried Luke were the ones he called “the starers”—the ones who looked back when he looked at them.

All the hall monitors were starers.

So was jackal boy.

Luke tried to tell himself that the starers bothered him only because he’d spent so much time in hiding. Of course he didn’t like being stared at. They were probably just acting normal, and he was in danger of giving away his real identity by getting disturbed by it.

Somehow he couldn’t believe that.

At night when jackal boy tormented him, Luke kept his eyes trained careftilly on the ground. But he could feel jackal boy’s gaze on the side of his face as definitely as he would feel a slap or a punch.

“Say, ‘I am an exnay of the worst order,”’ jackal boy ordered him as usual one evening.

Luke mumbled the words. He wondered what would happen if he looked up and unleashed his questions on

jackal boy: Why do you stare? Why aren’t there any windows? Why do we never go outside? Why was the door open that one day? And finally: Are there any other shadow children here?

But of course he couldn’t ask jackal boy Jackal boy thought it was funny to make Luke wave his arms for five minutes straight. Jackal boy was only interested in humiliating Luke. He’d probably think it was amusing to tell the Population Police, “I know where you can find a third child. How big~s my reward?”

So Luke bit his tongue and gritted his teeth and touched his finger to his nose fifty times, as ordered. He jogged in place until his legs ached. He reached for his toes again and again, until jackal boy said in a bored voice, “Get out of my sight”

Luke crawled into bed unsure whether to be relieved that he hadn’t blown his cover, or disappointed that he hadn’t found the answers to his questions.

That night in bed, he was too busy puzzling over all his mysteries to even think about whispering his own name. When he had his pretend conversations, he asked advice, instead of offering apologies.

What do you think, len? What’s wrong with this place?
Is
there something wrong? You went out into the world on fake passes all the time. Do people everywhere act like the boys at Hendricks?

And,
Mother, Dad, what’s your opinion? Is it okay if I go out into the woods again?

But it was ridiculous to feel like he had to get permission from parents he’d never see again. Or to ask advice from a friend who was dead. It was just too bad that that was all he had.

Luke swallowed a lump in his throat. He couldn’t solve the school’s mysteries. But he was going back to the woods no matter what.

Thirteen

Luke worked out a plan for leaving the school every day after lunch, and coming back right before dinner.

It was sort of a compromise—he thought he ought to go to some classes, no matter how little sense they made to him. And this way he wouldn’t miss any meals. He was already hungry all the time. He already had trouble keeping his fancy Baron pants hitched up on his scrawny frame.

The first day he left, he slipped out while the hall monitor was looking the other way. He knew now that none of the other boys would even notice.

So easy,
Luke thought to himself as he jogged across the lawn to the woods.
Why don’t all the boys escape out here?

He decided it wasn’t worth troubling himself with unanswerable questions.

The sun was shining, and he could tell that even the leaves that had been curled up and tiny a week earlier were full grown and spread out now. High overhead, the arc of tree limbs in some parts of the woods blocked out the sky

completely.
It’s like a cave,
Luke thought. But that reminded him of hiding and cowering indoors. He moved out into a clearing, where grass struggled to grow through last fall’s dead leaves. It looked like there were raspberry plants, too, mostly buried in tangled brush.

“Raspberries,” Luke whispered, his mouth watering. Mother grew raspberries, back home, and every June she kept the whole family stuffed with raspberry pies and cakes and breads. She made raspberry jam, too, and spread it on their toast and spooned it into their cornmeal mush all year long.

Luke eagerly searched the branches in front of him— tasting a raspberry would be like visiting home, just for a minute. But there weren’t any berries yet, only an occasional bud. And it was likely the weeds would choke out those buds before they matured.

Unless Luke cleared the brush around them.

It only took Luke ten or fifteen minutes to pull the weeds and give the raspberry plants room, but by the time he was done, he had a full-blown idea in his head.

He could grow a whole garden out here. Surely no one would mind, or even find out. In his imagination he saw neat rows of sweet corn, tomato plants, and peas. He could put strawberries and blueberries over at the side of the clearing, where they’d get some shade. He’d want beans, too. Squash wasn’t practical, because it wasn’t much good raw. But there was always cucumber and zucchini, cantaloupe and watermelon
...
Luke’s stomach growled.

Then he remembered seeds. He didn’t have any.

Luke’s dream instantly withered. How stupid was he that he thought he could grow a garden without seeds? Luke could imagine how Matthew and Mark would make fun of him if they knew. Even Dad and Mother would have a hard time not laughing. Just a month away from home and he’d already forgotten what you needed for a garden.

Luke stared at the measly raspberry plants in disappointment. Then he could almost hear Mother’s voice in his ears:
Make the best of what you’ve got
How many times had he heard her say that?

Even one raspberry would be delicious.

And maybe he could find blueberry or strawberry plants somewhere in the woods, and transplant them.

And maybe he could get seeds from some of the food at school. The bean sprouts they were always feeding him, for example—could he plant those? He didn’t know what kind of beans they would grow into, but even if they were soybeans, Jen had told him once that the Government thought those were edible. Roasted, maybe. He could build a fire.

And maybe later in the summer, they would serve tomatoes or cantaloupe or watermelon, and he could smuggle the seeds to his room somehow. It would be too late for planting by then, but he could save the seeds for next year.
...

It made Luke’s throat ache to think of staying at Hendricks School a whole year. A whole year without his family, a whole year of grieving for Jen, a whole year of not speaking to anyone but jackal boy A whole year of having nothing but a fake name and clothes that didn’t fit.

Luke stood up and planted his feet firmly on the ground.

“I have the woods,” he said aloud. I’ll have the garden. This is mine.”

Fourteen

By the end of the week, Luke had a nice plot of land cleared. The raspberry plants were at the center, and he had straight lines of bean sprouts planted on either side. It was Dad he pretended to appeal to most now.

“What do these look like to you, Dad?” he’d say aloud, as though Dad were really there to answer. “Am I just wasting my time? Or will I have a good crop come fall?”

Luke truly wasn’t sure. But he felt so proud, looking at the neat little garden. He kept meaning to explore more of the woods, but he was always too busy digging and weeding, tending his plot. Anxiously he shooed away squirrels and chipmunks, and wished that he could stay out and guard his garden all the time.

But each afternoon he kept a close eye on the Baron watch he now wore on his wrist, so he could run back to the school promptly at six o’clock. He’d found the watch in his suitcase, and faced quite a chore figuring out how to read it. Those lines and “V’s” and “X’s” on it were numbers, he knew, but different from what he was used to. Why did Barons always have to make everything so fancy and com

plicated? Back home Mother and Dad had just a single digital clock, in the kitchen. It blinked off the minutes as clear as could be. This watch was like a foreign language to Luke. But he stared at the angle of the rays of sun, he studied the digital clocks at school and compared them with the watch on his wrist—eventually he understood the Baron watch as well as any other.

That made him feel proud, too.

So did his next accomplishment.

One day at lunch they served baked potatoes in the school dining hall. They were so undercooked, they practically crunched. Luke bit into a raw end that hadn’t even had its eye removed. Spitting it out, he complained to himself,
I’d rather plant this than eat it.

Plant this. Of course. How many springs had Luke spent cutting up potatoes for planting? He and Mother, perched over a three-gallon bucket, knives flashing. When he was little, he’d always tried to rest his feet on the top of the bucket, the same way Mother did, but he was never tall enough. Even when he was tall enough, he never balanced things right He’d tip the whole bucket over. Mother would look at him sternly and sigh, “Pick it up.” But then she’d smile, like she wasn’t really mad. She’d talk to him the whole time they worked: “Careful with the knife—don’t cut toward your hand.~ You’re making sure there’s an eye in every potato, aren’t you? Nothing will grow without an eye.”

But potatoes would grow without a seed. He just needed a raw potato.

Covertly, Luke used his fork to separate the cooked and raw part of his potato. The raw part he dropped into his hand, and slipped into his pocket. Probably nobody had ever used Baron pants for transporting potato parts before, but Luke didn’t care.

As soon as the bell rang for the end of lunch, Luke moved quickly among the tables, grabbing the left-behind potato pieces wherever he could. His pockets were stuffed in a matter of minutes.

He walked stiffly down the hall and out his door, trying not to smash the potatoes.

Nobody noticed.

Out in the woods, Luke dumped out his pockets and examined his treasure. He had eight potato pieces that looked like good candidates for planting. He wished he’d thought to smuggle a knife out of the dining hall, too, but that couldn’t be helped. He halved as many of the potatoes as he could using his fingernails and brute force. Then he planted them in a row beside the beans.

When he was done, Luke sat back against a tree trunk and surveyed his work. It looked good. In a few days he’d know if anything was going to grow. He thought the bean sprouts looked bigger. At least they weren’t withering yet

After a few minutes of rest, Luke walked down to a creek that ran through the woods and cupped his hands in it, making trip after trip to bring back water for his garden. If only he had one of those three-gallon buckets now! Even a cup would help. Maybe he could bring one from the dining room.

In the meantime, he really didn’t mind using his hands. Walking back and forth between the creek and his garden, Luke felt a strange surge of emotion, one he hadn’t felt in so long that he’d practically forgotten what it was.

Happy,
he thought in amazement.
I’m happy.

Fifteen