Among the Barons

CHAPTER 22

For just an instant Luke let himself imagine hiding again. He could go back home with Mother and Dad, Matthew and Mark. But he’d be living in the attic, taking his meals on the stairs again, out of sight. He wouldn’t be allowed to look out windows or even to walk past a window.

“I can’t,” Luke said weakly “I can’t go back into hiding.”

“Why not?” Mr. Grant said. ~You were hiding before you got Lee’s name. What’s the big deal about hiding now?”

“It’s.. “ Luke could only shake his head. They were rich and powerful. How could they possibly understand? Having tasted freedom, having been brave, having volunteered to do something grand for the cause — he absolutely could not return now to the nothingness of life in hiding.

“How would you like it if someone told you that you had to go into hiding?” he asked the Grants.

Mrs. Grant stood up with a flounce.

“Oh, this is ridiculous,” she said. “I’ve never had to hide. I’m a legal individual. I have rights. I’m a Baron. It’s not the same.”

“Don’t you think I should have rights, too?” Luke asked.

Then, looking at the two adults’ stony faces, he began to lose hope. They didn’t care about third children. They’d never thought about whether Luke or anyone else like him should have rights or not. He was just a pawn to them, someone they could use for their own purposes and cast aside when they didn’t need him anymore.

“That’s not the point,” Mrs. Grant said. “The point is…” A sly smile crept over her face. “The point is, it doesn’t matter whether you like our plan or not If you sabotage our plan, if you don’t act like Lee, you sabotage yourself. Don’t think we wouldn’t be happy to call the Population Police on you.”

She was threatening him. Luke felt the color drain from his cheeks. He stared into Mrs. Grant’s exquisitely beautiful face, still perfectly made up at three in the morning. She was even still wearing a pearl necklace. What could he possibly say in response?

“But if you want me to help in staging my death…,” Luke began. He was ashamed that his voice came out in a whimper.

“Oh, don’t you worry about that. We’ve got everything planned. We don’t need your cooperation,” Mrs. Grant said with a sickly sweet smile.

And then the secret meeting was over, and Mr. Grant walked Luke back to his room — to Lee’s room. In a daze Luke changed out of the rumpled tuxedo and into his own pajamas. And then he lay in bed, replaying the whole conversation in his mind. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like a nightmare.

We want you to die….

You couldn’t get another identity….

You were hiding before. . What’s the big deal about hiding now?

The Grants might as well kill him for real and be done with it, Luke thought Hiding again would be practically as bad as dying.

And then a resolve began to steal over him. No matter what, he wouldn’t go back into hiding. Surely he could do something, secretly, as part of the underground resistance to the Government. Mr. Talbot had hinted before at the existence of secret workers for the cause. Luke wasn’t sure if any of them had legal identities or not. He remembered three kids he’d met through his friend Nina — Percy, Matthias, and Alia. They’d once been involved in making fake I.D.’s. He wasn’t sure what they were doing now, but maybe he could help them.

Luke’s plans were vague and shadowy at best, but they made him feel better. He wasn’t a Baron like the Grants, he wasn’t legal like the Grants, he wasn’t even an adult. But that didn’t mean he had to roll over and play dead when they said to. That didn’t mean he didn’t have any choices. All he had to do was get in touch with Mr. Talbot, secretly. Mr. Talbot could protect him from the Grants’ schemes.