Among the Imposters

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.”