Among the Imposters

Eighteen

When dinner was over that night, Luke slipped out of the dining hail behind all of the other boys. Instead of going into the evening lecture room like everyone else, he ducked down a dark hall. It wasn’t a direct route to the door that led outside, but if Luke turned three corners and backtracked a bit, he’d get there.

I know the school really well now, Luke marveled. If I had a note I needed to read in private now, it wouldn’t be a problem at all.

Luke felt decades older than the scared little boy who’d worried so over the note from Jen’s dad. And gotten so upset when he read it.

It was just a scrap of paper. What did I expect?

Luke wondered: Would he ever look back on this day and regret getting so upset about his ruined garden?

No.

Luke had told himself it didn’t matter if he ran into hall monitors. He could just start asking them questions: Why did you destroy my garden? What if I toldthe headmaster that you’ve been sneaking out? But now, creeping down the deserted hallway, he was glad he didn’t have to test his bravado. As far as he could tell, the hall monitors only guarded the main route to the door. He’d suspected as much. The monitors didn’t have to be very cautious, because most of the boys at the school behaved like sheep, only going where they were told. And all of the teachers seemed to be gone in the evenings.

Luke reached the final corner before the doorway, and stopped. The sound of his watch ticking seemed to fill the entire hall. Luke pressed his wrist to his chest to muffle it. Then it was his heart pounding that seemed too loud. His ears roared with listening.

Was this how Jen had felt, the night she left for the rally? Brave, reckless, crazy, courageous, terrified — all at once?

It didn’t seem right to compare. Jen had been going to the rally — leading it, in fact — in an effort to win rights for third children all over the nation. Even her parents didn’t know what she was doing. But she had believed so strongly that nobody should have to hide that she’d died for it.

Luke was mad about a garden.

Thinking that way, Luke felt foolish. He wondered if he should turn around. But just because Jen’s cause had been enormous, that didn’t mean Luke’s was unimportant. Like Jen, Luke wanted to right a wrong.

Just then he heard the sounds he’d been waiting for: someone whispering, a muffled laugh, the click of the door latching. Luke waited a full five minutes — it was too dark to see his watch, so he counted off the tics. Then he tiptoed out of the shadows and followed the others out the door.