Among the Imposters

Twenty Five

By the end of the week, all the teachers had test dates written in chalk on their blackboards. And Luke was spending every spare moment studying.

“Why?” Trey asked him one night as they were trudging out to the woods. “Jason can fix your grades. And it’s not like your real parents are going to see them, anyway.”

“When you were stuck in your room,” Luke said, “didn’t you ever want to know anything about the outside world? About whether other people were like you, or different, or whether grass grows the same way all over the world, or how a car runs?~

“Not really,~ They said.

Luke was sorry that he couldn’t explain. It wasn’t the grades themselves that mattered to him. But he felt like he had something to prove. Maybe that people from the country — leckers-weren’t so dumb, after all. Maybe that Jen’s dad hadn’t risked his life for nothing, getting Luke a fake identity. Maybe that Luke wasn’t wasting time just hanging out in the woods making jokes with the girls from Harlow while other third children still had to hide.

He was surprised that, with each day that passed, his classes made more sense to him. The teachers weren’t really that bad, just distant. The history teacher, Mr. Dirk, could tell fascinating stories about kings and knights and battles, and they were all true. The literature teacher could recite whole poems from memory. Luke didn’t always understand all the words, but he liked the cadence and rhyme. The math teacher said once, ‘Aren’t numbers friendly?” and he really seemed to believe it. Luke wondered if the teachers were shy, too — if they had some of those phobias Trey and Jason had talked about, and were downright terrified of looking their students straight in the eye.

The night before his first test, Luke studied through dinner, and skipped going to the woods with all the others during Indoctrination so he could hunch over in a hallway, reading history Jason mocked him—”What are you trying to do, bookworm? Learn as many big words as Trey?” and, “You could read all night and still not pass your tests. Come on.”

“Leave me alone,” Luke growled, eager to get back to the 3frojan War.

Luke was surprised that Jason stepped back instead of insisting.

“Fine,” he said. “Waste your time. See if I care.”

The words sounded like the swaggering boy Luke was used to. But his tone seemed to say something else. So did the set of his shoulders as he walked away. He sounded wary, on edge.

Could Jason possibly be scared of Luke?

Luke was nobody Jason was in charge. Luke decided he was imagining things, and went back to his book.

Still, after lights out, Luke couldn’t sleep. He was too unsettled — worried about the test the next day, wondering what his family was doing back home, wishing Jen were there to figure out Jason for him. He even thought back to the advice Jen’s dad had written for Luke: “Blend in.” Who was Luke supposed to blend in with? The boys who trudged blindly through the halls each day? The ones who followed Jason? Or Jason himself?

Somewhere in the room, a bed creaked.

Luke thought it was just someone turning over in his sleep but he stiffened anyway, and listened hard.

There was a pat-pat-pat that could have been footsteps, or could have been Luke’s imagination. And then, the hall light shone briefly into the room as the door was opened and closed.

Luke sat up. He crept over to the door and opened it a crack so he’d have light to see by.

All the beds were filled with sleeping boys except two. Luke’s.

And Jason’s.