Among the Imposters

Twenty Eight

Luke hardly dared to breathe. He held his book high over his head.

Jason still didn’t move.

What if Luke had killed him?

Luke knelt down and put his hand in front of Jason’s nose. Very, very faintly, he felt bursts of air every few seconds. Jason wasn’t dead, only knocked unconscious.

For how long?

Luke wasted time staring at Jason’s motionless body. Luke wouldn’t have wanted to be a murderer, but everything would be easier if Jason were dead.

Luke could kill him now.

Everything in Luke recoiled against that notion. Jason was the worst kind of fake — an informer, a traitor, someone who pretends to be a friend and then betrays. He probably had as good as killed four boys whose only crime was existing. Jason deserved to die.

But Luke couldn’t kill him.

Luke was desperately trying to get his paralyzed brain to come up with another option, when the portable phone rang. The noise echoed in the stairwell as shrilly as a hundred roosters, all crowing at once. It sounded loud enough to wake the dead, not to mention the merely unconscious. Luke grabbed the phone, just to shut it up. It kept ringing. Luke stared at it stupidly. He’d never actually touched a phone before tonight. Didn’t they stop ringing when you picked them up? He punched buttons on the phone at random. Finally, miraculously, the noise stopped.

Luke let out a sigh of relief Why had the phone rung in the first place? Jason had been using it. Then when Luke pulled it away and stomped on it, that must have worked like hanging it up. But for it to start ringing again— Someone was calling Jason.

Fearfully, Luke put the phone to his ear. “Hello?” he whispered.

He had a sudden moment of hope. Maybe he’d misunderstood. Maybe Jason hadn’t said that he worked for the Population Police, but that the exnays didn’t trust him because they thought he might work for the Population Police. Or that the exnays didn’t trust anyone, because of the Population Police. Maybe the person on the other end of the line was a good guy, working for the cause, worried that something had happened to poor, noble, misunderstood Jason.

“Hello?” Luke whispered again.

“Don’t you ever pull that kind of a stunt on me again!” The angry voice on the other end came through the phone as forcefully as a tornado. “You hang up on the Population Police, you’re a dead man. We’ll kill you even before we kill those four exnays you just turned in.”

Luke’s hope dissolved. He struggled to keep his mind from dissolving, too. Think, think. . He’d heard Jen’s dad fool the Population Police once. Mr. Talbot had lied so smoothly that even Luke, who knew the truth, was practically convinced.

Luke put his hand over his mouth. He had to make the man on the other end of the line think he was Jason.

“I’m sorry,” Luke muttered. “It was a mistake. I accidentally. dropped the phone and it shut off by itself.” With a little help from Luke’s foot.

“What? I can’t hear you!’ the man yelled.

“It’s a bad connection,” Luke said, speaking louder. He’d heard Mother and Dad say that all the time. He hoped portable phones could have bad connections, too. “I said I was sorry. I dropped the phone by mistake. I didn’t hang up on you. Why would I hang up on you when I’m trying to convince you to give me more time?”

‘Whatever,” the man growled. Luke could tell: The man didn’t care what had happened. He just wanted Jason to groveL And Luke had done it for hint Luke was good at groveling.

“Here’s how it is,” the man continued. ‘We’ll give you another day. Then that’s it. And, Jason? You get those other boys or else. We’ve got a quota to fill, you know.”

The phone clicked. Luke realized the man on the other end had hung up.

Luke had fooled him. And he’d bought some time. He had another day.

Or until Jason woke up.