Among the Imposters

Thirty One

Luke crept back down to the first floor with only the vaguest plan in mind. He needed Mr. Talbot’s phone number. He needed a phone. The school office should have both.

The school office was locked.

Luke stood before the ornate door for what felt like hours. The door had a glass panel at the top, so he could see in easily. He could make out the shape of a phone on Ms. Hawkins’s desk. He could see old-fashioned file cabinets behind it. Surely there was a file in there with Luke’s name on it — his fake name, anyway. Would Mr. Talbot’s phone number be listed in there, because he was the one who’d brought Luke to the school? Luke thought so. But it did no good unless Luke could get into the files. And no matter how much he jiggled the knob of the office door, the door held firm.

Desperately, Luke kicked it. But the door was thick, solid maple wood. Nothing flimsy at Hendricks. Even the glass was probably— Glass. Luke couldn’t believe how stupid he was being.

He slammed the glass panel with his textbook, and a satisfying spiderweb of cracks crept across it. He hit it again, a little lower, smashing that portion of the panel.

‘And Jason thinks books are useless,” Luke muttered to himself. “Take that!”

Luke covered his hand with part of his pajama sleeve and pushed through the bottom of the glass. Only a few shards fell to the ground. The rest of the panel stayed in place. It was high-quality glass. Anything cheap would have shattered completely, and fallen to the ground with an enormous clatter.

Luke reached on through, until he could touch the knob from inside. He turned it — slowly, slowly — until he heard the click he’d been waiting for. He eased the door open and raced to the filing cabinet.

With only the dim light from the hall, Luke couldn’t read any of the labels on any of the files. He had to carry them out to the door to see whose they were.

The first batch he pulled had Jeremy Andrews through Luther Benton. He replaced them and moved further back in the file. Tanner Fitzgerald through — yes, there it was. Lee Grant.

Luke was surprised by the thickness of his file, considering how short a time he’d been at Hendricks. The first set of papers were school transcripts from other schools— evidently the ones the real Lee Grant had attended, before he died and left his identity to Luke. There were pictures, too, seven of them, labeled, KINDERGARTEN, GRADE ONE, GRADE

— o… all the way up to grade six. Strangely, the photos really did look like Luke. Same sandy hair, pale eyes, worried look. Luke blinked, thinking he’d been fooled. But when he opened his eyes, the resemblance was still there. Had the real Lee Grant looked that much like Luke?

Then Luke remembered something Jen had told him once, about changing photos on the computer.

“You can make people look older, younger, prettier, uglier — whatever you want. If I wanted to make my own fake I.D., I probably could,” she’d bragged.

But Jen had wanted to come out of hiding with her identity intact. She hated the thought of fake I.D.’s.

Staring at the faked pictures, Luke could understand. It was all too strange. He knew he should be reassured by how thoroughly his records had been doctored. But it frightened him instead. There was no sign of the real Luke Garner. Probably even his family would forget him eventually.

Luke didn’t have time for self-pity. He turned the page, hoping his admission papers would be next.

They weren’t. Instead, there was some sort of a daily log. Luke read in horrified fascination:

The log continued in that vein, with an entry for every day Luke had been at Hendricks. There was repeated mention of therapy and treatment, and its success or failure. But Luke had had no entrance interview. He’d had no therapy, no treatment, no attention from the school officials at all. Obviously, this was another faked record.

But who had faked it? And why?

Thoroughly baffled, Luke turned the page. And there was the thick sheaf of his entrance papers.

Mr. Talbot was listed in the second column of the sixteenth page, as an emergency contact.

Luke grabbed the phone and started dialing.