Among the Imposters

Thirty Eight

The sun was barely over the horizon, but it was already a steamy day Luke brushed sweat out of his eyes and pushed another seed into the ground. It was late in the season to plant a garden, but they’d had to wait until after exams. Luke could only hope for a late frost in the fall. Behind Luke, four other boys clutched a sturdy rope stretched across the garden rows. One boy dipped quickly toward the ground, dropping a seed before he straightened up.

“Good, Trey,” Luke said, laughing. “But it’s easier if you open your eyes.

“I might see something that way,” Trey grumbled. “Everything’s so bright out here.

“Just smell, then,” Luke suggested.

Trey breathed deeply

“It’s so fresh,” he said in a marveling voice.

‘Wait until you taste the peas you’re planting,” Luke said.

Luke was still surprised that Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Talbot had agreed to his plan.

“I never intended to run an agricultural school,” Mr. Hendricks had grumbled. “Some of these boys are from the richest families — or supposedly from the richest families—” ‘Then they need to know how food grows, as much as anyone,” Luke answered, surprised at his own tone of authority.

Sometimes Luke wondered if he was just taking the easy way out — staying at Hendricks because it was familiar, growing a garden because that’s what he liked. But the Population law had started over food, so nobody could say that growing food wasn]t important Or maybe that was the problem — that people had started believing it wasn’t important.

Luke watched Trey plant another seed, this time with his eyes open.

“This little thing is really going to grow?” Trey asked incredulously.

Luke nodded.

“It ought to,” he said. “And it’ll be yours.”

He hadn’t been able to tell Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Talbot how much longer he wanted to stay at Hendricks school. last week’s exams had pointed out plenty of holes in his education, and he knew now that he could learn here. And, no matter what, he knew it had to be good for the other boys to get outside.

“Are you some kind of a teacher?” one of the boys behind Trey asked Luke. He spoke hesitantly, like a little kid just learning how to talk. “What’s your name?”

“Just call me ‘L,’” Luke said, without thinking.

Now, where had that come from? It wasn’t Luke, it wasn’t Lee — it was, somehow, both identities at once.

Just like Luke himself.