Among the Imposters

Four

When the bell rang after this class, Luke didn’t even try to go against the crowd. This time the flow of traffic carried him to a huge room with tables instead of desks, and bookshelves instead of portraits on the wall. All the other boys sat down and pulled out books and paper and pens or pencils.

Homework. They were doing homework.

Luke felt brilliant for figuring that out. How many times had he watched his older brothers groan over math problems, stumble over reading assignments, scratch out answers in history workbooks? Matthew and Mark did not like school. Once, years ago, Luke had been peering over Mark’s shoulder at his homework, and noticed an easy mistake.

“Isn’t eight times four thirty-two?” he’d innocently asked. ‘You wrote down thirty-four.”

Mark stuck out his tongue and pushed so hard on his pencil that the lead broke.

‘See what you made me do?” he complained. “If you’re so smart, why don’t you go to school for me?”

Mother was hovering over them.

“Hush,” she said to Mark, and that had been the end of it.

Luke’s family didn’t dwell on what they all knew:

Because Luke was the third born, he was illegal, violating the Population Law with every breath he took and every bite of food he ate. Of course he couldn’t go to school, or anywhere else.

But here he was, now, at school. And it wasn’t Matthew and Mark’s little country school, but a grand, fancy place that only the richest people, Barons, could afford. Rich people like the real Lee Grant, who had died in a skiing accident. His family had concealed his death and secretly given his identity card to help a shadow child come out of hiding.

Couldn’t everyone tell that Luke was an impostor?

Luke wished the real Lee Grant were still alive. He wished that he, himself, were still at home, hiding.

“Young man,” someone said in a warning voice.

Luke glanced around. He was the only one still standing. Quickly he slipped into the nearest vacant chair. He didn’t have any books to study or work to do. Maybe this was the time to read the note from Jen’s dad.

But as he reached into his pocket he knew it wasn’t safe. The boy across the table from him kept looking up, the boy two chairs down kept whispering and pointing. Though Luke kept his head down, he could feel eyes all around him. Even if no one was looking directly at him, Luke felt itchy and anxious just being in the same room with so many other people. He couldn’t read the note. He could barely keep himself from bolting out of his chair, running out the door, finding some closet or small space to hide in.

And then everybody would know that he wasn’t really Lee Grant. Everybody would know that all he knew was how to hide.

Luke forced himself to sit still for two hours.

When a bell went off again, everyone trouped down a hall to a huge dining area.

Luke hadn’t eaten since breakfast at home — his mother’s lightest biscuits and, as a miraculous farewell treat, fresh eggs. Luke could remember the pride shining in her eyes. as she had slid the plate in front of him.

“From the factory?” he had asked. Eggs usually were not available for ordinary people, but his mother worked at a chicken factory, and if her supervisOrs, were in a good mood, s~fnetimes she got extra food.

Mother had. nodded. “I promised them forty hours of overtime in exchange. Unpaid.”

Luke had gulped.

“Just for two eggs for me?”

Mother had looked at him.

“It was a good trade,” she’d said.

Remembering breakfast gave him a lump in his throat as big as an egg. He wasn’t hungry.

But he sat down, because all the other boys were sitting. Instantly another boy turned on him and glared.

“Seniors only,” he said.

“Huh?” Luke asked.

“Only seniors are allowed at this table,” the boy said, in the same kind of mocking voice that Mark always used with Luke when Luke had said something dumb.

“Oh,” Luke said.

“What are you, some kind of a lecker?” another boy asked.

Luke didn’t know how to answer that. He was so eager to get up, he tripped and crashed into the next table.

“Juniors only,” a boy said there.

Luke tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but it had grown even bigger.

He went from table to table, not even bothering to try to sit- down. At each table, someone said in a bored voice, “Sophomores only,” or “Freshmen only,” or “Eights only”… Luke didn’t know what he was, so he kept moving.

Finally he reached an empty table and sat down.

A bowl of leaves and what looked like germinating soybeans sat in front of him. Was this supposed to be food? The other boys were eating it, so he did, too. The leaves were clammy and bitter and stuck in his throat.

Luke let himself think about potato chips. Nobody was supposed to have junk food, because of the food shortages that led to the Population Law. But Jen had given him potato chips when he’d gone over to her house, secretly, at great risk. He could still taste the salt, could still feel the crisp chips against the roof of his mouth, could still hear.

Jen saying, when he protested that potato chips were illegal, “Yeah, well, we’re illegal, too, so why don’t we enjoy ourselves?”

Jen. If Jen were here now, she wouldn’t put up with bitter leaves and tasteless bean sprouts for supper. She’d be standing up, demanding decent food. She’d go to any table she wanted. She’d march up to the person in charge — the headmaster? — and say, “Why won’t anyone tell me what classes to go to? What are demerits? What are the rules, anyway? You’re not running this school very well!” She’d punch Rolly right in the eye.

But Jen wasn’t there. Jen was dead.

Luke bent his head low over his food. He stopped even pretending to chew and swallow.

After supper everyone was herded into another vast room. A man stood at the front talking about how glorious the Government was, about how their leaders’ wisdom had kept them all from starving.

Lies, Luke thought, and marveled that he had the will even to think that.

Finally another bell rang and the other boys scattered. Luke walked uncertainly up and down strange halls.

“To your room,” a man warned him. “Lights out in ten minutes.”

Luke was so eager to get to his room, he actually found his voice.

“I–I’m new. I don’t know where my room is.”

“Well, then, find out.”

“How?” Luke asked.

The man sighed, and rolled his eyes.

“What’s your name?” he asked, slowly, as though Luke might be too stupid to understand the question.

“L—” Somehow Luke couldn’t bring himself to claim his fake identity. “I know my room number. One fifty-six. I just don’t remember where it is.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” the man growled. “Up those stairs and around the corner.”

Even with the man’s directions, Luke got turned around and had to search and search. By the time he finally saw the engraved 156, his legs were trembling with exhaustion and his feet were blistered from walking in the stiff, unfamiliar shoes. Luke was used to going barefoot He was used to sitting in the house all day, not walking up and down stairs and through labyrinth-like halls.

He stepped through the doorway and headed straight for his bed. It had a spread on it and looked like all the others now. All Luke wanted to do was fall into it and go to sleep and forget everything that had happened that day.

“Did you ask permission?” someone barked at him.

Luke looked around. He was so tired, he hadn’t even noticed that seven boys were sitting on the floor in a circle, playing some sort of card game.

“Per-Permission?” he asked.

One of the boys — probably the one who’d spoken— threw back his head and laughed. He was tall and thin, and older than Luke. Maybe even as old as Luke’s brother Matthew, who was fifteen. But Matthew was familiar, known. Luke couldn’t read this boy’s expression. He had a strange cast to his dark eyes, and his face was oddly shaped. Something about him reminded Luke of the pictures he’d seen in books of jackals.

“Hey!” the boy said. “They sent us a voice replicator. Amazingly human-like form. Voice is a little off, though. Let’s try another one. Repeat after me: ‘I am an exnay I am a fonrol. I am a lecker. I don’t deserve to live.’”

Most of the other boys were laughing now, too, but quietly, as if they didn’t want to miss Luke’s answer.

Luke hesitated. He’d heard those words before: Rolly had called him an exnay and a fonrol, and someone had called him a lecker at dinner. Maybe they were from that foreign language the short, fat teacher had been speaking. Luke had no idea what the words meant, but he could tell that they were probably bad things. Thanks to Matthew and Mark, he could spot a setup.

Luke shook his head.

The jackal boy sighed in exaggerated disappointment.

“Broken already,” he said. He stood up and knocked his fist against Luke’s side the way Luke had seen his father tap on the engine of broken tractors or trucks. “You just can’t get good junk nowadays.”

Luke pulled away He stepped toward his bed.

Jackal boy laughed again.

“Oh, no, not so fast. Permission, remember?. Say, ‘I am your servant. 0 mighty master. I shall do your bidding forever. I will not eat or sleep or breathe unless you say it is to be ~

The boy moved between Luke and his bed. The others leaned forward, menacingly. Like a pack of jackals, Luke thought.

Jackals were nasty, vicious animals. Luke had read a book about them. They tore their prey limb from limb sometimes.

These were really boys, not jackals, Luke reminded himself. But he was too tired to fight.

“I am your servant,” he mumbled. “I–I don’t remember the rest.”

“Why do they always send us the stupid ones?” the jackal boy asked. He looked down at Luke. “Bet you don’t even know your own name.”

“L–Lee,” Luke whispered, looking down at his shoes.

“Lee, repeat after me. ‘I—’”

“I—”

“Am—’”

“Am—”

The jackal boy fed him each word and Luke, hating himself, repeated it. Then the boy made him touch his elbow to his nose. Cross his eyes. Stand on one foot while reciting, “I am the lowest of the low. Everyone should spit on me,” five times. The lights flickered and went out in the middle of this ordeal, and still the jackal boy continued. Finally he yawned. Luke could hear his jaw crack in the dark.

“New boy, you bore me,” he said. “Remove yourself from my presence.

“Huh?” Luke said.

“Go to bed!”

Meekly, Luke slipped beneath his covers. He was still wearing his clothes — even his shoes — but he didn’t dare get back up to take them off The unfamiliar pants bunched up around his waist, and he silently smoothed them out. Touching his pocket reminded him: He still hadn’t read the note from Jen’s dad.

Tomorrow, Luke thought. He felt a little bit of hope return. Tomorrow he would read the note, and then he would know how to find out what classes to go to, how to deal with boys like Rolly and his roommates, how to get by. No — not just to get by. Luke remembered what he’d hoped for, leaving home — was it only that morning? It seemed so long ago. He’d been thinking about making a difference in the world, finding some way to help other third children who had to hide. Luke didn’t expect the note from Jen’s dad to tell him how to do that, but it would give him a start. It would make that possible.

All he had to do was go to sleep and then it would be tomorrow and he could read the note.

But Luke couldn’t sleep. The room was filled with unfamiliar sounds: first the other boys whispering, then breathing deeply, in sleep. The beds creaking when someone turned over. Some vent somewhere blowing air on them all.

Luke ached, missing his room at home, his family, Jen.

And his own name. He felt his lips draw together.

“Luke,” he whispered soundlessly, in the dark. “My name is Luke.”

He waited silently, his heart pounding, but nothing happened. No alarm bells went off, no Population Police swooped in to carry him away. His feeling of hope surged, even more than the fear. His name was Luke. He was nobody’s servant. He was not the lowest of the low. He was Dad and Mother’s son. He was Matthew and Mark’s brother. He was Jen’s friend.

Or — he had been.