Among the Imposters

For example, by the end of the week, Luke was even more baffled by the lack of windows than ever before. Because he’d discovered: There wasn’t a single window in the entire place.

To learn that, Luke had to make himself figure out the floor plan of the entire school. He had to be sure that he peeked into every classroom, every sleeping room, every office. One morning at breakfast, he even pretended to get turned around and plowed straight into the kitchen. Two cooks screamed, and Luke was given a stern lecture and a record ten demerits, but he found out what he wanted to know: Even the kitchen lacked windows.

Why? Why would anyone build a windowless school?

Luke wondered if there’d been something unusual about his family’s house, that it had had windows, and he’d just accepted it as the norm. But, no — all the houses and schools and other buildings Luke had seen in books had had windows. And when the Government built Jen’s neighborhood, all the houses there had windows. And Jen’s family and their neighbors were Barons — if Baron houses had windows, why didn’t Baron schools?

Luke couldn’t figure out the other boys, either. There were rocking boys in most of his classes, he realized now. Several times, Luke practically hypnotized himself staring at them. But they seemed harmless enough.

The boys who worried Luke were the ones he called “the starers”—the ones who looked back when he looked at them.

All the hall monitors were starers.

So was jackal boy.

Luke tried to tell himself that the starers bothered him only because he’d spent so much time in hiding. Of course he didn’t like being stared at. They were probably just acting normal, and he was in danger of giving away his real identity by getting disturbed by it.

Somehow he couldn’t believe that.

At night when jackal boy tormented him, Luke kept his eyes trained careftilly on the ground. But he could feel jackal boy’s gaze on the side of his face as definitely as he would feel a slap or a punch.

“Say, ‘I am an exnay of the worst order,”’ jackal boy ordered him as usual one evening.

Luke mumbled the words. He wondered what would happen if he looked up and unleashed his questions on jackal boy: Why do you stare? Why aren’t there any windows? Why do we never go outside? Why was the door open that one day? And finally: Are there any other shadow children here?

But of course he couldn’t ask jackal boy Jackal boy thought it was funny to make Luke wave his arms for five minutes straight. Jackal boy was only interested in humiliating Luke. He’d probably think it was amusing to tell the Population Police, “I know where you can find a third child. How big~s my reward?”

So Luke bit his tongue and gritted his teeth and touched his finger to his nose fifty times, as ordered. He jogged in place until his legs ached. He reached for his toes again and again, until jackal boy said in a bored voice, “Get out of my sight”.

Luke crawled into bed unsure whether to be relieved that he hadn’t blown his cover, or disappointed that he hadn’t found the answers to his questions.

That night in bed, he was too busy puzzling over all his mysteries to even think about whispering his own name. When he had his pretend conversations, he asked advice, instead of offering apologies.

What do you think, len? What’s wrong with this place? Is there something wrong? You went out into the world on fake passes all the time. Do people everywhere act like the boys at Hendricks?

And, Mother, Dad, what’s your opinion? Is it okay if I go out into the woods again?

But it was ridiculous to feel like he had to get permission from parents he’d never see again. Or to ask advice from a friend who was dead. It was just too bad that that was all he had.

Luke swallowed a lump in his throat. He couldn’t solve the school’s mysteries. But he was going back to the woods no matter what.

Thirteen

Luke worked out a plan for leaving the school every day after lunch, and coming back right before dinner.

It was sort of a compromise — he thought he ought to go to some classes, no matter how little sense they made to him. And this way he wouldn’t miss any meals. He was already hungry all the time. He already had trouble keeping his fancy Baron pants hitched up on his scrawny frame.

The first day he left, he slipped out while the hall monitor was looking the other way. He knew now that none of the other boys would even notice.

So easy, Luke thought to himself as he jogged across the lawn to the woods. Why don’t all the boys escape out here?

He decided it wasn’t worth troubling himself with unanswerable questions.

The sun was shining, and he could tell that even the leaves that had been curled up and tiny a week earlier were full grown and spread out now. High overhead, the arc of tree limbs in some parts of the woods blocked out the sky completely. It’s like a cave, Luke thought. But that reminded him of hiding and cowering indoors. He moved out into a clearing, where grass struggled to grow through last fall’s dead leaves. It looked like there were raspberry plants, too, mostly buried in tangled brush.

“Raspberries,” Luke whispered, his mouth watering. Mother grew raspberries, back home, and every June she kept the whole family stuffed with raspberry pies and cakes and breads. She made raspberry jam, too, and spread it on their toast and spooned it into their cornmeal mush all year long.

Luke eagerly searched the branches in front of him— tasting a raspberry would be like visiting home, just for a minute. But there weren’t any berries yet, only an occasional bud. And it was likely the weeds would choke out those buds before they matured.

Unless Luke cleared the brush around them.

It only took Luke ten or fifteen minutes to pull the weeds and give the raspberry plants room, but by the time he was done, he had a full-blown idea in his head.

He could grow a whole garden out here. Surely no one would mind, or even find out. In his imagination he saw neat rows of sweet corn, tomato plants, and peas. He could put strawberries and blueberries over at the side of the clearing, where they’d get some shade. He’d want beans, too. Squash wasn’t practical, because it wasn’t much good raw. But there was always cucumber and zucchini, cantaloupe and watermelon… Luke’s stomach growled.

Then he remembered seeds. He didn’t have any.

Luke’s dream instantly withered. How stupid was he that he thought he could grow a garden without seeds? Luke could imagine how Matthew and Mark would make fun of him if they knew. Even Dad and Mother would have a hard time not laughing. Just a month away from home and he’d already forgotten what you needed for a garden.

Luke stared at the measly raspberry plants in disappointment. Then he could almost hear Mother’s voice in his ears: Make the best of what you’ve got How many times had he heard her say that?

Even one raspberry would be delicious.

And maybe he could find blueberry or strawberry plants somewhere in the woods, and transplant them.

And maybe he could get seeds from some of the food at school. The bean sprouts they were always feeding him, for example — could he plant those? He didn’t know what kind of beans they would grow into, but even if they were soybeans, Jen had told him once that the Government thought those were edible. Roasted, maybe. He could build a fire.

And maybe later in the summer, they would serve tomatoes or cantaloupe or watermelon, and he could smuggle the seeds to his room somehow. It would be too late for planting by then, but he could save the seeds for next year…

It made Luke’s throat ache to think of staying at Hendricks School a whole year. A whole year without his family, a whole year of grieving for Jen, a whole year of not speaking to anyone but jackal boy A whole year of