“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.
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.
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.
Five
Luke didn’t get a chance to read the note from Jen’s dad the next day. Or the next. Or the next.
In fact, an entire week went by with him resolving every night in bed, “Tomorrow Surely I’ll find a way to read the note tomorrow.” But the next nightfall found him still stymied.
At first, he thought there was an easy solution. The bathroom, for example. He could go in, shut the door, read the note.
But none of the bathrooms at Hendricks were like the bathroom at home, closed-in and private. The Hendricks bathrooms were rows of urinals and commodes, right out in front of everyone. Even the shower was communal, just an open, tiled room with dozens of spigots sprouting from each wall.
Luke could barely bring himself to lower his pants with everyone watching, let alone read the note. He always lingered until most of the other boys were gone, but he never found a bathroom that fully emptied out Finally, after three days had passed and he was getting desperate, he resolved to wait in the bathroom for as long as it took, regardless of bells or classes. The bell rang for breakfast and still he remained, pretending to be very concerned with scrubbing his face.
Finally it was just Luke and another boy, standing by the door.
“Out,” the boy said.
The boy was mean-faced and muscular. Luke’s legs trembled, but he didn’t shut off the water.
‘I’m not done,” Luke mumbled, trying to sound nonchalant, unconcerned. He failed miserably.
The boy grabbed Luke’s arm.
“Didn’t you hear me? I said OUT!” The boy jerked so hard on Luke’s arm that Luke felt pain shoot through his whole body. Then the boy shoved Luke out the door. Luke landed in a heap on the hallway floor. A hall monitor looked down at him in disgust
“You’re late for breakfast,” he said. “Two demerits.”
Luke feebly looked from the hall monitor to the other boy, who was now standing menacingly in the bathroom doorway. Then he understood: They were alike. There were guards in all the bathrooms, as well as in all the halls. He couldn’t read the note in either place.
He wondered about trying to read the note in his room. He would get there first at bedtime, he decided. The first several days this was impossible because, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t ever remember which way to go. Left at the top of the stairs, then right, then right, then left? Or was it right, then left, then left, then right? Most nights, it was a miracle if he found the room at all before lights out Though that was just as well, because it reduced the amount of time that jackal boy could spend tormenting him.
Finally, in the middle of Luke’s second week at Hendricks, he sat at the back of the hall during.the evening lecture, so he was the first one up the stairs. Holding his breath, he counted off the turns. Right — yes. Right — yes. Left. And there — yes! Room 156.
