Margaret Haddix: Among the Imposters

Something else bothered Luke, too.

“But I wanted to learn a lot at Hendricks,” he said. “Math and science and how to speak other languages…. I’ve been here a month and I haven’t learned a thing. I don’t even know if I’m going to the right classes. I wanted to—” he broke off at the last minute because he remembered he couldn’t talk about being an exnay. He couldn’t say that he wanted to learn everything he could to help make third children legal again.

Jackal boy was laughing anyway.

“Oh, right, we’re all here to learn,” he said, rolling his eyes. This made his friends laugh, too. “Just stick close to me,” jackal boy continued. ‘That’s how you learn what you need to know. Forget the classes. And if you’re worried about grades — don’t you think I know how to fix that, too? How do you think we all got on the honor roll?”

Luke didn’t know. He didn’t even know what the honor roll was.

But when the bell rang for the first class, he left the dining hall with jackal boy and his gang. He felt safe now, traveling in a pack. All the hall monitors he passed gave him knowing looks, with secret nods that nobody else could have noticed.

And when he hesitated between classrooms, jackal boy was quick to tell him where to go.

Luke didn’t go back to his garden by himself anymore. But two or three times a week, jackal boy would whisper in his ear, “Tonight,” and Luke’s heart would jump. “Tonight” meant, “We’re going to the woods. We’re meeting the girls.”

Each time he stepped outside, Luke would breathe in deeply, the same way a starving man gobbled down food. But he noticed that most of the others, all so brave and imposing indoors, positively cowered in the open air. They squeezed their eyes shut and took halting steps forward, like condemned men walking to their executions.

“You don’t like the outdoors, do you?” Luke asked Trey once as they walked across the lawn to the woods.

They shook his head slowly, as if moving too quickly might make him throw up. He looked a little green already

“It’s better in the woods,” he said through gritted teeth. “At least there we’re covered.”

“But—” Luke took another deep breath, savoring the smell of newly mowed grass and spring rain. He couldn’t understand Trey “Don’t you hate being cooped up all the time?”

They gave him a sidelong glance.

“I spent thirteen years in the same room. I didn’t step foot outside even once until I came here.”

“Oh,” Luke said. He suddenly saw that, for a third child, he’d been very lucky. Before the Government tore down the woods behind his house and built a neighborhood there instead, he’d spent most of his time outdoors. Except for not going to school, he hadn’t lived that differently from his older brothers.

He couldn’t imagine spending thirteen years in the same room.

“Jen went shopping on fake passes,” he told They. “Her mother took her to play groups. I thought other third children lived like her.”

“I wouldn’t know,” They said. “I–I wished—” He hesitated. “I miss my room.”

Luke felt sorry for the other boy How many of his other new friends had basically lived their entire lives in a box?

He watched jackal boy running ahead, then circling back to encourage the others.

“Jacka — I mean, Jason must have been like Jen,” Luke said. “He must have gotten out a lot. He’s not afraid of anything.”

“No,” They said. ‘He’s not. He says he’s overcome all his hiding-related phobias. And he’s only been here a few weeks longer than you.”

“He has?” Luke asked in surprise. He’d assumed jackal boy was a long-timer, with years of experience at Hendricks.

“The rest of us only started last fall,” Trey continued. “I think. No one talked much before Jason got here.”

Before he could make sense of that, Luke had to remind himself all over again that “Jason” was really jackal boy It was no wonder that Luke had been confused when he first started at Hendricks — the boys, at least the ones he hung out with now, did go by three or four different names. They might answer to the first or last part of their fake name at school, and the first or last part of their real name out in the woods. That was riskier. A few just went by initials.

Trey had explained that his name just meant “three.” He wouldn’t tell even jackal boy his real name.

They reached the woods, and what They had said finally sunk in.

“Wait a minute,” Luke said. “You mean you weren’t all friends before Jason came? You haven’t been meeting in the woods all along?”

Trey flashed him a puzzled look.

“Just since April,” he said.

Luke’s mind was racing.

“The rally was in April,” he said.

“Yeah,” Trey said with a shrug.

The girls met them then, and they started the same kind of banter Luke had witnessed the first night. It sounded different to Luke now, not as if they were allworldly and experienced, but as if they were reading lines in a play, pretending to talk to each other the way normal boys and girls talked. Nina made jokes about how stupid boys were, and Jason made fun of the girls. Luke watched the faces of the ones who were quiet. They all looked scared.

“What’s this meeting for?” Luke asked suddenly.

Jason turned to look at Luke in surprise.

“Why — we’re planning ways to resist the Government over the Population Law. To follow up the rally.”

“The rally,” Nina echoed wistfully.

Luke’s heart beat fast This was what he’d wanted! He’d wanted to do something brave like Jen. It would be like apologizing to her for not going with her, for doubting her.

But could he be as brave as Jen?

Without dying, too?

“How?” he demanded. “How are we going to resist?”

Nina and Jason looked at each other.

“Well, that’s what we’re deciding,” Nina said. “Just like a boy asking dumb questions!”

But they didn’t decide anything that night. They just joked around some more, made a game of guessing one boy’s real name, and headed back to their schools.

Jason pulled Luke aside as they stepped back into the school building.

“Not everyone’s as ready as you,” he said. “You’ve got to give the others time. As long as they’re trembling in their shoes every time they step outside, they’ll never make good subversives.”

Luke was flattered. It made sense. “Okay,” he said.

Jason playfully punched Luke’s arm.

“Knew you’d understand. Hey — you ready for finals?”

“Finals?” Luke asked.

“You know, next week? End-of-term tests?” Jason said. “You pass, you get out of here, you fail, you’re stuck for life?”

Luke stopped short

“Oh, no.. ,“ he breathed.

Jason laughed.

“Scared you, huh? Remember, you stay on my good side, I’ll make sure your ‘parents’ get to look at a brilliant report!”

“I’m not even going to the right classes!” Luke said, panic coursing through his veins. “And I can’t ask anyone now. It’s been too long—”

“I’ll find out for you!” Jason said, laughing again. He was already halfway down the hall.

Jason was as good as his word. The next morning at breakfast, he handed Luke a computer printout that said, at the top, CLASS SCHEDULE FOR LEE GRANT.It had times, room numbers, teachers’ names.

“Where’d you get this?” Luke asked.

“You think your only computer hacker friend is dead?” Jason said.

He meant Jen. Luke had a flash of missing her all over again. He could picture her sitting at the computer, typing fast. She’d created a chat room for third children, with the password of “free.” She’d connected hundreds of third children, so they weren’t just sitting in their little rooms, all alone. She’d hacked into the records of the national police, to make sure none of the kids going to the third-child rally were caught before they got to the capital.