Margaret Haddix: Among the Imposters

Mr. Dirk walked past his classroom. Luke started to protest, but Mr. Dirk was walking briskly now. Luke had to hurry to keep up. Mr. Dirk walked right up to the front door and turned the knob.

“Isn’t it locked tonight?” Luke wanted to ask. But he was beginning to understand that Mr. Dirk wasn’t going to scold him about ancient history He kept his mouth shut.

The door opened easily Luke and Mr. Dirk stepped outside together.

Tiers of steps lay before them in the twilight. Luke remembered his trepidation climbing these very stairs, his first day at Hendricks. They didn’t seem quite so imposing now, probably because he was at the top looking down, instead of the bottom looking up.

‘Where are we going?” Luke couldn’t resist asking.

For an answer, Mr. Dirk put a finger to his lips.

They climbed down the steps and walked along the expansive driveway June bugs sang, far off in the distance. They made Luke homesick. Back on the farm, his dad and brothers were probably just coming in for supper after a hard day of baling. Mother would just be getting home from the factory.

It didn’t seem right that Luke had just had one of the most terrifying days of his life, and his own family would never know.

“Watch your step,” Mr. Dirk said.

Luke had been so lost in thought, he hadn’t even noticed that they had turned, and were now standing in front of a small cottage. No — not a cottage — the small scale had fooled him. This building had turrets and arches like a castle, but was nestled so neatly behind lilac bushes and rhododendron and forsythia that Luke could have walked right past without seeing it at all.

“Ring the bell,” Mr. Dirk instructed. He turned to go.

Luke was swept with panic.

“Wait!” he cried. Mr. Dirk was hardly a comforting figure, but at least he was familiar. Luke didn’t like being abandoned in a strange place, without explanation.

“I trust you can find your way back on your own, when you are finished,” Mr. Dirk said, and disappeared into the shadows.

There was nothing for Luke to do but press the doorbell.

“Come in,” a deep voice called from inside.

Luke gave the door a little push. It was made of the same kind of heavy wood as all the doors at Hendricks. It barely moved. Timidly, Luke edged it open and stepped inside.

A dim room lay before him. Prisms hung from old-fashioned lamps. Wood-framed couches curved between oddly shaped tables cluttered with dozens of framed pictures. Luke didn’t even notice the man in the wheelchair until he cleared his throat.

“Welcome, young man,” the man said. He was older than either Luke’s parents or Mr. Talbot. He had thick white hair that swelled above his forehead like a snowbank. He wore crisp khaki pants and a pale blue shirt — the same kind of Baron clothes Luke had almost become accustomed to wearing himself. “Would you care for a drink? Bottled water, perhaps?”

Luke shook his head, baffled. Questions swarmed in his mind.

“George,” the man called.

Mr. Talbot stepped into the room from the back part of the house.

Luke’s knees went weak with relief. Finally! Someone who could explain.

“Mr. — ” Luke began.

But Mr. Talbot shook his head warningly He waved a long bar in front of Luke’s chest and his legs, then behind his back. Finally he leaned back and announced, “He’s clean. No bugs.”

“I hate all this technology, don’t you?” the man in the wheelchair said, leaning back as though Mr. Talbot’s announcement had freed him to relax. He stirred a cup he held in his hand. Luke thought he caught a whiff of something like the chicory coffee his parents had sometimes drunk as a special treat. “But now I can introduce myself. I’m Josiah Hendricks. You know my friend here, I presume.”

Luke could only nod.

“Sit down, sit down,” Mr. Hendricks said. “No need to stand on ceremony.

Luke noticed that Mr. Talbot, always so much in charge every other time Luke had seen him, obeyed instantly Luke quickly sank into an armchair as well.

Mr. Hendricks sipped his drink.

“You are an inquisitive young man,” he said to Luke. “You wish some explanations. No?”

“Yes,” Luke said eagerly He looked over at Mr. Talbot, expectantly But Mr. Talbot was staring pointedly at Mr. Hendricks.

“Once I was a very rich man,” Mr. Hendricks said. “I spent my money foolishly — who doesn’t when they have more money than they know what to do with? There is a long and not particularly attractive story about how I spent my younger days. But suffice it to say that I was given reason to develop compassion by the time of the Great Famines.” He looked down quickly. Luke saw for the first time that both of his pants legs hung empty below the knee. “I am not disguising anything for you tonight,” Mr. Hendricks said softly.

Luke shifted uncomfortably in his chair. What was he supposed to say? Evidently nothing. Mr. Hendricks went on with his tale.

“You know the Government was considering letting the ‘undesirables’ starve, do you not?” Mr. Hendricks asked. “When there is not enough food, who deserves to eat? The blind girl? The deaf boy? The man missing his legs?”

The anger in his voice was unbearable. Luke stumbled over his own tongue, ready to say anything to move the story along.

“Jason — I mean, the one taken away this morning — he told me about that. At school.”

“Indeed,” Mr. Hendricks said. He seemed lost in thought, then roused himself to continue. “My family— and I — spent millions on bribes, to convince the Government to have a heart They left the disabled alone. And passed the Population Law instead.” He frowned, stirring his coffee. “And how compassionate had I been? I saved my own kind, knowing that others would likely be killed. So I set up the schools. As penance.”

“Mr. Hendricks foresaw what others did not,” Mr. Talbot said. “He understood that hundreds of illegal children would be born, and hidden. And he knew they’d need safe places to go if they were able to come out ofhiding.”

“But I thought your schools were for autistic kids, kids with phobias, the ones who—” Luke stopped. “Oh,” he said.

Mr. Hendricks chuckled.

“So my charade fooled you?” he asked. “Who can tell if a child rocks because he has autism or because he is terrffied out of his wits? Who can tell if agoraphobia is caused by oddities in the mind or lifelong warnings, ‘Going outdoors is suicide’? In the beginning, yes, I accepted children whose problems stemmed from other causes. I nurtured a reputation as a schoolmaster who would take on any troubled child. And when the first illegal children began emerging, they came here, too.”

Luke tried to grasp it all.

“So everyone’s an exnay? And everyone knows?” he asked. “The teachers, Ms. Hawkins in the office, the nurse, all the other boys—”

“Oh, no.” Mr. Hendricks shook his head emphatically “My charade is complete. I don’t even know for sure which boys are which. I don’t want to know. There is the possibility of—”

“Torture,” Mr. Talbot said grimly.

“Those I don’t know, I can’t betray,” Mr. Hendricks said. ‘And I hire only employees who seem uniquely capable of ignorance. Teachers so enamored of their academic disciplines that they can’t even recognize the students who sit before them for an entire year. Administrative staff whose incompetence is of such towering magnitude that they can’t input records into computers, won’t notice when files are faked or replaced… There’s a certain charm to my system, is there not?”

Luke remembered how Jason’s portable phone had disappeared, how the doors had been locked, how the files under his four friends’ new fake names had magically appeared.