Margaret Haddix: Among the Imposters

Stupid, Luke chided himself How can you be homesick for doorknobs?

Blinking quickly, he shoved on the door and it gave way Blindly, he stepped in.

He was at the back of a huge classroom. Boys sat in row upon row upon row, dozens of them, it seemed to Luke, all the way to the front of the room. There, the tall, thin man who’d just given Luke demerits was writing on the wall.

Or was it the same man? Luke squinted, confused. Oh. There was a door at the front of the room, too. That was the door the man had used. But had Luke and Rolly really walked so far between the doors? Suddenly, Luke wasn’t sure of anything.

Luke scanned the row of boys in front of him, looking for Rolly He was supposed to stay close to Rolly, so that’s what he’d do. But now he couldn’t even remember if Rolly had brown hair or black, short or long, curly or straight. He’d really never looked that closely at Rolly, just followed him and gotten beat up by him. Any of the heads in front of him might belong to Rolly.

The man at the front of the class turned around.

‘And the Greeks were — sit down—” he interrupted himself impatiently.

He was looking at Luke.

“M-Me?” Luke squeaked. “W-Where should I sit?”

His voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. There was no way the man could have heard him, all the way at the front of the room. Probably the boy sitting a foot away hadn’t even heard him. But suddenly every boy in the room turned around and stared at Luke.

It was awful. All those eyes, all looking at him. It was straight out of Luke’s worst nightmares. Panic rooted him to the spot, but every muscle in his body was screaming for him to run, to hide anywhere he could. For twelve years — his entire life — he’d had to hide. To be seen was death. ‘Don’t!” he wanted to scream. ‘Don’t look at me! Don’t report me! Please!”

But the mqscles that controlled his mouth were as frozen as the rest of him. The tiny part of his mind that wasn’t flooded with panic knew that that was good — now that he had a fake I.D., the last thing he should do was act like a boy who’s had to hide. But to act normal, he needed to move, to obey the man at the front and sit down. And he couldn’t make his body do that, either.

Then someone kicked him.

‘Ow!” Luke crumbled.

Rough hands jerked him backwards. Miraculously, he landed on the corner of a chair, barely regained his balance, and managed not to fall completely. He slid to his right and was solidly in the seat.

‘Thank you,” the man at the front said with exaggerated, mocking gratitude. ‘See me after class. As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, the Greeks were quite technologically advanced for their time….

Then Luke could no longer hear the man’s words over the buzzing in his ears. His heart kept thumping hard, as if it, at least, still thought Luke would be wise to run. But Luke resolutely gripped the edge of the chair. He was acting normal now. Wasn’t he? The boys who had been staring at him slowly began turning back to face the teacher again. Luke wiped sweat from his forehead and looked around for whoever had kicked and pulled and shoved him. Had they been trying to help him? Luke desperately wanted to believe that. But all the boys near him were looking at the teacher, nonchalantly as though Luke weren’t even there. And if they’d been trying to help, wouldn’t they be trying to catch Luke’s eye, to get him to say thanks?

Luke really didn’t know. He knew how his family would act — Mother and Dad, Matthew and Mark. Mother and Dad would never kick him, and his older brothers would be poking him now, taunting him, ‘Want us to kick you again?”

The only other people Luke had ever met before today were Jen’s dad — who was practically as big a mystery as the boys sitting beside him now — and Jen. And Jen would…

Luke couldn’t bear to think about Jen.

A bell rang suddenly and it was such an alarming sound that Luke’s heart set to pounding again.

“Remember! Chapter twelve!” the teacher called as all the boys scrambled up.

Luke meant to go see the teacher, as he’d been instructed. This had to be the end of the class. But the tide of boys swept him out the back door of the classroom before he quite knew what was happening. By the time he got his feet firmly on the ground, and felt like he might be able to break away he was around a corner and down another hall. He fought his way back to what he thought was the original hallway But then he couldn’t figure out which way to turn. He looked all around, frantically searching for either the teacher or Rolly — as nasty as he’d been, Rolly was at least sort of familiar. But all the faces that flowed past him were strangers’s.

Of course, the way Luke’s mind was working, both Rolly and the teacher could have paraded past Luke five times and he might not have even recognized them.

The crowd in the hall was thinning out. Luke began to panic again.

‘Get to class,” an older boy standing nearby ordered him.

“Where?” Luke said. “Where’s my class?”

The boy didn’t hear him. Luke thought about asking again, louder, but the boy seemed to be some sort of guard, someone in charge, like a policeman.

Like the Population Police.

Luke put his hand over his mouth and veered away down another hall. Another bell rang and boys started running, desperate to get into their classrooms. Hopelessly, Luke followed a group of three or four through a doorway into another classroom. At least, he thought it was another classroom. For all he knew, he might have circled around and gone into the same one all over again. Maybe that was good. Maybe after class this time, he could make it up to talk to the teacher— It was a short, fat man who stood up to talk this time.

As confused and panicky as Luke felt, even he could tell it wasn’t the same teacher.

Luke hastily sat down, terrified of drawing attention to himself again. He resolved to listen carefully this time, to pay attention and learn. He owed it to everyone — to Mother and Dad, to Jen’s father, even to Jen herself.

It was ten minutes before he realized that the man at the front was speaking some other language, one Luke had never heard before and didn’t have a prayer of understanding.

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.