Margaret Haddix - Among the Imposters

— and then drew back.

At the last minute, it was like someone or something screamed, “No!’ in his mind. Mother had talked about God sometimes — maybe that’s who it was. Or maybe it was Jen’s spirit, come to help Luke when her father’s note hadn’t Maybe it was just Luke’s own common sense. Luke didn’t know what he thought about God or ghosts or even his own intelligence, but he knew: He couldn’t risk going to the woods today.

Luke walked on, pretending to be casually.dawdling.

“Get to class,” the monitor growled.

Luke nodded, and stepped into the next classroom he passed. He felt as disappointed as if he’d discovered bars on the door. What was he — a coward?

Luke remembered all the mind games he’d played with himself trying to get up the nerve to go to Jen’s house that first time. He’d waited weeks, always telling himself he was just waiting for the right moment. He had been a coward then.

But he wasn’t being a coward now. Sinking into a seat, as anonymous as every other boy in the room, he actually felt brave, clever, crafty.

Probably he’d just gotten lucky the day before. If he wanted to be able to go the woods again and again and again, without getting caught, he’d have to be smart about it. He’d have to pay attention to everything. Maybe he’d even have to figure out why the hall monitor the night before had been so panicky Before he went back again, he’d have to know it was safe.

Luke looked around the room. Up front, the teacher was drawing complicated-looking mathematical formulas on the chalkboard. Luke couldn’t have solved any of them if his life depended on it. But for once, instead of sinking into despair and staring down at the desk in front of him, Luke got the nerve to peer around at the other boys. A few were watching the teacher. A few were taking notes — er, no, they were drawing pictures of naked girls. Some were blatantly sleeping, their mouths slack-jawed. And some were sitting off to the side, their arms clutched around their legs, rocking.

Luke stared. He didn’t have much to go on, since he’d only known six people before in his entire life, but that rocking certainly didn’t seem like normal behavior.

Eventually the bell rang, and he stumbled into another class. It was the same there: some boys acting normal, some boys rocking endlessly.

Why hadn’t he noticed anything like that before?

He knew why. Every other time he’d looked directly at any of the other boys, he’d glanced quickly, then looked away, for fear that they might actually look back.

You could miss a lot, doing that.

Walking through the hall to his next class, Luke tried an experiment: He stared directly into the eyes of every single boy who went past him.

It was terrifying — even worse than running blindly across a lawn. Luke’s stomach seized up, and he thought he might actually throw up his breakfast oatmeaL He thought his legs might crumple under him, in fear.

But it was also interesting.

Most of the other boys he passed looked away as soon as Luke made eye contact. Some of them seemed to have a sort of sixth sense that warned them off from letting Luke look at them in the first place. Only two or three stared boldly back, their eyes locked on Luke’s just as Luke’s were locked on theirs.

Remember them, Luke ordered himself. But it took all his willpower just to keep himself from looking away.

When he finally arrived in a classroom doorway, Luke was shaking all over.

I gave something away, just then, he thought. Now they’ll know.

But he didn’t know who “they” were.

Luke made himself wait an entire week before he went back to the woods. But in that time, no matter how closely he paid attention to everything, the mysteries only seemed to multiply.

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.