Among the Impostors Read online

  “With all due respect to my friend here,” Mr. Talbot nodded toward Mr. Hendricks, “we don’t really know how Jason and Nina came to work for the Population Police, or why they came to these schools. We’re mostly guessing. They’re just kids, after all.”

  “ ‘Just kids?’ ” Mr. Hendricks protested. “You think only adults are capable of such villainy? Naturally, adults must have put them up to it, but—”

  “I’ll be interrogating both of them tomorrow,” Mr. Talbot interrupted quietly. “Let’s just say I intend to discover facts that my Population Police colleagues probably don’t want me to know. It’s likely that those two kids were offered substantial bribes for their work. Or”—he laughed bitterly—“maybe they were true believers devoted to their cause. Who knows?”

  Luke wondered about that. Long ago, when he’d first met Jen, he’d wondered if the Population Law was correct, if maybe he really didn’t have any right to exist, to eat food that might go to others. But Jen had convinced him that wasn’t so, that everyone had a right to live. No matter what. But what if Jason and Nina had truly believed in what they were doing, even among their enemies—just as Mr. Talbot believed in what he was doing, double-crossing the Population Police, even as he worked in their headquarters every day?

  Luke rubbed his temples. This wore his brain out even more than the history test had. He wished everyone could just be what they were, and not have to pretend.

  The clock in the corner began donging, giving off distinguished, silvery peals. Luke read the time effortlessly, without having to count dongs: eight o’clock.

  “Well,” Mr. Talbot said, rising, “you’ll need to get your things out of your room before the other boys come out of—what do you call it? Indoctrination? And then I can drive you to your next school tonight. I’ll tell you about it on the way.”

  “No,” Luke said.

  Mr. Talbot and Mr. Hendricks looked at him in bafflement. Then Mr. Hendricks chuckled.

  “Oh, so you boys have come up with another name for it besides Indoctrination?”

  Luke understood the old man’s confusion. He could go with that, make up some silly name for Indoctrination, pretend that that was all he’d been objecting to. But it wasn’t.

  “No,” Luke said firmly. “I mean, I don’t want to leave Hendricks.”

  Now Mr. Talbot and Mr. Hendricks absolutely gaped at him, thoroughly aghast. Luke could tell what they were thinking: We gave him a new identity. We gave him a place to hide. We saved his skin today. And now he tells us “no”? How dare he?

  Luke gulped. He wasn’t so sure how he dared, either. Only two months earlier, when he’d left home, he’d been a scared little kid afraid even to speak. He’d had a borrowed name and borrowed clothes—nothing but memories to call his own. But those memories were worth something, and so was he. He wasn’t some pawn to be moved across a chessboard, according to other people’s plans.

  Luke thought about what he’d accomplished at Hendricks—not just what he’d done to help outsmart Jason, but what he’d done making his garden, trying to make friends, studying for his tests. Jen, you’d be proud, he thought. He tried to figure out how to explain to Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Talbot.

  “I’m glad you want to help me,” Luke started softly. “And I’m, um, honored that you think I’m ready to leave. But I don’t think I’m done here. When I came out of hiding I told my parents that I wanted to help other third children. Only, I didn’t know how. But now I do. I want to help them here.”

  Mr. Talbot and Mr. Hendricks exchanged glances. Then Mr. Talbot sat down.

  “Tell us more,” he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The sun was barely over the horizon, but it was already a steamy day. Luke brushed sweat out of his eyes and pushed another seed into the ground. It was late in the season to plant a garden, but they’d had to wait until after exams. Luke could only hope for a late frost in the fall.

  Behind Luke, four other boys clutched a sturdy rope stretched across the garden rows. One boy dipped quickly toward the ground, dropping a seed before he straightened up.

  “Good, Trey,” Luke said, laughing. “But it’s easier if you open your eyes.”

  “I might see something that way,” Trey grumbled. “Everything’s so bright out here.

  “Just smell, then,” Luke suggested.

  Trey breathed deeply.

  “It’s so fresh,” he said in a marveling voice.

  “Wait until you taste the peas you’re planting,” Luke said.

  Luke was still surprised that Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Talbot had agreed to his plan.

  “I never intended to run an agricultural school,” Mr. Hendricks had grumbled. “Some of these boys are from the richest families—or supposedly from the richest families—”

  “Then they need to know how food grows, as much as anyone,” Luke answered, surprised at his own tone of authority.

  Sometimes Luke wondered if he was just taking the easy way out—staying at Hendricks because it was familiar, growing a garden because that’s what he liked. But the Population Law had started over food, so nobody could say that growing food wasn’t important Or maybe that was the problem—that people had started believing it wasn’t important.

  Luke watched Trey plant another seed, this time with his eyes open.

  “This little thing is really going to grow?” Trey asked incredulously.

  Luke nodded.

  “It ought to,” he said. “And it’ll be yours.”

  He hadn’t been able to tell Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Talbot how much longer he wanted to stay at Hendricks school. Last week’s exams had pointed out plenty of holes in his education, and he knew now that he could learn here. And, no matter what, he knew it had to be good for the other boys to get outside.

  “Are you some kind of a teacher?” one of the boys behind Trey asked Luke. He spoke hesitantly, like a little kid just learning how to talk. “What’s your name?”

  “Just call me ‘L,’ ” Luke said, without thinking.

  Now, where had that come from? It wasn’t Luke, it wasn’t Lee—it was, somehow, both identities at once.

  Just like Luke himself.

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  SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2001 by Margaret Peterson Haddix

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  Also available in a hardcover edition.

  Book design by Heather Wood

  First paperback edition October 2002

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Haddix, Margaret Peterson.

  Among the impostors / Margaret Peterson Haddix

  p. cm.

  Sequel to: Among the hi
dden

  Summary: In a future where the law limits a family to only two children, third-born Luke has been hiding for the entire twelve years of his life, until he enters boarding school under an assumed name and is forced to face his fears.

  ISBN 978-0-689-83904-7 (hc)

  [I. Fear-Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations-Fiction. 3. Science fiction.] I. Title. PX7.H1164 Ap 2001

  [Fic]-dc21 00-058325

  ISBN 978-0-689-83908-5 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-0-689-84808-7 (eBook)