Among the Impostors

Luke drags Jason down the stairs and down the hall to the nurse’s office, knocking and calling out through the door that his friend is sick. Luke tells the nurse that Jason had a seizure and was spouting lies in a delirious state. He asks if the nurse can give Jason something to keep him asleep. Once they get Jason to the bed, the nurse asks if Jason hit his head and Luke responds that it’s possible since he was thrashing around in his sleep. The nurse begins to question his story and Luke suggests they strap Jason down so he doesn’t have another episode. The nurse ignores the advice and takes both of their names, eyeing Luke carefully. She types up an account of the injury and has Luke sign it, telling him to go to bed. As Luke leaves, he wonders if there was another way he could have handled the situation. He concludes that taking Jason to the nurse was the only viable option but worries that Jason will explain what happened when he wakes up. Luke realizes he left the phone and his textbook on the stairs and goes to get them, only to find the textbook and no phone.

Luke searches the stairwell landing for the phone, unable to believe it’s gone. He wonders who could have taken it. He realizes he can’t trust anyone, but also understands the lives of the four boys whom Jason reported are in danger, as well as his own. Luke considers hiding but determines that the best strategy is to stop the Population Police from ever searching the school. He knows he needs someone who can handle the Population Police and concludes the best option is to contact Mr. Talbot.

Luke goes to the front office to locate his school file, as he thinks Mr. Talbot’s phone number will be attached to his information. When he sees the office is locked, he breaks in using his textbook to shatter the glass. Luke finds his file and is surprised to see photos of Lee Grant that look exactly like him. He remembers Jen telling him that photos can be altered using the computer. The resemblance in the photos terrifies him and he worries his real identity may become lost forever. He finds that his file also contains a daily log of his behavior, but none of it is true. It mentions therapy and treatments that Luke never actually experienced. He realizes it’s all fake and he can’t imagine who was responsible for writing it. He finally finds his entrance papers and locates Mr. Talbot’s number.

Luke tells Mr. Talbot that his advice to blend in has failed and must come get Luke. It’s not clear that Mr. Talbot understands, and he calmly advises Luke to continue to give school a chance. Frustrated and panicked, Luke tries to convey the urgency of the situation and tells Mr. Talbot he’s having a problem like he had before. Mr. Talbot responds by telling Luke he needs to attack that problem first and Luke hopes he’s speaking in some sort of coded language. Luke tells Mr. Talbot he can’t because there are four other problems now and it’s an emergency. He feels proud, thinking that he conveyed the message without revealing any information, but Mr. Talbot suddenly sounds annoyed and tells Luke he can handle his own problems and hangs up.

Luke feels as though he’s failed and Mr. Talbot didn’t understand his message. He wonders if Jen ever felt like giving up and he thinks to himself that he will never live up to her bravery and heroism. He cleans up the papers in the office and walks out, deciding he and the others will just have to run away, possibly to the city. He tries to head outside to see if it’s near daylight, but the door he always uses is locked. He tries the front door, but it’s locked as well. He thinks to himself that a school that locks its students in at night is more like a prison. He slumps down outside of his history class when Mr. Dirk finds him, orders him to go back to bed, and gives him two demerits.

Luke falls asleep and the next morning feels guilty for not doing more to warn the others. He reasons that they were locked in, so there wasn’t much he could do. Some of the other boys are studying on their beds, but Jason is still absent. Luke asks where he is, but no one knows. Jason is still missing at breakfast and Luke looks around at the other boys who Jason betrayed. He tries to whisper to one of them that he’s in danger, but the boy brushes Luke away in annoyance. The door to the dining hall opens and a huge man storms in, announcing he’s a member of the Population Police. The man announces that he has a warrant for the arrest of “illegals” (147) who have falsified their identity. He adds that violating the Population Law is punishable by death; creating false documents is punishable by death by torture. Just as he begins to announce who he’s arresting, Mr. Talbot steps into the room and tells the man he’s found the criminal. Walking behind him in handcuffs is Jason.

Jason protests, telling the officer it’s all a lie and that he knows who the real exnays are. The officer seems ready to humor Jason, telling Mr. Talbot that he not only enjoys when they sell one another out, but would also be happy to surpass his monthly quota. Jason walks over to Luke’s table and names the four boys he’d revealed earlier on the phone. He also says Lee’s name, but explains he needs more time to find out his real identity. Mr. Talbot laughs, saying that he’s known “Lee” since he was a baby. He produces a picture from his wallet of his family at Christmas, with Luke posing alongside them in a Santa hat. The other four boys stand up and reveal their identities, saying different names than the ones Jason just gave. Jason accuses them of lying and tells everyone to look at their records. Mr. Dirk stands up to retrieve the boys’ files. When he returns, the files appear to have the new names the boys just gave when they stood up. The officer angrily asks how the files could have been faked in the matter of a few minutes and escorts Jason out of the dining room.

Luke finds it strange that after everything that has just transpired, the boys are going off to class as usual. Luke takes his history exam but is distracted by questions about the identities of the four boys. He wonders how the new names they’d been given matched the files brought out by Mr. Dirk. He also wonders how Jason had been found out. Mr. Dirk approaches Luke and asks if he’s Lee Grant, to which he nods yes. Mr. Dirk asks Luke to follow him and Luke thinks it’s because Mr. Dirk is going to tell him he’s failed his history exam. Mr. Dirk takes him right out of the school’s the front door. He follows Mr. Dirk to a cottage tucked away behind plants and bushes. Mr. Dirk tells him to ring the doorbell and then leaves, with Luke panicking at being left behind at a strange house.

Luke rings the bell and a voice tells him to come into the house. He enters and an older man in a wheelchair offers him a drink. Mr. Talbot enters the room, scans for listening devices, and determines that Luke is clean. The older man introduces himself as Josiah Hendricks and invites everyone to sit down. He refers to Luke as “inquisitive” (158) and assumes he must be looking for some answers, to which Luke responds that he is. Mr. Hendricks tells him that as a rich man, he was once a frivolous and unwise spender. But by the Great Famines, he had grown much more compassionate. He looks at his legs, calling attention to the fact that there is nothing below the knee. He angrily explains that the Government was thinking about letting the “undesirables” (158) starve, which potentially included those like himself. He tells Luke that while he and his family successfully bribed the Government to leave those with disabilities alone, the Government still passed the Population Law. Mr. Hendricks set up his schools because he felt guilty that he had managed to rescue people with disabilities while others still suffered.

Mr. Talbot then explains to Luke that by opening the schools, Mr. Hendricks gave third children a place to live out of hiding. Luke interjects, saying he thought the schools were for youth with autism and agoraphobia. Mr. Hendricks explains that he quickly expanded to take illegal children as well. No one at the school knows exactly who is an exnay and who isn’t, which is on purpose to minimize the possibility of betrayal. He also hired teachers who were indifferent to the students, as well as administrators who were incompetent so they would not notice if files were faked. He concedes that some people know what is going on, like Mr. Dirk, who has limited information, but he won’t reveal more than that.

Luke is suddenly overcome with anger and feels that Mr. Hendricks simply abandons exnays in an isolated and lonely environment. Mr. Hendricks explains that the school is deliberately set up that way because the children need to adapt to their new surroundings and life outside of hiding. He compares the situation to a deep-sea diver who must come up to the surface slowly due to the change in pressure. He says when they’re ready, they can move on, and asks Luke if he’s prepared to go.

Luke is initially confused by Mr. Hendricks’s question. Mr. Hendricks explains that this is the first time his school has been breached by the Population Police. While they were once willing to pretend fake I.D.s were impossible, they changed the rules after Jen’s rally. Mr. Hendricks did not foresee that they would begin to put traitors like Jason at the school, who gathered information about the students. Luke realizes that all the abuse he took from Jason was not intended to make him tougher, but to make him break. He thinks how badly things could have gone if Jason had succeeded. He angrily asks Mr. Talbot and Mr. Hendricks how they could have missed Jason’s duplicity. Luke points out that Jason was so different from everyone else, to which Mr. Talbot responds that Luke was different too because he liked going outside. Luke hadn’t realized that they knew about that.

Mr. Hendricks tells Luke that they initially thought Jason forming the club was positive, but then Luke showed them that they were wrong. Luke says revealing Jason’s false nature was all Mr. Talbot’s work, but Mr. Hendricks corrects him, reminding Luke that he was the one who knocked out Jason and took him to the nurse. At the nurse’s office, Jason had asked for his phone, which alerted everyone to a possible breach. When they found Jason’s phone, they saw he had called the Population Police. Luke’s phone call also alerted Mr. Talbot that something suspicious going on, and he was able to redirect the Population Police to Jason and Nina—Jason’s female counterpart at the girl’s school. Luke asks what will happen to Jason and Nina, but Mr. Talbot responds that it’s better not to know. Luke wonders if he could have saved the others some other way, without compromising the lives of Jason and Nina.

Luke asks Mr. Talbot why the Population Police believed Luke over Jason. Mr. Talbot explains that it was because he had solid evidence, adding that putting Luke’s face over Jen’s in the Christmas picture served them well. Mr. Hendricks explains to Luke that Lee Grant’s father is a powerful person, which makes Luke angry since the man is not his real father. He begins to get frustrated with all the “double-talk” (167) in the conversation and he asks why Nina and Jason had betrayed everyone. Mr. Hendricks tells him that they were not actually third children and were set up from the beginning as plants to gather information. Luke is in awe of what he regards as such extreme evil. Mr. Talbot adds that they still have no idea how they came to work for the Population Police or why they ended up at Mr. Hendrick’s schools. He says he’s planning to interrogate them the next day and find out as much as he can. Luke wonders if maybe Jason and Nina believed as Luke once did—that third children have no right to exist. He momentarily wishes everyone could stop pretending to be something else.

At eight o’clock, Mr. Talbot tells Luke he needs to get his things before Indoctrination is over and he’ll drive Luke to the next school. Luke refuses and says he won’t leave Hendricks. The two men look at him in disbelief. Thinking back on all he’s accomplished at Hendricks; Luke explains to the two men that he doesn’t think his work at the school is finished and he wants to help other third children there. Mr. Talbot sits back down, asking to know more.

Luke stands outside of Hendricks, brushing the sweat out of his eyes. Luke works on planting a garden with four other boys, including Trey. He is still in disbelief that Mr. Talbot and Mr. Hendricks agreed to everything he’d suggested. Mr. Hendricks initially protested that he’d never meant for the school to be agricultural, especially since many of the boys come from extremely wealthy families. Luke replied that it was just as important for them to know how to grow food as anyone else. He wonders if in the end he is just taking the familiar path by staying at Hendricks, but he reminds himself that the Population Law had been about the shortage of food, so growing it is certainly important.

Luke isn’t sure how long he plans to stay at Hendricks and didn’t give Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Talbot a definitive answer on that point. He knew the education was lacking and there was plenty more to learn. One of the boys working in the garden asks Luke if he’s a teacher and what his name is. Luke tells the boy “just call me ‘L’” (172). He isn’t sure why he replies that way, but feels the letter encompasses both of his identities.