Authors: Margaret Peterson Haddix
grabbed up Luke in a dizzying embrace. Luke got a whiff of elegant perfume, and then she released him. She stood back, looking him up and down.
“Oh, Lee, you have grown so much while you were away,” she exclaimed. “Why, last fall you barely came up to my shoulder. And now
. . .“
Now Luke could look her straight in the face, eyeball to eyeball, if only he had the nerve. “Oh, I’ve missed you! Why did you have to stay away for a whole year?”
She wrapped him in another hug. Over her shoulder Luke caught a glimpse of Smits’s face. His whole expression had crumpled in pain.
“Smits,” Mr. Grant said, quite formally, and offered his son a hand to shake.
Luke expected the two parents to trade off—with Mrs. Grant hugging Smits and Mr. Grant thrusting a stiff hand at Luke. But when Mrs. Grant released Luke a second time, the two grown-ups only stood there, staring awkwardly at the two boys. Smits made no move toward his mother, and he might as well have been invisible, for all the attention she paid him. At least Mr. Grant managed a curt nod toward Luke.
“Well, you’ll want to get settled in your rooms,” Mrs. Grant said at last. “You must be tired after your journey Oscar, could you...”
Mrs. Grant didn’t even have to finish her request Oscar stepped forward, practically standing on Smits’s heels.
“I’m going, I’m going,” Smits muttered.
Luke felt like saying, “Don’t you want to know what happened at school? Don’t you know that those two are dangerous together?” He was used to his own parents, who would have been curious. Who would have been concerned.
He watched Smits step past his mother. She barely flickered her eyes in his direction. Her lips flattened into a thin line of disapproval. From the side Luke could see the emotions playing over Smits’s face: first pain, then fury.
Smits had wanted his mother to hug him, too.
Luke didn’t understand what he’d witnessed, or why he’d been hugged in Smits’s stead. He still didn’t understand why the Grants wanted him there. But he could tell that he’d just been sent to his room.
And he didn’t have the slightest clue where it was.
CHAPTER 18
The chauffeur saved him. He came in just then carrying the luggage, and Luke simply followed him. Up the stairs, down a long, stately hail. Up more stairs, just a half flight, into an entirely different wing of the house. Finally, when Luke was sure he’d walked more than a mile, the chauffeur deposited Luke’s luggage and Smits’s luggage in adjoining rooms.
Luke hesitated in the doorway of what must have been Lee’s room. He looked back at Smits and Oscar, who were still lingering in the hall.
“Just leave me alone!” Smits snarled. “I’m home now! I’m safe! Okay?”
“You think there is not danger here?” Oscar replied. “You think I believe that
you
are not dangerous here?”
Luke slipped into Lee’s room, hoping the other two hadn’t noticed him listening. And then, staring, he forgot everything else.
The whole rest of the house was luxurious and elegant
beyond belief But Lee’s room was the first place that looked fun. At one end of the room four couches were clustered around a large-screen TV An entire video arcade lurked in a nearby alcove. Another alcove looked like a sporting goods store: Skis, golf clubs, hockey sticks, tennis rackets, and entire barrels of footballs, baseballs, and basketballs were arranged artfully in every corner. A third alcove held a set of drums and three guitars.
“You play?” the chauffeur asked. Luke had totally forgotten about him. But he was staring longingly at the guitars.
“Some,” Luke lied, figuring that the real Lee must have. He hoped the chauffeur wouldn’t ask for a demonstration.
But the chauffeur only nodded and bowed, and walked out.
Luke wandered around the room for a while, feeling lost. He looked into drawers of neatly folded clothes. He pulled out a pair of pants and held them up against his own waist. The pant legs ended about the same place as the pants he was actually wearing, but he wasn’t sure what that proved. Had the real Lee been about the same height as Luke, or had the Grants secretly found out what size clothes Luke wore, and stocked the room accordingly?
Luke was really looking for something personal—some proof that a real boy had lived here. Initials carved in the bed frame, maybe, or an old drawing of an airplane that Mrs. Grant (or the nanny?) had deemed too special to be
thrown out. Luke would even have settled for some signs of wear on the basketballs. But everything looked new and unused. If this had truly been the real Lee’s room, he’d passed through this place without leaving behind so much as a smudge on the wall.
Or all signs of his presence had been erased.
Luke shivered at that thought Suddenly spooked, he went next door to Smits’s room, which was every bit as expansive as Lee’s.
Smits was sprawled across the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Oscar was nowhere in sight.
“Smits, can you tell me...” Luke began.
Smits shook his head and put his finger over his lips. He pointed over to an open door, where Luke could see a figure in a black dress bent over a porcelain sink. A maid was cleaning the bathroom.
“Oh, yeah, it’s great to be home,” Smits said. “Home, where even the walls have ears.~~
“I just wondered if you wanted to go down with me and get a snack,” Luke finished lamely.
The maid came out of the bathroom.
“Now, don’t you boys be ruining your appetites,” she scolded. “The cooks have been working all day on a fancy welcome—home dinner for you.”
Nothing could have ruined Luke’s appetite. Breakfast back at Hendricks School had been heartier than usual, but that had been hours ago. Still, if Smits didn’t go with him, he wasn’t sure he could find the kitchen. And without Smits he wouldn’t have the nerve to rummage through it, looking for food.
“I’m not hungry anyway,” Smits said.
Luke’s stomach growled. He tried to ignore it. “Want to go outside and play, then? Shoot some hoops or something?”
“Nah,” Smits said. “Outside the trees have ears.”
There were gardeners, Luke guessed. He supposed that Smits was trying to warn him. He supposed that he ought to be grateful.
But what Luke really wanted to do was punch Smits right smack in the nose. It was almost as bad as if Smits really were his brother.
CHAPTER 19
The rest of the day felt interminable. Luke wandered aimlessly around the house and grounds for several hours. He didn’t encounter either of Smits’s parents again, but there seemed to be a servant around every corner. And they all seemed to know everything about him—or, at least, about the person he was supposed to be.
“Have you brought up those grades in mathematics, Master Lee?” a man Luke guessed was a butler asked him in the front hallway.
“I tuned up the engine on your motor scooter, sir,” a mechanic in a grease-covered uniform told him out beside the garage, which looked large enough to hold a boat—and probably did, come to think of it.
As the grandfather clock by the front door chimed seven, a housekeeper scolded him, “There you are! Why aren’t you washed up and dressed for dinner?”
“I
...
,“
Luke protested. He scrambled toward what he thought was the dining room. He remembered seeing a
vast wooden table in one of these rooms—now, where was it?
Mostly by luck Luke arrived in the proper room. Mr. and Mrs. Grant were seated at opposite ends of the huge table. Two chairs were arranged between them. Smits sat in one of those chairs. Luke dashed toward the other one.
‘And where is your tuxedo, young man?” Mrs. Grant asked.
“Um...,” Luke said. He noticed that both Smits and Mr. Grant were in formal black suits, with pure white shirts underneath and black bows tied crisply around their necks.
“We didn’t dress for dinner at school,” Smits volunteered. “Lee probably forgot all about it.”
“Indeed,” Mrs. Grant sniffed. “Well, we shan’t have you forgetting here. Go and change this instant”
Luke considered himself quite fortunate to be able to find his way back to his room, find a suit—a tuxedo?—in his closet, and scramble into it. He was flimbling with the tie, wondering how angry the Grants would be if he just forgot about it—versus how angry they’d be if he kept them waiting any longer—when Oscar silently stepped into the room and adeptly twisted the tie into shape. He straightened the sleeves of Luke’s coat, shoved a stray lock of hair off Luke’s forehead, and pushed him out the door without saying a single word.
Back in the dining room Mrs. Grant purred, “Now, that’s better. That’s the son I like to see.” Then she, Mr.
Grant, and Smits began spooning up soup that had gone cold. The dinner passed in a blur. Luke ate heartily of the
soup, thinking it was a shame that that was all there was. So he was pleasantly surprised when a plateful of greens arrived next. But the courses that came after that were foods he had no hope of identifying. Once, he suspected he was eating white lumps of rice under some type of gravy But Luke was pretty certain that the gravy wasn’t made from pork fat, which was the only kind he’d ever eaten before.
He supposed the food was good—delicious, even—but it was hard to enjoy it sitting with a sullen Smits and Smits’s icy parents. And an army of servants constantly came in and out, whisking dishes away as soon as any of them were finished. By the ninth course Luke was aware of a strange sensation in his stomach: He was too full.
“Psst, Lee,” Smits finally whispered from across the table. “You don’t have to eat it
all.”
Luke noticed that the others were barely touching their food, letting the servants take away plates missing only a bite or two.
“Oh,” Luke said. He wondered what happened to the extra food. Did the servants eat it? Was it thrown away?
No one would be able to tell from the Grants’ dining habits that there’d been famines and starvation barely fifteen years earlier, that food was still rationed across the land. Luke had a feeling that the Grants hadn’t paid any attention to the famines at all.
Except for Smits’s quick whisper, there was no chatter at the table, no questions from the parents, like, “How’s school going?” or “When do you suppose they’ll have the wiring fixed at Hendricks?” For all the notice Mr. and Mrs. Grant gave Smits and Luke, you’d almost have thought the boys were still away at school.
The Grants didn’t even speak to the servants who brought and removed the food. For all the notice they gave to the servants, Luke wondered if they thought that the food appeared and disappeared by magic.
Finally, finally, the servants brought ice cream, which Luke was sure had to be the last course. In spite of his now aching stomach, he ate all of his ice cream, down to the last drop. Ice cream had been such a treat back home. He’d had it only once or twice in his life.
“Lee,” Mrs. Grant hissed. “Gentlemen do not
gobble.”
Red faced, Luke dropped his spoon. It clattered on the floor, spinning off threads of melted ice cream across the polished marble.
“May I be excused?” Smits asked in the silence that followed.
Mrs. Grant nodded.
Luke watched a servant swoop out of nowhere, grab up the spoon, and wipe away the ice cream in a flash. He gathered his nerve to speak.
“May I be excused, too?” he asked.
“I suppose,” Mrs. Grant said.
Heavyhearted, Luke found his way back to Lee’s room.
He threw himself across the bed, fighting waves of nausea. He’d hated Hendricks School at first, too, but the Grants’ house seemed much, much worse. And yet Smits had seemed to be trying to help him. And Oscar had appeared at just the right moment to help him with that tie.
Why? Why did either of them care what happened to Luke?
CHAPTER 20
Luke was sound asleep, and had been for hours, when someone began shaking his shoulder.
“Lee. Get up,” a voice whispered.
Luke opened his eyes to complete darkness. It was the middle of the night, he thought. He’d fallen asleep without changing his clothes, so the knot of the bow tie dug uncomfortably into his neck. He’d been dreaming, he realized, about nooses.
uWha who are you?” he said, fighting a sense of total disorientation.
“Shh!” A hand clapped instantly over Luke’s mouth. He’d accidentally spoken out loud. “Don’t make another noise. So help me, I’ll...” A tiny penlight switched on in the darkness. “I’m your.., father. See?”
Mr. Grant held the tiny light below his chin, illuminating his face. But the effect was ghoulish, creating eerie shadows around his eyes. Luke felt like he was looking into a Halloween mask.
“Now, come with me,” Mr. Grant whispered.
Timidly Luke slipped first one foot, then the other, out of bed. He had a flash of memory—this was like all those nights he’d been awakened by Oscar, summoned by Smits. And he’d always gone. What if he’d disobeyed? What if, just once, he’d stamped his foot and announced, “You know what? I’m not Lee, and I’m not going to pretend anymore. Leave me alone. Let me go back to sleep.”
But he couldn’t have done that any of the other times, and he couldn’t do it now.
Silently, fighting a rising sense of dread, Luke walked alongside Mr. Grant. They went out of his room, down the hall, down the stairs. Luke might have suspected Mr. Grant of purposely leading him in circles, trying to confuse him. But the house was so much like a maze, even in bright daylight, that Luke figured Mr. Grant was truly taking the most direct route to wherever he was going.
Finally Mr. Grant stood before a closed door on the first level. Luke wasn’t entirely
sure,
but he thought that he’d attempted to open this door earlier in the day, when he’d been exploring. The door had been locked then. But now Mr. Grant looked around cautiously, opened the door effortlessly, and motioned Luke inside. A few seconds later Mr. Grant stepped in behind him and shut the door.
“Have you activated the system?” a woman~s voice asked in the darkness.
“Three, two, one.., all set,” Mr. Grant said.
Lights came on then. They were standing in an office. A massive mahogany desk stood in the center of the room, and bookshelves lined the walls. Mrs. Grant was sitting in a stiff chair in front of the desk, but she quickly stood up and walked toward Luke and Mr. Grant.
“Finally,” she said.
Luke tensed, afraid that she was going to hug him again. But she only took him by the shoulders, held him at arm’s length, and squinted thoughtfully at him.
“Braces, of course,” she said. ‘And perhaps some hair dye...”
“Maybe contacts,” Mr. Grant said.
“Do you think anyone would really notice his eyes? They’re not that different,” Mrs. Grant said. “Having him fitted for contacts, that’d be another person we’d have to pay off—”
“Of course. You’re right,” Mr. Grant said.
Luke felt like he was an object they were considering buying. Neither of them had looked him square in the eye yet or addressed him directly. Didn’t they think he would have any say in the matters of braces, hair dye, or contacts?
No. Of course not.
Finally Mrs. Grant stepped back and said, ‘Well,
I
think it will work. I think we ought to try it.”