Among the Barons

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “Lee! There you are!” Mrs. Grant suddenly swooped into the room. Lee instantly sat up straight, but she frowned anyway. “For heaven’s sake, get off that couch this instant. You’ll leave it rumpled, and how would that look for our party this evening?”

  Luke bolted to his feet.

  “P-p-party?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Grant said. “It’ll be the social event of the season. We’ve been planning it for months. It’s so nice that you and Smits are home from school and will be able to attend. Isn’t it?”

  She smiled so sweetly at him that Luke had a hard time remembering how coldly she’d regarded him the night before.

  “Is it—do we . . .” Luke wanted to ask if Smits and Lee had usually attended their parents’ big parties before. He wanted to ask if he’d be expected to know any of the other guests, and if so, what he was supposed to do when he met them tonight. But of course those weren’t questions he could just blurt out, unless he was in the secret room. He settled for, “Do I have to wear a tux?”

  Mrs. Grant laughed, making a sound that reminded Luke of breaking glass.

  “Of course, you silly goose. You boys! Thinking you can get away without wearing a tux! Would you believe Smits asked me the same thing?”

  And Luke looked back into Mrs. Grant’s falsely sparkling eyes and thought, No. I’m not sure I can believe you even when you tell me something as simple as that.

  “Now, come on,” Mrs. Grant said. “The orthodontist and hairdresser are here. It’s time for your makeover!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  By eight o’clock there were tiny lights strung in the trees along the driveway An army of maids had made sure that every inch of the Grants’ house was dust free and virtually gleaming. Dozens of cooks had prepared tray after tray of more foods than Luke had ever seen before.

  And Luke had been transformed as well. Most of his teeth had been encased in silver prisons, with something that felt like barbed wire running between them. His hair had been dyed a darker brown, while Mrs. Grant had fluttered over the hairdresser, lamenting, “I can’t believe you can’t trust a boy anymore not to go bleaching his hair while he’s away at school. . . .”

  The braces hurt. His newly dyed—and gelled—hair felt stiff and unfamiliar. He didn’t recognize himself when he walked past a mirror.

  And now he and Smits were in their tuxes, standing at the top of the stairs. Waiting.

  “I want both of you to make a grand entrance,” Mrs. Grant said, hovering over them, straightening Luke’s tie, flattening a tiny cowlick at the back of Smits’s head. “After all the guests have arrived, I’ll have the butler announce you. He’ll say, And here are the sons of the manor, Lee and Smithfield Grant.’ And then you’ll come down the stairs, like so.”

  She took small, mincing steps down the top few stairs before turning around to make sure that they had been listening. Was this part of the plot? Luke wondered. Were the Grants counting on his being so clumsy and unaccustomed to the spotlight that he’d trip and fall? Would the guests believe that he would die from such a fall?

  Luke stared down the long stairway. Of course they would believe such a thing. If he tripped at the top and fell down thirty-two stairs, he might die for real.

  And that would probably suit the Grants just fine.

  Luke held in a shiver of fear and reminded himself: Chandeliers. Oscar had said that he needed to watch out for chandeliers. And assuming that Oscar was telling the truth about that, Luke had enough to worry about without looking for other death traps.

  Far below, the front doorbell rang.

  “That must be the first guests,” Mrs. Grant said. “It’ll be the Snodgrasses—they’re always early. They have no social graces.” Mrs. Grant shook her head disapprovingly and began walking down the stairs. She turned around briefly to remind both boys, “Now, remember. Be on your best behavior.”

  Down below, the butler was opening the door. Luke could hear his booming voice call out, “Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Snodgrass. Mr. and Mrs. Grant will be so glad to greet you. May I take your coats?”

  Beside Luke, Smits slumped and sat down on the top step. Luke decided he might as well do the same. He slid down beside the younger boy. The fake I.D.’s he’d transferred into his tuxedo pocket poked his leg, as if he needed another reminder that everything around him was false.

  “I can’t believe they’re having a party,” Smits muttered. “My brother’s dead, and they’re having a party.”

  Luke glanced anxiously around. Oscar was leaning on a railing right behind them, but he seemed not to hear.

  “It’s been nearly six months,” Luke said apologetically. “Probably that’s long enough to wait before people start having parties again.”

  “They were having parties all along,” Smits said glumly.

  “They had to pretend . . . ,” Luke started to say. He didn’t like defending Mr. and Mrs. Grant, but he was getting panicked. Smits needed to pretend, too. What if Smits told one of the party guests that Lee was dead? What if one of the servants overheard?

  “But they were enjoying themselves,” Smits said fiercely. “They love their parties. They never cared about Lee.”

  In spite of himself Luke argued, “I thought you said they liked him better than you.”

  Smits fixed Luke with a dead stare. “So now you know what they think of me.”

  Behind them Oscar cleared his throat warningly. Luke was suddenly fed up with all the subterfuge. Without thinking, he turned around and asked Oscar, “Does Smits know who you are? Does Smits know that you knew Lee? That you can tell him everything he wants to know about how Lee died?”

  Oscar’s face turned a fiery red. He jerked his fists up; Luke knew that if even one of those fists hit him, he’d be knocked down the stairs for sure. But Oscar stopped just short of swinging at Luke.

  Because Smits was answering.

  With his eyes trained forward, Smits began reciting, “Oscar is my bodyguard. My parents hired him when I started telling lies at my old school. I’m not mentally stable. That’s what my parents say. That’s why I have Oscar. Oscar works for my parents.”

  He sounded like a schoolboy repeating facts he’d memorized but didn’t understand. It was eerie.

  “Good,” Oscar growled. “Now we all know where we stand.”

  After that the three of them sat in silence at the top of the stairs until a huge light suddenly shone up at them, and the butler’s booming voice called out, “And here are the sons of the mansion, Lee and Smithfield Grant.”

  Luke stumbled to his feet. Blindly he began descending the stairs beside Smits. The light was so intense, he couldn’t see any of the guests below. But they were clapping. Luke tried to force himself to smile in the direction of the applause. The smile only pressed his lips more tightly into the braces, making his mouth ache even more.

  At the bottom of the stairs Mrs. Grant wrapped first Luke, then Smits, into showy hugs. Smits wasn’t slighted in the least this time.

  “My sons,” Mrs. Grant said, and she sounded as if she loved them both deeply.

  An old, bewhiskered man behind her stepped forward to shake Luke’s hand.

  “My, how you’ve grown,” the man said. “I haven’t seen you since you were barely up to my knee.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Mrs. Grant said, and her voice was as light and merry as a fountain. “And now Lee’s going through that gawky phase, with the braces and all, so you might not even recognize him now.”

  Mr. President? Was this the president? Was Luke shaking the hand of the man who’d outlawed third children? Only disbelief kept Luke from recoiling.

  “Oh, I’d recognize this boy anywhere,” the man—the president?—said, chuckling. “Looks just like his lovely mother.”

  Luke choked back something like a giggle.

  “And he’d certainly recognize you,” Mrs. Grant said in a voice so clogged with flattery that Luke could have gagged. “The last time we drove into the city, there
were pictures of you everywhere.”

  “Well,” the man said. “People keep insisting on pasting those pictures up. I don’t even know where they get them.”

  “Your people love you,” Mrs. Grant said soothingly.

  So it was the president. In a daze, Luke shook the next hand that was thrust at him, while Smits shook the president’s. Fortunately, no one seemed to expect him to say anything more than, “Hello, sir.” And just as fortunately, after the first few people, somehow Smits got ahead of Luke. More than once he turned back to Luke and said something like, “Look, it’s the Hadley-Perkinses!”

  So Smits was helping Luke once again. Luke wasn’t sure how long it would last. And no matter how hard he tried to act normal, he couldn’t help glancing up every time he neared a chandelier. There was one in the entryway, one in the living room, one in the parlor—after a while Luke lost count.

  And there was Oscar, constantly threading his way behind them like a dark shadow.

  Was Oscar waiting for Luke to turn around and announce, “Okay, I’ve decided. I’ll help you now”?

  Or was it already too late?

  Finally Smits and Luke reached the end of the row of hands they had to shake. The guests seemed to have forgotten them. They stood together off to the side. Luke finally had a chance to think. He nudged Oscar’s side.

  “Did you see the president?” he asked. “What if we—”

  Oscar instantly clapped his hand over Luke’s mouth.

  “Don’t even finish that sentence,” he hissed warningly in Luke’s ear. “There are guards everywhere.”

  And then Oscar released him and nodded at a man in a dark suit nearby.

  “Just showing him some bodyguard moves,” Oscar said calmly.

  Luke wasn’t even sure what he’d intended to suggest to Oscar. But how could Oscar, who wanted to overthrow the Government, stand in the same room with the president and not do something? How could Luke?

  Then Luke looked around and noticed how many of the supposed guests had tiny wires leading into their ears, how many men kept their hands over pockets that, for all Luke knew, must have contained guns. Oscar was right—the house was crawling with guards.

  Did that make the party safer or more dangerous for Luke?

  “Hors d’oeuvres, sir?” a familiar voice said behind him.

  A serving girl in a black dress and frilly apron held out a tray full of unidentifiable round food. Luke’s face instantly lit up—not because of the food, but because of the girl. It was his friend Nina, who’d gone to the girls’ school that bordered Hendricks School for Boys.

  Forgetting himself, Luke blurted out, “What are you doing here?”

  Nina did a better job of staying in character.

  “I was just hired today, sir,” she said with a small curtsy. “Mistress hired several new servants just for tonight’s party. Me and Trey, and Joel and John . . . we’re here to help, sir.

  And Luke understood that she meant the last part completely, not just as part of her act. Luke’s friends were there to help him. Not just Nina, but Trey and Joel and John. Mr. Hendricks had not sent him off to the Grants’ and forgotten about him. For the first time that night Luke felt like beaming.

  One of the round cheese balls or sausage balls or whatever they were rolled off Nina’s tray. She bent down to pick it up, then glared up at Luke. Luke got the message. He fell to his knees as well and pretended to reach for the food. Nina leaned over and whispered in his ear, “Be careful. Most of the servants are on Oscar’s side. And you better believe it’s killing me to call you ‘sir.’ ”

  “That’s good to know,” Luke murmured solemnly.

  Above him Mrs. Grant swooped in out of nowhere.

  “Lee!” she hissed. “Let the servant get that! My son should not be crawling around on the floor during my party!”

  “Yes, Mom,” Luke said obediently, and stood up.

  Mrs. Grant sniffed and steered him over to meet someone whose hand he’d somehow missed shaking.

  While he was smiling and nodding and trying to act polite, he caught a glimpse of Trey opening and shutting the door to admit more guests. He saw John stacking dirty plates on a tray and whisking them away. And he saw Oscar, with narrowed eyes, talking to one of the president’s guards.

  The party, Luke realized, was a battlefield. The sides were being drawn in the midst of the women in their glittering dresses, the men in tuxedos holding elegant champagne glasses, the servants arranging tiny cakes in neat rows on doilies. Luke could guess at the alliances of every person in the room.

  Except Smits.

  The younger boy was slumped on a sofa, not even looking at the guests talking around him. Luke wondered how the younger boy felt, sitting there ignored, while Mrs. Grant crowed over Luke, “And Lee, you have to meet . . .”

  Luke wished he’d been able to tell Smits, just once, how sorry he was that Smits had lost his brother.

  But would Smits have believed him?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  By the time the first guests started leaving, hours later, Luke felt like he’d shaken hundreds of hands, said “sir” and “ma’am” thousands of times, nodded and smiled so much that the muscles in his face ached and the inside of his lips were raw from rubbing on the braces. He’d gone glassy-eyed from forcing himself to stare directly into the faces of total strangers. And his right arm ached from the vise grip Mrs. Grant kept on it, guiding him from guest to guest.

  “The president is about to leave,” she hissed in his ear. “We must go outside and bid him farewell. It’s protocol.”

  Smits came, too, this time. The three Grants and Luke walked outside and lined up as a chauffeur drove the presidential car around to the front. Mr. and Mrs. Grant stood practically shoulder to shoulder, with Smits on Mrs. Grant’s right and Luke on Mr. Grant’s left. A cool breeze blew through Luke’s hair, and he heard a faint tinkling overhead. He looked up—right at the enormous chandelier he’d been amazed by when he’d first arrived at the Grants’ house.

  Luke shivered. The blazing lights seemed to blur as he fought back panic. Watch out for chandeliers. . . . It was all he could do not to bolt immediately. But all the guests were watching him. The Grants won’t try to fake my death if they’re standing under the chandelier with me, he thought. And Oscar won’t try to fake Smits’s death if I’m here, too. He forced himself to stand still and straight and tall, an arrogant Grant just like Smits and his parents. But out of the corner of his eye he kept track of where his friends were—Trey just behind him, off to the left, and Nina and Joel and John in a clump of servants watching through a side door as the president departed. And he noted that Oscar was just behind Smits. Oscar’s not going to endanger himself Luke told himself.

  The president stepped out of the house. His chauffeur opened the door of his limousine and stood waiting as the president slowly moved toward the Grants. He shook each of their hands in turn and gave Mrs. Grant a kiss on each cheek.

  “Marvelous party as usual, Sarinia,” the president said. And then, as the chauffeur was helping the president into his car, Luke heard Nina scream behind him.

  “Watch out!”

  Instinctively Luke looked up. The chandelier was shaking, swaying ominously back and forth. Luke had time to move, but he couldn’t suddenly—his muscles seemed frozen in fear. And then, just as the chandelier began plunging toward him, Luke felt someone knock him off his feet.

  It was Trey. Trey had tackled him.

  They landed safely off to the side just as the chandelier smashed down in a huge explosion of breaking glass. The blazing lights were extinguished instantly. Luke felt shards spray out against his bare hand, practically the only part of his body that wasn’t sheltered by Trey. The braces bit into his lip and he tasted blood in his mouth. Somebody screamed, and then there was silence. Luke was scared to look back at the chandelier, but he glanced up at the circle of guests and servants around him, silhouetted in the dimmer lights from the windows. Everyone st
ood frozen in horror.

  “That’s what you get for teaching me how to play football,” Trey said in Luke’s ear.

  “You saved my life,” Luke muttered back. “You’re the hero tonight.”

  “Yeah,” Trey said, sounding amazed. “I guess I am.”

  And then he inched away gingerly, being careful not to touch any of the broken glass. His cheeks and hands were already bleeding.

  Luke didn’t get up yet, but he gathered the nerve to turn his head to the side, toward the fallen chandelier. Incredibly, Smits was standing out of the way, totally unscathed. But he was staring at the heap of shattered glass with an unearthly look on his face.

  “Dead,” he wailed. “They’re all dead! My brother is dead! My parents are dead! Oh, my . . . brother . . . is . . . dead!”

  Luke scrambled to his feet so quickly that he accidentally drove more slivers of glass into his hands. He didn’t bother to brush them away. He stood looking across the ruined chandelier at the younger boy.

  “I’m alive, Smits,” he said. “As long as I’m alive, you have a brother.”

  If he’d just wanted to keep up the charade of being Lee, he would have spoken differently. But he was too shocked to think about charades or pretenses or lies that had to be told. He was just trying to comfort Smits.

  “I’m your brother, Smits,” he said. And Smits looked past all the shattered glass and nodded.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The other people seemed to awaken from their trance after that. The president’s chauffeur slammed the door behind the president, scurried into the front seat of the car, and zoomed away, leaving behind dozens of guards. The guards began screaming into mouthpieces, “Alert! Alert! Someone tried to assassinate the president!” They yelled at the horrified guests, “This residence is locked down immediately! Nobody shall leave until we discover who perpetrated this heinous crime!”