Among the Hidden

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  The people streaming through the houses did look different from anyone in Luke’s family. They were mostly thin, beautiful women in formfitting dresses, and heavyset men in what Luke’s dad and brothers called sissy clothes—shiny shoes and clean, dressy pants and jackets. Luke always felt a little embarrassed for them, showing up like that. Or maybe he was embarrassed for his family, that they never looked like any of the Barons. Luke preferred it when the adults had children with them and he could concentrate on them. The smallest ones were always as dressed up as their parents, with hair bows and suspenders and other geegaws Luke knew his parents would never buy. The older kids usually seemed to be wearing whatever they’d grabbed first out of their closet that morning.

  Though he knew no one would dare show up with three kids, he always counted: “One, two . . .” “One . . .” “One, two . . .”

  What if a family with just one kid moved in behind them, and he sneaked into their house and pretended to be their second child? He could go to school, go to town, act like Matthew and Mark . . . .

  What a joke—Luke living with Barons. More likely he’d be shot for trespassing. Or turned in.

  When he began thinking things like that, he always jumped down from his perch by the vent and grabbed a book from one of the dusty stacks by the eaves. Mother had taught him to read and do math, as much as she knew herself. “At least we have a few books for you . . . ,” she often mumbled sadly when she left in the morning. He’d read all their books dozens of times, even the ones with titles like Diseases of the Porcine Species and Common Grasses of Our Countryside. His favorites were the handful of adventure books, the ones that let him pretend he was a knight fighting a dragon to rescue a kidnapped princess, or an explorer sailing on the high seas, holding tight to a mast while a hurricane raged about him.

  He liked to forget he was Luke Garner, third child hidden in the attic.

  Sometime around noon he’d hear the door from the mudroom to the kitchen swing open and he’d go down and eat at the same time as his dad. Without Mother there were no homemade pies now, no mashed potatoes, no roasts that sent good smells throughout the house. Dad always made four sandwiches, checked to make sure no one could see him, then handed two of them to Luke in the stairwell.

  Dad never talked—he’d explained that he didn’t want anyone overhearing him, and wondering. But he did turn the radio on for the noon farm report, and there was usually a song or two after that before Dad silenced the radio and went outside to work again.

  When Dad left, Luke went back to his room to read or watch the houses again.

  At six-thirty Mother came home, and she always stopped in and said hi to Luke before rushing out to do a whole day’s work in the few hours before bedtime. Usually Matthew or Mark came up to visit him, too, but they could never stay long, either. They had to help Dad before supper, then do homework afterwards. And they always had been nicest to Luke outdoors. Before the woods came down, the three of them often had played kickball or football or spud in the backyard, after school and chores. Matthew and Mark always fought about who got to have Luke on his team, because, even if Luke wasn’t very good, two boys together could always beat the third.

  Now they played halfhearted games of cards or checkers with Luke, but Luke could tell they’d rather be outside.

  So would he.

  He tried not to think about it.

  The best part of the day came at the end, when Mother tucked him in. She’d be relaxed then. She’d stay for an hour sometimes, asking him what he’d read that day, or telling him stories about the factory.

  Then one night, when she was telling how her plastic glove had gotten stuck in a chicken she’d de-gutted that day, Mother suddenly stopped in the middle of a sentence.

  “Mother?” Luke said.

  She answered with a snore. She’d fallen asleep sitting up.

  Luke studied her face, seeing lines of fatigue that hadn’t been there before, noticing that the hair around her face now held as much gray as brown.

  “Mother?” he said again, gently shaking her arm.

  She jerked. “—but I cleaned that chicken al—oh. Sorry, Luke. You need tucking in, don’t you?”

  She fluffed his pillow, smoothed his sheet.

  Luke sat up. “That’s okay, Mother. I’m getting too old for this any”—he swallowed a lump in his throat—“anyway. I bet you weren’t still tucking Matthew or Mark in when they were twelve.”

  “No,” she said quietly.

  “Then I don’t need it, either.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  She kissed his forehead, anyhow, then turned out the light. Luke turned his face to the wall until she left.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  One cool, rainy morning a few weeks later, Luke’s family left in such a rush, they barely had time to say good-bye. They dashed out the door after breakfast, Matthew and Mark complaining about their packed lunches, Dad calling back, “I’m going to that auction up at Chytlesville. Won’t be home until supper.” Mother hurried back and handed Luke a bag of cracklings and three pears and some biscuits from the night before. She muttered, “So you won’t get hungry,” and gave him a quick kiss on the head. Then she was gone, too.

  Luke peeked around the stairway door, surveying the chaos of dirty pans and crumb-covered plates left in the kitchen. He knew not to look out as far as the window, but he did, anyway. His heart gave a strange jump when he saw the window was covered. Someone must have pulled the shade the night before, to try to keep the kitchen warm, and then forgotten to raise it in the morning. Luke dared to lean out a little further—yes, the shade was down on the other window, too. For the first time in almost six months, he could step out into the kitchen and not worry about being seen. He could run, skip, jump—dance, even—on the vast linoleum without fear. He could clean up the kitchen and surprise Mother. He could do anything.

  He put his right foot out, tentatively, not quite daring to put his full weight on it. The floor squeaked. He froze. Nothing happened, but he retreated, anyway. He went back up the stairs, crawled along the second-floor hallway to avoid the windows, then climbed the stairs to the attic. He was so disgusted with himself, he could taste it.

  I am a coward. I am a chicken. I deserve to be locked away in the attic forever, ran through his head. No, no, he countered himself, I’m cautious. I’m making a plan.

  He climbed up onto the stool on top of a trunk that served as his perch for watching out the back vents. The neighborhood behind his house was fully occupied now. He knew all the families and had come up with names for most of them. The Big Car Family had four expensive cars sitting in their driveway. The Gold Family all had hair the color of sunshine. The Birdbrain Family had set a row of thirty birdhouses along their backyard fence, even though Luke could have told them it was pointless to do that until spring. The house he could see best, right behind the Garners’ backyard, was occupied by the Sports Family. Two teenaged boys lived there, and their deck overflowed with soccer balls, baseball bats, tennis rackets, basketballs, hockey sticks, and apparatus from games Luke could only guess at.

  Today, he wasn’t interested in games. He was interested in seeing the families leave.

  He had noticed before that all of the houses were empty by nine in the morning, with kids off to school and grown-ups off to work. Three or four of the women didn’t seem to have jobs, but they left, too, returning late in the afternoon with shopping bags. Today, he just had to make sure no one was staying home sick.

  The Gold Family left first, two blond heads in one car, two blond heads in another. The Sports Family was next, the boys carrying football pads and helmets, their mother teetering on high heels. Then there was a flurry of cars streaming from every driveway onto the still-sparkling new streets. Luke counted each person, keeping track so carefully that he made scratches on the wall, and counted the scratches twice again at the end. Yes—twenty-eight people gone. He was safe.

  Luke scrambled down from his chair, his head s
pinning with plans. First, he’d clean up the kitchen; then he’d start some bread for supper. He’d never made bread before, but he’d watched Mother a million times. Then maybe he could pull the shades in the rest of the house and clean it thoroughly. He couldn’t vacuum—that’d be too loud—but he could dust and scrub and polish. Mother would be so pleased. Then, in the afternoon, before Matthew or Mark or the kids in the neighborhood got back, he could put something on for supper. Maybe potato soup. Why, he could do this every day. He’d never considered housework or cooking particularly thrilling before—Matthew and Mark always scoffed at it as women’s work—but it was better than nothing. And maybe, just maybe, if this worked, he could convince Dad to let him sneak out to the barn and help there, too.

  Luke was so excited, he stepped into the kitchen without a second thought this time. Who cared if the floor creaked? No one was there to hear it. He gathered up dishes from the table and piled them into the sink, scrubbing everything with extraordinary zeal. He measured out flour and lard and milk and yeast and was putting it all in a bowl when it occurred to him it might be okay to turn on the radio, very softly. Nobody’d hear. And if they did, they’d just figure the family had forgotten to turn it off, just as they’d forgotten to raise the shades.

  The bread was in the oven and Luke was picking up lint by hand from the living room rug when he heard tires on the gravel driveway. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, too early for the school bus or Mother or Dad. Luke sprinted for the stairs, hoping whoever it was would just go away.

  No luck. He heard the side door creaking open, then Dad exclaiming, “What the—”

  He was back early. That shouldn’t matter. But hiding on the staircase, Luke suddenly felt like the radio was as loud as an entire orchestra, like the smell of baking bread could fill three counties.

  “Luke!” Dad yelled.

  Luke heard his father’s hand on the doorknob. He opened the door.

  “I was just trying to help,” Luke blubbered. “I was safe. You left the shades down, so I thought it was okay, and I made sure everyone was gone from the neighborhood, and—”

  Dad glared. “You can’t be sure,” he snapped. “People like that—they get deliveries all the time, they get sick and come home from work, they have maids come during the day—”

  Luke could have protested, no, the maids never come before the kids get home from school. But he didn’t want to give himself away any more than he already had.

  “The shades were down,” he said. “I didn’t turn on a single light. Even if there were a thousand people back there, nobody would know I was here! Please—I’ve just got to do something. Look, I made bread, and cleaned up, and—”

  “What if a Government inspector or someone had stopped by here?”

  “I would have hidden. Like always.”

  Dad was shaking his head. “And leave them smelling bread baking in an empty house? You don’t seem to understand,” he said. “You can’t take any chances. You can’t. Because—”

  At that precise moment, the buzzer on the oven went off, sounding as loud as a siren. Dad gave Luke a dirty look and stalked over to the oven. He pulled out the two bread pans and tossed them on the stove top. He flipped off the radio.

  “I don’t want you in the kitchen again,” he said. “You stay hidden. That’s an order.”

  He went out the door without looking back.

  Luke fled up the stairs. He wanted to stomp, angrily, but he couldn’t. No noise allowed. In his room, he hesitated, too upset to read, too restless to do anything else. He kept hearing You stay hidden. That’s an order, echoing in his ears. But he’d been hidden. He’d been careful. To prove his point—to himself, at least—he climbed back up on his perch by the back vents and looked out on the quiet neighborhood.

  All the driveways were empty. Nothing moved, not even the flag on the Gold Family’s flagpole or the spokes on the Birdbrain Family’s fake windmill. And then, out of the corner of his eye, Luke caught a glimpse of something behind one window of the Sports Family’s house.

  A face. A child’s face. In a house where two boys already lived.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Luke was so surprised, he lost his balance and almost fell backwards off the trunk. By the time he recovered and righted himself, the face was gone. Had he imagined it? Was it just one of the Sports Family brothers home early from school? Kids got sick, like Dad said, or they decided to play hooky. Luke tried to remember every detail of the face he’d seen, or thought he’d seen. It had been younger than either of the Sports Family brothers’. Softer. Hadn’t it?

  Maybe it was a thief. Or a maid, come early.

  No. It had been a child. A—

  He didn’t even let himself think what another child in that house would be.

  He stared for hours at the Sports Family’s house, but no face reappeared. Nothing happened until six, when the two Sports Family boys drove in in their jeep, unloaded their football gear, and carried it into the house. They didn’t run out screaming about being robbed.

  And he’d seen no thief leave. He’d seen no maid leave.

  At six-thirty, Luke reluctantly climbed down from his perch when he heard his mother’s knock on the door. He sat down on his bed and muttered a distracted, “Come in.”

  She rushed to hug him.

  “Luke—I’m sorry. I know you were just trying to help. And everything is amazingly clean. I’d love it if you could do this every day. But your father thinks—I mean, you can’t—”

  Luke was so busy thinking about the face in the window that at first he couldn’t figure out what she was talking about. Oh. The bread. The housecleaning. The radio.

  “That’s okay,” Luke mumbled.

  But it wasn’t, and it never would be. His anger came back. Why did his parents have to be so careful? Why didn’t they just lock him in one of the trunks in the attic and be done with it?

  “Can’t you talk to him?” Luke asked. “Can’t you convince him—”

  Mother pushed Luke’s hair back from his face. “I’ll try,” she said. “But you know he’s just trying to protect you. We can’t take any chances.”

  Even if the face in the window of the Sports Family house was another third child, so what? Luke and the other kid could live right next door all their lives and never meet. Luke might never see the other kid again. And he’d certainly never see Luke.

  Luke lowered his head.

  “What am I supposed to do?” he asked. “There’s nothing for me to do. Am I supposed to just sit in this room the rest of my life?”

  Mother was stroking his hair now. It made him feel itchy and irritable.

  “Oh, Lukie,” she said. “You can do so much. Read and play and sleep whenever you want . . . . Believe me, I’d like to live a day of your life right about now.”

  “No you wouldn’t,” Luke muttered, but he said it so softly, he was sure Mother couldn’t hear. He knew she wouldn’t understand.

  If there was a third child in the Sports Family, would he understand? Did he feel the way Luke did?

  CHAPTER TEN

  When Luke went down to supper, he saw that Mother had set his two loaves of bread out on the china plate she used for holidays and special occasions. She was showing off the bread the way she used to tape up the crooked drawings Matthew and Mark brought home from school when they were little. But something had gone wrong—maybe Luke hadn’t used enough yeast, or he’d kneaded the dough too much or too little—and the loaves had turned out flat. They looked lopsided and pathetic in the center of the table.

  Luke wished Mother had just thrown them away.

  “It’s cold out now. Nobody’d notice if you pulled the shades. Why can’t I sit at the table with all of you?” he asked when he reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “Oh, Luke—” Mother started. “Someone might see your shadow through the shade,” Dad said.

  “They wouldn’t know it was mine,” Luke said.

  “But there’d be five. Some
one might get suspicious,” Mother said patiently. “Luke, we’re just trying to protect you. How about a big slice of your bread? There’s cold beef and canned beans, too.”

  Resignedly, Luke sat down on the stairs.

  Matthew asked about the auction Dad had gone to.

  “I drove all that way for nothing,” Dad said disgustedly. “I waited four hours for the tractors to come up, and then I couldn’t even afford the first bid.”

  “At least you got home in time to fix that back fence before dark,” Mother said, cutting the bread.

  And yell at me, Luke thought bitterly. What was wrong with him? Nothing had changed. Except he’d maybe seen a face that maybe belonged to someone like him—

  Matthew and Mark suddenly noticed the bread Mother was doling out.

  “What’s wrong with that?” Mark asked.

  “I’m sure it will taste fine,” Mother said. “It’s Luke’s first try.” Luke muttered, “And my last,” too softly for anyone to hear. There were advantages to sitting on the other side of the room from everyone else.

  “Luke made bread?” Mark said incredulously. “Yuck.”

  “Yeah. And I put special poison in one of the loaves, that only affects fourteen-year-olds,” Luke said. He pantomimed death, clutching his hands around his own neck, letting his tongue hang out of his mouth, and lolling his head to the side. “If you’re nice to me, I’ll tell you which loaf is safe.”

  That shut Mark up but earned Luke a frown from Mother. Luke felt strange about the joke, anyway. Of course he’d never poison anyone, but—if something happened to Matthew or Mark, would Luke have to hide anymore? Would he become the public second son, free to go to town and to school and everywhere else that Matthew and Mark went? Could his parents find some way to explain a “new” child already twelve years old?

  It wasn’t something Luke could ask. He felt guilty just thinking about it.

  Mark was making a big ceremony out of bringing the bread to his mouth.