The Deceivers

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “I don’t know.” Natalie shrugged helplessly.

  Finn darted back to huddle beside Emma.

  “We never knew what it meant, that almost everyone was wearing orange and blue the last time we were in this world,” Chess said, as if he was trying to sound reasonable and unafraid. “It might not have meant anything. It just seemed . . .”

  “Bad,” Finn muttered, clinging to Emma.

  “No, it seemed evil,” Natalie said. “Like someone having Nazi swastikas everywhere, or seeing KKK members wearing white hoods, or—”

  Emma opened her mouth to warn Natalie, Can’t you see you’re terrifying Finn even worse?

  But just then Emma heard a door open, followed by a voice coming from the top of the basement stairs: “Natalie, is that you down there? Why aren’t you at school?”

  It was Ms. Morales.

  For an instant, Emma felt her heart jump. Ms. Morales was such a mom. Staying with Ms. Morales after their own mom vanished had been nightmarish for the Greystones, but Ms. Morales had always been kind. And Emma knew how Natalie longed to get her mother back; Emma could see joy burst over Natalie’s face at the sound of her mother’s voice.

  And then, just as quickly, the joy on Natalie’s face flipped to fear, and Emma felt her own heart crash. Finn burrowed closer against Emma’s side, and Chess pulled them both back into the shadows.

  It must have hit the others as quickly as it hit Emma: This wasn’t the Ms. Morales they knew. This was the Ms. Morales from the other world.

  The evil one.

  Eighteen

  Chess

  Chess heard Ms. Morales’s voice. Then he heard footsteps on the stairs.

  Ms. Morales—the other world’s Ms. Morales—was coming down the stairs.

  “Hide!” Natalie whispered, shoving the three Greystone children farther back into the shadows behind the furnace.

  “You, too!” Chess begged.

  “No—she already knows I’m here!” Natalie whispered back. “She’ll look for me—it’ll just make her find the three of you. . . .”

  There was nothing Chess could do to help Natalie.

  Natalie—brave, brave Natalie—stepped away from where the Greystones were crouched. She stopped by the bottom of the stairs.

  “Natalie, answer me!” Ms. Morales demanded, her heels clicking on the stairs.

  Even hiding, Chess was still at the right angle to see the play of emotions on Natalie’s face at the sound of her mother’s voice.

  No, don’t think of her as Natalie’s mom, Chess thought. That’s too hard, and it’s not really her. This woman is the Judge. The Judge who wanted to punish my mother.

  And the Judge didn’t sound exactly like Ms. Morales. Ms. Morales’s voice had a lilt to it, a playfulness, even when she was mad at Natalie. Maybe there was just the trace of an accent, too, a hint that she’d be equally comfortable speaking Spanish or English. Chess wasn’t sure what made her voice unique, but he liked the way Ms. Morales talked.

  The Judge’s voice was more boxed-in, tightly controlled. It sounded humorless and angry, with no room for any other emotion.

  “M-Mom?” Natalie stammered. “I thought you already left.”

  “Oh, so you waited until you thought everyone was gone, and then you skipped out from school and sneaked back home?” the Judge accused.

  “Everyone”? Chess thought. Who else lived here besides Natalie—er, Other-Natalie—and her mom?

  Natalie seemed to be fighting to control the emotions on her face. She finally settled on a defiant glare toward the Judge, who’d stopped on the bottom step. If he leaned out a little, Chess could see the back of the Judge’s head.

  “I’m not skipping school!” Natalie protested. “I got sick and they sent me home!”

  “Without calling me first?” the Judge mocked. “Come on, Natalie. That’s not school policy. How stupid do you think I am, telling such a transparent lie—”

  “It’s true!” Natalie insisted. “They tried to call you and couldn’t get through. The school secretary said something about lots of people having cell phone problems today. . . . Anyhow, my friend Megan’s mom was there, and she said she’d bring me home, since she was coming this way anyway.”

  “Lies, lies, lies.” The Judge’s voice was truly cutting now. “You don’t have any friends named Megan.”

  Well, Chess thought. Score one for the Judge for knowing that.

  “She’s a new friend,” Natalie said. “You haven’t met her yet.”

  And . . . score one for Natalie for coming up with that so quickly, Chess thought.

  Against the odds, he felt hope rising. Natalie sounded utterly convincing. Maybe she could lie her way out of this.

  She had to.

  “Natalie . . .” To Chess’s surprise, the Judge’s voice softened. “We’ve talked about this. You have to be . . . cautious . . . about people trying to get close to you. You know, because of my position, and your father’s, there are people who will try to worm their way into your good graces and pretend to like you. When really—”

  “Are you saying no one would like me if you and Dad weren’t my parents?” Natalie exploded. “Really, Mom? Is that what you want me to think? Are you trying to destroy any self-confidence I might have left after . . . after . . . ?”

  “Natalie!” The Judge’s voice was harsh again. “You know that’s not what I’m saying! And regardless, you know this supposed mother of Megan, whoever she is, isn’t an approved emergency contact. The school knows there’s a very short list of people they should release you to—the school was completely irresponsible, and I fully intend to complain. But your behavior was reprehensible and . . . and reckless. Do you want to be kidnapped? Don’t you understand how likely that could be, given the circumstances? And I know you’re not sick. Just admit it, and we’ll pick up this conversation from there.”

  The Judge didn’t raise her voice, but somehow her biting tone was worse than yelling. Chess was behind the furnace, not in the direct line of the Judge’s fury, and he still felt like withering. He still felt like begging for mercy and apologizing, I’m sorry! I’m sorry Natalie had to lie!

  He almost felt like creeping out from behind the furnace and telling the Judge, I’m sorry for sneaking into your house from a different dimension! I’m sorry you don’t even know Finn and Emma and I are here!

  But that was crazy.

  Chess swallowed hard and watched to see what Natalie would do.

  Natalie’s face convulsed like she was about to cry. Then she ran to the side—Chess had to crane his neck to see where she went—and she grabbed a navy blue-and-orange metal trash can. She held the rim so tightly Chess could see her knuckles turning white.

  Then Chess heard the unmistakable sound of retching. And . . . vomiting.

  “She can make herself throw up?” Finn whispered beside Chess. “She’s that good of an actress?”

  Emma slid her hand over Finn’s mouth and shook her head warningly. Chess put a finger over his lips.

  “Oh, Natalie. Honey.” The Judge sighed, and in that moment she didn’t sound like the Judge anymore. This time her voice was an exact match for Ms. Morales’s. “Come on. Let’s take you upstairs and get you cleaned up. And then . . . let’s make sure nobody poisoned you.”

  Chess huddled even more tightly with Emma and Finn, hoping all three of them fit into the shadows as Ms. Morales took a few steps across the basement’s navy blue carpet to reach Natalie and guide her back toward the stairs. He kept his head down, peering at his little brother and sister, because he didn’t trust himself to look toward Natalie and the Judge.

  If the Judge sees us, I need to come up with a convincing story, he told himself. We can’t just count on Natalie to lie for us. And when the Judge turns around, we’ll be in her direct line of sight if she glances in this direction. . . .

  But evidently, walking back to the stairs, the Judge looked only at Natalie. Chess didn’t hear her gasp in sudden horror or scream, Who are you
? What are you doing here? I’m calling the police!

  Still, Chess stayed tensed and braced to run. Or maybe braced to jump out and cause a distraction and hope the Judge saw only him, not Emma and Finn. Wasn’t that a better plan?

  He didn’t let himself relax until he heard Natalie’s and the Judge’s footsteps at the top of the stairs, followed by the door shutting behind them.

  And then Finn shook off Emma’s hand over his mouth and tilted back his head to gaze up at Chess and asked, in his most innocent Finn whisper, “Poison? There’s poison here in this world? Like, anyone could be poisoned, out of the blue?”

  “I don’t know anything about that, Finn,” Chess said. “I guess . . . I guess it’s a good thing we brought our own food.”

  “But . . . Mom’s here,” Finn said. “And Ms. Morales. And Joe. And now Natalie’s up there, and she left her backpack down here with us, and we just heard her mother say that she could be kidnapped or poisoned. . . .”

  Neither Chess nor Emma reminded Finn that the Judge wasn’t Natalie’s mother. Not their Natalie’s mother.

  “Finn, we’ll make sure Natalie’s okay,” Emma finally whispered. “We’ll get her back, and we’ll rescue Mom and Ms. Morales and Joe, and then we’ll go home.”

  But Emma didn’t step out of the shadows, any more than Chess did. Chess couldn’t even bear to lift his head to look at the glaring orange and blue of the rest of the basement. It had never occurred to him that they wouldn’t have Natalie with them the entire time they spent in this world. How much had he come to rely on Natalie?

  What would they do if she never came back?

  Nineteen

  Finn

  What if Natalie dies? Finn wondered.

  This was such an unusual thought to find in his brain that he actually tilted his head to the side and smacked the palm of his hand against his temple, the way he would if he had water stuck in his ear.

  He reminded himself that he’d been with Natalie until two minutes ago; he’d seen her eat a cinnamon-and-brown-sugar Pop-Tart as she pedaled her bike to her mom’s house. It had come out of the same pack as one Finn ate as he waited in Ms. Morales’s hallway while the girls were in Ms. Morales’s office. And his stomach felt fine. He knew Natalie hadn’t been poisoned.

  But he’d watched Ms. Morales—no, the evil judge lady—as she rushed to Natalie’s side, and it was hard to remember what was real and what was fake. It was hard not to believe his own eyes. The Judge really did act like she thought Natalie could have been poisoned; the Judge totally looked like she believed her daughter was in danger.

  What is wrong with this world? Finn wondered. Why is it so different from ours?

  He was thinking wrong again. The world he thought of as his, the world where he’d spent almost his entire life, wasn’t really where he belonged. This awful world—with its mean people and its ugly orange-and-blue flags and banners and clothes and furniture—was where Finn and his family were supposed to fit.

  How could we be from a place that stinks so bad? he wondered, sniffing sadly.

  And . . . he didn’t smell anything.

  He tugged on Chess’s arm and poked Emma in the back.

  “Hey—did you notice? This house doesn’t stink like the other places we went, the last time we came to this world,” he told them.

  Emma raised both eyebrows and then squinted—this was her “I’m a scientist, and I’m going to test a hypothesis” look. She inhaled so deeply and for so long that Finn wondered if her lungs were twice as big as his.

  Then she let the air out and grinned and patted Finn’s shoulder.

  “He’s right!” she exclaimed. “I don’t smell anything. What does that mean?”

  “Maybe no one’s being controlled in this house,” Chess said. His words should have been comforting, but he said them with a bitter twist. Finn gazed up at his brother, and Chess’s skin seemed stretched too tightly across the bones of his face.

  “No odor, no control,” Emma murmured. “Sounds like a logical conclusion.”

  Finn remembered that Emma had come up with a theory the last time they’d been in this world. It was when the kids were at the bizarre, awful trial where their mother was up on the stage—handcuffed to a chair. (Finn couldn’t forget that detail, even though he wanted to.) And Mom couldn’t even defend herself, because there was fake video making her seem guilty. And, if Emma’s theory was right, the people in charge had also released something into the air that made the crowd scared and angry and cruel. It made the kids feel defeated and hopeless, too.

  Emma thought whenever the stink got worse, the bad stuff in the air was worse, too.

  “Of course the Judge wouldn’t be controlled in her own home,” Chess said. “She’s the one doing the controlling.”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Emma said.

  “She was the one running Mom’s trial,” Chess said. “She . . .” For a moment Chess’s face looked like he was trying, two weeks late, to fit in with all the angry, bitter faces in the crowd at Mom’s trial. He didn’t look like himself at all. Maybe he smelled the bad odor, even if Finn and Emma couldn’t.

  Finn sneaked his hand into Chess’s, as if he could pull Chess back to being himself. Chess looked down at Finn, and his face softened.

  “Never mind,” Chess said. “Let’s figure out how to find Mom.”

  Emma pulled a laptop from her backpack. But it wasn’t the one with Mom’s secret codes—it was one of Natalie’s. Evidently Emma had brought two laptops with her.

  “We need to find Wi-Fi first,” Emma announced. “We do that, and I bet there’s a way to . . . to see where Mom was sent to prison.”

  “Mom’s in prison?” Finn said. His voice shook.

  The whole time they’d talked about coming back to rescue Mom, somehow he’d imagined her frozen in place, just where they’d left her. Somehow he’d believed the Greystone kids and Natalie could just run back to the huge auditorium where the trial was, and Mom and Joe would still be onstage.

  And then, he thought, Mom and Joe could figure out how to rescue Ms. Morales, too.

  “Finn, you saw that trial,” Emma said. “No way were they going to find her not guilty.”

  He was glad it was Emma, not Chess, who answered. Emma could make the awful words sound brisk and matter-of-fact.

  Chess would have made Finn feel.

  “But we know Mom isn’t guilty!” Finn protested anyway. “We know she didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “Finn,” Chess said gently. “Yes, we know she didn’t do anything wrong. She wouldn’t. But we don’t know how many things they’ve made illegal here. Things are backward in this world. Mom said it wasn’t even legal to tell the truth. Not if it makes the leaders look bad.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  Finn didn’t know what argument he could use, if truth was illegal.

  Emma looked up from the laptop, which she’d turned on while Finn and Chess were talking.

  “Okay, I can’t log on to anything from here,” Emma reported. “We need to sneak out and find a place where I can. Do you think they have public libraries here, like we do? Or Starbucks or Panera or . . . ?”

  “Last time, Natalie couldn’t get her phone to work in this world,” Chess pointed out. “Maybe computers from the other world won’t work here, either.”

  “I think Natalie’s phone problem was because she was out of range,” Emma said, shutting the computer and slipping it into her backpack again. “You know, because she was in a different dimension from the cell towers she was trying to connect to. With a computer—”

  “With a computer, the leaders might be able to see who’s trying to log on, and where they are,” Chess said. “What if there’s something about that computer that lets them see we’re from the other world?”

  “Chess,” Emma said. “We can’t just sit in this basement doing nothing.”

  Finn saw Chess dip his head down, giving a quick glance toward Finn. Chess wasn’t just looking at
Finn; Chess was trying to get Emma to look, too. It was like Chess and Emma were arguing, and Finn was the argument. He was caught between his brother and sister.

  Chess and Emma didn’t usually argue. And they never made Finn choose sides.

  Finn’s stomach churned. Maybe his Pop-Tart had been bad after all. Maybe he was getting food poisoning, just like Natalie.

  Or maybe it was this world that made people sick, even without the bad smell. Looking out at the blue-and-orange basement made Finn’s stomach queasier; remembering all the angry faces at Mom’s trial made him want to grab the lever on the wall and open the tunnel again and run back to the other world. The better world.

  Except, how could anything be better without Mom?

  Just then, Finn heard a door clunk against a wall above him. The basement door was open again, and someone was running down the stairs. Finn could hear every pounding footstep.

  “Guys!” It was Natalie. She didn’t sound sick now. She sounded ecstatic. “Guys, listen. Mom and Dad are gone now, so you can come out. Did you hear me? I said Mom and Dad. I love this place! Mom and Dad are still married here. Isn’t that great?”

  Twenty

  Emma

  “They aren’t your mom and dad,” Emma said.

  Natalie’s face hardened.

  “I know,” she said. “It’s just, for so long I . . .” She clutched her head with both hands, her palms pressing in on her cheekbones, her fingers tented over her eyes. Then she shook her head and dropped her hands. She peered back at Emma. “Never mind. Let’s . . . get moving.”

  “First things first,” Emma said. “Wi-Fi. So we know where to go. And maybe we should use a computer that’s already in this house, so no one detects ours. Do you think this world’s Natalie might have a spare laptop in her room?”

  Chess patted her shoulder approvingly.