The Deceivers

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Natalie sprang away from Grandma—Fake-Grandma—and sprinted for the door. She was too late. The door opened, and Natalie came face-to-face with another girl. Or not another girl—just a mirror image of herself, wearing the same jeans and T-shirt, but in a way that made her look less sweaty, less bedraggled, and less scared than Natalie felt. Oh, and somehow the mirror image also made it look like Natalie was talking on a phone.

  But mirrors didn’t work that way. The world seemed to tilt, and Natalie understood what had happened.

  Natalie wasn’t facing another girl. She wasn’t facing a mirror.

  She was facing Other-Natalie.

  Thirty

  Natalie

  “No!” Other-Natalie exploded, stepping into the room and shoving Natalie aside. “This isn’t happening! I won’t put up with it! How could Mom and Dad have gotten me a body double, like they’ve been threatening to? An impersonator? And they didn’t warn me, they just . . . sprang it on me by having you show up in my room? No way!” She stalked over and slammed her phone down on her desk, then seemed to change her mind and pulled it back up again. “I’m calling Dad!”

  “Child,” Grandma said softly from behind Natalie. “My sweet baby girl. Calm down. Let’s talk about this quietly. There are others in the house right now.”

  Natalie turned. Somehow in the instant while it was just Natalie facing Other-Natalie, Grandma had shucked off the red wig and the brown uniform, dropped them to the floor, and kicked them under the bed. Grandma’s stylish short gray hair was a little mashed, and her mauve sweater was a little crumpled, but otherwise she looked perfectly normal.

  Perfectly like Natalie’s own grandmother if she’d been miraculously brought back to life.

  “I am not going to calm down!” Other-Natalie wailed. “Are you kidding? Mom and Dad were too cowardly to break this news themselves? They’re making you do it, Grandma? This isn’t even a good imitation of me! I bet you can still see plastic surgery scars on her face!”

  Carelessly, as if Natalie were just some unwanted doll or stuffed animal someone had dropped off in Other-Natalie’s room, Other-Natalie pushed back the hair by Natalie’s face. She was clearly looking for proof that Natalie was in disguise.

  Natalie shoved Other-Natalie’s hand away.

  “Who is this, this fake?” Natalie countered, too late and too feebly. “I’m Natalie Mayhew. This is my room and my house, and she’s the impostor! The deceiver!” Maybe Natalie wasn’t as good a liar as she thought. Her voice wobbled. Then she added, “And you’re my grandma!” and that came out right.

  Grandma—Almost-Grandma—looked back and forth between the two girls.

  “And I thought King Solomon had it rough,” she muttered.

  “That was someone offering to cut a baby in half because two woman both claimed it,” Other-Natalie began. “And this is—”

  “—you being asked to tell the difference between your own granddaughter and some fake!” Natalie finished for her.

  Other-Natalie shot her a startled look. Maybe Natalie had chosen the exact words the other girl had planned to say.

  “Stop that!” Other-Natalie scolded. “Stop imitating me! This is freaking me out. I guess Dad—or Mom; it was probably Mom who actually made the arrangements—I guess they must have told you to stay completely in character. But this isn’t funny. This is going to ruin my life.” She turned to appeal to her grandmother again. “Grandma, you have to talk to Mom and Dad. They’re just being paranoid. I know the world’s a dangerous place, and we’re living in dangerous times. But I can take care of myself—I took that self-defense class, remember? You can’t let them just lock me in my room all the time while this girl is out going places, living my life. She’ll ruin my reputation. I mean, just look at her! I don’t think she even combs her hair!”

  Self-consciously, Natalie smoothed back a strand of hair that had been hanging down into her eyes. It was true that she’d mashed her hair under her bike helmet that morning and then ignored it ever since. No—then she’d mussed it on purpose, trying to look sick.

  “Who cares about hair?” Natalie asked, and both Almost-Grandma and Other-Natalie squinted doubtfully at her.

  Oh, right, because that’s probably not something Other-Natalie would say, Natalie thought. It’s not even something I would have said before a few weeks ago. Other-Natalie is like me before my parents got divorced, before I lost Grandma, before Mom disappeared. . . .

  Natalie had to squeeze her eyes shut for a moment to pull herself back together. This was not going well. She was probably only seconds away from both Other-Natalie and Almost-Grandma screaming for security guards to come and take her away.

  She opened her eyes wide and directed her gaze at Grandma.

  “Please,” she said. “Please help me.”

  Natalie had thought Almost-Grandma’s eyes were wrong before, when she first stood before her in the basement, and her face didn’t go all soft and mushy and loving. The old woman’s gaze now was so hard and heartless that Natalie wondered how Other-Natalie could stand it. Did this version of Grandma love her granddaughter at all?

  Was she capable of loving anyone?

  “You know what, girls?” Almost-Grandma said. “I don’t have time for this. You work things out on your own. You’ll be safe here, doing that.”

  And then, before Natalie had a chance to react, Almost-Grandma scooped up her clothes and wig from the floor, stalked out the door, and shut it behind her.

  Belatedly, Natalie dashed to the door and tried to spin the knob.

  It was locked.

  Natalie whirled back toward Other-Natalie.

  “You let people lock you in your own room?” she asked. With Almost-Grandma gone, there was no reason to keep trying to pretend she was Other-Natalie, and Other-Natalie was the fake.

  Other-Natalie gave a combination shrug, eye roll, and head tilt. Natalie recognized the gesture as her own go-to reaction when she was pretending that something didn’t bother her—when really she wanted to cry and scream and stomp her feet.

  “Welcome to being Natalie Mayhew,” Other-Natalie said, her voice flattened so completely that Natalie had to wonder, Is that how I sound when I’m pretending I don’t care? Or is she even better at hiding her feelings than I am?

  Natalie half expected the other girl to go back to screaming at her. Or to scream for her grandmother or someone else to come and release her from her room. Instead, Other-Natalie slipped into her desk chair and spun it to the side, studying Natalie closely.

  “You haven’t had plastic surgery,” Other-Natalie said. “You don’t have scars. I would have seen them, and they would have been fresh. But . . . you do look like me.”

  “No,” Natalie admitted cautiously. “And yes.”

  The real Other-Natalie twisted in her chair, turning it side to side.

  “Of course Mom and Dad would have paid for the most expensive option,” she mused. “The highest quality. The most foolproof. But this . . . I’m guessing all you really need to look exactly like me is better hair-care products. When was the last time you used conditioner? Or—wherever you came from, did they only let you use the cheap stuff?”

  In spite of herself, Natalie almost giggled. Or maybe it was a cry she held back. Before the divorce, before Grandma’s death, before Mom vanished, Natalie had also been a true believer in the amazing power of the right hair conditioner.

  Now—well, honestly, half the time when she’d taken a shower lately, she couldn’t remember if she’d bothered using soap and shampoo, let alone conditioner. Most of the time, she’d just stood under the water plotting how to get Mom back, trying to figure out what solution she and the Greystones had missed.

  “Did Mom and Dad have me cloned?” Other-Natalie continued. “I mean, it sounds crazy, but . . . let’s think about this. If they made a clone of me now—or nine months ago, whatever—you’d just be a baby. But you’re the exact same height as me, you look like you’re the exact same age, so . . . did they h
ave me cloned when I was born? Is that even possible?” Other-Natalie stood up and walked all the way around Natalie, studying her. “I don’t understand.”

  Natalie remembered the Greystone kids telling her about the wild theories they’d come up with when they first heard about the Gustano kids having the same names and birthdates as them. “Cloning” had been on their list of possibilities, too, even though it made no sense. Natalie wished the Greystones were here now—Finn could distract Other-Natalie with his charm, Emma could come up with strange scientific theories to lead her astray, and Chess . . . well, it would help just to have Chess there gazing sympathetically at Natalie.

  But the Greystones weren’t there. Natalie had to take control of this situation on her own.

  “You want to know what’s going on?” Natalie asked. “How it’s possible for you and me to look identical when we’ve never seen each other before in our lives?”

  “Yes,” Other-Natalie said.

  Oops. Now Natalie really did have to come up with an explanation. Some convincing lie, something that made Other-Natalie want to help her.

  She opened her mouth and gazed pointedly into Other-Natalie’s eyes. Often the key to a good lie was just looking someone directly in the eye.

  But looking into Other-Natalie’s eyes was too much like gazing into a mirror. She saw the hurt and confusion the other girl was trying to hide. She saw how much Other-Natalie was trying to be her own person, and how sometimes it felt like the whole world was trying to stop her. She saw how many millions of ways she and Other-Natalie were alike.

  It wasn’t just skin-deep.

  Natalie was taken off guard, and the words that slipped out of her mouth were, “I’ll tell you the truth. I promise.”

  Thirty-One

  Finn, Right After Natalie Left the Office

  “I’ll keep watching,” Finn told Chess and Emma. “To see where Natalie goes and what happens.”

  Chess pressed up alongside Finn and clutched the Judge’s desk so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

  “I’m watching, too,” he said. “And if anything goes wrong . . .” Chess gulped. “I mean, nothing’ll go wrong. I just want to watch. Just in case. But Emma, you should keep working on the computer, and see what you find.”

  “You think I can concentrate at a time like this?” Emma squeaked out.

  She joined Chess and Finn, all three of them huddled together by the Judge’s desk, all three of them staring at the image on the wall of the cleaners in the Morales-Mayhew basement with its twisted pillars and blue-and-orange banners.

  Even Finn knew this was crazy. There was so much they didn’t know about this world; they had a million things to look up. Two of them really should be scanning the internet while the third person watched Natalie—that would be the smartest plan.

  But Finn didn’t say that aloud. It felt too good to have Chess and Natalie pressed in close beside him, bookending his shoulders.

  It almost made him feel safe.

  And . . . it made him feel like Natalie would be safe, too.

  On the wall, Disguise Lady and Ace Two kept working away, vacuuming and scrubbing. And then Natalie appeared in the scene, rushing toward Disguise Lady.

  “Can we turn the camera to see Natalie and Disguise Lady from the front, not just the backs of their heads?” Emma asked.

  “Natalie did it before, but I saw what she was doing,” Finn said. Without taking his eyes off Natalie, he reached under the desk for the button hidden in the carved wooden angel’s wing. But maybe he should have looked at what he was doing, because his finger bumped a different part of the wing. The scene on the wall didn’t rotate—it changed completely. Now, rather than spying on Natalie and the woman in the basement, the Greystones had a clear view of Other-Natalie’s bedroom.

  “Go back!” Chess exclaimed.

  “Sorry,” Finn said. “I’ll fix it.”

  “No—wait! I want to see this!” Emma reached under the desk and grabbed Finn’s hand.

  “What are you talking about?” Chess asked. “That’s just an empty room, and Natalie—”

  “It’s not empty!” Emma said. “Can’t you see the cleaner hiding in the closet? The cleaner Natalie told not to go into that room?”

  It took Finn a moment to see what Emma meant. At first all he noticed was the closet door sliding to the side, a smidge at a time. Then he saw a woman’s face in the crack between the door and the doorframe.

  “Are the cleaners playing hide-and-seek?” Finn asked.

  The woman squeezed out of the closet, then stepped back in, pulling the door all the way shut this time. Maybe she wasn’t actually playing hide-and-seek, but just practicing, the way Finn did when he was looking for new hiding spots and deciding which ones he could get into and out of without making any noise.

  Closets were usually too obvious, but Finn did like how Other-Natalie’s closet door slid open and shut so silently.

  “Okay, the cleaners are doing lots of weird stuff,” Chess said. “I don’t understand that either. But get back to Natalie! If the cleaners are sneaking around and hiding and, and who knows what else—that means she’s in even more danger out there!”

  Finn reached under the desk again, more carefully this time. The basement scene reappeared on the wall. But Natalie and Disguise Lady were nowhere in sight. The camera view showed only Ace Two leaning over the couch.

  “Maybe they just . . . walked to the back of the basement, to talk privately?” Emma suggested. “Can we see . . .”

  Finn ran his finger over the button, and it felt like he was sliding the camera on some sort of railing along the basement ceiling.

  “I’m getting the hang of this now!” he exclaimed.

  At the back of the basement, there were more shadowy couches, all of them oddly stiff and formal, as well as a dark blue velvet curtain that hung from the ceiling to the floor, right where the basement ended back in Ms. Morales’s house in the better world. Why put in such a gigantic curtain just to hide a wall?

  Natalie and the old woman were still nowhere in sight.

  “Keep going—we’ve got to find Natalie . . . ,” Chess muttered. “Would they have gone toward the stairs?”

  Finn made the camera reverse, back toward Ace Two. He was walking away from the couch now, toward the stairs and the wall where the kids had left the lever.

  “If Natalie thinks she and that woman can talk privately over by the lever, and then that guy walks over beside them, well . . . I wish we could warn Natalie!” Emma agonized, twisting her hands together.

  Finn zoomed the camera ahead of Ace Two. He got the first glimpse of the lever they’d left behind, tucked behind the furnace. No one was standing in this area of the basement, either.

  “Maybe Natalie found out Disguise Lady wants to help us again, and so she’s bringing that woman up to this office right now,” Finn suggested. “Maybe we don’t even need to keep watching the basement.”

  He started to spin the camera view up toward the stairs. But Emma’s hand shot out and she grabbed him by the wrist.

  “Stop!” she cried.

  Finn saw what she was screaming about: Ace Two was beside the lever again. He glanced over his shoulder—once to the left, once to the right, and then once again in both directions, as if he really wanted to make sure no one saw him.

  And then he put his hands on the lever and yanked it straight off the wall.

  Thirty-Two

  Emma

  “He just, he just—” Emma sputtered.

  “Shut off our way back to the other world,” Chess finished for her. “He stopped that tunnel from ever working again.”

  In the scene on the wall, the cleaner gave one more furtive glance over his shoulder, then slid the lever into his uniform, hiding it.

  “No, no, no!” Emma cried, circling the desk and aiming for the door.

  Chess grabbed her by the shoulder, holding her back.

  “Wait—we’ve got to think this through!” he said. />
  “I already have,” Emma retorted. “If he takes that lever away, we’re stuck in this world forever! It won’t even matter if we find Mom, because we’ll have no way to take her to safety! We’ve got to get that back!”

  “She’s right, isn’t she?” Finn asked, gazing back and forth between Emma and Chess. “And she’s got a plan?”

  Emma didn’t have a plan. But she couldn’t wait. She scrambled for the door.

  “You can’t go out there by yourself,” Chess protested.

  Emma saw him peer back at Finn as if he couldn’t decide which of them to protect.

  “You stay with Finn,” Emma said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Chess grabbed Finn’s arm, pulling him away from the desk.

  “We stick together,” Chess said. “All three of us are going to get that lever back.”

  Maybe Emma was feeling a little torn herself. She wanted Finn—and Chess—to stay safe, but it would also be really nice to have them with her.

  “Hurry,” Emma said. “Before that man gets away.”

  Maybe she was also a little afraid that if she waited a second longer, she’d think of all the reasons why going after the lever wasn’t logical.

  Or she’d just chicken out.

  Both Chess and Finn were by her side instantly: Chess looking white-faced and tense, Finn trying a wobbly smile that was probably supposed to look brave, but mostly just revealed his clenched teeth.

  “Should we prop the door open?” Chess asked. “Natalie has the key, but if we want to come back before her, then—”

  “Can we make it look like it’s locked, but it really isn’t?” Finn asked.

  “Let’s try,” Emma said. “Was there a sheet of paper anywhere?”

  “Here!” Finn rushed to a closet Emma hadn’t noticed, and pulled out a flyer with Judge Morales’s face on it.

  Emma took the paper and folded it in half and then half again. She turned the doorknob to open the door, and slid the paper into the crack between the door and the doorframe. There was no sound of the lock clicking back into place.