Among the Barons

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “When that door opened in my room, I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Joel said.

  “Did anybody know those doors were there?” John asked.

  “Why didn’t they just let us go out the regular doors?” Robert asked.

  “Because they knew we’d all be too scared,” Trey said glumly. “They knew we were cowards.”

  Trey seemed thoroughly disgusted with himself. He wouldn’t meet Luke’s eyes. Luke thought about how he’d feel now if he’d been one of the boys cowering in their beds or trembling in their closets. He felt a surge of pride; he, at least, had been brave. This time.

  “Hey, maybe there wasn’t a fire at all. Maybe this was just a drill,” Joel said. “Maybe it was just a test Luke and the teachers cooked up to see how we’d react. They probably got the idea from Smits, talking about needing a sledgehammer to escape.”

  He and several other boys turned almost accusingly toward Luke.

  “No, there was a fire,” Trey said dully. “Didn’t you smell the smoke?”

  “Hey, where is Smits?” John asked. “Why isn’t he here bragging about how his bodyguard got him out, because he’s so rich and his life is so much more valuable than any of ours?”

  Now everyone looked expectantly toward Luke, waiting for him to explain. Smits wasn’t even Luke’s real brother, and Luke was still supposed to be Smits’s keeper.

  “He’s here in Mr. Hendricks’s house, too,” Luke said. “He’s just in a different room.”

  “He’s probably got a room to himself,” Joel said resentfully.

  Luke didn’t answer this time. He was still trying to make sense of what Mr. Hendricks had told him. The last thing he wanted to do was try to explain everything to the others, who didn’t think much of Smits anyway. But they didn’t like Oscar, either. They’d probably want to blame both of them for setting the fire.

  Luke was pretty sure he knew which one was guilty. But why?

  The conversation seemed to swirl away from Luke as the other boys moved from the dining room to the kitchen. Only Trey stayed by Luke’s side.

  “Weren’t you scared at all?” Trey asked softly. “Why didn’t you want to hide, too?”

  Luke thought back. It was hard to remember what he had been thinking when that first alarm went off, when that first order came over the loudspeaker: “Evacuate immediately!” He wasn’t even sure if he had been thinking.

  “I probably did want to hide,” he told Trey. “I just knew that I couldn’t. And I was worried about everyone else.”

  “Of course,” Trey said. “That’s because you’re brave. You’re a hero. And I’m not. I never will be.”

  Luke remembered how miserable he’d been when he found out that his friend Jen had died at the rally for third children’s rights, when Luke hadn’t even had the courage to go to it. But Luke, at least, had had the comfort of knowing that his cowardice—if that’s what it was—had probably saved his life. Trey’s cowardice could have led to his death.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Luke said lightly. “Next time, you’re welcome to be the hero instead of me.”

  Trey shook his head. “I’m not joking,” he said. “It’s not that easy. When I’m terrified, I can’t just stand up and say, Well, it’s hero time!’ I can’t. And you—you went back into a burning building, what—six, seven, eight times? You risked your life.”

  Luke didn’t like thinking about what he had done in those terms.

  “There wasn’t that much danger,” Luke said. “I never even saw any flames.”

  “That’s because the escape corridors are sealed,” Trey said. “Mr. Dirk explained everything. They sealed off our dormitory rooms and the escape route as soon as the first alarm went off. It really is an ingenious system. None of us deserve it. Except you.”

  Luke had never seen Trey like this before. Trey had never seemed to mind being easily frightened; he’d never seemed to long for courage. What had the fire done to him?

  “All right, everyone,” Mr. Hendricks announced at the front of the room. “We’ve now checked the entire school thoroughly. It’s safe for all of you to go back to your rooms. I realize this has been a disruptive experience—all morning classes are canceled, so you all may sleep late.”

  The boys had recovered enough of their spirit that they managed to raise a feeble cheer. But the exuberance died as soon as they began moving out into the darkness once more, facing their fears of the outdoors yet again.

  Luke moved around the edges of the crowd, thinking he’d need to guide the others along the path to the school. But Mr. Hendricks stopped him at the door.

  “Not you,” he said, laying a cautioning hand on Luke’s arm. “I need your help.”

  “With Smits?” Luke asked.

  Mr. Hendricks nodded. “And Oscar.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Luke waited on the couch until all the other boys were gone. When Mr. Hendricks finally shut the front door and rolled his wheelchair back toward Luke, Luke started to blurt out, “Mr. Hendricks, it had to have been Smits who set the fire. He told me—”

  Mr. Hendricks held up his hand, stopping Luke.

  “Now, now,” he said. “The last thing I need right now is to hear any more wild accusations. Think very carefully before you tell me anything.”

  What would it hurt to tell Mr. Hendricks the truth? Luke wondered. He slumped on the couch in confusion.

  “One of the few things that Oscar and Smits agree on is that you were the last one in Smits’s room last evening,” Mr. Hendricks said. “Besides the two of them, of course. What I would like you to do for me right now is to go up to Smits’s room and tell me if you see anything amiss. Apart from the fire damage, that is.”

  “The fire was in Smits’s room?” Luke asked.

  Mr. Hendricks nodded.

  “Entirely,” he said. “We were able to contain it quite successfully.”

  Luke’s certainty ebbed a bit. No matter what Smits had said, why would Smits want to burn his own room?

  But for that matter, why would Oscar want to injure the boy he was supposed to be protecting?

  Luke could easily understand why Mr. Hendricks looked so troubled. Luke stood up.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  He went out the front door. The night air that had felt like such a relief only an hour or so ago seemed cold now. Threatening. Luke felt like he’d caught the other boys’ fear.

  But none of the other boys were going to have to inspect a charred room all by themselves. Only Luke.

  In his head Luke carried on an imaginary conversation with Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Talbot: Guess what? When I said I was willing to be brave for the cause of helping to free all the third children, this isn’t what I meant. This is scaring me—this is danger, for no reason. This has nothing to do with the cause. Smits isn’t my concern. Smits shouldn’t be my problem.

  But he couldn’t imagine what Mr. Hendricks’s or Mr. Talbot’s response would be if he actually spoke those words to either of them.

  Luke slipped in the front door of the school and lightly raced up the stairs. He saw none of the other boys, but some of the teachers seemed to be patrolling the halls. No one stopped Luke.

  On the fourth floor the smell of smoke was overpowering. Luke longed for an open window to lean his head out. But except for the smell, Luke found no other evidence of fire until he reached the door of Smits’s room. The door was pulled shut, but burn marks spiked out from the frame. Gently Luke pushed the door open.

  The room he’d stood in only hours before was transformed. The carpet was covered with wet ash; the comforter on the bed was burned away. Luke thought about what little Mr. Hendricks had told him about Oscar’s and Smits’s differing versions of how the fire had started. Could Oscar possibly have set Smits’s bed on fire while Smits was in it?

  To still the terrifying questions growing in his mind, Luke moved over to Smits’s desk, which seemed relatively untouched. His schoolbooks wer
e stacked neatly off to the side, only slightly charred but, like much of the rest of the room, soaking wet. The computer everyone had been so impressed by when Smits arrived was now only a sad heap of melted plastic.

  Luke wanted to run away, to rush back to Mr. Hendricks and report, “I didn’t see anything strange.” And then maybe he could wiggle out of any obligation Mr. Hendricks thought he had to Smits and Oscar; he could go back to bed like all the other boys. He could fall asleep and tell himself that everything frightening him was just a nightmare.

  But something made Luke keep looking, methodically, with a sort of horrified fascination. He pulled out drawers, examined papers that had managed to escape all flame. But they were just ordinary homework—musical scales and conjugated verbs. Luke moved away from the desk. In the closet, totally unscathed, he found the folded-up cot that Oscar evidently slept on when he wasn’t sleeping in the chair.

  And then, tucked under the sheet, inside a split seam of the cot’s mattress, Luke found something rigid and plastic and rectangular. Luke dug into the mattress and pulled out two identification cards.

  Fake ones.

  Or were they?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  One of the I.D. cards showed Smits’s face but a different name: Peter Goodard. The other I.D. showed no picture, just a name: Stanley Goodard. Why was the picture missing? Had the fire prevented Oscar from gluing his picture on—or from taking Smits’s picture off? Were Oscar and Smits really not Oscar and Smits, but Peter and Stanley? Or were they really Oscar and Smits, planning to go undercover as other people? Why would they want to do that? And whose plan was it? Oscar/Stanley’s or Smits/Peter’s?

  Luke felt so overwhelmed that he sank to the floor, neither remembering nor caring that he’d get ash all over his clothes. He stared at the fake I.D.’s in his trembling hands.

  “Are you finding everything satisfactorily?” a voice said behind him, from the doorway of the room. It was Mr. Dirk.

  Luke scrambled to hide the I.D.’s. He slid his hand toward his pant pocket, forgetting he was still wearing pajamas. And even fancy Baron pajamas lacked pockets in the pants. The only pocket was on the pajama shirt. Desperately he cupped the I.D.’s in his hand, trying to keep them out of sight.

  “Mr. Hendricks sent me to check on you because you were taking so long,” Mr. Dirk said.

  “Oh—I was just being thorough,” Luke said. “Like you tell us to be on essay tests.”

  Mr. Dirk laughed, without any humor.

  Would there be any harm in telling Mr. Dirk the secret Luke had just discovered? Luke certainly intended to tell Mr. Hendricks, and Mr. Hendricks trusted Mr. Dirk. Then Luke remembered what Mr. Hendricks had said: “Think very carefully before you tell me anything.” What was Mr. Hendricks so afraid of? Shouldn’t Luke pass the burden of this secret to a trustworthy grown-up as soon as possible?

  He wanted to. But something made him keep quiet.

  “So, thorough or not—are you almost done? Mr. Hendricks is waiting, you know,” Mr. Dirk said.

  “Um, sure,” Luke said.

  He turned slowly, trying to slip the I.D. cards up his sleeve as he moved. And because he stayed low to the floor, for the first time he saw what lay under Smits’s bed.

  “Oscar’s sledgehammer,” Luke said, and pointed with the hand that wasn’t hiding the I.D. cards.

  Mr. Dirk walked into the room, his shoes squishing on the wet, burned carpet. He bent down and pulled the sledgehammer out from under the bed. It was near the head of the bed, directly below the pillows that Smits had been lying on the last time Luke had seen him.

  “Is that a clue?” Luke asked. “Is it important where we found it?”

  “Perhaps,” Mr. Dirk said. “I’m not a forensics expert. This is why I like history. With the advantage of hindsight you can almost always tell what’s important.”

  Luke tried to remember whether Oscar had been holding the sledgehammer the last time Luke had been in Smits’s room. But Luke hadn’t been paying attention to Oscar then.

  “I’ll take it to Mr. Hendricks,” Luke said. “He’ll know what to do with it.”

  Grasping the sledgehammer in one hand and holding the I.D.’s inside his pajama sleeve with the other, Luke left Mr. Dirk looking perplexed, standing in the middle of Smits’s ruined room.

  Back at Mr. Hendricks’s house, Luke silently laid the sledgehammer and the two I.D.’s on the dining-room table. Mr. Hendricks’s eyes widened in surprise when he saw the I.D.’s, but he quickly swept them from the table and thrust them back at Luke.

  “Keep these out of sight,” he said. “Did anyone else see them?”

  Luke was relieved that he could shake his head no. Still, he carefully slipped the I.D.’s into the pocket of the pajama shirt.

  “This is an interesting development indeed,” Mr. Hendricks muttered, seemingly to himself.

  “What if this is who Smits and Oscar really are?” Luke asked, tapping the pocket. “What if they’ve been lying about their identities all along?”

  “Smits is Smits, all right,” Mr. Hendricks said. “I’ve no doubt of that. But Oscar could be anyone. That’s why he’s dangerous.”

  Luke shook his head, trying to clear it. Outside Mr. Hendricks’s windows Luke could see the first tinge of dawn creeping over the horizon. And Luke had had barely five minutes of sleep all night. That must be the reason it took so long for Mr. Hendricks’s words to register. When they did, he jumped back in panic.

  “Oscar could be anyone?” he repeated. “Do you think he’s from the Population Police?”

  “No,” Mr. Hendricks said, “but you might want to act as though he is.”

  Luke squinted at Mr. Hendricks in total confusion. Mr. Hendricks sighed and handed Luke a set of keys.

  “Smits is in the back bedroom,” he said. “Why don’t you go get him and bring him to me?”

  Luke half expected Smits to be asleep, but he sprang out of the room the instant Luke got the door open.

  “Am I safe now? Have you sent that murdering scum off to jail where he belongs?” Smits yelled. Then he slumped against the doorframe as soon as he saw it was only Luke. “Oh, Lee. Hi.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” Luke asked.

  The younger boy didn’t answer, only followed Luke down the hall. When they reached the dining room and he saw the sledgehammer lying on the table, Smits resumed his hysteria.

  “So you found Oscar’s weapon,” Smits raged. “Under the bed, right? He never meant to use that to save me, you know. I’m lucky he never bludgeoned me to death in my sleep.”

  “Smits,” Mr. Hendricks said patiently, “how did you know where Oscar hid the sledgehammer, to avoid saving you, if, as you told me before, you were asleep when he supposedly set the fire?”

  Smits visibly wilted.

  Mr. Hendricks shook his head. “Smits, with as many untruths as you’ve been accused of telling, I’d think you’d be a more accomplished liar by now.”

  “That’s my problem,” Smits said sulkily. “I’ve never been a good liar. Haven’t you ever noticed? The people who are good at it never get caught. If I could lie well, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

  Luke wondered exactly what Smits meant by that.

  “Smits,” Mr. Hendricks said gently, “why did you set the fire?”

  Smits looked down. “I wanted you to send Oscar away,” he mumbled. Then he peered earnestly at Mr. Hendricks. “Couldn’t you still do that? Couldn’t you tell my parents that he was to blame, and then they’d fire him and he’d go away? And you could tell them that I’m doing really well here, so I don’t need another bodyguard. . . .”

  “And what would that accomplish?” Mr. Hendricks asked.

  Smits looked from Mr. Hendricks to Luke.

  “Then I could act the way I want to act. I wouldn’t be . . . spied on. I could find out . . .” He broke off and looked back at the floor.

  “Find out what?” Mr. Hendricks asked.

  But Smits only shook his
head. He kept his face down. Luke wondered if he’d started crying.

  “Sit down, Smits,” Mr. Hendricks said. “Lee, could you go open Oscar’s door now?”

  So Luke took another key and went to another door at the back of the house. Like Smits, Oscar was waiting close to the door. But when Oscar saw Luke, he said nothing, only rushed past him, out to Mr. Hendricks.

  “I must call my employers,” Oscar announced. “I demand to be given a phone this instant!”

  Mr. Hendricks gave Oscar an amused look.

  “I believe, as headmaster of this school, that I shall be the one calling the Grants,” he said. “If they ask to speak to you, I shall, of course, let them. Now, sit!”

  Oscar sat. Luke hid a smile at the sight of the huge, muscular man obeying the command of an old man in a wheelchair. Oscar could easily have overpowered Mr. Hendricks and grabbed as many phones as he wanted. But Mr. Hendricks had such an aura of control about him, Luke bet that it didn’t even occur to Oscar to disobey.

  Mr. Hendricks rolled into his office to use the phone. Oscar, Luke, and Smits sat silently around the dining-room table. After a few moments Oscar reached out and grabbed his sledgehammer. Luke saw Smits flinch beside him. But Oscar didn’t do anything with the hammer, only cradled it in his arms.

  Then Mr. Hendricks returned.

  “The Grants have been informed now that we had a minor fire at our school, possibly electrical in nature,” he said. He looked directly at Smits. “They want you to come home as soon as possible, until our wiring can be thoroughly checked. For safety’s sake.”

  “But—,” Smits protested.

  Luke noticed that Oscar looked ready to complain, too, but he kept his mouth shut.

  “They were adamant,” Mr. Hendricks said. “I don’t believe that anything you might say would change their minds. Now, why don’t you and Oscar go and pack up whatever can be salvaged from your room?”

  Astonished, Luke watched Smits and his bodyguard leave.

  “You trust the two of them alone together?” Luke asked as soon as they were out the door.