He thought about saying nothing. Just letting her walk past. He could hang back, wait a while so she didn’t think he was following her. It might be easier that way—
“Hi,” he said, raising one hand and waving it like an idiot.
She stopped fifty feet away and stared at him. He couldn’t really see her eyes, just the shape of her hair, lifting a little in the morning breeze. Behind her the sky was orange and purple.
He walked closer, every step taking a certain amount of effort. Finally he was standing no more than five feet from her. She was biting her lip.
“Hi, yourself,” she said.
Jake was too nervous to laugh but he smiled. He tried to think of something to say but failed. Instead he lifted one arm and waved in the direction of the school, and the two of them started walking again. Eventually, she started talking, as if to fill the empty space. “My name’s Megan Gottschalk. We just moved here, like, two weeks ago. Just before school started. I had some friends in Chicago, that wasn’t so bad. But here I don’t know anybody. That’s where we’re from, Chicago. It was a lot different. It’s so hard, not having anybody to talk to.”
Jake nodded in sympathy. During the summers, when Cody was in Florida with his grandmother, he often felt the same way. Like part of his life was missing, like there were resources he needed and he couldn’t find them.
She went on about her life, her childhood, her parents. Trying so hard to make good grades in school, not because it seemed very important but because nothing else did, either, nothing seemed to make much difference but at least with grades you knew there was something to work towards. There was a concrete goal, and she liked that.
He did not choose to share his Pass/Fail status.
Finally she wound down, until there were pauses between her sentences, stretches where they did nothing but walk together in silence. It wasn’t nearly as awkward as the silence that came before, though. “This is kind of nice,” that little laugh that couldn’t, “it’s nice talking to you. You’re so quiet. I feel like you’re just listening, paying total attention to me. Most people when you talk to them they’re nodding and acting like they hear you but they’re actually thinking about what they’re going to say next. They aren’t really listening at all. That always makes me so crazy.”
Jake nodded again. He wondered if he should offer to carry her books or something, then thought better of it. Instead he asked, when it was clear she had finished, “What happened that night in your car? Why did you drive into my house?”
Her eyes flashed and he saw that deep blue again. He wouldn’t mind just looking at those eyes for a long time, he thought.
“It was just an accident. I got careless, I think.”
“You think?” he asked.
She shrugged as if the question didn’t make much sense. “I was going home. I’d been at the mall, buying some stuff for school. Just notebooks and pens and things, and a couple outfits, I guess. I was driving home, I mean, I don’t drink, so it wasn’t that, but there was this moment where my eyes were closed. It’s funny, I wasn’t even tired. I don’t remember being tired… I guess I must have been. My eyes were closed, just for a second, and then the car was headed right for a brick wall. That’s all I remember. I’m sorry. I wish I had a better answer for you.”
“That’s fine.” They reached the school a few moments later and walked inside together. “Listen,” he said, as they split up to go to their individual homerooms, “do you walk the same way every morning?”
She nodded, her eyes wide.
He was a little surprised himself. “Tomorrow, when you get to that corner, wait for me. Or I’ll wait for you. I want to—ask you some more questions.”
It was almost like he’d asked her out, Jake thought. It was very close.
She agreed to the plan and then went her way. Jake headed toward Mr. Schneider’s room—his head was spinning and he wanted to talk to Cody very badly, he needed to talk to Cody—but when he got there the door had a note on it telling him to go to a classroom on the other side of the school. By the time he arrived the bell had rung and the halls were deserted, but he figured he didn’t need a hall pass. Unless that was part of the test—he couldn’t rule that out.
This was it. It had to be. The next test. His palms started to sweat.
He reached for the doorknob of Classroom 187 but the door opened before he could touch it. Standing inside was a man in a navy blue three piece suit, wearing black leather gloves and a perfectly reflective mask. In the reflection Jake’s face looked terrified.
“Hello, Jake,” the Proctor said. “Are you ready to get started?”
Chapter Seven
The Proctor’s voice wasn’t electronically distorted, at least it didn’t sound that way. It didn’t sound human, either, though. It had a warm, buzzing quality, as if he were speaking through the whirling blades of an electric fan. The man behind the mask (if it was a man—it could just as easily be a woman in disguise) whispered, which didn’t help, and used no hand gestures or body language.
Jake stared into the reflective mask, stared at his own face, and figured he understood. There was no way for him to know who was testing him, so there was no way to know which of the school’s teachers were part of this messed-up game. The voice was distorted just to make sure he didn’t recognize it. The mask showed nothing but himself. The identical suits meant there could be one teacher behind the whole thing (the odds on favorite was Mr. Zuraw, the guidance counselor) or it could be dozens of them. It could be every teacher in the school, taking turns with the mask.
“Hello, Jake,” the Proctor repeated, patiently waiting for him to make some kind of response. “Are you ready to get started?”
Jake licked his lips. They were suddenly dry. This was his second test, and he still understood only a few basic rules. He would have to be on his guard. “Yes,” he replied. What would even happen if he said no? Would the Proctor just wait until he changed his answer? Or would he—
“Failure to respond to a test results in a registered grade of FAIL,” the Proctor told him.
Jake let out a little whimpering noise, despite his best efforts to contain it.
Had this thing just read his mind?
Or maybe he had failed to give the correct response. “I’m ready to get started,” he tried, speaking very distinctly.
“Good! Then let’s get started. This will be a very easy test, if you use your intelligence. It is highly recommended that you pass this test, as later tests in the series will be more difficult and more likely to result in a failure condition. It’s important to accrue all the PASSes you can now, rather than waste one of your allotted FAILs.”
“That… makes sense,” Jake said, frowning. Now he wondered if he was talking to a machine. Was there some kind of robot behind the mask? Was he listening to a recorded message?
“There are a number of envelopes in the room behind me,” the Proctor went on. “All but one of them contain a FAIL. Please select the other one and open it.”
The Proctor stepped smoothly aside, letting Jake enter the room.
It was a classroom, much like all the others although the desks had been removed, leaving most of the floor empty. A little early morning light came in through a row of rectangular windows in the far wall. A single wide teacher’s desk sat in the middle of the floor tiles, illuminated as well by overhead fluorescent lights. On the desk sat nine envelopes, arranged in a grid: three by three. They were all pale blue, as was to be expected. They were all the same size and shape and nothing immediately distinguished one from another.
That was all. There was nothing else in the room.
He had to pick one envelope. This was supposed to be an easy test—but it looked like he had eight chances in nine to fail it automatically.
He began to seriously worry about the harder tests to come.
Nine envelopes. Only one right choice.
Jake walked toward the table, intending to pick one up at random. He couldn’
t see any other way to choose. Maybe he would pass his hand over each one and see if it gave him a different feeling somehow. Would he even know if a PASS was hidden inside one? He hadn’t yet seen an envelope with a FAIL in it, so he didn’t know if they were different, or if they felt any different from the PASSes. He was almost certain they would seem identical from the outside.
Jake started to reach for the one in the middle. It stood out, a little, because it was the only one surrounded on all sides by other envelopes. But—it couldn’t be that easy, could it? Maybe he should pick the bottom-most, right-most envelope, because that was the last one in the series, and therefore least likely to be picked. He reached for it, and then stopped.
He only had one chance. And a wrong pick meant an automatic fail. He could feel sweat rolling down the small of his back.
He looked back at the Proctor. He—she—it—didn’t move a muscle, just stood there patiently, waiting to see what he would do.
“Can I ask you questions?” he said.
“You may, but the number of answers I can provide are quite limited.”
Jake nodded. He pointed at the topmost, leftmost envelope. “Is it this one?”
The Proctor didn’t even shake its head. So that wasn’t the answer.
“Cheating is permitted,” Jake said, quoting the rules. “Sometimes it’s necessary to cheat to complete the test.”
“Yes,” the Proctor said.
“Do I have to cheat to complete this test?”
“No,” the Proctor said. “Of the entire series of tests, this is the most straightforward. There are no alternate conditions. There are no variables involved. Only one envelope is correct. It is in this room. There is no time limit, nor any constraints on how you choose. You may pick the envelopes up and feel them, hold them up to the light, smell them, weigh them, and so on as you please. The test will continue until you open one envelope. Do you understand, Jake?”
“I… think so,” Jake said.
This had to be easy, he thought. It at least had to have a logical solution. It looked like a purely random choice, but that just wasn’t fair. Not when his very life was at stake. The tests were designed to challenge him, but they weren’t meant to be arbitrary—he was almost certain this wasn’t just a pointless game, that there was a reason he was being subjected to this, that he was being sized up for something, something important. Something the rest of the kids in his school weren’t qualified for.
He wanted to Pass. He realized that, right then. Always before good grades had just been something that came naturally. Easily. This was different. He wanted it. He wanted to know what was on the other side, what happened when he passed the last test and it was all over.
But he had to get through this test first. Nine envelopes, completely alike. If he was allowed to pick them up, test them however he wanted, hold them up to the light then most likely such examinations would be useless. Picking at random was almost a sure way to fail. His hands, he realized, were shaking.
He started to reach for an envelope, just to get it over with. He picked up the one in the middle row on the right-hand side, lifted it in both hands and almost got his thumb under the seal to tear it open—when something hit him like a brick.
The envelope, the Proctor had said, was in this room.
It never said it was on the desk.
He turned around slowly, looking around at the corners of the room, glancing up at the ceiling. He asked the Proctor to move so he could close the room’s door and see what was on the back of the door—maybe it was taped up there. It wasn’t.
One more place to look. He got down on his hands and knees and looked underneath the desk. Just like, he thought, he had looked under his bedside table at home and found that row of his own initials. That was funny. He crawled under the desk and looked up.
Taped to the underside of the desk was a pale blue envelope.
“Oh my God,” he said, letting out a trapped breath. He had come so close to opening the wrong one. This one, a tenth envelope, surely contained his PASS.
As he opened it, though, he realized the Proctor had promised no such thing. It had said that all but one envelope contained a FAIL. It didn’t say anything about the tenth envelope.
With eyes wide he tore open this hidden envelope and pulled out the simple card inside. It read DUCK.
As soon as he’d finished reading it, a high-caliber, high-velocity rifle bullet shattered the window at the far side of the room and lodged itself in the vinyl floor tiles.
The test wasn’t over.
Chapter Eight
Jake fought to control his breathing. He looked around the room—what he could see of it from his position of safety under the desk—and saw glass scattered on the floor, the tiles scorched where the bullet had cut through them, the Proctor still standing in one corner, not moving at all, not running away in terror.
Well, of course not. The Proctor wasn’t the target of that shot. Jake glanced from the window to the bullet hole in the floor and traced the bullet’s trajectory. Had he opened one of the other envelopes—the ones on top of the table, all of which contained automatic FAILs, the bullet would have gone right through him. Through his heart, maybe. Or his eye.
He was supposed to be allowed three FAILs before he was killed. That was the rule. But clearly this was one of those automatic failure conditions the Proctor had mentioned. He understood what that meant now: some of the tests would include conditions under which he could be killed without warning, regardless of how many FAILs or PASSes he had. Suddenly everything looked a lot scarier.
A second bullet burst through the window glass, and made a crater in the plaster of one wall. Jake’s whole body jumped a split second after it hit. He pushed himself backwards, away from the windows. If he stood up, if he moved out from under the desk, would he be shot instantly?
But the alternative was to stay down there until—when? Until the test was over? Until the gunman got bored and left?
He followed the trajectory backward, through the window, out into the world beyond. The football stadium was back there. The shooter must be standing on top of the bleachers, aiming through a telescopic sight. The stadium was only about a hundred yards from the back of the school. Jake knew very little about guns but he figured that couldn’t be a very difficult shot for a marksman.
He had to get out. It occurred to him that the Proctor was safe. That if he moved toward the Proctor, the gunman might think twice about shooting him, so he wouldn’t hit the Proctor as well. Jake grabbed the legs of the desk and jumped out as quickly as he could, right toward where the Proctor still stood motionless and unaffected. He nearly collided with the silent man as another shot rang out, spraying his back with tiny shards of shattered glass. He pulled his shoulders in, terrified that he’d been shot in the back and just didn’t feel it yet. But no—he hadn’t been hit. If he had he would be bleeding, he would be—dead.
The Proctor next to Jake sank slowly to the floor, as if his suit was suddenly empty and there was nothing to support it. Jake yelped as he saw the Proctor drop past him, a perfect round hole drilled through its reflective surface where the wearer’s forehead would be.
They had killed their own man, just to try to hit Jake. There was no safe place in that room.
The door stood open at the far side of the room. Jake dashed through it and up the hall, thinking he had to be safe there—thinking he could at least stop to breathe, to think about what came next. The gunman couldn’t shoot Jake if he couldn’t see him through the windows, right? He started walking hurriedly away.
Then he stopped in his tracks, every hair on his arms standing up straight. There was someone out in the hallway, moving around. Someone bigger than Jake. He could hear them, feel their presence with a sense he couldn’t quite identify. Just around the corner, maybe. Or perhaps half the school away. But he knew he wasn’t alone. That he wasn’t safe.
He headed down the corridor, trying not to run. When he ran he couldn’t hear a
nything but his own footfalls. Even at a slower pace he was almost deafened by his own heartbeat. He pressed up against the wall of the corridor, which was made of cinderblocks painted over so many times they’d become soft and rounded. Across from him a row of lockers ran down the hallway, each exactly alike.
Down at the far end of the hall a long linear shadow stretched across the tiles. The shadow of a human being. There was someone there, waiting for him.
Jake looked the other way. Down that hallway lay the school’s music rooms and the cafeteria. Big, open spaces, but maybe they would offer places to hide. But for how long? He didn’t know if there was a time limit on this test.
The shadow at the end of the hall wasn’t moving. Jake calmed himself, forced himself to be rational. He needed to know. That shadow could just be cast by a hall monitor, or even a teacher willing to help him. He pushed himself slowly toward the corner where the hall bent away to the right. He didn’t want to peak around that corner—that would mean exposing his head to whatever was out there. Maybe another gunman. He looked around wildly and saw, in front of him, a trophy case. It was filled with the school’s football championship cups and soccer and wrestling awards, all of them polished to a high sheen. The glass that fronted the case was well-polished, too. In it he could see the reflection of the man around the corner.
He was wearing a navy blue suit, black gloves, and a perfectly reflective mask. He had a large chunky pistol in his right hand.
Jake couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move.
He nearly screamed when the Proctor’s suit started ringing.
It sounded almost like he had a telephone in his pocket. How was that possible? It was just some surreal detail to add to the collection. But then the Proctor put away his gun and reached inside his jacket to take out something small and made of plastic, not much bigger than two decks of cards. It looked almost exactly like the little hinged box Jake had seen on Mr. Zuraw’s desk, the one labeled NOKIA. The Proctor unfolded it and it stopped ringing instantly. Then he placed it to his ear. Just like it was a telephone.
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