Lindsey pulled out the test booklets and started to call out names. “Bailey? Here you go. Don’t forget to take an answer sheet and a number two pencil. Tamara? Here you go. Penny?” I raised my hand and she winked at me. “I know who you are. Here is your booklet and your answer sheet.”
After she had passed out all of the booklets to their rightful owners, Lindsey went back to the front of the room and held up a digital timer. “I’m going to set the timer for an hour. Just answer the questions as best you can. And if you have any questions for me or you feel overwhelmed or it gets hot in here or whatever, just let me know.” She paused to give us a chance to ask those burning questions. But the room was quiet. “Let’s get started.”
There was crackle of paper as we all opened our test booklets. I quickly scanned the first page for what type of test it might be. My eyes zoomed to the first question:
What, if anything, can empirical psychology tell us about the epistemic standing of our moral judgments?
I must have read it four or five times before I finally understood what I was looking at. I’m screwed.
* * * * *
“You guys have twenty minutes left. Twenty minutes,” Lindsey repeated.
I didn’t even know where to start. I tried to calm my mind like Lindsey had just told us but there was nothing giving me any direction. I put down my pencil and looked up. Lindsey met my eyes and gave me an encouraging smile.
I looked down at my answer sheet. At some point, I’d forced myself to answer some questions but they were all wild guesses. There was nothing guiding me. I still had more than thirty-five questions to go. And now I only had twenty minutes left.
I wanted to put my head down on the desk and die.
I looked at my answer sheet again and noticed something I hadn’t before—the answers were making a shape. It was vague but it was there. If I played connect-the-dots with the answers I’d written, it looked a lot like the Pisces constellation. I flashed back to the incident in the elevator. Was it possible that I had seen the answer key to my test?
I took inventory of my options. I could turn the test in without finishing. I could continue to guess the answers. Or I could take a chance.
My pencil started moving before I had even really made my decision. Within minutes, I had recreated the Pisces constellation answer sheet I remembered from my run-in with Lindsey in the elevator. Then I realized that if I was actually right and that was my answer sheet I saw, I would get a perfect score. Everything everyone had told me that they didn’t expect me to get a perfect score. I went back and changed a bunch of the answers so that they didn’t fit the pattern.
“Time!” Lindsey started collecting the test materials. “Good job, everyone. You all worked hard and deserve a treat. Make sure you guys go do something fun or spend time with someone special today. You earned it. Have a great day.”
We all started to file out of the room, with me bringing up the rear. Just as I was approaching the doorway, Miss Fine appeared. I visibly recoiled from both the surprise appearance and the person delivering it. “Did I startle you?” she deadpanned.
“Um, no.” Yeah, I always look like I’ve seen a ghost.
“I just wanted to see how you did on your assessment.” She walked past me and approached Lindsey, who seemed just as tense as I was. Miss Fine ignored her, though, too. She thumbed through the answer sheets until she found mine. It was only then that she spoke to Lindsey. “Where is the key for this one?”
“Oh, I was just gonna—”
“Just give it to me.” Lindsey did as she was told.
I started to feel awkward standing near the door. And I actually didn’t want to watch her grade my test right there. If it was good news, I could wait for it. If it was bad news, I could wait even longer for it. “Um, can I—”
Miss Fine didn’t even let me finish or turn around to address me. “No.” She placed the answer key over my answers and pulled a red pen out of nowhere. Both Lindsey and I watched as she made some swift marks on the page.
It felt like forever before she looked up from the sheet. She turned back to me slowly. “Eighty-one percent.”
“Oh.” Oh no! I made too many of them wrong! “What does that mean? Did I fail? Did I pass?”
Miss Fine didn’t say anything but Lindsey piped in. “That’s more than passing. That’s in the top percentile of scores, Penny. Congrats!”
“What?” Oh no, I didn’t make enough of them wrong.
“I told you that the you weren’t meant to ace the test but you practically did.” She couldn’t contain herself any longer. She burst from her seat and ran over to give me a hug. “You’re a superstar!”
Miss Fine looked at me with renewed interest. She tapped her red pen on the desk. “Interesting. Very interesting, Penny.”
I didn’t say anything. I had to keep my mouth closed because I had a strong feeling I was about to throw up.
Chapter 14
It was after five when Miss Fine finally stop staring at me and I was able to escape. My mom was blowing my phone up, texting to ask if I would be home for dinner, and calling when I didn’t answer. But I was so stunned about everything that had just happened I couldn’t deal with her right then. Instead, I went straight to Audrey’s apartment.
I didn’t even knock when I got there. I just threw opened her door and yelled, “I cheated! I cheated!”
It was only after I finished yelling that I realized that Audrey wasn’t in the room. Instead there was a woman with long dark hair and blue eyes sitting on her couch flipping through a magazine.
We looked each other for a moment and then yelled “Audrey?” at the exact same time, almost as if it were planned.
“What?” Audrey came barreling out of the bedroom wearing a bright yellow-orange dress with puffy sleeves and a shiny fabric. All of the layers swallowed her up. She looked like she was being attacked by a giant grapefruit. Even though I was all concerned about what had just happened, I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.
“I’m glad you find this funny. Close the damn door.” Audrey hitched up the humongous yellow orange skirt and sank into the couch.
I shut the door but kept laughing. “You look ridiculous.”
Audrey turned to the lady on the couch. “See? I told you.”
The lady looked annoyed. “It’s nacho cheese. You chose nacho cheese and that was the only nacho cheese dress in the store.”
“I was hungry!” Audrey growled. “I don’t really care about the color of the dress!”
“Who is this, Audrey?” The lady acknowledged me for the first time. By this point, I’d gotten control over my laughter but the sight of Audrey in that big dress was still making me grin like an idiot.
“That’s Penny. She’s this little disadvantaged kid I’m temporarily mentoring. Penny, this is Mellie. She used to be my best friend. Until she made me put on this dress, that is. Now she’s dead to me.”
Mellie ignored the best friend comment. “Who thought that would be a good idea?”
“Hey, I have wisdom to offer the youth of the nation.”
“Like what?”
“Like. . .” she paused to think. “Like, never agree to be a bridesmaid. Ever. No matter how much you like the girl getting married,” she finished with a grin.
Mellie threw a pillow at Audrey. “Take it off. I’m taking it back and I’m going to find a nice dress in a nice shade of yellow and you’ll wear whatever I come up with.”
Audrey stomped back into the room. “See if they have some nice hoodie options.” When she came back with the dress in a garment bag, she handed it to Mellie, they said their goodbyes, and Mellie left. Now that Audrey was back in her usual jeans and t-shirt combo, she was a little less ridiculous. “So what’s up? How did it go today?”
“I cheated.”
“What? How?”
I went over exactly what happened. Audrey’s eyes got big when I told her about the run-in with Lindsey in the elevator and even bigger when I go
t to the part about seeing the Pisces constellation in my partial answers. By the time I got to the part where I scored in the top percentile, she was practically all eyes and completely speechless.
“I need a beer,” she said when she could finally speak again. When she got back from kitchen, she took a long gulp but still didn’t say anything. She just sat on the couch next to me and looked lost in thought.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. “Well? What do you think? I’m freaking out!”
“It’s a sign.”
“A sign of what? That I need to cheat?”
“No, that you need to do whatever it takes. That’s what you told me right? That you’ll do whatever it takes? This is what it takes.”
“But. . . I don’t know how I feel about all of this lying. My dad wasn’t a liar. I don’t think this is what he wanted.”
“But didn’t he tell you to lie to your mom?”
“No, he said that secrecy was part of the Oath. He didn’t say to lie.”
Audrey shrugged as if I was worried about nothing. “Secret. Omission. Lie. It’s all the same thing. And you need to get used to it if you’re actually ever going to be a Super.”
Over the last week or so, I’d heard a lot of people tell me that maybe Audrey wasn’t the best role model for me. It was finally starting to sink in that it might be true.
* * * * *
“Where have you been?”
Mom blew up my phone the entire time I was at Audrey’s house. I finally texted her that I was on the way home from the library. I skipped Poco entirely and just went straight upstairs to our apartment. I figured she’d be working and I could take a shower and settle in before seeing her.
But Mom was sitting in the dark living room. She didn’t have the TV on and she wasn’t reading a book or anything. She was just sitting there in the dark. I turned the light on before I even realized she was even there. Her face looked tired and worried.
“At the library,” I repeated the lie I’d texted her earlier.
“No, you weren’t.” Mom is such a loud person. She was always talking and fussing and kissing. Dad used to call her passionate. That had always been her way. She only got scary when she got quiet.
“Mom—”
“Don’t,” she cut me off. “Don’t lie to me again. That’s all you’ve been doing lately. I went to the library. You were not there.”
“Um—”
“I called your school to ask where the SHSAT study group was meeting. They said there wasn’t one.”
“But—”
“They said you hadn’t even signed up to take the test. You’ve been lying this whole time, haven’t you?”
She finally paused for me to get a word in, but I didn’t know what to say. Part of me wanted to just spit out the whole story. Keeping all of this to myself was hard. And I wasn’t sure this is how I wanted to spend the next seventy years of my life.
Mom took my silence for defiance. “Oh, are you at a loss for words? Are you thinking up another lie to tell me? If your father were here to see this, he—”
“If Dad were here, none of this would be happening,” I blurted out. “You keep acting like everything is fine but it’s not. All you do is work, work, work. I hear you crying in your room at night. You’re not happy. You’re not OK. You’re lying every single day, every single time you talk to me. And you’re just focusing on this school thing to distract yourself.”
Mom closed the gap between us with a couple of steps. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare tell me how to how to grieve. I am the mother. You are the child,” she pointed at me, poking me in the chest hard. “Now you tell me where have you been all of this week?”
“I’ve been looking at a new school.” That was kinda true.
“A school? But why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Because it’s a boarding school. I want to go away to school.” I didn’t know where that came from.
“Where?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes. You are my daughter. I should know what’s going on with you. I should know what your plans are. I should be included in these decisions.”
“I’ll figure it out on my own.” I scowled at her. “I want to be on my own. I don’t want to be smothered all of the time. I don’t want you texting me about when I’m going to be home. I don’t want you to tracking my every move. I think it’s time for you to get a hobby or something.”
Mom looked like I’d slapped her. And in a way I felt like I had. But I said what needed to be said. I just wanted to be away from her. “Can I go to my room now?”
“Go.” I stomped toward my room but Mom stopped me before I got there. “Penny?”
I didn’t even turn around to face her. “What?”
“I don’t want to hear any more lies from you. If you can’t tell me the truth, just don’t say anything to me at all.”
Chapter 15
The next time I saw Mom was at breakfast. She was doing her usual thing but she set my food down in front on me without even making eye contact, let alone speaking. It was awkward and weird. But I wasn’t surprised by any of it.
We’d never had a fight like that. This was beyond grounding me or taking my phone away. I knew I’d hurt her feelings. But I wasn’t ready to apologize. Instead I spent all of Saturday and most of Sunday in my room, alternating between watching Golden Girls reruns and trying to force myself to be psychic by practicing with the cards.
On Sunday, Jeannie called out because she had an emergency and I found myself volunteering to take her shift that evening. For the past week, I’d been too busy making up nonexistent friends and study groups to work in the diner after school. I was still feeling guilty about the fight and about slacking off. Mom accepted my offer without comment and went upstairs for the night.
Sunday evenings were generally slow but I kept myself busy. We didn’t have any problems and by 8:30PM, I was ready to shut down. I started to clean up while the last couple finished their meal in the corner table.
I dropped the check on the lovebirds and gave them a look that I hoped said that I was ready to close up. Then I set up the half-empty ketchup, salt, and pepper holders on an unused table so I could fill them up.
“Marrying” the condiments had to be done once a day. Before I started officially helping out in the diner, I would come down before bed and do the condiments with my dad. I could still remember him giving me the goofy explanation of the term. “Well when one ketchup and another ketchup love each other. . . and are half empty. . . they share ketchup to become one ketchup. . .” Then he’d position one ketchup over the other and wiggle his eyebrows. It was a lame attempt at humor but it made me laugh every time.
As I worked, my mind was free to wander. Considering everything that had been happening, I had plenty of distance to cover. Just seven days ago, I’d been eaten up by the idea that my father’s unfinished business would stay that way. And now, I had a Big Super, a telepathic test, and a growing ulcer to go with it. But at least I had a shot. I didn’t know whether to throw up or to jump for joy.
The lovebirds in the corner paid their check and made their way out of the diner. “Have a nice night, guys. Thanks,” I called after them. I flipped the sign to “Closed” and took the money over to the register. As I was counting down the change from the bill to put into the tip jar, the bells over the door jangled.
Ugh. I forgot to lock the stupid door.
“Sorry, we’re closed,” I said without looking up. “But we open tomo—” I choked on the words and never finished the sentence. Miss Fine was standing in doorway of the diner.
She walked over to the counter right across from the register, where I stood frozen in place. “That’s fine. I’ll make it quick,” she said, taking a seat.
“Wha—Um—How—” I stumbled, not quite getting a whole word out. “Coffee?” I don’t know why I said that. I’d already cleaned and shut down the coffee machine earlier. There wasn’t any coffee made. Please say
no. Please say no. Please say no.
Miss Fine gave me a stiff nod. “Sure. I’ll take it black, please.”
I tried to hide my grimace and started a fresh pot of coffee. “I’ll just make a fresh pot. It will be just a few minutes.” We sat there in silence for a few moments before I thought to ask her the question that was burning in my mind. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to see you.”
“But I mean. . . why?”
“Because I wanted to congratulate you on your test results. They were very. . . impressive.”
Cold sweat sprouted on my brow. She knew. I just knew that she knew. And now she had come to take my memories.
I didn’t say anything. I was too scared to formulate words. She didn’t wait for me to answer, though. “You’re trying to do what you think your father would want you to do, aren’t you?” She paused, to give me room to speak but I was still frozen in place. She went on. “Did you know I knew your father?”
“No. He. . . never mentioned you.”
“Dan and I went to the Academy together. We even dated a bit. He was always one of the good ones.” She cleared her throat, as if reminding herself to stay on track. “You look a bit like him. Definitely around the ears. I hadn’t seen him since school but I could see him in you.” The coffee machine made a little beeping sound behind me. “The coffee’s ready,” Miss Fine observed.
I turned around and started to make her cup, hoping she couldn’t see my shaking hands. When I turned back to hand her the coffee, she took it without comment.
She stirred it, even though she hadn’t put anything in it. Then she continued. “Your father was an optimist. He could always find the gray in a black and white world. He was quite stubborn about it, actually.”
I nodded. That did sound a lot like him.
“But the real world isn’t made for optimists. It’s made for realists, like me,” she added
“Why did you come here?” I asked again.
“Because it’s a good place to get a cup of coffee.” She reached into her inside pocket and brought out a picture. “And to give you this.”
Super Secret (Book 1): Super Model Page 6