Qualify (5 page)

The classroom is one of the larger ones, and it’s already halfway full. It’s divided into rows of desks and additional chairs and a strange partitioned area that has a sign posted “Testing Area. Do Not Enter.” Two women teachers stand near the partition, and again one of them is wearing the four-color Atlantis armband. Since I don’t know either one of them, I am guessing the one without the armband is just faculty from another school, and the other’s from Qualification.

The teachers watch us dispassionately as we enter the classroom. It’s the same beaten-down, resigned look in their eyes that most grownups have these days—a sad mixture of weary despair and grim acceptance. I am reminded once again that, as adults, they’ve had weeks and months of agonized panic, denial, and eventually resignation with impending death, to deal with. At least
we
have a shred of hope, while they’re all living on death row. They get to stay
here
on our doomed planet, and the best they can hope for is, if they have teenage children, maybe their kids might Qualify, so their DNA gets to be saved.

“Take your seats, please,” one of them says in a voice with little inflection. “When I call your name, you will come up here and be tested. This is an individual portion of the test. It is not timed, but should take no longer than five minutes per person. The rest of you please remain in your seats until your name is called. And no talking!”

I find an empty seat near the middle in the fourth row, between an unfamiliar round-faced girl with dark hair and some skinny kid in a grey hoodie, both of whom look way younger, like freshmen. And it occurs to me that this is a mixed classroom, not just juniors like me. Pretty weird to be taking a test with people from other grades.

I look around the room and I see some familiar people I know from my class, and a few seniors and sophomores. Everyone’s muttering, whispering, students are looking around warily, and I see fear and uncertainty in their eyes.

And then my stomach drops out from under me, and suddenly I am ice-cold and scalding-hot at the same time. Logan Sangre is sitting only a few seats in front of me and to the right, in the second row.

Logan Sangre. . . .

Dark hair, longish and wavy, a rare black with rich brown highlights. Olive skin, chiseled angular features, dreamy hazel brown eyes, and the longest dark lashes I’ve ever seen on a boy. Add to that, wide shoulders, muscled arms underneath his black hoodie, long and powerful runner’s legs encased in black jeans, and perfectly defined abs that belong on a classical Greek statue.

Logan Sangre, a senior, the hottest guy in Mapleroad Jackson High, and an all-around amazing combination of track star athlete and honor roll student. Beauty and brains. He can have his pick of any girl, any time. And as far as I know, he does, because they’re always falling all over him—though I think he might be between girlfriends now, since I haven’t seen him hanging around Joanie Katz, his latest GF, for more than a week. . . . And, oh yeah, he’s got time to play lead guitar in a band. Just kill me now.

It’s such a cliché to say it, but Logan Sangre is completely out of my league. Like, miles-to-the-Moon out of my league. And he doesn’t know that I exist. I’ve been crushing on Logan since my first month of freshman year, which makes it three years now—from the very start when we first moved to Vermont from California to get away from the West Coast and all its disastrous mess. Pacific coastal radiation was determined to be the primary cause of Mom getting sick, so Dad got his University of Vermont faculty position, and we all ended up attending Mapleroad Jackson School.

Anyway, Logan Sangre. What really got to me from day one was not so much his amazing hotness and good looks, but his confident coolness. Okay, that does not make sense, but see, there I go already, losing IQ points just thinking about him. And the fact that he regularly wins academic competitions makes it even worse. Sure he also brings in track-and-field trophies for our school, but come on, there are plenty of hot jocks out there. But how many of them are also “mathletes” and National Merit Scholars?

So, yeah, Logan Sangre. Whenever I’m in the same room with him, I lose about 20 points off my IQ score and acquire a speech impediment and, I bet, a permanent skin rash from blushing so much. I pretty much cannot function within a twenty-foot radius of him. The funny thing is, we’ve never spoken a word. . . . Okay, except maybe once there was a “sorry” exchanged in the cafeteria when I nearly ran into him with my tray, my sophomore year. That was the one time he met my gaze and looked into my eyes directly with his dreamy dark ones, and of course that was precisely when I tripped on my own shoelaces and spilled milk all over my best pair of sneakers.

The fact that Logan is in the same classroom with me
now
makes me crazy. How in the world will I be able to concentrate, to deal with Qualification and not make some kind of stupid klutz mistake? Logan Sangre is going to ruin everything.

I take deep breaths and try to stare straight ahead and not to look at him, even though I am aware with every cell of my body that he’s
right there
, at the edge of my peripheral vision.

Mrs. Bayard, the teacher with the Atlantis armband on her sleeve, calls the first name, and it doesn’t seem to be in alphabetical order, probably some kind of freaky Atlantis-only-knows order. I watch Mindy Clarence, a fellow junior, get up with a very pale face, and hesitate. “Should I leave my bags here?” she asks timidly.

“Up to you, sweetie. Go ahead and bring your things, if you like. But you won’t need them for the test. You can collect them on your way out.”

Mindy nods and leaves her bags lying under her desk. She walks through the classroom, then steps behind the partition with Mrs. Bayard.

For a few seconds there’s silence. Then the whispering begins. The remaining teacher whose name I missed sits down in a chair right before the partition and watches us blandly, but does not shush us yet. She periodically checks the paperwork in her lap, then the clock on the wall.

“What’s happening there?” a boy whispers behind me. “What if it’s some kind of alien brain experiment thing where they take over your body and suck out your grey matter?”

A few nervous titters sound.

“They’re not aliens, stupid, they’re humans just like us, only from an ancient genetic branch—” says a girl’s voice, also from the back.

“How do
you
know?”

The teacher up in the front looks up and says, “Quiet, please.”

I sit and mostly stare ahead of me, running my fingers against the surface of my desk, sticky in places with old gum residue. And I throw occasional glances at Logan Sangre. He is leaning on one elbow and his posture is relaxed and casual, as if he’s not nervous in the least. He turns his head occasionally, and his gorgeous face is almost sleepy looking, that’s how calm he seems. His grey outer jacket is off, hanging from the back of his chair.

I examine his long black sports bag on the floor next to his backpack, and wonder what personal things are inside. One of his guitars? If my baby brother managed to stuff his skinny portable guitar in a duffel, I wouldn’t be surprised if Logan did the same thing.

A couple of minutes later, a funny noise comes from beyond the partition. Everyone immediately stares and the classroom goes really, really quiet as we all strain to listen.

The weird noise comes again and it sounds like Mindy Clarence’s voice. She is saying “Eeee” or maybe singing. Weird! “Eeeee, eeee-eeee-eee, eee-eee. . . .”

“What did I tell you?” the same boy hisses from the back. “They’re sucking her dry!”

“Shut up!” someone else says in a genuinely frightened voice.

The silence in the classroom is overpowering. Even the teacher in the front frowns and turns her head, appearing to listen.

I watch and listen, transfixed. Even now I cannot help noticing the angular lines of Logan’s profile as he partially turns around then looks forward again. Just for a moment, our eyes seem to meet. . . .

Mindy’s voice stops. A few seconds later, Mindy Clarence emerges from the partition, looking ordinary, if somewhat troubled, and heads back toward her empty desk. She picks up her stuff, shoulders the backpack and heads out the classroom door without a glance.

The teacher up in the front marks down something on her paper, then calls out the next name.

The next student to go up is an unfamiliar guy, probably a senior, and probably from another school. He walks with a swagger, but you know it’s all for show. He disappears behind the partition and again everyone’s staring and the whispers are down to a minimum. About two minutes into his test, we hear the boy’s voice. It cracks on a laugh at first, then he sings badly, “Eeeee-eeee, eee-eeee.”

Someone in the back of the class snickers, and it starts a minor wave.

A few girls in the front turn around with affronted looks.

Soon the senior comes out, with a sheepish expression, then also goes for his bags and leaves the classroom.

The next name is called. This goes on for about forty minutes, maybe an hour, maybe more, like an eternity—I can’t tell since the classroom clock is out of my line of sight—and by now the room is getting sparse, as people take the test and leave somewhere. The general classroom whispering resumes, but it keeps to regular levels. Except for a few stifled giggles, there’s no unusual reaction whenever a student being tested sings “Eeee-eeee” in a particularly awful way.

I tense up when I hear the name “Logan Sangre” getting called. He gets up, tall and sleek, and calmly walks to the partition. Wow, I so envy him. If only I could bottle all that cool attitude and smear it all over me. . . .

A few minutes pass and I hear Logan’s voice. It is confident and smooth, and has a nice velvety quality of a real practiced singer. It actually sounds
good
. I remember that Logan not only plays guitar but frequently sings vocals for his band, taking turns with the regular lead singer and his good bud, Josh Merrow.

If Logan doesn’t ace Qualification, I don’t know who can.

Soon Logan is done and I am gifted with the sight of him standing there for a moment as he emerges and looks around the classroom, then goes for his seat to grab his things. I watch him put on his grey windbreaker jacket, and sweep the black hair out of his eyes as he moves. He carries the large sports bag with ease, and for another moment I again wonder what’s inside.

Logan’s gone and the room suddenly loses all its leashed electricity, like an energy balloon deflating in my mind. I am suddenly bored, and the nervous worry surges back full force, to sweep me in its relentless ocean. I return to staring at the front of the classroom, and listen to some poor girl sing “Eeeee-eeee,” terribly off-key.

In some ways this feels like the longest class period of my life.

At last, when the room is nearly empty, my name is called.

Chapter 3

M
y heart starts hammering as I walk behind the partition. Mrs. Bayard is sitting at a large table that appears to have all kinds of things and equipment on it. “Gwenevere Lark?” she confirms, glancing at a sheet.

“Yes.”

“Take a seat please, right here, and try to relax. This will be very quick and painless, I promise. I will ask you to perform several brief tasks, some of which may seem a little odd or unusual. Just do them to the best of your ability.”

“Okay. . . .” I head over to the empty chair across from her. My hands rest in my lap, and I feel them clamming up.

Mrs. Bayard places a blank sheet of paper on the table in front of me, and a pencil. “Please write your full name on top of the page, on the left.”

I do as she asks, making a painful effort to print my name as clear and large as possible, since usually my handwriting is messy and kind of unreadable.

When I look up, Mrs. Bayard is holding up a white plastic object in her palm. I recognize it as some kind of geometrical 3-D shape.

“This is a regular dodecahedron,” says the teacher, putting the object down on the table before me. “It’s a polyhedron with twelve faces, each face being a pentagon. Basically, it’s just a shape with five sides, rendered in three dimensions.”

“Okay,” I say. “Yes, I know.”

“Good. Now, I want you to draw it.”

“What?”

Mrs. Bayard sighs. I imagine she’s had to deal with a similar reaction far too many times today.

“Simply think of it as art class. Just draw this item the best you can, a quick sketch.”

“I am not a good artist—”

“It doesn’t matter. Just do the best you can.”

“Okay.”

I glance at the dodecahedron, and feel a burst of panic. Drawing is just not my strength, although I don’t suck at it completely. I try to imagine my brother Gordie in my place, and how he would smile and sketch a masterpiece in thirty seconds.

I try to channel Gordie as I draw a five-sided figure, then awkwardly try to add 3-D sides at various angles, and then some shading to it to make it fancy.

“That’s fine now.” Mrs. Bayard reaches forward and takes the paper away from me as I am still shading a side. In its place she slides a tablet computer before me.