“This will be a test of your creative ability as wizards,” the proctor says, showing the four of us her gleaming fangs. “Now, as you ladies are all from Texas, I will put you together at a table. Take a few minutes, get your equipment out, and relax. It’s a simple timed test. You took these in third grade.”
I don’t laugh. It’s an old joke, and it’s not funny. There’s nothing simple about this test. The three other girls with me titter politely. Aside from Cameron, I don’t know any of them, and I only know her because she sits across the room from me in Advanced Spellcasting. She has long curly hair, perfect teeth, and she smiles a lot. She’s smiling now. All dolled up like a cheerleader with her hair in a bun and a pencil twirling like a baton between her fingers. We pick up our bags and follow the proctor to our table. They are hideous things, garish orange, and poorly made. All our testing materials are in it, and the seams strain under the weight. I’ll throw it away when the test is over. Or ask if there is somewhere in the school where they recycle them. I don’t need a souvenir.
Cameron leans in and whispers in my ear. “Glad they are giving us our own table, aren’t you? Jesus, Ellie, I don’t know anyone here. Isn’t it exciting?”
I hate that nickname. And I know the bag is going to break.
The proctor gives us a long table with too many legs, like the guys in the Arts lab designed it to walk about on all eight. “Pull up a chair,” she invites, “and make yourselves comfortable. You can look at your examination book, but don’t go any further than the first page.” She wags a finger at Cameron, who is peeking. “Don’t make any marks on your sheet until the timer starts, and don’t make any marks in the book itself. You must use the issued pencils for the test. Don’t sharpen them. They’ll take care of themselves.”
I look at the blunt end dubiously. I can’t tell what it’s made of yet, but I have a way of finding out. I set the pencil in my mouth and nibble. Cameron gives me a look. I sit on the far side of the table in a folding chair that speaks. “Elspeth Lamiter. Austin Polytech. Weight one hundred and ninety-three pounds,” it snarls.
Everyone titters. Cameron Moreland is a feather at one-hundred and fifteen, but she blushes furiously, and says something about salad for lunch. I risk a nibble of pencil again, and spit. Synthetic wood. Tastes like plastic beaver crap. I hate the feel of them, these self-sharpening pencils. Not worth the work it takes to mass produce them, not when it’s so easy for anyone to shape the wood into the tool you need with magic, like I do. I’m a mechanically-minded girl, or I wouldn’t be in Advanced Spellcasting. And if one hundred ninety-three pounds gives the chair a complex, just let it try to buck me off. I’m from Texas. I’ll fix it to the floor.
The room is filling up with people I don’t know and never will. They chat together like old friends. It’s that strange camaraderie I can’t understand, but it seems to exist among average wizards with a unity of purpose and place. Their chairs announce them in big voices with big name schools for surnames. I think I even hear someone from Salem.
Damn, I wish I’d gone out and gotten shit-faced last night. I could have made a case for staying in bed sick at the hotel, instead of eating a stale bagel with peach jelly in the lobby, and washing it all down with bad coffee while Cameron declared she couldn’t eat a thing; she was that nervous.
Cameron is picking through her bag. I do the same. The table jams me in the leg, but I’m not giving that chair a chance to weigh me again by getting up. I take out the test booklet, all slick with plastic to protect it from magical splash, and set the paper examination sheet on top. Next is a disc and a disc drive to play the stupid thing, since they won’t allow us to connect to a common server. Too easy to cheat for some of these guys. Everyone gets their own copy. It’s old school, but there’s no hacking. Next is a tablet with a cord to attach to the disc drive. I suspect it will show shape puzzles for magical manipulation. I pull out a set of earbuds and confirm my suspicions.
“I’m so nervous,” Cameron chatters. “Are you?”
“I just want it over with.”
She shuts up. I should never have applied to take this test, but I let my physics prof'’ talk me into it. That’s what I get for being a wizard and an engineering major. I’m not going to pass. Magic at this level is for brilliant mathmagicians like Cameron, not visual-spatial hacks like me who only know it when they do it.
When the proctor takes the stage, the chairs are still squeaking names, weights and schools. The noise stops when she pulls a cord and the curtains open to reveal a massive hourglass full of red sand, and a tiny, puff-cheeked demon holding the stopper closed. He’s got his face scrunched up like he needs to take a shit. My gut isn’t happy either. Stress sets me off. Next time the proctor swarms my way, I’ll ask her how bathroom breaks happen. I’ve tested plenty of times, but never at this level. Never for a fellowship.
“Students, we are pleased to welcome you to the final examination for the Michael A. Bourette Scholarship,” she says, smiling like she means it. “Only one student here today will be awarded this grant, and I wish you all the very best of luck. Some rules before we get started. First, no eating or drinking during the examination. You should have stopped off at Starbucks before you got here, kids.”
People laugh. I squirm. I wish I hadn’t drunk my usual gallon of coffee.
“Second, you must use only the pencils provided to you for this examination. They are self-sharpening, so you won’t need to adjust them during the testing procedure. You’ve all seen bubble sheets. Mark only the answer you want counted. Stray marks on the sheet could cause your answer to be disqualified. Don’t make any marks in the test booklet. Any calculations should be done on the scratch paper provided and turned in with your test at the end of the examination.”
I check through the bag for the paper and stick my elbow in Cameron’s hip. “Sorry.”
“Shh. I’m trying to listen.”
She has a point. Although the proctor is speaking loudly, the chairs are constantly complaining over her. I find the paper.
“You have to be shitting me. Look at this.” I wave the index card shaped spiral notebook in Cameron’s face.
“I can do it all in my head, anyway,” she says smugly.
“Lastly, although this is a timed event, the actual length of the test depends upon how long it takes for the Fellowship Board to tally the results and declare one of you has passed. While you may have three hours, time could be called at any minute if the board makes a selection, so don’t spend too much time on any one question. If you don’t know the answer, mark your best choice and go on to the next one. Once the sand starts to fall you may begin. I will be walking around the room to offer assistance with the directions, and to answer questions about the examination and the rules, but I can’t help you with the actual questions themselves.”
I won’t bother to ask about bathrooms. Cameron has the look of a racehorse, dancing in the gate before the bell rings. She’s so competitive, she’ll take the teacher to task for a technicality on a half-point deduction. I’ve seen her do it. More than once. My best bet is to answer what I can, and walk out when the urge hits, and I’ll just not come back. I don’t have a shot at this, not when the test could be called at any moment. Cameron might have a supercomputer for a brain, but I need to draw the geometry to make it work. I always have.
“You may begin.”
The sudden shrill of chairs announces that over half the class has literally jumped in their seats. The demon in the glass is crushed by a wheelbarrow load of sand that smashes him to the bottom of the glass. He oozes out like a squashed wad of gum and rebuilds himself in a less sandy spot, then preens his scales back into shape. I open the booklet.
The page is composed of questions written in tiny print, with the possible answers below for the purposes of marking them on the sheet. I see somebody didn’t bother to listen to the instructions about not marking in this booklet; it looks like an inkblot test.
I set my pencil to the examination paper and wait while it peels away the layers to expose the blunt end of the lead. The first question isn’t even about magic. It’s basic arithmetic and, like Cameron boasts, I can do that in my head. But the pencil marks are very faint. I bear down harder. Nothing. I glance at Cameron. She looks as red faced as I feel.
“Sharpen your pencil?” I offer.
“Shh.”
“Don’t say I didn’t offer.” Under the desk, I give the pencil a good neck-wringing. It yelps, but with all the squeaks and grumbles in the room, nobody hears but me. It’s a lost cause, though. It dulls as soon as I set it against the examination paper, and I’m back to bearing down like a drill press.
The table knees me in the calf. I scrunch my chair around, but there’s no such thing as personal space at this table. Cameron is practically sitting in my lap. I would like that actually, but she wouldn’t, and she moves. She shoulders into the blonde next to her.
I glance around the room. All the tables are built on the same lines as this one. Approximately six by four, with two students crammed on each side, and the legs serving as dividers below the hip in case anyone gets frisky. I pick up my chair, and plant it at the end of our table. There’s no room to spread out otherwise.
“Elspeth Lamiter, Austin Poly—”
“Shut the fuck up.” I give it a good shove, but it completes my weight with triumph and adds an ounce to rub it in. My bladder is growing turgid, not yet miserable.
I settle down again and read. This one is interesting. This is magic. I get out the postage stamp scratch pad. It won’t open. The first page is stuck to the second, stuck to the third, the fourth, the fifth. There’s no tearing off sheets to make more room. I have to fill one full before I can use the next. I test this by doodling with the dull pencil until it gives me the next sheet. I tear off the first. Doodle the second page full. Tear it off. It gets wise to me around the sixth piece, but I’ve got a decent sized pile now, and I lay them all out and work out the details of designing a bridge to withstand the concussive blast of an elemental explosion.
Behind me, Todd Mathison, Northwestern, weight two-hundred one and change, shifts his chair to the end of the table.
“Are you uncomfortable?”
Damn. The proctor is here, vampire teeth showing. She sets a friendly hand on my shoulder, cold as winter.
“Yeah, I am,” I say boldly.
“Perhaps another table,” the proctor says, and moves to confront Todd the same way. “Are you uncomfortable? Yes? Another table.”
She turns back to me. “Put your things in your bag, you and you.” She points to Cameron, and then to Todd, who looks as embarrassed as Cameron. “Another table will be more comfortable.”
But it isn’t. They looked the same from where I was sitting, but I would swear they narrowed the new one by a good six inches on the end. Todd shoves in next to Cameron, and a Tennessee girl bumps shoulders with me, and we go at it again, knocking knees and excusing ourselves as we try to arrange papers and booklets to fit the space. All around us, chairs are announcing names again as more students are shuffled to new tables.
“It’s part of the test,” Tennessee mutters. “See if we can stand it.” She buckles down to her work. Her notes are so tiny she has to squint to read them.
Cameron dashes off a few more answers, reads the third page, and pulls out the machine and the disc.
“Do you mind?” Todd grumbles.
Cameron shoves her elbow into my examination paper. My pencil slips and a long line of black appears through the answer I was marking. Six pages of scratch paper in the garbage.
The sun is streaming through the long glass windows of the examination room now, and a blinding glare falls on the screen Cameron is setting up. She angles it. I pull my pencil up before I lose another answer. I stand, grab my chair and turn it, back facing the table. I read a question, shut the book, and then use it as a clipboard to support my scratch papers while I work out the answer.
The proctor is there before I can work out the equation. “I’m sorry, but you need to have your examination paper on the table for your results to be recorded.”
“I’m not marking. I’m thinking.”
“Perhaps another table.”
This time Cameron doesn’t come with me. Todd and Tennessee glare at me, and I can see Todd’s relief as he slides his machine into the space where I was parked. About halfway across the room, the bag breaks. The proctor, with inhuman speed, reaches for the machine and the disk, but the extra pencil, the scrap paper, the examination and the booklet go flying. I have to stop and gather things again, but the paper notebook has split apart, and I only salvage a few pieces that didn’t crawl under the tables.
“Here,” the proctor says, pulling out a seat for me at another table with three students. She points at the red hourglass. “Don’t run out of time.”
The other students regard me with the cordiality reserved for a scorpion in the laundry basket. It’s time for the spatial test, and I’ve got to use the machine. But the students here are in the same place, and there’s no room.
“We could share a screen,” I offer. “That way there’s more room.”
The two across the table shake their heads. They are well into their manipulations, but a red-headed boy with a California smile grins at me. “There’s an idea.” He shoves his screen in my direction and with a sigh of relief, I turn to the next page in my booklet.
I can barely read the directions, let alone the problems. “Does your book look like this?” I whisper.
“Yeah,” he says. “Some shithead drew all over it.”
“Part of the test.”
“Maybe.”
It’s a struggle to decipher the first construction, but California and I match our pace. He turns the shape one way, and I the other, and we reach our own conclusions.
“Excuse me?” Monster teeth appear in the monitor’s reflection. “Are you uncomfortable? Perhaps another table.”
California sighs. He takes his screen and goes, and I have to pull out my machine and screen. It never hit the floor, but something isn’t right with it. It’s slow to load, and I have to wait minutes for my thoughts to register and turn the shape. The earphones are buzzing like fluorescent lights. I definitely need to piss.
I yank the headphones off.
“Are you uncomfortable?”
“Is it deliberate?” I confront her this time as she shifts me across the room again. Cameron, lucky girl, is still stationed almost at the front of the room. She is working frantically. In the hourglass, the demon is dancing on the sandpile, and kicking it up in the air while more grains fall like raindrops on his head.
“The Fellowship sets the examination parameters,” she says. “Do your best. And don’t run out of time.”
I have a moment to think as the table empties and students shuffle through the musical chairs. With no one sitting near me, it feels like I’m alone in the world. I don’t like it. Not like I’ve ever had a lot of friends, but I like the company. Helps me pretend I belong.
Briefly, I scan the room for Cameron. She’s coming my way, red-faced and guilty, supporting her bag with both hands. Wordlessly, I scoot over and she sits next to me. She looks like she wants to cry.
“It’s like a damned nightmare,” she mourns, but pulls out her examination sheet bravely. I do the same. In minutes, we are joined by two students and the battle for space begins again.
“Don’t run out of time,” the proctor reminds us. I can’t tell if fifteen minutes have passed or a year. Cameron is biting her lip. She hurries, her pencil breaks, and a line appears where her answer should be. She squeaks like it’s the first time. I’ve got a damned page of the lines already. She sits back. Everything in her face twitches.
“It’s okay,” I say quietly.
“I made a mistake.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t make mistakes.”
I don’t argue with her. It’s worthless. There’s no more room and I find I don’t care. I turn around and stare at the frantic students fumbling through their mental calculations, with their dreams of earning the scholarship vaporizing as fast as their answers. I’ve learned that the squeak of the chair is an automatic eviction notice so I twist my body to evenly distribute my weight. I can see the whole room from my vantage place near the doorway.
I could get up, leave the stupid bag, the stupid machine, the stupid pencils, and the stupid paper wads behind. I never belonged here anyway. I’ve half a mind to take the examination book, though. I won’t take it out of the school. Just take it to the bathroom, piss on it, and leave it in the commode. When Cameron comes back to the hotel, I’ll go get drunk with her as she celebrates her win. I might even make a pass at her because I’ll be drunk enough to do that, and she’ll be drunk enough not to hate me for it. She’ll have other things to think about. Then I’ll go home. I’m a magical engineer. That’s good enough. The hourglass is emptying behind the desk where the proctor should be sitting, but she’s moving around the hall, shoving students around.
I thumb through the examination book, glancing at the questions I won’t be answering today. I could do them all if I just had the space to work and a little quiet to do it in. This is ridiculous.
I stand. Shove my chair back. It sounds the alarm and the proctor looks my way.
“What are you doing?” Cameron says.
“Going someplace quiet to work.”
She snorts.
“You want to come?”
She answers by shoving her chair into my spot. I pick up the torn bag, tuck it under my arm and march to the front of the room where the hourglass counts minutes and the demon dances the seconds. The proctor is on her way. I run the last few steps, jump onto the stage, and pull the comfortable leather chair out from under her desk and sit.
“Are you uncomfortable?” I yell as she reaches me. “Perhaps another table? No need to help me. I’ll help myself.”
All her monster teeth shine. “Time,” she says.
R. Lee Fryar (she/her) is a writer living in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. When she’s not writing stories, she works as a small animal veterinarian, homeschools her children, and acts as chief servant and personal attendant to three cats, two dogs, and six spoiled brat chickens. She also paints watercolors of her characters and settings whenever she feels inspired.