Lexicon by Max Barry Page B

the door handle. “Dinner will be called at six.” The door closed.
    Emily let her bag drop. She went to the window and studied the mechanism until she figured out how to swing open the glass in two panels. She leaned out. A breeze tugged her hair.
Woods
was right. The trees were like pillars. You could get lost in there. Find a gingerbread house. Meet a witch.
    She needed the bathroom. She would have to find some of the other kids, check out the competition. But she stood awhile and watched the trees, because even if this whole deal turned out to be a scam, this moment here was really nice.
    •   •   •
    She peed and washed her hands and studied herself in the mirror. Her hair was like straw. She was wearing an outfit that looked worse the fancier her environment became and didn’t smell terrific, either. But aside from this, she did not seem completely out of place. She could possibly believe she was a person who regularly peed in bathrooms with twenty-foot ceilings. And then went out on her horse. “Relax,” she told the mirror, because her eyes were tense.
    She followed sounds of a television to a small room with sofas and cushions and a boy spread across them. He sat up as she entered. His hair was very curly. His clothes were new and bright and his collar was turned up. If they had something in common, she couldn’t see it.
    His eyes moved over her. He was probably thinking the same thing. “Hey,” he said.
    “Hi. Who are you?”
    “A guy. On a sofa.” He smiled. She hated him already. “You’re here for the tests?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Just arrived?”
    “Yeah.”
    “From where?”
    “San Francisco.”
    “Right,” he said. “And, uh, where in San Francisco?” He smiled again. That upturned collar, what was that?
    “Street.” He looked blank. “The,” she said. “The street. You know. The street.”
    He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
    “Yeah, I see that.”
    “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to offend. I mean, what is it you, uh, do?” He twirled a finger, indicating the room. “They don’t bring you here for no reason.”
    “I’m a magician. I entertain.”
    “Really?” he said. “You don’t strike me as the entertaining type.”
    “You don’t strike me as someone who knows jack about shit,” she said, because she was starting to get a little intimidated by his wording. “Why are you here?”
    He grinned. His teeth were really something. “New England Schools Debating Conference. Finals.” He waited for a response. “I’m good.”
    “Are you,” she said.
    •   •   •
    She showered and re-dressed. Where she’d come from, it was fine to wear the same clothes for days at a time; that meant you were busy following life’s opportunities. But she could see that here it was going to become an issue. She pulled on her jacket, at least, which was furry and had little biker studs she made fun of if anyone mentioned them but secretly thought were awesome. She brushed her hair until most of the knots were gone and clipped it out of her face. She had a faint memory of mascara left in her makeup bag and scraped together what she could to give herself smoky eyes. She had lost her deodorant somewhere. But she had soaped up in the shower. The reality was she smelled better than she had in a while.
    A bell rang somewhere: an honest to God bell, like a musical instrument. She opened her door to faces peering out of doorways. They were all young, mostly female. “Chow time!” said a black girl across the hall, and there were titters.
    The dining hall table had twelve places set on a tablecloth the size of a bedsheet but there were still miles of glowing wood stretching away at either end. The curly-haired boy came in, joking with a girl she hadn’t met, and sat opposite. She thought he might look at her but he didn’t. She tried to figure out the cutlery. A girl, no more than ten, climbed onto a chair beside her. Emily said hi and the girl said hi back, shyly. On her