Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

A crush of other girls in matching uniforms pushes past us. They’re beautiful, all of them, the way I’m beginning to see being rich gives everyone a gloss of beauty—fine clothes, straight white teeth, shiny hair, subtle paints for lips and eyes, and soft, unblemished skin in browns and peaches and pearls. No one here is missing eyes or teeth or has hair bleached and brittled by malnutrition. I smooth my own blunt-cut hair and grip Miyole’s hand. I wish I had my knife. I tried to tuck it in my belt this morning, but Soraya caught me and made me leave it behind.

Miyole, though, she’s caught up in the swirl and luster of it. She tries to drag us both up the building’s front steps. I hold back. Despite Soraya’s talks on board-certified instructors and advanced classes and individual progress assessments, I only have the muddiest idea what waits for me inside. Will the girls teach each other, like Miyole taught me my letters and figuring, or are we left to sort things out on our own? Do they have books? Or tablets? Or both? What happens inside these walls that couldn’t happen in the solitude of Soraya’s house, where I could grind out my ignorance in private?

Finally I let Miyole drag me through the front doors. A woman in a pale blue suit with her black hair pulled back in a loose bun catches us as we step inside. “Miyole? Ava?”

“Yes.” My voice squeaks.

“We’ve been expecting you. I’m Dr. Lata, dean of new students at Revati Academy. If you’ll come this way, please?”

We follow her through the broad front hall, then alongside a small courtyard full of ferns and a trickling fountain. Girls sit in clusters on the fountain wall. One of them, tall and dark haired, with a gemstone stud in her sharp nose and gold bands crisscrossing her long hair, cuts her eyes sideways at us and leans close to her friends to whisper something. A stab passes through me. Soli. Llell. I used to have friends like that. Where are they now? Soli will have had her baby. And Llell, I hope she found the husband she wanted. Even if she wanted me dead along with the rest of my crewe, she was my friend, once.

Dr. Lata leads us to a lamp-lit, windowless room on the third floor, filled almost to its walls by a table. Two rows of bronze-framed tablets, thinner and more transparent even than the ones Soraya bought us, are anchored in the wood.

“Please, sit,” Dr. Lata says.

We take seats side by side at the wide table, across from her.

“Dr. Hertz has informed us of your . . . ah . . . unusual situation,” Dr. Lata says. “I assure you, one of the benefits at Revati is the individualized tutoring you’ll receive to bring you up to speed. The young ladies who graduate from our institution have a ninety-eight percent placement rate in the world’s top postsecondary learning establishments.”

I look at Miyole. She has her eyes on Dr. Lata, nodding as though she’s understood, so I nod along with her. A sinking feeling sucks at the center of my chest.

“But first we need to assess your learning needs.” Dr. Lata gestures to the pristine tablets before us. They blink on, already brimming with text blocks and equations. “If you’ll each complete the entrance exam, the headmistress and I will review the results and inform you of your class placement at the end of the day. In the meantime, Ava, we’ll put you with the junior class, and Miyole, you may join the fourth-grade girls.”

“But I want to stay with Ava,” Miyole says.

“You may see each other at lunch, and during free study,” Dr. Lata says.

“Please, so missus, it would be better if we could stay together,” I say quietly.

Dr. Lata pauses before she speaks and folds her hands together patiently. “We like our students to interact as much as possible with their own age group. We feel it puts everyone at ease in the learning environment and enhances social development. Now, if we were to put you two together in the same grade, we would hardly be serving your potential for emotional acclimation and cognitive growth, would we?”

It seems best to nod.

Dr. Lata smiles warmly at us. “I’m glad you understand.” She stands. “I’ll be down the hall if you need me. Ava, I trust you’ll leave Miyole to do her own work and not give her any hints, hmm?”

I stare after her as she closes the door softly. Miyole giggles and rolls her eyes. As if she would be the one in need of hints.

The tablets ding softly, reminding us to start.

“Good luck,” I whisper as I pick up the slender stylus clipped to my tablet’s side.

“You too,” Miyole says.

I stare down at the screen in front of me. Miyole’s been teaching me figuring since Rushil coaxed her into talking again, explaining about words like integer and the language of symbols. It comes more natural to me than the reading, but still, we haven’t gotten very far. Equations some like the ones Miyole had me practice file down the left side of the screen.

6 2+ b 2= 144

a|-1| + 12(3·4a)/5 = 1,729

z(144/2 2+3—24) = 45

I push through them, then others asking the percentage of elements in a serum and the likely increase of a population given a two percent death rate per year. But too soon the questions throw up words like matrices and sine and cosine. They ask me to change an equation to a sloping line on a graph, and I’m utterly lost.

I switch to the other column, the questions about reading and words.

Its var-variegated coat provides cam-camo-camouflage from the . . .

I’m even worse off here, though I didn’t think that was possible. I rub my pendant’s smooth surface with my thumb as I try to read.

. . . was the first to con-conduct Deep Sound ex-explor-explorations with the as-assist-assistance of neo-neoaccel-neoaccelerant tech-technologies . . .

The words I do know bleed together or lose their sense next to the ones I’ve never heard. Their meanings go soft and slippery in my head, so all I can do is jab half blind at the answers Dr. Lata must want. I lay down the stylus, close my eyes, and lean my head in my hands.

I glance up through my fingers. Miyole leans over her tablet, mouth parted, eyes jumping back and forth across the screen. Every minute or so, she pauses to record a mark on the tablet, then goes back to reading, the stylus pressed against her lower lip.

I pick up the stylus again and stare at the questions.

India’s progress has provided a cat-catal-catalyst for eco-economic growth and improved standards of living in neighbor— no—neighboring countries . . .

I scroll down. I’ve only finished a third of the figuring questions, and hardly any of the ones that take reading. What do they expect from me? And why can’t I do this? Why don’t they let me show them all I can do with my hands instead? I can weave and practice fixes and fly a ship all on my own. Doesn’t that count for anything?

Miyole clips her stylus neatly to the tablet’s side. “Done.” She grins at me.

I taste something caustic on my tongue, as if my heart is leaking bitter bile. How can she be done when she’s a smallgirl, and I’m near a woman? What’s wrong with me? I swallow my desire to say something sharp and put Miyole in her place. I force a smile back at her instead.

“You should go tell Dr. Lata,” I say. “I’m close on finishing. I’ll be after you in a slip.”

She slides out of her chair and disappears through the door. I flip through the questions again, striking answers, scribbling clusters of words I know, random numbers, anything to be done with these questions.