Polly Shulman - The Grimm Legacy

“ Enough! Turn off ,” I muttered to the painting. Fortunately, it accepted the almost rhyme and quieted to murk as I hid behind the picture wall.

“Elizabeth? You in there?” It was Marc’s voice. I crept out from behind the picture wall. He was standing at the end of the room, holding the door open with one long leg. “Hurry up, we can’t stay here,” he urged.

I felt a shiver of relief as I heard the door click shut behind us.

Marc took the stairs two or three steps at a time while I ran panting behind. I used to be in better shape when I still took ballet.

Marc waited for me at the third landing. “Come on, you’ll never make the team at that rate!”

“What team?”

He looked me over. “I don’t know, Girls’ JV Dawdling?”

“Where are we going?”

“Preservation.”

“Where’s that?”

“Top floor.”

“Can’t we take the elevator?”

“ You can—Coach’d kill me if I do.” He took off again.

At last we reached the top of the staircase, with the corridor that led to the MER on the right and parts unknown—at least to me—on the left. There we ran into Ms. Callender. There was a frown on her friendly face.

“Elizabeth! Where have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you; aren’t you supposed to be on Stack 2?” she asked.

I didn’t know what to say—and even if I had known, I was panting too hard to say it. Fortunately, Marc stepped in. “Didn’t Ms. Minnian tell you? I’m supposed to take her to Preservation and get to work on the backlog of repairs,” he said.

“Oh. No, she didn’t mention that, but I’m afraid it’ll have to wait. Dr. Rust wants to see Elizabeth. I’ll send her up to help you when they’re done.” She made a note on her clipboard and said to me, “Go on down, honey, Dr. Rust is waiting.”

I guess she must have seen my dismay. She smiled and added, “Why the long face?”

“Did I do something wrong?” I asked.

“No, no. Just the opposite. There’s nothing to worry about. We thought you were ready for the next step, that’s all. Or at least, the next step toward the next step—or . . . well, I’ll let Dr. Rust explain. Go on downstairs, honey.”

“Okay.” I hurried away, still feeling uneasy.

Dr. Rust looked up when I tapped on the open door. “Ah, Elizabeth. Come on in. Sit down, sit down. Let’s see, you’ve been with us since January, right?”

I nodded.

“Martha Callender tells me you’re a good, hard worker, and Stan Mauskopf speaks highly of your character. I’ve heard good reports from one or two of the patrons as well. We think it may be time to give you a little more responsibility. Do you feel ready?”

Hardly. What I felt was guilty. Had Dr. Rust and Ms. Callender been discussing my noble character at the very moment I was sneaking around the Grimm Collection?

I cleared my throat. “That’s so nice of Mr. Mauskopf and Ms. Callender. What kind of responsibility?”

“Let’s discuss that after you take the test. That will give me the information I need to make a decision about what work would be right for you here.”

“Okay. What kind of a test? Sorting buttons again?”

Doc smiled. “No, this is a standardized test—multiple choice. Let’s find you a quiet place to work.”

We walked down the hall to a small office with a desk by the window. “Here you go,” said Dr. Rust, handing me a sheaf of papers held together with a binder clip. “You have forty-five minutes to complete the exam. Make sure you fill in each circle completely on the answer sheet. Do you have a number 2 pencil?”

“I think so.” I fished around in my backpack and brought out the pencil the homeless woman had given me, the one I’d used to outline my social studies paper. I’d come to think of it as my lucky pencil.

“Excellent. I’ll be back in exactly forty-five minutes.”

The questions on the test were bizarre:

7. A carpenter has three sons. The eldest builds a palace from alabaster and porphyry. The second builds a courthouse from granite and sandstone. The youngest builds a cottage from a walnut shell and a corn husk. How many nails do the three sons use?

❍ A. π

❍ B. Infinity minus one

❍ C. One too many

❍ D. One too few

8. A child offers you a choice of two caskets, one gold and the other lead. Which do you take?

❍ A. The gold one

❍ B. The one in the child’s left hand

❍ C. The one the moth lands on

❍ D. A river underground

I chewed my pencil and stared at the paper. I couldn’t imagine which answers were correct. I couldn’t even tell which were wrong, although on most multiple-choice tests I can usually cross out at least one or two right away. I had that terrible nervous feeling you get in nightmares, where you’re taking a test in a class you never signed up for.

A minute or two ticked by.

Well, I decided, there was nothing for it but to try my best.

I went through the questions carefully, filling in circles. I read each question, then shut my eyes, imagined the choices as vividly as I could, and let my heart decide. When my heart didn’t have an opinion, I left it up to my pencil.

At last I reached the end of the test, but there were still a couple of pages attached with the binder clip. The first one was a list of some sort: Paper towels, dish soap, pistachios, milk, sardines, cayenne . . . Doc’s groceries?

I turned to the next page. On top of the sheet, in the same typeface as the exam, was written: Repository Qualifying Exam Level Two, 209v04 Key. Beneath was a list of answers. They seemed to correspond to the questions on the exam I’d just taken.

Doc must have accidentally given me the answer key!

I felt a wave of guilt. But really, I told myself, how was Dr. Rust’s carelessness my fault?

Running my eye down my sheet, I saw with alarm that I hadn’t gotten a single answer right. The key called for all the safest, dullest answers.

I started to erase my answer to the first question, to change it to the one on the answer sheet. My pencil didn’t seem to like that. It made an ugly pink smear on the page, the color of an infected cut. The color, I thought, of cheating.

Feeling as if I’d had a narrow escape, I turned the pencil around and filled in the circle again next to my original answer: D, With all her heart. I was relieved by my decision, but I was disappointed too. Now that I knew I wouldn’t get the promotion, I realized how much I wanted it.

The door opened. “Elizabeth? All done?”

I handed Doc my answer sheet, along with the other papers. “I think you gave me the answer key,” I said.

Doc grunted. “Indeed I did . . . huh, so that’s where my shopping list got to. Sardines! I knew I’d forgotten something important. Now, let’s see how you did. CDD, ADC, BAB, CCB, ACB . . . Excellent. Almost a perfect score.”

“What do you mean, almost perfect? I only got one right!”

Doc smiled, freckles drifting across one cheekbone. “Only one wrong, you mean. This key is a list of wrong answers. You passed with flying colors.”