F. Wilson - The Select

After the general knowledge section the questions got weird.

They baffled Tim. Strange questions involving values and decision-making: about being a general in a battle and deciding who was expendable, about being a surgeon in a M.A.S.H. unit surrounded by wounded soldiers—instead of goofy jokers like the TV show—and having to decide who would be treated now and who would have to wait until later.

Triage.

There didn't seem to be any one correct answer to these.

Tim felt paralyzed. He'd spent years matching the right answer to the right question. But now there was no right answer.

Maybe that was the point. Maybe The Ingraham wasn't looking so much for answers to the questions as it was looking for answers about the person taking the test.

The realization galvanized Tim. This was great. All he had to go was dive into these and cut loose. But not too loose. He had to consider the kind of answer these folks were looking for.

*

Finished.

Tim glanced at his watch. Ten minutes to spare. Everything done. All his four hundred multiple choices had an A, B, C, D, or E box blackened to the right of it. No sense in going back and rechecking. Too many. And besides, he was drained. He couldn't bear to read and answer one more goddamn question about anything.

He glanced over at Quinn. She was still working down at the bottom of the last row. She'd finish in time. He was turning away to check on Matt when he noticed two unanswered questions at the top of one of her columns. He checked his exam booklet. Those were two of the Kleederman questions.

It hit him that maybe Quinn wasn't familiar with the equations. Maybe she'd drawn a blank on Johann Kleederman. Why else would she leave them unanswered?

And Christ, the Kleederman Foundation was the pocketbook for The Ingraham. They might dump on anyone missing those.

Tim looked around for the proctor. She was standing by her desk now, arranging her papers, preparing to collect the test pamphlets. Tim slipped his answer sheet inside his exam book, replaced his shades over his eyes, and waited. When her back was turned he rose and, in one continuous movement, leaned over Quinn's shoulder, blackened the B and C boxes next to questions 201 and 202, then straightened and strode down the aisle.

My good deed for the day .

*

Quinn stared down at the two marks Tim had made on her answer sheet. He'd blackened in choices on two of the three questions that had completely stymied her. What on God's earth was the Kleederman equation? She'd never heard of it.

Obviously Tim had. Probably could tell her the page and paragraph where he'd read about it. God, she wished she had a memory like that. Wouldn't that be great? Like having an optical CD-ROM reader in your head.

She stared at those little blackened boxes. They weren't her answers. She felt queasy about handing them in.

Instinctively, Quinn reversed her pencil and moved to erase them. She had always done her own work, always stood on her own two feet. She wasn't going to change that now.

Almost of its own accord, her pencil froze, the eraser poised half an inch above the paper.

Her whole future was at stake here. This was real life. The nitty-gritty. Doing "good enough" wouldn't cut it; there were just so many places the next class. Fifty, to be exact. She had to score in the top fifty.

The Kleederman questions could mean the difference between acceptance and rejection.

And she didn't have a clue as to how to answer them.

But still...they weren't her answers.

As she lowered the eraser to the paper, the proctor's voice cut through the silence.

"Time's up. Pencils down. Any more marks and your test will be disqualified."

*

Tim stood with Matt around the central pond and waited for Quinn to come out of the class building. A chill wind had come up, scraping dead leaves along the concrete walks. He pulled his jacket closer around him. Winter was knocking.

Finally she showed up, walking slow. He wondered at her grim expression.

"How'd you do?" Matt asked.

Quinn shrugged. "You ever hear of the Kleederman equation?"

"Sure," Tim said. "It's—"

"I know you did." The look she tossed him was anything but friendly. "I want to know about Matt."

That look unsettled Tim. He'd thought he'd be her knight in shining armor. What was eating her?

Matt scratched his head. "It has to do with distribution of medical services among an expanding population."

"You've heard of it too? You've both heard of it?" She shook her head in dismay. "Why haven't I? Three questions and I couldn't even guess at an answer."

"Cheer up," Tim said. "You got two of them right, anyway. At least I hope they were right."

Her head snapped up. Her expression was fierce. Her eyes flashed as she looked into his.

"No. You got two of them right. Not me. I didn't have a clue. I don't hand in other people's work, Tim."

He groaned. "Oh, no. You didn't erase them, did you?"

There was pain in her eyes now. "No. I didn't. And I'm not too proud of myself for that."

She turned and walked off toward the dorm. Tim started after her but stopped after two steps. He wanted to be with her but what was the use? She'd put up a wall.

"You marked a couple of answers on her sheet?" Matt said.

"Yeah. They were blank. Thought I was doing her a favor." He didn't want to show it—didn't even want to admit it—but he was hurt , damn it "Boy, I just can't win with her."

"With 999 other people you'd be a hero. But Quinn's got her own set of rules. You tested on her own standards and she feels she failed."

Tim was jolted. "Jesus..."

"Didn't I tell you she's one of a kind?"

"You got that right. Kind of old-fashioned, though, don't you think?"

"Yeah," Matt said softly. "She's an old-fashioned girl."

"I didn't think there were any of those left."

To his dismay Tim realized he was becoming enthralled with Quinn Cleary.

SPRING BREAK

Adrix (adriazepam), the new non-habituating benzodiazepine with strong anti-depressant properties from Kleederman Pharmaceuticals, has quickly become the most widely prescribed tranquilizer in the world.

Medical World News

CHAPTER FIVE

In what had become a daily ritual, Quinn sat on her window seat in her cozy little bedroom, raised the binoculars, and aimed them across the front yard toward the end of the driveway. And with each new day the suspense grew. It had swollen to a Hitchcockian level now.

The front yard wasn't much—a hundred feet deep, rimmed with oaks and elms, filled with laurel and natural brush, and a patch of winter-brown grass. Pretty drab and lifeless now, but soon spring would bring the forsythia into buttery bloom and then there'd be lots of color. The house was old, the foundation even older—the first stones had been placed a century and a half ago. The superstructure had been built and rebuilt a number of times since then. The current structure had been completed sometime in the Roaring Twenties. Over the years Quinn had lined her little bedroom nest with photos, pennants, posters, honor certificates, medals and trophies from her seasons as a high school track star. And many a night she had spent fantasizing about the children who had occupied the room before her, where they were now, what they had done with their lives.

They hadn't all stayed farmers, she was sure of that.

The farm. The acres stretched out behind the house. Lots of land. If this kind of acreage were situated near the coast, or better yet, along the inner reaches of Long Island Sound, they'd be rich. Millionaires. Developers would be banging on their door wanting to buy it for subdivision. But not here in the hinterlands of northeast Connecticut.