Lexicon

out at the hidden world of sunlight that lay above the clouds: She was leaving Benny behind. And this was a good thing. She felt like she had two years before, when she’d walked away from a falling-down house with her Pikachu bag on her back, her mom’s threats and prophecies bouncing off her back, and the more she walked the better she felt. Benny hadn’t been good. Not really. She was getting a sense of that, now that people were taking her bags and bringing her drinks while she slept. She was seeing that without Benny, she could be so much more.
    The attendant touched her arm at the exit. “Thank you so much.”
    “Thank
you
so much,” she said.
    • • •
    In Arrivals stood a driver, complete with hat and uniform, holding a printed sign reading EMILY RUFF . “I’m Emily,” she said.
    He reached for her bag. She hesitated, but let him take it; she needed to get used to that. “I’m very pleased to meet you, miss. I have a car out front. Was your flight bearable?”
    “Yes.” She fell into step. She felt kind of stupid about the Pokémon bag. It looked ridiculous on this guy’s trolley. But he didn’t seem to mind. People glanced at her, this dirty girl with a uniformed driver, and she tried not to smile, so as not to ruin it.
    He held open a door for her. Outside was bright and cold. A long, liquid black limousine lay spread along the curb. The driver opened the rear door and she climbed inside like it was nothing.
    Did she want a drink? To watch TV? Because she could do that. There was enough room to lie down. She could live here.
    The driver entered. The locks thunked. “No rain expected. You come to us on a good day.”
    “I thought it was a good day,” she said. “I felt that.”
    They drove for forty minutes and stopped at a set of high steel gates. Through the limo’s dark glass, she saw grass and gigantic trees. The driver spoke to someone in a guardhouse; the gates parted. As they moved up the hill, a building appeared.
    “It’s an old convent,” said the driver. “There were nuns here for a hundred years.” The car pulled around the front of the building, its tires crunching gravel. A man came down steps toward them. A porter. That was what he was. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
    “Yes.”
    “They’ll take you from here.” He turned in his seat to face her. She liked that: the way people were turning to talk to her. “Best of luck with your examinations, miss.”
    • • •
    The porter led her to a room with high ceilings and wood-paneled walls and ten thousand books. A sitting room, she guessed. Because she had heard of those, and couldn’t think what else this room was for. Maybe nothing. Maybe after a certain size, a building had more rooms than uses. She squeezed her bag between her ankles and tried to relax. Occasionally she heard a door close—
thonk
—and murmurs of conversation, and laughter that floated up a corridor somewhere. She kind of needed to pee.
    A woman’s heels rapped outside. The door clacked open. For a second, Emily thought it was a nun, but it was just a woman in a dark blue suit. She had nuns on the brain. The woman was slim, maybe thirty-five, with dark hair and delicate glasses. She came toward Emily with her hand extended and her fingers down. A lady handshake. Emily got off the chair to take it. “Hello, Emily. Thank you so much for joining us. I’m Charlotte.”
    “Hi,” she said.
    Charlotte settled into a chair. Emily returned to hers. They seemed a long way apart. A rug lay between them like a map of some undiscovered world. “In a moment, I’ll show you to your room,” Charlotte said. “But first, I’m sure you must have questions.”
    She did. Like,
What was with that Lee guy
, and
Why me
, and
These examinations, what are they, exactly
. But she didn’t ask them. The thing was, if these questions had bad answers, it was going to be really disappointing.
    “We have six of you this week,” said Charlotte, deciding to answer questions Emily hadn’t asked. “Six applicants, that is. You each have your own room, of course. Yours overlooks the East Wood; I think you’ll enjoy it. There’s a central dining room, where you’ll be served meals, and you’ll find a recreation room at the end of the hall, and a reading room beside that. Between examinations, please do feel free to explore the grounds. It’s a wonderful space. It was once a convent.”
    “I heard.”
    “If you leave the New Wing, you may bump into some of our