Lexicon

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 other side, a pretty girl with angel-blond hair slid into a seat. The curly-haired boy looked at the blond girl and away and then back and Emily thought,
Yeah, okay
.
    Charlotte, whom Emily still vaguely thought of as a nun, moved around the table, chatting briefly to each of them. Bread was served. Soup. The ten-year-old stared hopelessly at her spoons and Emily tried to help with educated guesses based on what everyone else was using.
    “I love your jacket,” said the angelic blond girl. “It’s so authentic.”
    “Oh,” she said. “I like your ears.”
    “My ears?”
    Emily had meant that as an insult but now realized the angel girl was serious. The girl had seriously tried to compliment her jacket. “Yeah. They’re like a fairy’s.” She elbowed the ten-year-old. “Fairy ears, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “Oh,” said the angel girl. “Well, thank you.”
    There were silver plates with bite-size constructions of meat and bread and paste and whatever. She picked one up only because it got her out of this conversation. It was actually not bad. Weird, but not bad-weird. This was her whole day, on a cracker.
    Charlotte rose and gave a short speech about how happy she was to have them here and she hoped they would seize the opportunity with two hands because each of them had great potential and the Academy was dedicated to unlocking it. Then she said they should sleep well because the first examination would begin early, and the curly-haired boy asked what it would be, and Charlotte smiled and said that would be answered by the morning. Those were her words:
Answered by the morning.
You would get your head kicked in talking that way in Emily’s world, but she was kind of enjoying it. On the pier, under her floppy hat, she used words to make people smile and come closer and give her two dollars and not care about losing. Good words were the difference between Emily eating well and not. And what she had found worked best were not facts or arguments but words that tickled people’s brains for some reason, that just amused them. Puns, and exaggerations, and things that were true and not at the same time.
Answered by the morning.
Words like that.
    Afterward, they filed back to their rooms and she brushed her teeth alongside a girl from Connecticut. Everyone