Lexicon

hands. She had good fingers, even then, because of the card tricks. She didn’t know a thing about guns, except which end to hold, but that was enough, so the boys stood around looking scared while Emily and her friend made a lot of silly threats and walked out backward.
    The lesson here was probably that she should not cross parking lots in bad neighborhoods. But also, when you were outmuscled, if there was a gun around, you could get control of the situation by getting the gun.
    Emily was outmuscled. She did not have a gun. But she suspected there was one in the basement.

HELP!
    I am trying to get in touch with everyone from the church group for our big Christmas get-together! We really want to invite EVERYONE who spent any time with us over the year.
    I like to think I’m quite adept at sleuthing people down, but there’s one person I simply can’t locate: Virginia Woolf! One might think that with a name like that she’d be easy to find. Unfortunately, the opposite seems true—it’s IMPOSSIBLE to use the Internet because of all those pages about the famous writer! Very frustrating!! Anyway I was hoping someone might know SOME way to reach her, because she seemed quite attentive and interested in what we had to say!

    Much love,
    Belinda F.

[TWO]
    Beneath her desk was a gym bag. The top layer was clothes Emily actually wore while working out, and under those was a second set she’d stashed there against this day. She logged out of the ticket system and slung the bag over her shoulder. On her way out, she passed Sashona, who was on the phone, and Emily mouthed, “Gym,” and Sashona nodded. She felt a small pang, because although they’d never been friends, for this place they were pretty close, and Emily was never going to see her again.
    She walked two blocks to a small café, a place she came sometimes for lunch. In the restroom, she changed into the clothes from her gym bag: a T-shirt, a pair of frayed jeans, and an old denim jacket. She scrubbed the makeup from her face, collected a nice film of grime from the floor tiles, and dabbed this under her eyes and across her hairline. Her work clothes and the gym bag she stashed behind a toilet. She didn’t expect to see those again, either.
    She circled the block and approached the office from the lane on the other side. Here was a nondescript door with a sign that said THE ROBERT LOWELL INSTITUTE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH . It looked like just another doomed business renting space on the wrong side of the building. But it wasn’t. It was the public face of Labs. She pressed the intercom and waited.
    “Hello?”
    “Hey,” she said. “My name is Jessica Hendry, I did one of your, like, tests a couple weeks ago, and you said I should come back if I wanted?”
    The door buzzed. She pushed it open and went up the narrow steps. At the top was a small waiting room, with empty chairs and an energetic television. A woman with high hair sat behind sliding glass. “Take a seat,” she said.
    Emily sat and flipped through
People
. She had been here before. The first time, the day after she’d determined to start planning, she’d found the entrance but not gone inside. She looked up “Robert Lowell Institute” in the phone book and called them—from a pay phone, for what that was worth—and determined that yes, they were interested in volunteers for testing, and walk-ins were accepted between eleven and one o’clock. They had wanted her to come in the next day, but she demurred, because she hadn’t acquired a false identity yet. It took her a week to find Jessica Hendry, a girl Emily’s age who had no fixed address and little interest in the world beyond where she might score her next hit. Jessica took to Emily straightaway, maybe sensing a shared history in addition to the potential to scam some money, and gushed more personal information to Emily than she really needed. In exchange, Emily pressed a hundred-dollar bill into Jessica’s hand and squeezed her and said, “Keep this safe,” then stole it back when Jessica wasn’t looking, because, honestly, that wasn’t going to help anyone.
    The institute had asked her to fill out a questionnaire. She went through this carefully, answering the psychographic questions honestly, which exposed her completely, of course, to anyone who divined that Jessica Hendry was her. She was segment 220, she already knew. Which should be good, because Labs could never get enough 220s.
    After the questionnaire,