Shadows by John Saul Page A

answer sheets, marking numbers?
    A bell sounded in both Engersol’s office and the adjoining room.
    Josh, his thoughts interrupted by the sudden noise, looked up at the clock and was surprised to see that the allotted three hours had passed.
    His eyes shifted to the sheets on which he’d marked his answers, and he felt a vague queasiness in his stomach.
    At least a quarter of the questions weren’t marked at all. And how many of the ones he’d answered were wrong?
    But it wasn’t possible—he’d never failed to complete a test before, not even the ones they’d said no one was
supposed
to finish. He’d always done them all, finishing with plenty of time left over.
    And now he’d failed.
    He wasn’t going to get into the Academy at all!
    A wave of frustration crashed in on him, and he picked up the pencils that were arranged neatly on the table in front of him and hurled them across the room. Then, snatching up the test booklet, he burst through the door to Dr. Engersol’s office.
    “There wasn’t enough time!” he yelled, his face red, his eyes screwed into tiny slits. “Nobody could finish your stupid test!” Flinging the book at Dr. Engersol, he stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind him. Feeling her own face turning crimson with embarrassment, Brenda leapt to her feet and started after him.
    “I’m sorry,” she said over her shoulder. “I don’t know what got into him. I’ll make him apologize.”
    Before she could leave the room, George Engersol stopped her. “It’s all right, Mrs. MacCallum,” he said, grasping her arm and leading her back toward the chair.“Believe me, no matter where he’s gone or what he’s doing, someone is keeping an eye on him.”
    Brenda froze. What was he saying? Did they watch all the kids here, all the time? But why?
    And then she thought she knew the answer. They would do whatever they had to do to prevent exactly the sort of thing Josh had done on Monday. The last thing this school would want was for their students to do themselves any harm.
    “But he still can’t act that way!” she grumbled. “He hasn’t any right to be rude to you, no matter what he thinks!”
    Engersol smiled thinly. “Well, at least I know where he gets his temper, anyway,” he observed. “I’m not sure he’s any angrier than you are right now.”
    “But he—”
    “He just experienced the hardest test he’s ever taken,” Engersol said. “He didn’t finish
it—couldn’t
finish it—and he’s feeling totally frustrated. But he’s right about one thing,” he went on, his smile broadening. “No one can finish that test in the allotted time. That’s part of the point of it—I need to know how the kids react to being stymied. And Josh reacted very, very well.”
    Brenda gaped. “Well? You call that fit reacting well?”
    Engersol chuckled. “In terms of Josh, yes. It tells me he’s not lazy, and that he likes to get things done. All he wanted to do was finish the test, Mrs. MacCallum, and I frustrated him, which was part of the test. And frankly, I’d rather see him get mad than just accept the limitations of even an intellect as good as his. So let’s let him cool off, and find out how he did, all right?” Going to the next room, he picked up the sheets that were covered with Josh’s answers to the hundreds of questions that had been posed, and frowned.
    Until now, none of the students had ever filled in so much as half the answer sheets. It looked as though Josh had come close to completing nearly seventy-five percent of it.
    Unless, at the end, he’d simply been taking blind guesses. Well, Engersol thought, he’d soon know. Takingthe sheets back to his office, he began scanning them into his computer.
    In less than a minute he’d have Josh’s results.
       “Hildie?”
    Hildie Kramer looked up from her desk to see Tina Craig standing in the doorway to her office. At thirteen, Tina was already blossoming rapidly into womanhood, and by next year,