The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman

again?”
    Doc smiled. “No, this is a standardized test—multiple choice. Let’s find you a quiet place to work.”
    We walked down the hall to a small office with a desk by the window. “Here you go,” said Dr. Rust, handing me a sheaf of papers held together with a binder clip. “You have forty-five minutes to complete the exam. Make sure you fill in each circle completely on the answer sheet. Do you have a number 2 pencil?”
    “I think so.” I fished around in my backpack and brought out the pencil the homeless woman had given me, the one I’d used to outline my social studies paper. I’d come to think of it as my lucky pencil.
    “Excellent. I’ll be back in exactly forty-five minutes.”
    The questions on the test were bizarre:
7. A carpenter has three sons. The eldest builds a palace from alabaster and porphyry. The second builds a courthouse from granite and sandstone. The youngest builds a cottage from a walnut shell and a corn husk. How many nails do the three sons use?
❍ A. π
❍ B. Infinity minus one
❍ C. One too many
❍ D. One too few
8. A child offers you a choice of two caskets, one gold and the other lead. Which do you take?
❍ A. The gold one
❍ B. The one in the child’s left hand
❍ C. The one the moth lands on
❍ D. A river underground
    I chewed my pencil and stared at the paper. I couldn’t imagine which answers were correct. I couldn’t even tell which were wrong, although on most multiple-choice tests I can usually cross out at least one or two right away. I had that terrible nervous feeling you get in nightmares, where you’re taking a test in a class you never signed up for.
    A minute or two ticked by.
    Well, I decided, there was nothing for it but to try my best.
    I went through the questions carefully, filling in circles. I read each question, then shut my eyes, imagined the choices as vividly as I could, and let my heart decide. When my heart didn’t have an opinion, I left it up to my pencil.
    At last I reached the end of the test, but there were still a couple of pages attached with the binder clip. The first one was a list of some sort: Paper towels, dish soap, pistachios, milk, sardines, cayenne . . . Doc’s groceries?
    I turned to the next page. On top of the sheet, in the same typeface as the exam, was written: Repository Qualifying Exam Level Two, 209v04 Key. Beneath was a list of answers. They seemed to correspond to the questions on the exam I’d just taken.
    Doc must have accidentally given me the answer key!
    I felt a wave of guilt. But really, I told myself, how was Dr. Rust’s carelessness my fault?
    Running my eye down my sheet, I saw with alarm that I hadn’t gotten a single answer right. The key called for all the safest, dullest answers.
    I started to erase my answer to the first question, to change it to the one on the answer sheet. My pencil didn’t seem to like that. It made an ugly pink smear on the page, the color of an infected cut. The color, I thought, of cheating.
    Feeling as if I’d had a narrow escape, I turned the pencil around and filled in the circle again next to my original answer: D, With all her heart. I was relieved by my decision, but I was disappointed too. Now that I knew I wouldn’t get the promotion, I realized how much I wanted it.
    The door opened. “Elizabeth? All done?”
    I handed Doc my answer sheet, along with the other papers. “I think you gave me the answer key,” I said.
    Doc grunted. “Indeed I did . . . huh, so that’s where my shopping list got to. Sardines! I knew I’d forgotten something important. Now, let’s see how you did. CDD, ADC, BAB, CCB, ACB . . . Excellent. Almost a perfect score.”
    “What do you mean, almost perfect? I only got one right!”
    Doc smiled, freckles drifting across one cheekbone. “Only one wrong, you mean. This key is a list of wrong answers. You passed with flying colors.”
    “I did?”
    “Yes. Not only did you choose correct answers, but you did it without peeking at