Chapter 25- Jacob vs. the Assessment

I followed the two into the building and into the multipurpose room. It lived up to the school being massive yet very plain with random items scattered along its walls and students everywhere. In a sense, the place reminded me of my old charter school. I had gone there my sophomore year of high school, but had transferred over here my junior year along with Hope, Truman, Ruth, Violet, and Kristy. No matter how massive the school was I missed my old friends from the other. There, everyone was an outsider so nobody was and the people who would have been popular at a public school fit in well too. I had made friends with a guy who had this strange obsession with ducks and puns, a girl who had a strange obsession with cars, another girl with a strange obsession with Disney, a boy with a strange obsession with Ke$ha, and teacher who had a strange obsession with giving us essays. I really wanted to take them with me, but I couldn't and had to schedule events so we could meet up again. Often times we would go bowling or play some Mario Kart at my place. Good times…

"O.M.G.," Ruth glared looking over at me and pointed to two girls and a boy. "It's Hope and Kristy, and him."

I had known Hope since my Eighth Grade. She was quite a shy girl back then and I had befriended her because of this. The ginger had deep blue eyes like mine, a silver short sleeved shirt, black jeans, and grey sneakers. She was quite thin because she took gymnastics and had been doing so for a couple years now. As a matter of fact she started it because she wanted to become like those performers we had seen in San Francisco many years ago. Ever since she saw her mom there, she had been a lot more talkative and energetic. Ruth told me that whenever I was around a different side of her showed up so I didn't really know the other side.

Kristy was a peculiar girl and was the "curious George" of our gang. The fangirl was a bit lazy and didn't really think things through before she acted rationalizing out all the important details. Like, Gohan, she had thin black hair except hers stretched down to her hip with a strand of it green that matched her eyes. She wore a pink shirt with a heart on it, short blue jeans, pink NIKE's, and many rubber wristbands around her left wrist.

The boy Ruth had so resented was none other than Topher; Ruth's rival in the school. Like me, he had dirty blonde hair except his was much longer and made a giant flip at the front sort of proclaiming to the world of its presence. He had green eyes and wore a collared green sweatshirt that had a thick darker strip of green going through its center, long light brown trousers, and black sneakers with a white bottom. "What's up Ruth?" he snickered. "Ready for that date cause the Topher is ready…"

Ruth growled at him, "Not even in your dreams. I have a boyfriend and you are just another humiliation on live television. What was it? Total Drama? Get out of my face" and she sat on him.

"Agh!" he cried. "Not the hair!"

She just laughed, "Then I guess you should've moved when you still had the chance. I'm sitting next to Hope. Got it wanna because I'm pretty sure that's how they described you in the show."

"Hey," he defended her getting out from underneath her and standing up as I took a seat to the left of Hope and Truman to my left. "The only reason why I didn't win that show was because I was tricked. Okay?"

Ruth folded her legs over each other like she had already won the argument. "I got that episode and in it I'm pretty sure you were a big...fat...loser" In response a crowd who had followed us laughed at him while his crowd glared at her in anger. "See you, los-"

A lady with orange hair and strange glasses interrupted her through a microphone in an accent I could not understand, "Please, go to your seats so we can begin the assessment."

Ruth and Topher's groups immediately disbanded, Topher sitting in front of Ruth who cringed when she saw his skyscraper-like hair. "Relax, Ruth." Hope told her. "He's just trying to get your reaction. Don't let him annoy you or you'll give him the win."

I peered down at the packet on the desk. It looked just like a star test with a name spot and date at the top left corner of the page and rows of bubbles that filled up the entire page. At the bottom was a rectangle with a bar code and the words, Do not write in this area.

"Now, you must write your name on the designated line at the top left corner of the page…" the lady started. "Then you must fill in the bubbles of your date of birth, full name, and student ID. You will see a black space at the bottom of the page. Do not write in this part or change it in any way shape or form."

The whole school started working on the page along with myself. Before I did so I looked behind me and saw Gohan and Videl with two of their friends; Emma and Anna had joined them seated next to Videl.

For an assessment there was an awful lot of security. Guards with guns on their belts were assembled around the room and video cameras had taken themselves at every row of desks including ours. I found it best if I didn't coscar here since this place was so packed with lack of privacy. It made me feel trapped in some prison room being evaluated by scientists for my every action as if I was some sort of strange alien creature thingy. Truman was right; this was suspicious.

I silently prayed that Rylie didn't pop out of the ground.

Like the teacher had asked, I filled out the bubbles and wrote my name on the line taking care not to touch the bottom rectangle. "Students," she said. "Flip the page. You will answer the questions that are placed before you. There are 3 sections of this that you must complete before you leave this school for today. Problem solving, personality, and then you must write one essay about the thing you care about most. Are there any questions?"

Well that was simple. What was up with all the security? Why were these questions so personal? Why did we have to do a personality section? Why were the guards in the room so official? Was there a threat in the room or something? How come this was all so sudden?

Nobody moved though for everyone was pretty freaked out by the guy standing behind her. I didn't know about the others, but this guy seemed to be giving the whole school a staredown of death. He was one of the guards who had been remaining in the front of the room. He was big and bulky with sort of a square face that had a Bluetooth in his ear. He had short brown hair and wore a dark grey shirt and pants with massive black boots and a belt heavily armed with weapons. His name tag read, John Casey which fit him really well and honestly no better name could have been chosen.

Surprisingly, Ruth seemed invulnerable to it all and shot her hand up, "Yeah, can you like move this guy in front of me? He is totally wearing too much cologne."

"Ruth…" Hope whispered to her. "Remember what I said…?"

"He will not be moved." The teacher strictly answered. "Now get to work."

I opened up the next page which looked just like a Star testing one. It even had a paper in the packet that had more bubbles we had to fill out. Alrighty…question number one…It read, "There is a person who claims they have drawn a certain picture. They give a detailed summary about the individual steps they took to complete it. Which of these proves they are lying? A: They have no pencil marks on their hands. B: They have given too detailed a summary. C: They have not signed their work. D: I don't know."

This was a simple question enough since I like to do a lot of drawing and I got a lot of practice in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. They were lying because they had no pencil marks on their hands for whenever I had drawn I had had to deal with these. Derp... I filled in the bubble for A and moved onto the next one. I was astonished at this one for it was all math. I took out the scratch piece of paper from the packet and got to work on the problem. E, the answer was E. The next one was B and then B again. D, A, E, E, E, C, A, D, D, and so forth. These questions were nothing I had ever encountered before; they were all different ranging from science to court rooms, but all lived up to their 'problem solving' name. After what seemed forever, I finally got to the next section.

Ruth was way ahead of me and was surprisingly filling in bubbles at least every 30 seconds on average. How could someone plow through it that quickly? Hope was a little bit ahead of me, but not by far. Truman had managed to get through a good chunk of it and was barely managing to keep up with Ruth, but that was probably because of all the books he had read on this stuff (he read books about basically everything).

During the time the whole school was dead silent. And why wouldn't they be? They had security cameras being pin pointed at them and guards were everywhere along with that guy walking around the room breathing down our necks the whole time. It was like an awkward silence made home in the room we were working in.

I took a look at the personality portion of the quiz. Question number one time! "You are taken away into a dark room with only a flashlight, once on, you see that there are five doors which do you pick to go through" it said. What a weird question. "A: A Perfect Life that's a lie. B: A world where everyone loves you, but the people who love you in the real world hate you. C: Years filled with danger of trying to get back into your world. D: A life where everyone you hated disappeared. E: A life where you always got what you wanted."

I marked down C. Even if it was hard and dangerous. I knew that it was the right thing to do. Even without coscar I could actually do it. Fate will give what man will find it. It constantly presents different versions of itself to us and we have to choose what fate we want. Besides the people I hated were people too. If I had gotten rid of Dallin then I would have never gotten the fate I had now

The next question was tough too, "You are presented with four different personality traits you could add to yourself. A: Kindness. B: Intelligence. C: Think and Do Attitude (Stronger willpower). D: Athlete. E: Nothing.

I put down E. I wanted to be free to make my own personality and not let some sudden power to get one. I needed to take my own path minus the short-cuts unless if it was forced upon me. It's not like that has already happened or anything….

Lastly, after much more assessing, I got to the essay which was writing about what you care about most. Immediately, I put down my family. They had always been there for me; no matter what challenges I had. That time when Violet and I got the Black Figure years ago, she volunteered for the mission to interrogate him. She knew it would be dangerous, but she did it anyway because she didn't want him hurting me again. What about Hope's mom? She had come back to be with her daughter even though it meant turning into a pet animal. And I could never forget the time when I got bit by the rattlesnake. My family canceled all plans to help me out despite the fact we could be missing out on a family reunion; the first one we had ever had. I remembered sitting in the hospital guilting up that feeling of betrayal like I had ruined everything. Did Rylie have family? Did she have someone to hold on to, to comfort, and to love her? The girl had been alive for so long too…

Thank goodness I was done with that assessment. It was long and boring, but I actually got it done! Yay! I shut it and turned it in to the teacher by the front desk. The awkwardness had settled between the doors as I walked out of them between the guards for lunch. Blelck.