"You'll do fine." K whispered, nose to nose with A. "Stop worrying about it."
The boy ran his fingers through her hair. "I can't help it, you know."
"Well learn to." She kissed him, feeling his hand run down her back.
They lay down in the green grass. The snow had melted, the birds could be heard singing again. It was finally spring. The air was fresh and everything was green, it wasn't raining for once. K kissed him again and he laughed, kissing her back. A tickled her ribs, causing her to laugh into his mouth.
"A! Stop!" She giggled, trying to escape his grasp.
"But I love to hear you laugh." He pouted as she squirmed in his arms.
She stared down at his bright eyes, shaking her head.
"Too bad, learn some funny jokes."
She held his hands away from her as he sneakily kissed the corner of her mouth. They were kissing again when suddenly the branches above them started to shake and someone jumped down from the tree. They both sat up, startled as pieces of branches and leaves fell all around them.
"Test starts in a few minutes." It was B. He pulled a leaf out of his hair.
The couple stared at him astonished, and he just stared back, a bored expression on his face.
"B what the hell?!" A yelled at him, realizing B had been there the whole time. "What were you doing up there?!"
"What?" B asked nonchalantly. "Enjoying the view. Beautiful day isn't it?"
He stared at K, then back at A, who looked fairly annoyed. B smiled inwardly. What did A want him to say, that he had been watching them? Of course he was watching them. And it made him sick.
…
"Something was coming," They had told them. What or who that something was no one really knew for sure, but they had an idea. L. They were required to take a series of tests, tests that would measure their intellectual skills. They would then be ranked according to these skills. It was sort of like a competition to see who was the smartest. B wasn't thrilled.
The first was a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle with 1 hour to complete it. It was a simple puzzle that when completed would be a picture of a pond in a wooded area. B slept through the puzzle exam, not seeing any purpose in giving himself a headache trying to put together a stupid puzzle.
The buzzer woke him up, and he looked around to see many variations of unfinished puzzles. X and Y had both successfully done the border and some of the puzzle, Z managed to put together a chunk of the bottom of her puzzle, K did a small bit towards the center that was part of the pond containing pinkish colored lilies, and then there was A. He had completed almost the entire puzzle, and B eyed him as he groaned in frustration.
"I just had a little more to go..." A could be heard whining to himself.
The students were then moved to another room for multiple written exams. First was math, then reading, science, and writing. Each booklet sat unopened in a pile on each desk, and they were to do one at a time.
B opened up the math booklet slowly staring at the problems on the page. Most of it was calculus. B groaned and dragged his hands over his face before picking up the pencil. He tried and tried to do the problems, but everything was distracting him. One of the windows in the room wasn't sealed right and every time the wind blew he could hear a faint whistle. Someone was tapping their pencil in a steady repetitive beat, and it sounded like it was right in B's ear in the quietness of the room. He could also hear Roger's loud, tired breathing. Most of all, it was who was in front of him. A. A worked quickly, swiftly calculating problems on his calculator and recording the answers on the page. And when he wasn't doing that he was scribbling something on the page and the sound the pencil made irritated B. Everything irritated B.
He watched as one of the boy's hands went up to scratch his head, B's eyes locking with the red numbers that floated there. How distracting. They looked strange. B looked down at his paper, trying to ignore them, but he ended up looking at the numbers again. 276483527. B chewed on his fingernails. 915654765. B stared at them in a fog, watching as the number changed. 567845309. He wrote it down on his paper. 235573860. Again. 365869473. B spent the testing time recording A's numbers, covering most of the booklet with small scratchy numbers written in pencil. Each test B did the same thing, writing the numbers down over and over and over again, until the entire exam was over.
"What is this?" Roger asked him later on as he went through B's tests. Everyone else had left the room, K could be seen peeking in from the door. "B? What is this?"
"What?"
"Why didn't you take the exam?"
B said nothing and just stared at the man. He couldn't think of a reason why.
"B what are these numbers?"
He was pointing to the long list of random looking numbers. B stared at them. He didn't remember his handwriting being so sloppy, he needed to work on that.
"I was bored." B stated, staring back at the man.
"Well you are aware that you're going to receive a horrible score on this exam, correct?"
B shrugged and chewed on his fingernails. "It's not that important." He said. "I'm sure L will forgive me."
Roger narrowed his eyes at the boy. "Who told you any of this was for L?"
"Well what else would it be for..." B said slowly.
Roger sighed, trying to compose himself. "No, B. You need to take it again."
...
He put B in a room by himself, and gave him all of the tests again, this time 10 jars of jam and 3 packs of cigarettes sat lined up attractively on the desk in the front of the room.
"If you take this test," Roger said to him. "And I see you actually trying this time, you can have all of this."
B stared at him. Take the test, and he gets all of those things. Free cigarettes. Free jam, that he didn't have to steal. Did he really have a choice? B agreed.
When the scores came in, Roger was shocked. B had scored higher than A his second time around, unlike the first time where he had gotten a horrible score. The tests were handed back a few days later and the scores were posted in the downstairs hallway, the six students gathered outside of Roger's office fighting to look at the piece of paper taped to the wall.
B looked at the paper, seeing his name at the top of the list. He stood there in silence, X suddenly shaking him by the shoulders.
"I didn't know you were smart B!"
B put his hand on the boy's face and pushed him off of him, forcefully slamming him into the wall.
"Don't touch me." He said before walking away.
Everyone crowded closer to the wall, filling up the space where B had just been standing.
"What's this?" A squinted at the page. He noticed that B had received a significantly higher score than he had. A rushed over to Roger's office, pushing past everyone, even K, reaching the man's room in a silent panic.
"Roger you made a typo." A spat. "You put my score next to B's name, and his next to mine."
Roger was sitting at his desk, reclined in his chair. His glasses hung low on his face and he was just doodling on a piece of paper.
"There is no typo, A."
…
The three were in A and B's room, A and K sat at his desk on the far side of the room. A was freaking out, he had spread all his tests out, checking and rechecking all his answers.
"Something is wrong my score shouldn't be that low how did he..." A dug his hands into his scalp, squeezing his eyes shut. "This doesn't make any sense. The points must be added up incorrectly or something."
K rubbed his shoulder. "A you were nervous when you took it, your focus was off that's all." She said softly, trying to comfort him. "Let's go outside or something all this calculating is going to stress you out even more."
A shook his head, grabbing his calculator and hanging onto it for dear life. "No, no, no," He repeated, pressing the clear button. "There has to be a mistake somewhere I didn't get that many wrong... I have to check it again just let me check it again..."
"Or you could help me go over my answers?" K asked hopefully, smiling at him as she held her test.
A groaned, ignoring her question and turning back to the first page of his test.
"A..." She whined, massaging his shoulders.
"K I can't concentrate with you touching me."
K sighed in defeat and walked over to the window, the sound of calculator buttons being hit filling the quiet room. A could be really selfish sometimes. She looked across the room to see B sitting in his closet.
"Hmmm.." B mumbled, a jar of jam in his right hand and a roll of tape in his left.
He was seated on the floor, the pages of his first tests stuck to the walls of his empty closet. It looked like a room of endless numbers, and B just stared up at them, examining them.
"Erratic..." He said to himself, staring at the pages. "Very erratic."
He tapped his index finger on his lips, jelly sticking to them. His light source was suddenly blocked, and he knew someone was standing behind him.
"B what is that?" It was K.
"Nothing!" He jumped up and slammed the door in her face.
He ripped all the pages down and sat there in the dark momentarily before exiting the closet. K was standing there, a confused look on her face. He closed the door behind him and sat criss cross on the floor, leaning against the closet.
"Hello." He said looking up at her, scooping jam into his mouth.
"Hi, B." K said slowly, sitting down in front of him. "I wanted to know if you could go over my test with me since A..." She looked back at the blonde boy who was franticly rechecking his test. "Yeah."
"Sure." B said, staring at her.
"Well I wanted to look at the math first." She opened up one of the booklets and flipped to a page that was mostly blank. "Logarithms are confusing... I never really grasped the material, you know?" She looked up to see him staring at her.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" She asked, watching as he held a glob of jam in his fingers. "I still don't get how you can eat that stuff."
"I don't as much as I used to." B stated, still watching her. "But anyways, continue."
"Not with you looking at me like that-"
B took his hand and smeared jam across K's face, she almost immediately swatting him away.
"B!" She shrieked with a hint of annoyance, but it soon turned into laughs. "Why would you do that?!"
"Do what?" He asked as he smeared jam across the other side of her face.
"Stop!" She giggled, grabbing his hand and wiping it against his own face. "You're wasting it!"
He took some jam with his other hand and smushed it against her mouth, her muffled laughs could be heard filling the room. B laughed along with her, an unfamiliar feeling going through his body. She pulled his hands down, his skin sticking to hers. B stared at their hands, happy that he was okay with that, happy that the creeping feeling wasn't crawling up his arm.
"It's in my nose." K laughed, trying to wipe her face while still holding onto his hands.
"You were saying something about logarithms?" B said, smirking at her.
K was laughing again, and B could feel someone staring at him. In the corner of his eye he noticed A glaring at them from across the room. K got up to wash her face, B watched as she walked away, and A was still staring, his icy blue eyes locked on B.
…