The Mysterious Benedict Society (2 page)

“I haven’t passed it yet, Miss Perumal!”

“Oh, stop being silly,” she said, and after squeezing him tightly, Miss Perumal dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, walked determinedly to her car, and drove away just as the children were ushered into the building.

It was a curious test. The first section was rather what Reynie would have expected — one or two questions regarding octagons and hexagons, another devoted to bushels of this and kilograms of that, and another that required calculating how much time must pass before two speeding trains collided. (This last question Reynie answered with a thoughtful frown, noting in the margin that since the two trains were approaching each other on an empty stretch of track, it was likely the engineers would recognize the impending disaster and apply their brakes, thus avoiding the collision altogether.) Reynie raced through these questions and many like them, then came to the second section, whose first question was: “Do you like to watch television?”

This certainly was not the sort of question Reynie had expected. It was only a question of preference. Anyway, of
course
he liked to watch television —
everybody
liked to watch television. As he started to mark down the answer, however, Reynie hesitated. Well, did he really? The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he didn’t, in fact, like to watch television at all. I really
am
an oddball, he thought, with a feeling of disappointment. Nonetheless, he answered the question truthfully: NO.

The next question read: “Do you like to listen to the radio?” And again, Reynie realized that he did not, although he was sure everyone else did. With a growing sense of isolation, he answered the question: NO.

The third question, thankfully, was less emotional. It read: “What is wrong with this statement?” How funny, Reynie thought, and marking down his answer he felt somewhat cheered. “It isn’t a statement at all,” he wrote. “It’s a question.”

The next page showed a picture of a chessboard, upon which all the pieces and pawns rested in their starting positions, except for a black pawn, which had advanced two spaces. The question read: “According to the rules of chess, is this position possible?” Reynie studied the board a moment, scratched his head, and wrote down his answer:
YES
.

After a few more pages of questions, all of which Reynie felt confident he had answered correctly, he arrived at the test’s final question: “Are you brave?” Just reading the words quickened Reynie’s heart. Was he brave? Bravery had never been required of him, so how could he tell? Miss Perumal would say he was: She would point out how cheerful he tried to be despite feeling lonely, how patiently he withstood the teasing of other children, and how he was always eager for a challenge. But these things only showed that he was good-natured, polite, and very often bored. Did they really show that he was brave? He didn’t think so. Finally he gave up trying to decide and simply wrote, “I hope so.”

He laid down his pencil and looked around. Most of the other children were also finishing the test. At the front of the room, munching rather loudly on an apple, the test administrator was keeping a close eye on them to ensure they didn’t cheat. She was a thin woman in a mustard-yellow suit, with a yellowish complexion, short-cropped, rusty-red hair, and a stiff posture. She reminded Reynie of a giant walking pencil.

“Pencils!” the woman suddenly called out, as if she’d read his thoughts.

The children jumped in their seats.

“Please lay down your pencils now,” the pencil woman said. “The test is over.”

“But I’m not finished!” one child cried. “That’s not fair!”

“I want more time!” cried another.

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “I’m sorry you haven’t finished, children, but the test is over. Please pass your papers to the front of the room, and remain seated while the tests are graded. Don’t worry, it won’t take long.”

As the papers were passed forward, Reynie heard the boy behind him snicker and say to his neighbor, “If they couldn’t finish
that
test, they shouldn’t even have come. Like that chess question — who could have missed it?”

The neighbor, sounding every bit as smug, replied, “They were trying to trick us. Pawns can only move one space at a time, so of
course
the position wasn’t possible. I’ll bet some stupid kids didn’t know that.”

“Ha! You’re just lucky you didn’t miss it yourself! Pawns
can
move two spaces — on their very first move, they can. But whether it moved one space or two is beside the point. Don’t you know that white always moves first? The
black
pawn couldn’t have moved yet at all! It’s so simple. This test was for babies.”

“Are you calling me a baby?” growled the other.

“You boys there!” snapped the pencil woman. “Stop talking!”

Reynie was suddenly anxious. Could he possibly have answered that question wrong? And what about the other questions? Except for the odd ones about television and bravery, they had seemed easy, but perhaps he was such a strange bird that he had misunderstood everything. He shook his head and tried not to care. If he wanted to prove himself brave, after all, he had better just stop worrying. If he must return to his old routine at the orphanage, at least he had Miss Perumal. What did it matter if he was different from other children? Everyone got teased from time to time — he was no different in
that
respect.

Reynie told himself this, but his anxious feeling didn’t fade.

After all the tests had been turned in, the pencil woman stepped out of the room, leaving the children to bite their nails and watch the clock. Only a few minutes passed, however, before she returned and announced, “I shall now read the names of children admitted into the second phase of the test.”

The children began to murmur. A second phase? The advertisement hadn’t mentioned a second phase.

The woman continued, “If your name is called, you are to report to the Monk Building on Third Street no later than one o’clock, where you will join children from other sessions who also passed the test.” She went on to lay out the rules about pencils, erasers, and disqualification. Then she popped a handful of peanuts into her mouth and chewed ferociously, as if she were starving.

Reynie raised his hand.

“Mm-yes?” the woman said, swallowing.

“Excuse me, you say to bring only one pencil, but what if the pencil lead breaks? Will there be a pencil sharpener?”

Again the boy behind Reynie snickered, this time muttering: “What makes him so sure he’ll be taking that test? She hasn’t even called the names yet!”

It was true — he should have waited until she’d called the names. He must have seemed very arrogant. Cheeks burning, Reynie ducked his head.

The pencil woman answered, “Yes, if a sharpener should become necessary, one will be provided. Children are
not
to bring their own, understood?” There was a general nodding of heads, after which the woman clapped the peanut grit from her hands, took out a sheet of paper, and continued, “Very well, if there are no other questions, I shall read the list.”

The room became very quiet.

“Reynard Muldoon!” the woman called. Reynie’s heart leaped.

There was a grumble of discontent from the seat behind him, but as soon as it passed, the room again grew quiet, and the children waited with bated breath for the other names to be called. The woman glanced up from the sheet.

“That is all,” she said matter-of-factly, folding the paper and tucking it away. “The rest of you are dismissed.”

The room erupted in outcries of anger and dismay. “Dismissed?” said the boy behind Reynie.
“Dismissed?”

As the children filed out the door — some weeping bitterly, some stunned, some whining in complaint — Reynie approached the woman. For some reason, she was hurrying around the room checking the window locks. “Excuse me. Miss? May I please use your telephone? My tutor said —”

“I’m sorry, Reynard,” the woman interrupted, tugging unsuccessfully on a closed window. “I’m afraid there isn’t a telephone.”

“But Miss Perumal —”

“Reynard,” the woman said with a smile, “I’m sure you can make do without one, can’t you? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must sneak out the back door. These windows appear to have been painted shut.”

“Sneak out? But why?”

“I’ve learned from experience. Any moment now, some of these children’s parents will come storming in to demand explanations. Unfortunately, I have none to give them. Therefore, off I go. I’ll see you this afternoon. Don’t be late!”

And with that, away she went.

It had been a strange business indeed, and Reynie had a suspicion it was to grow stranger still. When the distant church bell struck the quarter hour, Reynie finished his sandwich and rose from the park bench. If the doors to the Monk Building weren’t open by now, he would try to find another way in. At this point, it would hardly surprise him to discover he must enter the building through a basement window.

As he mounted the steps to the Monk Building’s broad front plaza, Reynie saw two girls well ahead of him, walking together toward the front doors. Other test-takers, he guessed. One girl, who seemed to have green hair — though perhaps this was a trick of the light; the sun shone blindingly bright today — was carelessly flinging her pencil up into the air and catching it again. Not the best idea, Reynie thought. And sure enough, even as he thought it, the girl missed the pencil and watched it fall through a grate at her feet.

For a moment the other girl hesitated, as if she might try to help. Then she checked her watch. In only a few minutes it would be one o’clock. “Sorry about your pencil — it’s a shame,” she said, but already her sympathetic expression was fading. Clearly it had occurred to her that with the green-haired girl unable to take the test, there would be less competition. With a spreading smile, she hurried across the plaza and through the front doors of the Monk Building, which had finally been unlocked.

The metal grate covered a storm drain that ran beneath the plaza, and the unfortunate girl was staring through it, down into darkness, when Reynie reached her. Her appearance was striking — indeed, even startling. She had coal-black skin; hair so long she could have tied it around her waist (and yes, it truly was green); and an extraordinarily puffy white dress that gave you the impression she was standing in a cloud.

“That’s rotten luck,” Reynie said. “To drop your pencil here, of all places.”

The girl looked up at him with hopeful eyes. “You don’t happen to have an extra one, do you?”

“I’m sorry. I was told to bring —”

“I know, I know,” she interrupted. “Only one pencil. Well, that was
my
only pencil, and a fat lot of good it will do me down in that drain.” She stared wistfully through the grate a moment, then looked up at Reynie as if surprised to see him still standing there. “What are you waiting for? The test starts any minute.”

“I’m not going to leave you here without a pencil,” Reynie said. “I was surprised your friend did.”

“Friend? Oh, that other girl. She’s not my friend — we just met at the bottom of the steps. I didn’t even know her name. For that matter, I don’t know yours, either.”

“Reynard Muldoon. You can call me Reynie.”

“Okay, Reynie, nice to meet you. I’m Rhonda Kazembe. So now that we’re friends and all that, how do you intend to get my pencil back? We’d better hurry, you know. One minute late and we’re disqualified.”

Reynie took out his own pencil, a new yellow #2 that he’d sharpened to a fine point that morning. “Actually,” he said, “we’ll just share this one.” He snapped the pencil in two and handed her the sharpened end. “I’ll sharpen my half and we’ll both be set. Do you have your eraser?”

Rhonda Kazembe was staring at her half of the pencil with a mixture of gratitude and surprise. “That would never have occurred to me,” she said, “breaking it like that. Now, what did you say? Oh, yes, I have my eraser.”

“Then let’s get going, we only have a minute,” Reynie urged.

Rhonda held back. “Hold on, Reynie. I haven’t properly thanked you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said impatiently. “Now let’s go!”

Still she resisted. “No, I
really
want to thank you. If it weren’t for you, I couldn’t have taken this test, and do you want to know something?” Glancing around to be sure they were alone, Rhonda whispered, “I have the answers. I’m going to make a perfect score!”

“What? How?”

“No time to explain. But if you sit right behind me, you can look over my shoulder. I’ll hold up my test a bit to make it easier.”

Reynie was stunned. How in the world could this girl have gotten her hands on the answers? And now she was offering to help him cheat! He was briefly tempted — he wanted desperately to learn about those special opportunities. But when he imagined returning to tell Miss Perumal of his success, hiding the fact that he’d cheated, he knew he could never do it.

“No, thank you,” he said. “I’d rather not.”

Rhonda Kazembe looked amazed, and Reynie once again felt the weight of loneliness upon him. If it was unpleasant to feel so different from the other children at Stonetown Orphanage, how much worse was it to be seen as an oddball by a green-haired girl wearing her own personal fog bank?

“Okay, suit yourself,” Rhonda said as the two of them started for the front doors. “I hope you know what you’re in for.”

Reynie was in too much of a hurry to respond. He had no idea what he was in for, of course, but he certainly wanted to find out.

Inside the Monk Building, conspicuously posted signs led them down a series of corridors, past a room where a handful of parents waited anxiously, and at last into a room crowded with children in desks. Except for the unusual silence, the room was just like any schoolroom, with a chalkboard at the front and a teacher’s desk upon which rested a pencil sharpener, a ruler, and a sign that said: NO
TALKING
. IF
YOU
ARE
CAUGHT
TALKING
IT
WILL
BE
ASSUMED
YOU
ARE
CHEATING
. Only two seats remained empty, one behind the other. To guarantee he wouldn’t be tempted to cheat, Reynie chose the one in front. A clock on the wall struck one just as Rhonda Kazembe dropped into the desk behind him.