“I’m sorry to ask it. But, you know, you did tell Miss Perumal this morning that I could use your phone, and then later you told me there was no phone. So you see why I’m concerned. It’s just that I don’t want Miss Perumal to worry.”
The pencil woman seemed unperturbed. “That’s a perfectly reasonable question, Reynard. A perfectly reasonable question.” She gave him an approving nod and made as if to leave.
“Miss, but you didn’t answer my question!”
The woman scratched her head, and Reynie began to suspect that she was either a little daft or a little deaf. After a moment, however, she said, “I suppose you want the truth?”
“Yes, please!”
“The truth is I haven’t called Miss Perumal, but I will do so immediately. In fact, I was about to call her when you asked me if I had called her yet. Does this satisfy you?”
Reynie hardly knew what to say. He didn’t wish to offend the woman, but he could hardly trust her now, and it was more important to know that Miss Perumal’s mind was at ease. “I’m sorry, Miss, but may I please just call her myself? I’ll only take a minute.”
The pencil woman smiled. When she spoke this time her voice was quite gentle, and she looked Reynie in the eyes. “You are very good to be so concerned about Miss Perumal. What would you say if I told you that I have in fact called her already? No, don’t answer that. You won’t believe me. How about this? I’ll relay her message to you: ‘Do you see now that you didn’t need luck? I’m glad you wore matching socks.’ That is what she told me to tell you. Are you satisfied?”
Before Reynie could make up his mind how to answer, she slipped out of the room, leaving him to puzzle over her mystifying behavior. The message from Miss Perumal was obviously real, so why hadn’t she told him in the first place?
As he pondered this, he heard footsteps in the hall, followed by a timid knock at the half-open door. A young boy’s face appeared in the doorway. “Hello,” the boy said, adjusting his spectacles, “is this where I’m supposed to wait?” He spoke so softly that Reynie had to strain to hear him.
“I have no idea. It’s where I’m supposed to wait, though, so maybe it is. You’re welcome to join me, if you like. I’m Reynie Muldoon.”
“Oh,” the boy said uncertainly. “My name is Sticky Washington. I’m just wondering if this is the right place. The yellow lady told me to come down the hall and sit with someone named Reynard.”
“That’s me,” Reynie said. “People call me Reynie for short.” He put out his hand, and after a moment’s hesitation Sticky Washington came and shook it.
Sticky was a notably skinny boy (which Reynie suspected was how he got his nickname — he was thin as a stick) with light brown skin the very color of the tea that Miss Perumal made each morning. He had big, nervous eyes like a horse’s, and, for some odd reason, a perfectly smooth bald head. His tiny wire-rimmed spectacles gave him the distinguished look of a scholar. A fidgety scholar, though: He seemed quite shy, or at the very least anxious. Well, why shouldn’t he be anxious, if he’d been through what Reynie had been through today?
“Are you here for the third test?” Reynie asked.
Sticky nodded. “I’ve been waiting all day. I had to be here at nine o’clock this morning, and the test was over at ten. Since then I’ve just been sitting around in an empty room. Lucky I had a pear with me or I might have starved. I think all the other children got doughnuts. Why didn’t we get doughnuts?”
“I wondered the same thing. Were you the only one who passed, then?”
“The first test, no. A little girl passed it, too, but I haven’t seen her since yesterday. Maybe they told her to come at a different time — they’ve had tests here all day. Was there an extremely small girl in your group, about half our size?”
Reynie shook his head. He would have remembered anyone so tiny.
“Maybe she’s coming later. Anyway, as for the second test, yes: I was the only one who passed. Which surprised me because —” Sticky stopped himself with a glance at the doorway. He opened his mouth to continue, thought better of it, and at last pretended to notice something on the ceiling, as if he hadn’t been about to say anything at all. Obviously he had a secret. Reynie had a sudden suspicion what it was.
“Because there was a girl who cheated?”
Sticky’s eyes widened. “How did you know?”
“The same thing happened to me. I think it’s a trick of some kind. Tell me, this girl didn’t happen to drop her pencil on the way into the building, did she? Out on the plaza?”
“Yes! I couldn’t believe anybody would take such a chance. We were only allowed to bring one pencil, you know.”
“What did you do?”
“I tried to help her. A few other kids said they were sorry but they didn’t want to be late, and one boy even laughed. I felt awfully sorry for her, so I had her hold onto my feet and lower me down through the grate. She was strong as a bear and had no trouble doing it, and I’m so skinny I fit right through the bars. It was terrifying, though, I don’t mind admitting it, hanging upside down, scrabbling around in the dark. I think something even nibbled at my finger, but maybe I imagined it. I can get a little mixed up when I’m scared.”
“You were lucky to find her pencil,” Reynie observed. “It was pitch-black down in that drain.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t find it. But you know what she did? She hauled me back up through the grate and said, ‘Oh well, never mind. I have an extra one.’ And she pulled another pencil right out of her sleeve! Can you believe it? Why she would let me go down into that awful drain when she had an extra pencil, I can’t imagine. Then, to top it off, she offered me the answers to the test, to repay me for trying to help her. Apparently they didn’t do her any good, though. I’m glad I refused.”
“Me, too,” Reynie said. “I think refusing was part of the test. If we’d cheated, they would have known it, and I doubt either one of us would be here.”
From his shirt pocket Sticky took out a thin piece of cotton cloth and polished his spectacles with it. “If you’re right, it’s a little creepy that they’re tricking us like that.” He put the glasses back on and blinked his big, nervous eyes. “But I shouldn’t complain. They were very nice to let me continue to the third stage even though I missed a few questions. Very generous of them —”
“Wait a minute,” Reynie said. “How could you possibly have missed any? Did you circle the wrong letters by accident?”
Sticky seemed embarrassed. He shuffled his feet as he spoke. “Oh, well, I suppose the questions were easy for you, but for me they were rather difficult. Time ran out before I could answer the last three, so I had to just circle some answers and hope I’d get lucky. I didn’t, of course. But as I said, they were very forgiving.”
Reynie couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You mean you knew the answers to those questions?”
Sticky grew more dejected with Reynie’s every question. Tears brimmed in his eyes as he said, “Well, yes, I suppose I do look rather stupid, don’t I? I look like a person who doesn’t know any answers. I understand that.”
Reynie interrupted him. “No, no! I didn’t mean that! I meant that I’m surprised anybody knew the answers. One or two, maybe, but certainly not all of them.”
Sticky brightened, smiling shyly and straightening his back. “Oh! Well, yes, I suppose I do know a lot of things. That’s why people started calling me Sticky, because everything I read sticks in my head.”
“It’s perfectly amazing,” Reynie said. “You must read more than anybody I’ve ever met. But listen, once you figured out the test was a puzzle, why didn’t you just solve it that way? It would have saved time — you could have finished it.”