Let Them Dare novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Thirteen Hundred

The State Merit Exam scores went up on the testing center's website at noon on the following Monday.

I read them in the public library, at the long table by the window, with Pia on one side of me and Robby on the other.

Pia had brought pretzels for the nerves.

"Do it," she said. "Or I'll do it, and I'll cry on your keyboard."

My account was mine again.

The lock had come off on Sunday, and I had changed the recovery email to my mother's and written the new password on the inside of my wrist.

I typed it in.

The page took a long time to load, and I looked at the carpet while it did.

Robby leaned over, read the screen, and said very quietly, "Oh, good."

I looked.

Flanagan, Selah. Composite score: 1342.

I read it three times.

"That's over thirteen hundred," Pia said, in the voice of a person reading a sign aloud. "That's over thirteen hundred by forty-two."

"I know what it is."

"You're allowed to scream."

"It's a library."

"Then silently scream."

I put both hands over my mouth and did, and Robby laughed, and then the librarian looked over her glasses and he stopped.

I called my mother from the lobby.

She was on a ladder in a dentist's office, and I heard the ladder creak.

"Thirteen forty-two," I said.

There was a silence long enough for me to check that the call was still on.

"I'm going to sit down on the floor," my mother said.

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