The Last Lesson Was Losing Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Scraps
Jo learns the exam room was fake and her real card is torn up before her eyes, so she gets out of the car at a red light.
At 10:30 the proctor in Room 214 told me there was no section three.
I had raised my hand because the booklet jumped from section two straight to section four.
"There isn't a section three," he said. "There isn't an exam."
Five other candidates put down their pencils.
Then all five of them clapped.
One held up a phone and filmed my face.
Behind the proctor, someone had written on the whiteboard in green marker: LESSON THREE. NEVER TRUST A PAPER YOU DIDN'T CHECK.
"I checked my card," I said. "The board moved the exam to this campus. It's printed right on it."
"It's printed on the card you were handed," the proctor said.
He gave me a flyer with a bank's logo across the top.
It thanked me for volunteering at Scam Awareness Week.
The bank was Wylie's.
I put my pencil down in the groove of the desk, because I didn't know what else to do with my hand.
I had studied for this exam for a year.
I walked out past the clapping and down two flights of stairs.
Wylie's car was waiting at the campus entrance with the engine running.
He leaned across the seat and looked me over, pleased with himself.
"You made it to section two," he said. "Most people never notice. Get in, we're going to Lakeview Park. You've wanted to go for two years."
My voice came out thin. "Wylie, do you know how hard I worked for this?"
"I do."
"I got up at six every morning. I stayed in the study room until one. My back still hurts every day, and I wear patches under my shirt. You know all of that."
Wylie turned the air conditioning down four degrees, to the setting Bailey liked.
"I know," he said. "That's why I did it. If you can't tell when somebody close to you is pulling something, grad school won't make you any harder to fool."
"Out in the real world, people will take everything you've got. And you can always sit it again next year."
Bailey leaned out of the passenger window with her ponytail swinging.
She was the girl Wylie had grown up next door to, the one he called his little sister, and she had been bringing me coffee for four years.
"Jo, we're just trying to wise you up," she said. "I'd never have the nerve to do this to you if I wasn't sure you'd get in next time."
There was a blue paper band on her wrist, worn soft at the edges.
"Don't be mad. I'm only applying to Hartley for fun, you know that. I'll never beat you."
Then she reached into her bag and held up a small card in a plastic sleeve.
It was my admission card, the real one.
She waved it so I could see my own photo.
"You don't need this anymore," she said. "It would only upset you every time you looked at it."
She tore it in half, then in half again, and let the pieces go out the window.
They hit me in the face.
One scrap stuck to my cheek.
I peeled it off and read it, because I couldn't help it.
DOWNTOWN HALL. ENTRY CLOSES 7:30 A.M.
It was ten forty-one.
The real exam had started and ended without me.
Wylie looked at his watch, then at me. "Get in and stop embarrassing yourself. Or walk back to campus. Your call."
We were twelve miles from town.
My phone had four percent left and my wallet had a five-dollar bill in it.
I got in the back seat.
The air conditioning blew straight down my neck, and the sweat on my shirt went cold.
Bailey turned around and held out a small blanket printed with cartoon bears.
"You're shivering," she said. "Here. Use this."
I took it, because my hands were shaking and I didn't want anyone to see.
My phone lit up in my lap with last night's last message.
It was from Wylie, sent at 11:02.
Go to bed. Tomorrow will teach you something.
I had read it as a kindness and slept four hours.
Wylie drove with one hand and talked about the festival rides he'd booked for us, and Bailey filmed the road through the windshield.
At the first red light on Orchard Road I folded the bear blanket and laid it on the seat.
"What are you doing?" Wylie said.
I opened the door.
So I got out.
The heat came up off the asphalt and hit my face.
"Jo," Wylie called, and he sounded bored. "Get back in. It's ninety degrees."
I kept walking.
He rolled the window down and drove alongside me for ten feet, and Bailey laughed.
"Walk it off," he said. "You'll thank me by dinner."
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