Read Online Lexicon by Max Barry - Free Book Online

chatting briefly to each of them. Bread was served. Soup. The ten-year-old stared hopelessly at her spoons and Emily tried to help with educated guesses based on what everyone else was using.
    “I love your jacket,” said the angelic blond girl. “It’s so authentic.”
    “Oh,” she said. “I like your ears.”
    “My ears?”
    Emily had meant that as an insult but now realized the angel girl was serious. The girl had seriously tried to compliment her jacket. “Yeah. They’re like a fairy’s.” She elbowed the ten-year-old. “Fairy ears, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “Oh,” said the angel girl. “Well, thank you.”
    There were silver plates with bite-size constructions of meat and bread and paste and whatever. She picked one up only because it got her out of this conversation. It was actually not bad. Weird, but not bad-weird. This was her whole day, on a cracker.
    Charlotte rose and gave a short speech about how happy she was to have them here and she hoped they would seize the opportunity with two hands because each of them had great potential and the Academy was dedicated to unlocking it. Then she said they should sleep well because the first examination would begin early, and the curly-haired boy asked what it would be, and Charlotte smiled and said that would be answered by the morning. Those were her words:
Answered by the morning.
You would get your head kicked in talking that way in Emily’s world, but she was kind of enjoying it. On the pier, under her floppy hat, she used words to make people smile and come closer and give her two dollars and not care about losing. Good words were the difference between Emily eating well and not. And what she had found worked best were not facts or arguments but words that tickled people’s brains for some reason, that just amused them. Puns, and exaggerations, and things that were true and not at the same time.
Answered by the morning.
Words like that.
    Afterward, they filed back to their rooms and she brushed her teeth alongside a girl from Connecticut. Everyone but her had pajamas. On her way to bed, a voice floated down the hallway: “Good night, girl in a doorway.”
    “Night, boy on a sofa,” she said. She closed her door. She couldn’t believe she had just said that. He was trouble, this boy. But the good kind.
    • • •
    In the morning, they were sat in a hall and given forms. The first questions she recognized: Was she a cat person or a dog person? What was her favorite color? Did she love her family? Even the weird one was right there:
Why did you do it?
It was at the very top of a page and the rest was nothing but endless lines.
    “Please answer with complete honesty,” said Charlotte. She moved between their desks, echoes of her heels bouncing between the floor and ceiling. “Anything less will not serve you well.”
    They asked her favorite movies. Songs. Books. She hadn’t read a book since she was eight. She glanced around. The ten-year-old was three desks behind. Her feet didn’t even reach the floor. Emily twirled her pen. She wrote:
Princess Lily Saves the World
. It was the only one she could remember.
    Charlotte collected the papers and disappeared for a while. People leaned across aisles and compared answers. She noticed a man in the corridor, tall with brown skin and eyes like rocks, watching them through the glass. She felt flustered for some reason and looked away, and when she looked back, he was gone.
    Charlotte returned with a TV on a trolley. “You will be shown a series of rapidly changing images. One of the images will be of a type of food. You are to write down the name of the food. Are there any questions?” She looked around. “Very well. Good luck.”
    Emily picked up her pencil. Charlotte pressed a button on the VCR. On the screen, text appeared—SERIES 1-1—then faded away. There was a second of blackness. Then a jumble of images flashed by and was gone. Emily blinked. The screen said: END OF SERIES 1-1. Heads bent over