Pass/Fail (2012) by David Wellington Read Free Book Online

ground. He hadn’t meant to. His legs just wouldn’t support him anymore. “Cody—they’re going to kill me. They’re willing to kill me. I thought before I was safe, that I could fail three tests before they shot me. It looks like I can be killed at any time, now. It doesn’t make sense! I mean, there must be a reason for these tests. I must be important to them. But I’m expendable, at the same time.”
    “That is weird. What are you going to do?”
    Jake dug his fingers into the red sand. “I have to get out of here. I’ll run away. It means—it means dropping out of high school. I never imagined that before, but—if your high school is trying to kill you, who cares about graduating? I’ll take my Dad’s car and go to the city, I’ll—I don’t know. I’ll get a job. Cody—will you come with me?”
    It took longer for Cody to respond this time. He did, though, in the end. “Yes,” he said. “I would. Except there’s one thing you’re not considering. We’re only seventeen. We can’t rent an apartment. We can’t even get jobs. We could live like homeless people, I guess, though I’ve always enjoyed bathing.”
    Jake shook his head angry. “For once in your life stop being a smart ass. What option do we have?”
    “Sorry. But—it just wouldn’t work. Eventually our parents will call the cops to report us missing. We won’t even be homeless, we’ll be runaways. Eventually the cops will find us and they’ll drag us right back here.”
    Cody was right, Jake knew. He could never explain to his parents why he had to run away. His Mom already thought he was having a nervous breakdown. He and Cody could hide for a while in the city but they would always be looking back over their shoulders, waiting for a policeman to come and grab them and take them in. Or worse. Jake could imagine Mr. Zuraw, the guidance counselor, sending out killers to silence them because they knew too much.
    Then there was the worst possibility of all. That he would successfully escape, start a new life, hide from everyone and then one day, when he least expected it, wake up to find a pale blue envelope slipped under his door. That the tests didn’t stop at the front doors of the school. That the whole world was part of it.
    “What are you going to do?” Cody asked. “You can’t just—”
    “I can’t do anything until I have more information,” Jake said. He’d made up his mind. There was no point in getting depressed and giving up. But until he could answer a few questions he didn’t know how to proceed. “I have an idea, but it’s dangerous. You coming with me?”
    “Of course,” Cody said. He sounded half-sure, though. Like maybe he was starting to think he was betting on the wrong horse.
    Jake needed his help—what he had in mind was a two-man job. He would have to hope it worked out for the best, and that he wouldn’t permanently damage his friend’s trust in him. The two of them headed back towards the school, Jake peering out through every non-existent window and doorway in the ruins. He couldn’t shake the feeling he was being watched. He’d felt that way since he got his first blue envelope, he realized.
    They were just about to leave the ruins when something caught his eye. “Hold on a second,” he said.
    “What’s up?” Cody asked, looking scared.
    Jake shook his head. He’d seen something painted on the wall, just above the main exit from the ruins. Graffiti which read: PPPPPPPPPPFFPPF
    Jake stared hard at the letters, as if eventually a signature would appear beneath them and tell him who had painted them. He counted the Fs over and over again. Three of them, and then the inscription stopped.
    There was a kind of question on the aptitude tests they took every year, a question where you were presented with a row of numbers or letters or shapes and you had to determine what number, letter, or shape came next in that sequence. If this was one of those questions, Jake had to guess that the