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

next letter in the sequence couldn’t be a P.
    Was the inscription there just to scare him?
    If so, it worked.
     

Chapter Eleven
    Still scared, shaky, disoriented, but intent on doing something useful, he entered the school through the teacher’s wing, with Cody right behind him. He didn’t see anyone. “You stand lookout, here,” he said. They were directly opposite the guidance office. Mr. Zuraw’s office, where he’d first learned about the pass/fail curriculum. Jake had a feeling that if there were secrets stored anywhere in the high school, they would be in that office. “If anyone comes along—anyone—tap on the glass, here,” he said, pointing at the window inset into the door. “I’ll hear you and know I have to get out before we’re caught.”
    “What if we are caught?” Cody asked. His eyes were wide behind their magnifying lenses. “Will they shoot us?”
    “I don’t think so. Cheating is encouraged, sometimes necessary. I got a PASS for going to the cops and trying to wreck their game—I doubt searching an empty office will piss them off much, either.” Actually he was pretty well convinced that it would—that the PASS for his first escape attempt had been a message, a message that he was supposed to settle down and stop trying to cause trouble. He needed to do this, though. He needed at least to know who was testing him.
    Leaving Cody in place he doubled back and outside, then around the edge of the building to where a line of windows pierced the wall.
    He was pretty sure that Mr. Zuraw and the teachers of the school were more than they appeared. They were willing to kill—and to be killed—for the cause of the tests. Normal high school teachers, he was pretty certain, didn’t relish the prospect of threatening, intimidating, and assassinating schoolchildren.
    He found the windows he wanted, the ones which illuminated the guidance office, and peered inside. He could see Mr. Zuraw’s desk and the two chairs. There was a second room which led off the main office, and it was full of filing cabinets. Perfect.
    Jake hardly expected to find a document on top of the desk labeled “Why Jake McCartney Must Die” with helpful diagrams and illustrations. There had to be something in there, though, maybe something in the files, that would at least help him start to make sense of things.
    He tugged at one of the windows looking into the main office. It didn’t move, of course—it was locked tight. All the school’s windows were locked except in the hottest days of summer, when any breath of breeze was welcome. That didn’t mean Jake’s plan was foiled, though. He knew these windows. He’d been looking out of them for years. He knew how the locks worked.
    In one pocket he had a piece of cardstock he’d taken from the supplies in his art classroom. It was burnt orange in color, and when he doubled and folded it over six times it was a thin sliver of card as hard as a wooden stick but much thinner. Just thin enough to fit between the window and its frame. With his teeth he tore out a notch in one end of his impromptu tool, to make a kind of hook. Then it was easy enough to slip the card inside the window and snag the window’s simple latch. The window popped open easily, then, and slid up until he could reach inside the office.
    No alarm bells sounded, and no one came running with guns blazing. Jake calmed himself, then grabbed the edge of the window and crawled through, head first.
    The room beyond felt like any other in the school, though it was empty of people. It smelled faintly of disinfectant and the air was cool compared to the warm desert day outside. It was primarily dark, though there was plenty of light to see what he was doing.
    Jake went to the filing cabinets first, and looked for Mr. Zuraw’s file. He found it easily but it contained nothing of interest. Just his vital statistics, his current address, and his resume. Jake had no experience reading the resumes of educators but