Qualify by Vera Nazarian Read Free Book Online Page A

teachers and other administrators. I recognize Principal Marksen. He is talking to some people whose backs are turned. They are wearing four-color Atlantis armbands. One of them has distinctive golden-blond hair that glitters uncommonly bright under the overhead lights.
    A real Atlantean.
    My stomach lurches with fear. Again, everything hits home. This is real, this is happening.
    Qualify or die.
    As I pause for a moment, frozen with the cold incapacitating uncertainty, I hear my name being called.
    “Gwen! This way!”
    I turn to look, and it’s my brother George. He’s waving and I see Gracie is with him, looking nervous and wide-eyed. Gordie is there too, sitting hunched forward on the floor, surrounded with bags.
    I head over to them. “How did you do? What did you think of it?” Gracie pounces all over me with stress questions.
    “I don’t know,” I say. “Probably okay on the written stuff, but maybe not so well on the weird stuff. How did you do?”
    “I don’t know!” Gracie gesticulates with her hands in frustration.
    “Yeah, that’s the idea.” George glances around the auditorium as he is speaking. He is probably looking for his friends. “No one knows anything.”
    “Wasn’t the ‘Eeee’ test fun?”
    “Oh yeah. That was amazingly stupid.”
    “Hey, what object did you pick?” Gordie looks up from the floor with a dorky half-smile. “I picked the pen. I wonder what that was about. It was kind of interesting.”
    “That was crazy!” Gracie stares suddenly intense and wild-eyed. “I picked the knife!”
    George stops scanning the room and looks at her. “No way, Gee Four.”
    “That’s badass!” Gordie snorts.
    “Yes it is, and I am willing to use it.”
    “No, you’re not.” George raises one brow and smiles.
    “You have no idea!”
    For the first time, seeing the serious intensity in my sister, I can believe it. Something has happened to Gracie, because she is scaring me.
    I tell them I chose the map, because it was kind of the reasonable thing to do.
    “So much like you, Gee Two,” George says casually. “If anyone’s going to be reasonable, it’s you—”
    The bell rings, and suddenly the auditorium is full of extra noise that surges in waves. Someone in administration picks up and tests a microphone. “Please settle down and pay attention, everyone,” a voice says. “We’ll begin shortly, in about ten more minutes as we wait for more people to arrive. There are no chairs because we need you to clear the center of the auditorium. Soon we are going to be full to capacity. Everyone please move off to the sides and near the walls. You can sit on the floor, but only close to the walls. Also, please do not leave any bags unattended and lying underfoot—”
    In the chaotic mess of people, we pick up our stuff and approach the walls. Some guy who is a friend of George’s joins us, and then another, and together we all jostle, but George sticks with us. Usually during school, George would never be seen with the other “Gees.” He’d go off to hang with his friends instead of his uncool younger siblings, but this is different. This is family protective instinct kicking in. Possibly it’s the last time we might all be together in one room, and George understands this. So he stands next to us and keeps one eye on us, even as he chats and smirks and acts all senior-cool with his buddies, and talks trash about Qualification and the Atlanteans and the impending destruction of the Earth as if it’s just last night’s basketball game.
    “It’s almost two, and no lunch,” someone says. “This really blows. How much longer is this going to be? I need a smoke.”
    “So, yeah, I’m bored.” George turns around, glancing once at me and Gracie, then turns away again, speaking to his bud whose name I think is Eddie. I know for a fact he is not bored and freaking nervous, but there’s no way he or his buddies would stop to admit it—that all of this is terrifying .
    “Are