Red Glove Read Online Free PDF Page A

say to him, and head behind the screen. His nervousness seems to be contagious, though. I can feel my palms sweat.
    Vanderveer has short black hair and wrinkly skin covered in age spots. There are two chairs arranged in front of a little table where my folder is sitting. She plops herself into one. “So, Cassel,” she says with false cheerfulness. “What do you want to do with your life?”
    “Uh,” I say. “Not really sure.” The only things I am really good at are the kinds of things colleges don’t let you major in. Con artistry. Forgery. Assassination. A little bit of lock-picking.
    “Let’s consider universities, then. Last year I talked about you choosing some schools you’d really like to try for, and then some safety schools. Have you made that list?”
    “Not a formal, written-down one,” I say.
    She frowns. “Did you manage to visit any of the campuses you are considering?”
    I shake my head. She sighs. “Wallingford Preparatory takes great pride in seeing our students placed into the world’s top schools. Our students go on to Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Caltech, Johns Hopkins. Now, your grades aren’t all we might hope for, but your SAT scores were very promising.”
    I nod my head. I think of Barron dropping out of Princeton, about Philip dropping out of high school to take his marks and work for the Zacharovs. I don’t want to wind up like them. “I’ll start that list,” I promise her.
    “You do that,” she says. “I want to see you again in a week. No more excuses. The future’s going to be here sooner than you think.”
    When I walk out from behind the divider, Sam isn’t there. I guess that he’s having his conference. I wait a few minutes and eat three butterscotch cookies they have put out as refreshments. When Sam still doesn’t emerge, I stroll back across campus.
    The first night in the dorms is always strange. The cots are uncomfortable. My legs are too long for them and I keep falling asleep curled up, then straightening in the night and waking myself when my feet kick the frame.
    One door over, someone is snoring.
    Outside our window the grass of the quad shines in the moonlight, like it’s made of metal blades. That’s the last thing I think before I wake up to my phone shrilling the morning alarm. From a look at the time, it seems like the alarm has been ringing for a while.
    I grunt and throw my pillow at my sleeping roommate. He raises his head groggily.
    Sam and I shuffle to the shared bathroom, where the rest of the hall are brushing their teeth or finishing their showers. Sam splashes his face with water.
    Chaiyawat Terweil wraps a towel around himself and grabs a pair of disposable plastic gloves from the dispenser. Above it, the sign reads: PROTECT YOUR CLASSMATES: COVER YOUR HANDS.
    “Another day at Wallingford,” Sam announces. “Every dorm room a palace, every sloppy joe a feast, every morning shower—”
    “You enjoy your showers a lot, do you?” Kyle Henderson asks. He’s already dressed, smoothing gel into his hair. “Think about me while you’re in there?”
    “It does make a shower go faster,” Sam says, undaunted. “God, I love the Wall!”
    I laugh. Someone whips a towel at Sam.
    By the time I’m clean and dressed, I don’t really have enough time for breakfast. I drink some of the coffee our hall master has brewed for himself in the common room, and eat raw one of the Pop Tarts Sam’s mother sent.
    Sam gives me a dark look and eats the other.
    “We’re off to a good start,” I say. “Fashionably late.”
    “Just doing our part to keep their expectations low,” says Sam.
    Despite having spent the whole summer going to bed around this time in the morning, I feel pretty good.
    My schedule says that my first class today is Probability & Statistics. This semester I also have Developing World Ethics (I thought Daneca would be pleased I chose that for my history requirement, which is why I haven’t told her), English, Physics, Ceramics 2