The Park Service: Book One of The Park Service Trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page A

decide, I look to skip it. It won’t let me. Then I remember Mrs. Hightower saying we must attempt an answer for each question. I shut my eyes, making a blind choice. When I open them again, the question is gone—replaced with bold red lettering that reads: TEST COMPLETE.
    The desktop slides shut.
    I lift my head and look past my calculating classmates at the timer—two hours and nineteen minutes left. And I’m already done? Can that be? I listen to the other testers sighing with confusion as the clock ticks off another minute.
    I went too fast. Didn’t take enough time. I begin second guessing my answers, thinking of other possibilities for each question. Whole sections of the test parade across my mind and now I’m sure I messed it up with overconfidence. And why is everyone else still tapping away at screen calculators, working out math problems from the first half of the exam? Did I miss an entire section? Did I miss two?
    I grip the desktop, pull hard to open it again—it won’t budge. I jerk it harder, grunting without realizing it.
    “Is there a problem?” Mrs. Hightower asks.
    Everyone stops working and turns in their seats, curious eyes looking at me, waiting for a response.
    “I finished early,” I say, “but I think I missed a few.”
    Red grunts behind me. Someone chuckles.
    “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Hightower says, “but your answers, right or wrong, are final. You’re excused.”
    “I’m excused?”
    “You may leave,” she says. “You’re disturbing the others.”
    As I get up and walk to the elevator, my legs are shaking, so I breathe good energy in and bad energy out. The door opens, I step on, and look back. Everyone’s heads are bent over their tests again, except Red who’s glaring at me.

CHAPTER 3
What Did I Do?
    When I arrive at our living quarters, my father isn’t there.
    He’s probably still at his lab.
    With my lesson slate abandoned in Mrs. Hightower’s bin, waiting to be rebooted and reassigned, I’m bored, with nothing to do. I head out, walking to the east side of the Valley where our social buildings cluster around the open square.
    As I pass the public house, I hear the men and women laughing, and it hits me that I’m fifteen now and old enough to finally go inside, but the smell of the algae ethanol wafting out from the pub’s open windows turns my stomach sour.
    A few buildings farther down, I spot the green light above our theater door, signaling that an educational is about to begin. Stepping inside the lobby, I pass by the check-in kiosk without scanning my palm, and slip into the dark screening room unaccounted for. I’d rather not be on the grid tonight.
    As soon as I plunk into my seat, I notice a mother and her daughter sitting in the front row, the only other people here. I watch as the mother plays with her daughter’s hair, coiling it lightly in her fingers. I recognize the girl from the education annex where I think she’s a couple of years behind me.
    “Your hair is getting so thick,” the mother says. “It must be the new oil rations you’re taking.”
    They don’t appear to have noticed my entrance, and I feel guilty eavesdropping on their conversation. I consider coughing to alert them, but before I do, the mother continues:
    “Have you met any boys in your class yet?” she asks, still stroking her daughter’s hair. “Anyone you like?”
    The girl shrugs but says nothing.
    Her mother continues: “I met a boy when I was your age.”
    “Daddy?” the girl asks.
    “No, I met your father later. This was a different boy, a boy who sat next to me in main group.”
    “What kind of boy?”
    “A handsome boy. Sometimes it was hard to focus because I kept wanting to sneak glances at him. He was very attractive. Thinking about him made me feel things in my body I hadn’t felt before. Things, well, you know ... down there.”
    “Ooh, gross, Mom,” the girl says, turning her head away. “Why are you telling me this?”
    “I’m telling you