I Cheat On The Standardized Apocalypse Test

There are exactly two things in life I am genuinely good at: breaking glasses, and cheating on Scantrons.

Most kids only have one talent.

I am very lucky.

---

The Scantron sheet went all the way to letter H. The pencil was a number-2. The room was aggressively gray. Gray walls, gray floor, gray ceiling, fluorescent lights that made even my taped glasses look like a fashion choice. Fifty identical desk-chairs, none of them occupied, arranged in perfect rows.

The test had one question.

*Which of the following ways is the best way to become immortal?*

The options were:

A. Eat a peach from the Garden of the Immortals

B. Drink from the Fountain of Youth

C. Steal fire from the gods

D. Complete the Twelve Labors

E. Consume dragon pearls

F. Achieve perfect enlightenment

G. Make a deal with a fox spirit

H. *All knowledge comes from within*

I stared at it for a solid minute.

I considered A. I considered F. I considered G, briefly, because anything involving a fox spirit had the energy of a bad first date.

Then I remembered Marcus Chen's urban legend about Scantron machines. If you don't fill in any bubble but coat the row with chapstick, the machine reads it as correct.

What did I have to lose? I was already, somewhere, technically under arrest for collapsing a roller coaster. Might as well add academic fraud to my resume.

I pulled out my emergency chapstick (what? dry lips are a serious medical condition) and carefully drew a thin layer across all eight bubbles.

"Done!" I called out to the empty room.

Nothing happened for three seconds.

Then my Scantron levitated, spinning like a frisbee made of bad choices, zipped across the room, and fed itself into a chrome machine with more lights than a Christmas tree on steroids.

Green light. *Yes.* I had beaten the system. I was a genius. I was —

The green turned red. Sirens wailed. A computerized voice started counting down from ten.

On *one,* the floor vanished.

Not metaphorically. The actual physical floor ceased to exist, and I plummeted through nothing like Alice down the rabbit hole if Alice had been a thirteen-year-old Chinese-American kid with trust issues.

I landed hard on what felt like carpet made of disappointment, skidded twenty feet, and smacked my head against what I hoped was not another dragon.

When I woke up, the first thing I saw was the most judgmental face in the history of faces.

"Why'd you do that, doofus," the face said.

The face belonged to a girl about my age. Impossibly straight black hair. Eyes the color of jade marbles. Not romantic jade marbles, just very green, and very judgmental.

"Ribbit," I said.

There was a pause.

"What," the girl said.

"I mean, what did you ask."

She flicked my forehead.

"You tried to cheat on the placement test. The placement test. The one that determines your entire destiny. Are we sure he's a descendant."

A second voice, older, female, very dry, from across the room: "He is something. We have not yet decided what."

I sat up fast. Rufus tumbled out of my hood. The judgmental girl scooped him up before I could grab him, with the practiced gentleness of a person who had handled small mammals before, including, apparently, talking ones.

"Hi, Lucy," Rufus said.

"Hi, Rufus," she said back.

"Wait. You can talk?"

Rufus turned his red eyes on me.

"We'll get to that, Jackie. Try to keep up."

---

The room I was in did not, technically, fit inside a police station.

The ceiling went up at least three stories. Paper lanterns floated without strings, drifting in a slow, deliberate current. The walls were lined with shelves stretching back farther than I could see, packed with rolled scrolls, lacquered boxes, jars of glowing herbs. The air smelled like five-spice and ancient paper and the same industrial-strength jasmine tea Mom used to serve when we had houseguests.

In the middle of the room was a desk that looked carved from a single tree.

Behind the desk sat a woman.

Sixty or three thousand years old. I really could not tell. Iron-gray hair tied back into a tight twist. A charcoal suit cut in a city that was not San Francisco, in a year that was not this year. Reading glasses on a chain. Hands folded in the precise arrangement of a person who had personally signed a thousand expulsion forms.

She did not look up from the file she was reading.

"Jackie Lee," she said. "Adopted at age three. Six prior schools. Two suspensions. One police hold, currently active, conveniently vacated by your present location. One restaurant. One amusement park. One token in your pocket that you are very lucky was given to you, because otherwise this conversation would have gone differently."

She turned a page.

"Welcome to the Society of Ancient Traditions. I am Ms. Bai. I run this office."

"Hi," I croaked.

"You will sit there and not speak unless spoken to. Lucy will explain why you are here. I have a meeting in seven minutes. If we exceed seven minutes you will be reassigned to the boiler room, where you will be shown to a mop. Are we clear."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good. The boiler-room threat almost never comes up."

"Almost never," Lucy supplied.

Ms. Bai pulled a file from the stack at her elbow and slid it across the desk. The cover read, in printed block letters:

**LEE, JACKIE. PLACEMENT.**

Underneath, in handwritten red ink:

*— Kitchen God's grandson. Provisional. Watch.*

I read it twice. The third time, the words began to swim, the way letters did when my dyslexia kicked in.

*Kitchen God's grandson.*

"My grandpa."

Ms. Bai folded her hands.

"Your grandfather," she said slowly, "is missing."

"He's *dead.*" My voice cracked. "The roller coaster fell on him."

"Jackie." Her voice was not gentle but it was, for one syllable, less cold. "Your grandfather is *missing.* That is the term we use until we know more. We do not yet know more."

"Is he alive."

"We do not know."

She closed the file.

"Provisional admission granted. You will be lodged in our facility. You will train. You will not, under any circumstances, speak of any of this to anyone outside these walls, including your sister, your parents, your school counselor, or the Internet. Are we clear."

I nodded.

"Excellent. Lucy, take him to the dorms. Find him a bed. Briefing tomorrow at eight. Run him through the welcome packet."

Lucy made a small, choked sound. "Welcome packet? He cheated. He shouldn't be here. You can't just—"

"Yes, Lucy, I can. As of this moment he is your responsibility. Try not to lose him."

"But—"

"Out."

---

In the corridor outside, Lucy walked very fast.

The corridor itself was institutional. Concrete underfoot, scuffed from what had to be years of foot traffic, the sounds of a building at work below the city. And then it wasn't: the walls opened into something taller and older and the air changed, the temperature shifted slightly, and I registered without being able to explain it that the building had been here a long time. Not construction-long. History-long. The kind of long that meant the walls had absorbed a few thousand kids doing exactly what I was doing right now, which was jogging to keep up with someone who did not look impressed.

"Hi," I said, jogging to keep up. "I'm Jackie."

"I know who you are."

"You know who I am?"

"Word travels, idiot. The grandson the Kitchen God refused to tell us he had. The kid who got past two dragons in a week. The kid the moon rabbit decided to be friends with. *That* kid."

"Friends is a strong word," Rufus said.

"I'm Lucy. Lucy Chen-Martinez. In your year. He Xiangu's house. The only student in this entire facility who is half-something-else, so most of these idiots assume I shouldn't be allowed in. The other half of me is Mexican on my dad's side, Cantonese on my mom's mom's side. Half-Chinese is from my mom's mom — which counts, and I will fight anyone who says it doesn't, and I have, and I have won. So we have that out of the way. Any questions."

"Many."

"Save them."

We turned a corner. The corridor opened into a hall that did not fit inside the building it was supposedly in. Ceiling vanished into shadow. Floor was packed earth. Walls lined with calligraphy banners listing what I assumed were every student who had ever passed through.

I looked at those banners for a moment. One of them, near the bottom of the nearest column, had a name that had been written in a different hand than the others. The characters were older-looking. They made my scarf warm, which was not a coincidence I was in any position to investigate.

"Welcome to the SAT," Lucy said. "Society of Ancient Traditions. The Hogwarts Of Chinese Mythology, mostly so-named by people who have never read Hogwarts or anything Chinese. We are eight thousand years old. We are, currently, under San Francisco. Don't think about it."

We passed a doorway through which I could see a class of kids my age standing in a circle around a girl who was painting Chinese characters in midair with a brush that looked like liquid light. The characters glowed gold and faded.

I stopped for a half-second. The kids in that room were not performing. That was the word that arrived: performing. They were doing something. The way they stood — weight forward, shoulders down, attention on the character and not on who was watching — said these were people who had been in this room before and were going to be in it again, and the extraordinary thing happening in front of them was something they were learning how to be part of. Not watching. Part of.

I filed this.

"Calligraphy," Lucy said. "First-years. Truthsayer brushes. They'll teach you that one eventually. Don't bother. Most kids never use it for anything more practical than graffitiing the bathroom mirror."

She paused.

A young woman was standing in the middle of the corridor. Holding a tea tray.

She was about Megan's age. Fifteen, sixteen, but moving with the patient unhurried quality of a person who had not been in a hurry for a very long time. Her hair was in two tight braids. Her face was Megan's face.

I stopped walking.

"Hello, Mei," Lucy said politely.

The girl with Megan's face smiled. The smile was not Megan's smile. The smile was older. Sadder. The smile of a person who had read the end of a book and was being patient with you about the middle.

"Hello, Lucy. Hello, Jackie."

She handed me a cup of tea from the tray.

I took it. The cup was warm. I had not been warm in about three days. That particular warmth — the ordinary kind, ceramic against palm — felt like something I had been owed and had not expected to collect.

She said, "Welcome to the apocalypse, Jackie Lee. Today is going to be the second-longest day of your life. The first was yesterday. Tomorrow will be longer than both put together."

I looked down at the tea. The tea was jasmine. I had been awake for thirty-six hours. I had survived two dragons and a Scantron and a juvenile hold and I was now standing in a corridor under San Francisco being handed jasmine tea by a girl who looked like my sister from the future. In context, "welcome to the apocalypse" was actually the least alarming thing anyone had said to me all week.

She continued past us down the corridor.

I watched her go.

She turned a corner. She vanished.

And here is the thing that I noticed, which I would not have been able to articulate at the time: Lucy watched her too. Not the way I was watching her, which was wide-eyed and uncomprehending. Lucy watched Mei the way someone watches a thing they have been watching for a long time, with a quality that was patience and attention at the same time, carrying something specific in it, something she had decided to hold open rather than close.

"…Lucy."

"Don't ask."

"Lucy. That girl looks exactly like my sister."

"Don't ask, Jackie."

"Lucy. She could be my sister. She could be my older sister grown up by ten years. She could be —"

"Jackie." Lucy stopped. She turned. She looked at me with the expression of a Council member's apprentice who had been here three years longer than me. "Mei is one of the central mysteries of this place. The Council does not explain her. Ms. Bai does not explain her. Mei does not explain herself. There are at least three theories about her, including the one you are about to advance, and the Council allows them all to coexist. Don't pick a theory. Hold the question. The question will be useful."

"…you've been holding the question for three years."

"Yes."

"Has it been useful."

"Yes."

She kept walking.

I followed.

---

The houseless dorm was a long room with two rows of bunks. Three of them currently occupied by kids who looked up when I walked in and immediately went back to whatever they were doing.

Lucy pointed at a bottom bunk near the window.

"Yours."

"My bunk."

"Your bunk. Briefing at eight. Bring the rabbit."

She turned to leave.

At the door she said, "Jackie."

"Yes."

"Your grandfather is, in my opinion, alive. I have no proof, but I have a feeling. Feelings, here, count for more than they should."

I said, "Lucy."

"Yes."

"Why are you telling me this."

She shrugged.

"Because the Kitchen God's grandson should not have to spend his first night thinking the Kitchen God is dead, when the Kitchen God is, probably, just temporarily inconvenienced."

She left.

The kid in the bunk above mine leaned down upside-down.

"You're him."

"Hi. I'm Jackie."

"Yeah, no, you're Nezha."

"It's *Jackie.*"

"Cool. I'm Wei. Three years here. Welcome to the houseless. We are unloved by every Immortal so we have a lot of free time."

He flipped back up. The springs creaked.

I sat on my bunk.

On the pillow was a note in handwriting I knew even though I had only ever seen it once on a Christmas card:

*Jackie — Wear what they give you. Eat what they give you. Trust the rabbit. I'll see you when I can — G*

I held the note.

My hands were shaking.

He was alive.

Or at least someone wanted me to think he was.

Or at least, somewhere recently enough to have written me a note, somebody had wanted to leave it on this pillow.

I lay down on the cot.

Rufus crawled onto the pillow next to me.

In my pocket, the silver token Grandpa had given me was warm.

In my belt loop, a small wooden brush had appeared. Mei had, somehow, slipped it into my belt as she had walked past. I had not felt it land.

I held it up.

The brush was small, narrow, about the length of a chopstick, with a tip of badger hair and a handle of dark wood.

A small fold of paper was wrapped around the handle.

The paper said, in the same handwriting as Mei's tea-tray smile:

*Practice.*

And underneath:

*— Mei*

I closed my fist around the brush.

It was warm.

In Palo Alto, somewhere, Megan was, at this exact moment, pulling Mom and Dad out of bed with a printed copy of Trinity College's residential-housing history in her hand.

I sent her, mentally, a small apology I could not communicate.

She would, the next morning, find out from a phone call placed by a person calling herself "Officer Mei" that her brother had been, and I quote, from her notebook entry, *transferred to a specialized cultural-heritage juvenile-rehabilitation program at the request of a registered nonprofit, parental notification waived per emergency-statute clause 4.7,* which Megan would later spend forty-five minutes trying to look up and would not find, because it does not, technically, exist.

Megan would, when she could not find clause 4.7, write in her notebook: *Cultural-heritage program is plausibly cover for the Society of Ancient Traditions, which Jackie has not yet mentioned. Will await further information. Do not, under any circumstances, panic.*

She would not panic.

I lay on the cot in the basement under San Francisco and held the brush with the note that said *practice.*

I did not sleep.

I dreamed, briefly, of the wrong-blue ocean and the three weaving women.

The middle woman, this time, had Mei's face.

She said: *You made it.*

I said, in the dream: *Where is here.*

She said: *The beginning.*

She handed me a teacup.

The teacup was empty.

She said: *Fill it.*

I woke up.

The lantern in the corner of the dorm dimmed itself by some kind of automatic sensor.

In the dim, the brush in my hand glowed, very faintly, peach.

I tried, in the dark, to write a single character in the air.

The character for *home.*

The brush moved my hand for me. The character glowed gold for a half second and dissolved.

A small ringing, like a tuning fork, sang from the brush.

Wei, in the bunk above, snored.

I held the note and did not sleep and tried to decide if hope counted as data.

The lanterns, all the way down the corridor, dimmed once.

I slept through it.

Tomorrow's bell, when it rang, would be six AM, and the dragon would be twelve hours behind it.