Pass/Fail (2012) by David Wellington Page A

“That message means something to me. Something… I can’t explain.”
    He was still struggling to get his mind around the implications of the fact that someone was leaving him messages all over town. He had to think about that. He had to decide what it meant. In the process he could, quite possibly, lose Megan forever.
    Already she was walking away from him, back toward the alley. Toward the parking lot and his car. She wanted him to take her home. The date was over.
    “Wait,” he said, and this time, there was no hesitation. He knew exactly what to say. It came to him in a sudden flash of inspiration that left him sweaty and a little breathless. “Megan.”
    She turned, her short hair swinging across her cheek. Her eyes were narrow slits.
    “I trust you,” he said. “I want to tell you everything.”
    That at least stopped her where she was. So he began. He told her about the row of initials on the underside of his bedside table. He told her about what he’d been doing and thinking when her car hit the side of his house. He told her about his worst suspicion: “They can make people fall asleep on command—it’s a post-hypnotic suggestion, I think. A voice says ‘sleep’ in a certain tone and you just lose consciousness instantly. They could have broadcast the command over your car radio. You said you blacked out for a second, and I think that’s why. They wanted you to crash your car, to see how I would react. They would have let you burn to death in there if I hadn’t got you out.”
    She was still angry but now she looked a little scared. “That’s insane, Jake. Crazy—totally crazy. You actually believe this?”
    “Yes,” he said. “Do you want me to stop? To stop talking about this?”
    She bit her lower lip. “No.”
    He went on. He told her about the blue envelope, and his initial talk with Mr. Zuraw. How he and Cody had tried to bring in the police, and how that had been a failure. He told her about the test in Classroom 187 and the history quiz in Farsi. He told her about breaking into Mr. Zuraw’s office, where she’d surprised him.
    He couldn’t tell if she believed him or not. It didn’t matter, on one level, because he just had to get it off his chest. He had to tell somebody other than Cody. Somebody who was seventeen, like him. Someone he could trust. Maybe whether she believed him or not meant everything.
    It especially mattered a lot whether she believed what came next, because he wasn’t sure if he believed it himself, and he wanted a second opinion.
    “Every adult in town may be in on this.”
    “What, you mean our parents?”
    “Well, no,” he admitted. That didn’t seem right. Jake’s Mom and Dad didn’t seem the type to torment schoolchildren for fun. “All the teachers, though. And the school board. And the police, and—”
    “Getting crazier, Jake,” she said. “So who can you trust?”
    “Well, you. And Cody. I don’t think the other students know what’s going on. And then there’s somebody… there’s whoever painted that. Somebody who is trying to send me messages. To help me.”
    “Who is it?” she asked.
    “I don’t know! It must be another student, or at least somebody our age. I have to find out. I have to find them, and find out what they know. If I can find them maybe they can answer some of my questions. Maybe they can help me pass some of the tests.”
    Jake couldn’t think. He needed to work this out, to think about what he was being shown, and why, and by whom. Maybe the graffiti artist knew a way to get out of the Curriculum. He stopped for a second. “You believe me, don’t you? You don’t just think I’m crazy?”
    “What, about this whole thing? About passing and failing and guys in silver masks giving you weird tests?”
    “Yeah,” Jake said.
    She said nothing. She just stared at him, looking right into his eyes. Then she did the thing he feared the most. She looked away.
    “Jake, I don’t know you all that well. I was just