The Entrance Exam

Harmony woke up the next day unable to stomach any breakfast.

"You need energy," Frosting said.

"I want to throw up."

Frosting wrapped the bun in a plastic bag and put it in Harmony's backpack. "Make sure you eat at least a little bit before the exam. Or you might pass out in the middle."

"I may pass out anyways."

Harmony greeted Sugarcane at their usual spot. With every step they neared the school, and Harmony's heart beat faster. Is this really going to be the norm in middle school?

"I'm really not prepared."

"Me neither," Sugarcane said.

"You totally are."

"No I'm not. Besides, it's just an entrance exam. Sky said it doesn't matter."

"He's just saying that to not scare us."

"Please put your backpacks and electronics outside of the classroom!" Sky was standing at the door, holding a metal detector. "You may only bring your pencil cases and student cards."

"Can I take my tissues?" Sunny was snuffling.

"Let me take a look."

Harmony and Sugarcane put their backpacks next to each other and unzipped them to take out their pencil cases. Sugarcane dropped her phone inside.

Harmony saw the bun, flattened into pie. She took a bite and put it back in.

There was a line assembled near the door, waiting to pass through Sky's metal detector. He wasn't even checking too hard; just a nominal wave and you're in.

"Find the desk with your number on it," Sky said.

Harmony and Sugarcane weren't together. It seemed like the list was in alphabetical order. Harmony sat in the first row, right in front of the teacher's desk. Soon everyone was seated, and Sky came in with four folders, all of which were marked as "confidential."

"What I'm going to do next is hand out the answer sheets," Sky said. "Some of you may have seen this before, but for those of you who haven't, exams are different from elementary school now. You have the questions, and then you have an answer sheet that you write your answers onto. For multiple choice questions, you will color in one of the options with a pencil."

Harmony glanced around. Cosmo was a couple seats away from her, with a helmet fitted over her head. A mind-reading blocker. She looked miserable in it. Another student seemed to have a hyperawareness-blocking cloak on too, but being in the first row, her sight was limited.

"The most important part is to color your student number in, at the top here." Sky held up an empty answer sheet and gestured to the space at the top, a wide grid of digits. "Your student number can be found on your desk, or if you sat in the wrong spot, on your student card. I will be handing these out now."

When Harmony received hers, she wrote her name and colored in her number at the appropriate spots, double-checking to make sure she got it right.

"Next, I will hand out the questions sheet. Do not write on either sheet until the bell has rung. You will have two hours for the first section, and you may leave one hour in. Then there will be a ten-minute break. The next section lasts for one hour, and you may leave as soon as it has started."

Three hours?! And we're allowed to leave early? What kind of an exam is this??

The stack of questions landed on her desk. She took one and passed the rest behind her. It was a really long, continuous strip, four pages wide, so front and back made eight. The text was tiny, suffocatingly crammed onto the page.

She scanned the questions. The first section was math. And then science. Reading comprehension — she had never seen a passage this long!

This is terrible.

"The exam begins eight thirty sharp. Please wait for the bell to ring."

And on that note, a loud, screeching sound came blasting out of the speakers.

"You may begin."

Equations. What's the value of x? The first question was easy enough. Question two. Uh, what does this little "2" above the x mean? She skipped that one. What is "log"? Skipped again. What is this weird crowbar? Oh my… The single bite of bun in her stomach was acting up.

She ended up skipping the entire math section and moved onto science.

Harmony knew the answer to the first few questions from random books and TV shows. But soon she also became stuck. She couldn't even understand the questions, let alone answer them.

She glanced around again. The kid beside her was still on page two, and that made Harmony feel a little better. But then she realized she had skipped over the first three pages and the dread returned.

Name the components of an atom. Paired with the familiar picture, just with the labels replaced with blanks. Now Harmony really wished she had focused on that.

More skips. On her answer sheet, there was a huge box — is that space for an essay? She checked out the corresponding question. Programming. Write a class that inherits the given class… below was a chunk of code, and she could understand none of it.

After that came two interesting ones. She had to crack an encoded message. The first one was a set of numbers. Maybe I should replace them with letters? If A is 1 and B is 2… Slowly, a coherent message emerged. This is great!

The next code was a jumble of letters. She tried replacing A with Z and B with Y, but it didn't work. What about A with B and B with C? That didn't work either. She gave up.

She skipped to reading comprehension, but by the time she reached the end of the passage, she had forgotten the beginning. She looked at the clock. Thirty minutes in. How am I going to survive this?

The second passage was in ancient language. They had studied ancient language in sixth grade, but those passages were at most two to three lines long. This one had three entire paragraphs, and she couldn't understand a thing.

She looked at Sky. He was holding his own copy of the questions sheet, mouth curved into a content smile, occasionally jotting down some calculations.

The exam continued in silence, save for the shuffling of paper and creaking of the chairs. The clock ticked.

Sky cleared his throat, grabbing the attention of those closest to him, like Harmony. "You have one hour left. You may leave now if you want, but please remain quiet."

One kid really got up to leave. Sky walked over to his desk and collected his answer sheet.

Did he seriously complete that? In one hour?

Harmony simply sat at her table, turning the papers over and over, as if a new question that she could answer would suddenly pop out of the page. She contemplated leaving. It's not like I'm doing anything else, is it?

The bell rung again.

"Pens down, everyone," Sky bellowed. Harmony's answer sheet was mostly left blank. "Students at the back, please pass your answer sheets to the front."

Harmony received a messy stack of papers. The topmost one was filled with answers. Every multiple choice question had been colored in. Did this kid really know all of the answers?

"Harmony," Sky said. "Stop looking."

She quickly added her own sheet onto the pile and handed it to Sky.

"You will now have your break," Sky said. "You are free to use the restroom, but do not talk to each other. Please return in ten minutes."

Harmony and Sugarcane met at their backpacks. She shot Sugarcane an exasperated expression. Sugarcane simply shook her head. Harmony finished her bun and threw the plastic bag away.

The ten minutes were up, and Sky called everyone back into the classroom.

"You are now doing the second part of the exam. You have one hour, but you can leave whenever. There's nothing else for the rest of the day either, so you can leave the school after finishing. Remember, normal classes begin tomorrow!" The new answer sheet and questions were passed down.

Harmony stared at the paper.

"For all the questions below, 'the exam' refers to the first part of the exam that you have just finished taking."

"How many pages did the exam's question sheet have?"

It was eight. Harmony remembered.

"Repeat the second question on the third page. Include the options as well."

She had skipped that page.

"How many paragraphs did the second reading passage have?"

The first one, with the ancient language, had three. She hadn't counted the second.

What kind of an exam is this? An exam about an exam?

About half an hour in, she gave up. A few students had left already, and Harmony did as well. She packed up her backpack and waited for Sugarcane on a bench.

A few minutes later, Sugarcane was out. "What was that?"

"I had no idea."

"The second part was awfully meta. The first part was okay."

"The first part was okay?"

"Well, it didn't go as bad as I thought. I did a few questions in each section, though the coding one was weird. Why would they let us write code by hand?"

"You did the coding one? You knew what to write?"

"Well, I learned a bit about programming over the summer."

"When did you do that?"

"Over the summer?"

"I never knew."

"It was just a hobby thing, really. And I guessed on most of the other multiple choice questions."

"Wait, what?"

"I guessed. I just picked a random option that felt like it."

"You could do that?"

Now Sugarcane was quite shocked. "Well, what did you do then? Just left them blank?"

"Well, yeah! I didn't know you could just fill in a random answer!"

"Hey, it's eleven o'clock. Let's get going first."

Reluctantly, Harmony stood up and they walked back home.

"I did really terribly. I couldn't understand half of the questions."

"Me neither."

"But you did the coding one!"

"I might've gotten that wrong."

Suddenly Sugarcane's phone rang, a delightful, uplifting tune. She answered it. It was her mom. "Okay. Yes. I'll tell her." She hung up.

"My mom said your dad's therapy was canceled today."

"Oh dear." It was going to be a rough week.

"So he's taking us out to hotpot this evening."

"Looks like he's doing himself some therapy."

"See you then?" They reached Sugarcane's apartment.

"See you then," Harmony nodded.

Back home, Frosting had lunch ready. "How did the exam go?"

"Terribly."

"I told you — wait, terribly?"

"I couldn't understand most of the questions. Sugarcane had apparently learned programming in the summer and I didn't even know what the question was about. And she guessed on most of her questions while I just left them blank —"

"Calm down, sweetheart," Frosting said.

"How??"

"Have some food first."

"I'm not hungry. I ate the bun like an hour ago."

"Have some more, then."

"I'm not hungry!" Harmony ran to her room and shut the door. She buried her nose into her pillow and started sobbing.

Entity woke Harmony up when dinnertime came.

"Why was your therapy canceled?" Harmony remembered to ask.

"My therapist caught a cold and had a fever."

"Who else is coming?"

"Sugarcane's parents, as well as uncle Tangerine. Do you remember him?"

Harmony often heard her dad bring up Tangerine, but she could never remember him.

They parked in the basement of the mall in their favorite spot right next to the elevator, and rode up. The hotpot restaurant was in front of them as the elevator doors opened.

"Table for seven," Entity said to the waiter who greeted them.

They ordered some basic things and waited for the other people to arrive. Harmony asked for two drinks. Entity had a rare smile on his face as he watched the soup boil.

Tangerine walked over. "Hey, Entity! Hey, Frosting!"

"Hi!" Frosting replied, and then turned to Harmony. "Say hello to uncle Tangerine."

"Hello uncle," Harmony muttered.

"My therapist said he could make an appointment with you Thursday, same time," Tangerine said to Entity as he sat down. "Would you be up for it?"

"Wow, thanks!" Entity said. "I won't be back for dinner Thursday, then." Frosting nodded. The pot was bubbling, so Entity turned the heat down.

"Hello!" Came Sugarcane's voice. "Good evening, auntie and uncles!"

The adults greeted each other as Harmony and Sugarcane sipped their drinks doodled on the napkins. Entity was, of course, the one to dip the beef; though he always made sure to put some in his bowl first before giving it to anyone else.

"So!" Tangerine started. Harmony felt a sense of familiar dread. "How's our new middle-schoolers doing?"

Now Harmony remembers who Uncle Tangerine was.

"They're doing well!" Frosting said cheerfully.

"That's nice to hear! What did you learn at school today?"

"We did the entrance exam," Sugarcane said.

"How was the exam?"

"It was okay."

"When I was at school" — oh, please — "I used to set a goal every semester. It helps a lot with a target in mind! Why don't you do it too?"

"Yeah," Sugarcane's mom seconded. "What are your goals for this semester?"

Sugarcane thought for a while and said, "I want to learn new knowledge and be the first place in class." She had always been good at these sort of things.

"What about you, Harmony?" Tangerine looked at her with his wide, greasy grin.

"I don't know," Harmony said.

"Well you gotta have one!"

No I don't. "Survive," Harmony said curtly.

"Harmony," Entity was disappointed. "Don't treat uncle like that. How about you go for second place?"

"Did we order the beef noodles?" Harmony just wanted this to be over.

We did order the beef noodles, but just a small plate enough for Harmony and Sugarcane to split.

"I'm full," Harmony said. She was not full. "I'll go for a walk in the mall."

She wandered aimlessly through the row of restaurants and shops. Sugarcane soon caught up to her.

"You want some desserts?" She asked.

"You have money?"

"I have my phone. My parents gave me some allowance. Ice cream?"

Harmony found the cheapest option on the menu. Sugarcane got a big sundae and paid for them both. All Harmony could think of was how to get the money to pay Sugarcane back.