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"Look up and tell me what you see. Truth, now." Nurse Farrell patted her grey hair absently. She watched the boy squint, pupils contracting in the cool semi-darkness. Like every student at Night Vale Elementary, he’d taken this test every year since second grade, and each time it had gone the same with him. He’d be on his way to the middle school next year, and this was the last chance for a good record to be sent upward. He knew this, and was trying to play innocent.
“I don’t see anything,” he said with an unconvincing smile. He shrugged. “Same as every year.”
She sighed. “Put this over your mouth,” she instructed, handing him the mask. He’d done this four times already--his mother had angrily demanded the first test be repeated, after a few agents showed up at the door looking for him--but she was legally obligated to give instructions every time. “Inhale--hold--exhale.”
The boy’s eyes unfocused and his head dipped.
“What do you see, Steven?”
His head rolled clumsily back up, as though being pulled by an unseen hand in his hair. “The lights, don’t you see the beautiful lights? Look--that one points to where Venus would be, if we were somewhere else, like, where it should be. And see that spiral? Where does that lead? I don’t know yet, but I'll find it. I'll get me there soon, and then I’ll find out where my dad went, and who took him there, and who those people are pretending to be trees, and what that stuff in the mantle clock is. I’ll know and I’ll make sure everyone knows, I can see it all, I can--”
He coughed, a dry hollow sound, doubling over. A small cloud of blue slipped out of his mouth, unnoticed.
“Was it--did I do okay?” he asked, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
“Same as every year. Go on and find your mother.”
After the door closed behind him, she turned to the Agent pretending (poorly) to be a secretary. “Carlsberg, Steven E. Red flag him, file with copies of last year’s report. Soul Strength four. Next!”
It was the little ones that broke her heart.
This state testing was ridiculous--well, perfectly necessary of course, a very important precaution--but it was a little much for primary school. She stretched slowly, putting off starting the second graders. This was the first year, for most of them, and they were always so scared and sometimes they cried.
She waited for the Agent to finish, watching him carefully stab each key before hunting out the next letter, before she leaned out the door. “Paula, whenever you’re ready.”
The secretary--the real secretary, if only she had clearance to see the documents!--nodded and waved in a tall, proud, but appropriately wary little girl. She glanced toward the fake secretary, who, for reasons unknown, started typing again.
“Hold still,” Nurse Farrell said, shining the little blue light in her eyes. “Look right at me. Blink. Blink. One more. Good girl.”
“Stand right there--feet together--” she looked up at the Agent, still working away on one very short form with his tongue poking out of his mouth. Someday, they would send her someone who actually knew touch typing.
When he finally finished, and she had the silence she needed, she said, “Okay, Abbey. Now look up at that slide and tell me what you see.”
She shrugged. “Stars, Miss Farrell. And, um, void?”
“What else do you see?”
“Um.” She squinted at board, her eyes darting around like she was following something moving on the still image. “Um.” She blinked rapidly. “I don’t know.”
“Okay. Put this over your mouth. Inhale--hold--no, honey, you have to hold your breath till I tell you--here, let’s try again. Inhale. Hold. And now exhale. There you are.”
She didn’t droop or stumble, as they sometimes did, but neatly folded, sitting heavily on the floor. Even if she didn’t hold the first breath, she’d gotten a lot of the Gas and she was a slight child, mostly knees and elbows.
Nurse Farrell helped her back to her feet. “Okay. Look back at the slide, Abbey, and tell me what you see.”
“It’s all dark,” she whispered. “I’ve got to go home, I can’t be out in the dark. It’s late. I’m tired. My mother will lock me out and I’ll be alone in the dark. I’m scared.”
“But what do you see?”
“Nothing. Nothing. Straight void. In a sphere untouched by the sun. And it’s coming.” She turned her head slowly, looking up at the nurse, and her face was now neutral. “We will work out in the end. One way. Or another.”
They stared at each other--no, that wasn’t right, Nurse Farrell realized, the girl was staring through her--for a few seconds before Abby coughed into her small hand, then sneezed out a tuft of blue vapor.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Nurse Farrell said briskly. “Go on back to your mother.”
She watched the door close and glared at the young man at the desk. “Palmer, Abigail T. Soul strength seven and travel clearance after age twelve.”
The fake secretary was almost finished tapping away the last report, and Nurse Farrell restacked the sloppy pile of file folders on the desk while he hit the final three keys with a painful slowness.
There was a knock on the door.
“Yes?”
The woman who entered was short and round, her hair streaked prematurely with silver. She seemed distracted and was carrying a small child on her hip.
“Oh,” Nurse Farrell said, glancing at the clock in a way she hoped would communicate that it was late and everyone here had dinners to get to. “Hello. Listen, you know we can’t tell you anything about Abigail’s results--”
“I need you to check him. My son.”
Nurse Farrell patted her hair again and looked away. Dark Masters, but this woman was difficult. “Laura, I can’t anymore. You know the process is confidential, and anyway this test is too simple for any child who’s started puberty. If you have concerns about Bernard--”
“No, not Bernie.”
Nurse Farrell rubbed her temple and tried to smile at the little boy. His eyes were brown and serious, his dark hair cut short. He was dressed in a blue button down shirt and a skirt with a petticoat. Typical little boy. She sighed.
“How old is he?”
“Four. But the tablets at City Hall--”
“Alright. Okay. Fine.”
“Oh thank you, Margaret, I won’t forget this--”
“Leave him here, I’ll send him out when he’s done. Do you have his papers?”
She glanced through the documents--birth certificate, registration and insurance, vaccination records--then back at the small, suspicious face.
“Hello. You can call me Miss Margaret. I’m the nurse at your sister’s school.” She bit her lip and looked for something else to say, wishing she was better with small children. “Did you, um, did you dress yourself this morning?”
He nodded.
“Very good choices. We’re going to try a couple little tests, and then afterwards, if you listen well, you can have a sucker. How does that sound?”
“‘kay.”
She knelt in front of him and held up her tiny light. “Look straight ahead and blink when I tell you.”
He nodded.
“Okay. Blink. Bliiink. Sweetie, I need you to blink.”
“I am blinking,” he whined. His lip trembled.
“Oh. Let’s try again then.” She cleared her throat, sitting back on the heels of her neat white shoes. “Blink. Did you--okay. Again. One more. Hmm. Okay.” She would have sworn she saw something moving behind the lens of his eye.
She stood, and just before she turned she noticed his eyes snap open and shut rapidly, three times.
“Stand here--feet together.” She crossed the room briskly and flicked the slide projector on again. “Now look up at that slide and tell me what you see.”
“A moon?”
“You see the moon?”
“Maybe not our moon. Maybe another moon.”
“Anything else?”
He shook his head.
She looked again at the papers she’d gotten and tried to calculate how to dose the Gas for a thirty-seven pound child, feeling his eyes on her the whole time. Ugh, what a mess. Thanks for dumping this into my lap, Laura, she thought.
After a moment she walked back and handed him the mask. “Put this over your mouth and inhale. Okay. Exhale. Good.” She moved to set it back on the cart and said, “now look up again and tell me what you--”
She heard a soft thump and a giggle. When she turned he was sitting on the floor with his feet in front of him. His shoe was untied.
“I feel dizzy,” he said, giggling again, and then hiccupped out the small blue cloud and watched it float up to the ceiling.
Did she mistake the dose? She looked into his eyes, pupils still wide, almost eclipsing the dark brown around them. His lip twitched repeatedly into and out of a dark little smile. Something was definitely moving inside his pupils.
Hmm. So he was still affected by it, then.
“Look up, sweetie. What do you see?”
“There’s broken glass on the other side, a sheet on the floor.” It was definitely still a child’s voice, but disquietingly even, followed by an unsettling laugh. "Eyes are a window to the soul, did you know that? Well you're wrong. They're like a mirror, they tell you what you want them to."
She watched him for a moment, waited for it to pass. If the vapor was out already it would be difficult to tell when the effects wore off and it was socially responsible to return him to civilians.
“Oh thank you, Margaret, thank you so much--”
“It’s fine, Laura. And he’s fine.”
“Can you tell me…” The woman trailed off, rubbing her forehead and glancing back at the boy, lips stained purple from the pop and kicking his feet against the legs of the chair he was in. “I have these dreams, Margaret,” she whispered, “and these headaches, and when I wake up he’s always there just--just looking...his shadow is slow and I don’t--can you tell me anything?”
“Nothing specific.” Casually, she crossed her arms, extending the first two fingers of her right hand and tapping them slightly on her arm.
Laura saw the number and seemed to deflate further, something Nurse Farrell had previously thought not possible. “Oh. Oh no.”
“He’s young,” Nurse Farrell said, patting her hair. “He has time. Keep him close.” And then, softly, “you should probably trust the dreams. Just to be safe.”
She watched them leave before turning back to her office. While the useless young man got the form lined up in the typewriter, she pulled up the blinds and stared, unseeing, out the office window.
“Palmer, Cecil G. Redacted. Note on file: out of sync. Do not retest until age 15.”
“But Miss Farrell, you can’t--he isn’t even a student--”
But she had had quite enough of him. “Which of us has the degree, Carter?” she spat. “Out. Of. Sync. Do not. Retest.”