Free White Cat by Holly Black Page B

staring at the pamphlet. I’m not surprised by any of the information—like, I know I get headaches a lot because my mother gave an emotional working the way other parents give a time-out—but it’s still strange to see it printed in black and white.
    I flip open my phone and let the pamphlet fall to the floor. Get over here , the message reads. We’ve got a big problem. It’s the only text message I’ve ever gotten where everything is spelled right. It’s from Sam.
    I push the buttons to call him back immediately, but the call goes to voice mail and I realize he must be in class. I check the time on my phone. A half hour more until lunch. I text quickly— wht did u do? —which might not be the most sensitive message, but I’m imagining disaster.
    I’m imagining him caught with my book, ratting me out. I’m imagining being doomed to sifting through my parents’ detritus until Grandad finds some other odd job for me.
    The reply comes fast. Payout.
    I breathe. Someone must have won a bet and, of course, he doesn’t have the cash to cover it. B ovr soon , I text back as the door opens and the doctor walks in.
    Dr. Churchill takes the clipboard and looks at it instead of at me. “Dolores says there was some kind of mix-up?”
    I assume that Dolores is the unfriendly reception desk lady. “Mom told me that I had an appointment with you today.” Thelie comes out easily; I even sound a little resentful. There’s a tipping point with lies, a point where you’ve said something so many times that it feels truer than the truth.
    He looks at me then, and I feel like he sees more than I want him to. I think about the file sitting in my coat, so close that he could reach down and grab it before I could stop him. I hope he doesn’t have a stethoscope, because my heart is trying to beat its way out of my chest. “So why’d she make you an appointment with a sleep specialist? What kind of problems are you having?” he asks.
    I hesitate. I want to tell him about waking up on the roof, about my sleepwalking and the dreams, but if I do, he might remember me. I know he’s not going to write the note I need—no doctor in his right mind would—but I can’t risk him writing Wallingford any other kind of letter.
    “Let me guess,” he says, surprising me, because how could anyone guess why a patient came to a sleep clinic? “You’re here for the test.” I have no idea what he’s talking about.
    “Right,” I say. “The test.”
    “So, who canceled the appointment? Your father?”
    I’m in over my head, with nothing to do but play along. “Probably my father.”
    He nods like that makes sense, fishing around in a drawer until his gloved hand emerges holding a fistful of electrodes. He begins attaching them to my forehead, their sticky sides pulling at my skin. “Now we’re going to measure your gamma waves.” He switches on a machine and it jumps to life, needles skittering across paper in the pattern that’s mirrored on a screen to my left.
    “Gamma waves,” I repeat. I’m not even asleep, so I don’t see the point in measuring my gamma waves. “Is this going to hurt?”
    “Quick and painless.” The doctor peers down at the paper. “Any reason why you think you’re hyperbathygammic?”
    Hyperbathygammic. That long medical term for worker. HBG. Heebeegeebies.
    “Wh-what?” I stammer.
    His eyes narrow. “I thought—”
    I think of the woman I heard in the reception area. She was complaining about getting worked, and she sounded like they’d done a test on her to prove it. But he’s not asking me if I think I’ve been worked. He’s asking if I think I’m a worker .
    This is the new test, the one that they keep talking about on the news, the one that conservative politicians want to make mandatory. Theoretically, compulsory testing will keep HBG kids from breaking the law by accident when using their powers for the first time. Theoretically, the results are supposed to stay private, so there’s