Free The Candidates by Inara Scott

got a perfect score on the math section. Mr. Judan said I’m a math wizard. That’s why he wanted me here at Delcroix.”
    “Oh.” I was pretty sure I was supposed to be impressed by all this information, and since I’d already pissed her off by taking the bed under the window, being from Danville, and having dead parents, I decided not to tell her that Judan had come to recruit me as well, and told me they wanted me here for my unusual courage. “That’s great.”
    I sat back down on my bed and plucked at the hem of my pants.
    It was going to be hard not to hate Catherine Arkane.
    I thought about what Esther had said on the bus when Cam hugged me: no one had recruited her at all, or maybe they had called her mom at work. It made me wonder again why the school had sent Cam and Mr. Judan to meet with Grandma and me.
    “What was it like?” I tried to sound impressed. “When he recruited you, I mean. Did he meet with you by himself?”
    “Well, my dad was there too,” she said. “He flew all the way from D.C. to be there.”
    “But that was it? No one else from Delcroix?”
    She sniffed. “As if the chief recruiter isn’t enough?”
    I kept my eyes on my pants. So Cam hadn’t visited her? This information was both thrilling and unnerving. I loved the idea that Cam and I had some special connection, but I couldn’t escape the inevitable conclusion that he and Mr. Judan must have visited me by mistake. They must have gotten my name wrong, or transposed two numbers on an IQ test somewhere. Catherine Arkane obviously belonged at Delcroix; I did not.
    Catherine pulled another picture out of her trunk, this one of her and a man in a suit and tie. “That’s my dad. He went to Delcroix. He works at the White House.”
    I squinted at the picture. Catherine’s father looked a lot like her—tall, thin, and grumpy.
    “That’s cool.”
    Catherine placed the picture on the desk. “Right. Cool.”
    She pulled three more frames out of her trunk: two displayed pictures of her in a school uniform standing beside men wearing suits, and one showed her awkwardly hugging a woman wearing a suit. I wondered if anyone in her family ever wore jeans.
    “Is that your mom?” I asked.
    She nodded. I had the feeling she had lost interest in talking to me. I was officially beneath her.
    She unpacked with smooth, efficient motions, like someone who had done this many times before. She seemed to know exactly where each picture should go on her desk, and where all the clothes would fit in her drawers. I put on my headphones, turned on a CD, and pretended not to watch her.
    When she was finished, she sat down on the edge of her bed and cleared her throat. I sat up warily.
    “Time for ground rules,” she said, and fixed her dark eyes on me.
    “Ground rules?” I removed my earphones.
    “Look, I started boarding school when I was in fifth grade, so I know a little bit about how to deal with roommates. Here’s the story. You don’t touch my stuff, you don’t make noise when it’s time to study, and you don’t leave the lights on after ten. Got it?”
    I nodded. What could I say? Somehow I’d managed to get a complete psycho for a roommate. It only seemed fitting.
    “I’m here to study and learn. I consider it the highest possible honor to have been chosen to attend Delcroix, and I hope you do too. I intend to make Mr. Judan and my father and all the other people who came before me proud. And I don’t intend to let anything stand in the way of my success. Do you understand?”
    “Absolutely,” I said. “You’re absolutely right. Those rules sound perfect. I only wish I had thought of them myself.”
    She narrowed her eyes at me, as if trying to decide if I was joking. I kept my face impassive. Catherine Arkane, I decided, was like a young Principal Solom. Intense, motivated, and unafraid to throw an elbow if necessary. Luckily, I had dealt with people like Catherine before, and found the thing to do with them was simple: bow