Free Lexicon by Max Barry

door of your squat and there’d be two skinny bitches there, hips jutting, lips like cats’ asses, trembling with righteous outrage about something or other. Some debt, or thing you did. Charlotte beckoned. “Emily. If you please.” Her heels clacked down the hall.
    In her office, Charlotte gestured at a chair. The office was larger than Emily had thought. It had doors to other rooms, one of which Charlotte must sleep in, since she’d said to come see her any time of day. It had a single window that looked onto a courtyard, and a messy desk, on which stood a vase of fresh flowers. “I’m disappointed.”
    “Are you,” she said.
    “We gave you a sizable opportunity. You will never know how great.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “The examination room is monitored. Carefully.”
    “I see,” Emily said. There was silence. “So you’re saying I did something wrong in some way.”
    “Cheating? Yes. That was wrong.”
    “Well, you should have said that. You should have said, ‘Actually, we have three rules, the third one is don’t cheat.’”
    “You think that bears stating?”
    “That guy in San Francisco who sent me here, Lee, he knew I cheated people. That’s what I do. I’m a hustler. You bring me here but suddenly I can’t cheat? You never said that.”
    “I said honest answers were essential.”
    “In the test
before
. Not the video test.”
    “This isn’t up for discussion,” Charlotte said. “A driver is coming to collect you. Please collect your things.”
    “Well,” she said, “fuck.”
    “You may have been promised compensation for your time here. Unfortunately, that will not apply, due to the cheating.”
    “You bitch.”
    Charlotte’s face didn’t change. Emily had expected some kind of reaction, from someone so nunnish. She had assumed Charlotte was quietly furious, the way people got when you broke one of their made-up rules, but the truth was Charlotte didn’t seem to care. “You may go.”
    “Forget the driver. I don’t want anything from you.” She got up.
    “The airport is twenty miles. The driver—”
    “Fuck your driver,” she said.
    •   •   •
    She went to her room and stuffed clothes into her Pikachu bag. Until this point she had felt nothing but anger, but abruptly she was heartbroken and shaky with tears. She threw the bag over her shoulder and banged into the corridor. “Hey!” It was the curly-haired boy. “What happened? Where are you going?” But she didn’t answer and he didn’t come after her.
    There was no sign of a driver and she began to trudge down the driveway. About a thousand windows looked onto her back, and she imagined eyes in each one. But that was silly; the fact was, nobody would care. She would be gone five minutes and they would forget she’d existed, because the place made more sense without her.
    Halfway down the driveway, a car crunched up behind her. “Emily Ruff?”
    “I don’t want a driver.”
    “I’m not . . .” She heard the hand brake crank, the door open. “I’m not a driver.” It was the tall man she’d seen through the glass during her test. “My name is Eliot. Please come back to the house.”
    “I’ve been evicted.”
    “Hold up a second. Stop.”
    She stopped. The man scrutinized her. He had a stillness about him, which made him hard to read.
    “You cheated. Your defense is that nobody said you couldn’t. I agree. Go back to the house.”
    “I don’t want to go back to the house.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I’m not going to make it, okay? It’s pretty clear that everyone here but me is incredibly smart and knows, like, the names of poets, so . . . thanks for the opportunity.” She started walking again.
    He matched her pace. “There are two types of exams. The first tests your ability to withstand persuasion. The second measures your ability to persuade. This is more important. And from what I’ve seen, you have a good shot at those.”
    “Charlotte