Free Beautiful Blue World by Suzanne LaFleur Page B

of my head over to one side, tying it there to keep it out of my eyes. She handed me a mirror.
    “I think it looks nice,” she said.
    My hair was cut just above my shoulders.
    It didn’t look as blond with the ends cut off.
    With the tails went the sun-bleached hours of summer.
    A lump rose in my throat as I looked away from the mirror and down at the hair on the floor.
    “Come, Mathilde,” the Examiner said, but she spoke more kindly than she had before.
    I forced a weak smile at Miss Ibsen, who was smiling at me, and I scooted to keep up with the Examiner.
    Maybe I was finally going to find out what this was all about. What the test had been for and why I’d come all this way. And had my hair chopped. My new job.
    “You will rise and dress by eight every morning,” said the Examiner. “Eight to eight-thirty, there’s a brisk walk around the grounds; eighty-thirty, breakfast. Lunch at noon. Two to three is playtime outside, that’s mandatory, and very important. We need to keep this place looking like a school, and exercise keeps your mind sharp. Dinner at six, in your room by ten, lights out is up to you, though keep those curtains pulled. We expect you to rest well each night so that you are fresh for your daytime activities.”
    Like playtime? Had we come here just to disguise this place as a school?
    I was almost running to keep up as she continued along the hallway, but then she turned into the enormous living room.
    It was full of kids.
    Playing board games.
    Shouting, laughing, arguing.
    Moving pieces, setting them up a different way, going back to the way they were before. Walking between the boards to move pieces to other boards. Changing the moves other people had just made.
    Answering telephones at stations along the walls. Calling out to others around a board game, who would move the pieces, argue some more.
    Despite the noise, the room had an intensity of deep concentration.
    Some people were quiet. Reading, studying maps.
    A few adults walked around the room, observing, asking questions.
    But not giving direction or orders. They weren’t interfering at all.
    “What do you want me to do?” I asked.
    “Observe. Try things out. See what interests you. You may also read anything you see here or in your room. Lunch will be served shortly. You must be hungry.”
    I was. Though I’d been so distracted I hadn’t noticed until she mentioned it.
    Then she left me.
    Okay.
    I’d been instructed to observe. But not to stand frozen like a statue in the middle of the entryway.
    I tiptoed in.
    I spotted Annevi, sitting alone on her couch, staring at her board game, just as she had been last night. Her hair was cut like mine, I realized. She even had the same lock of hair pulled away from her eyes. So did all the other girls in the room.
    How had these girls looked before? Had they had long hair like mine? Had it felt strange to them, too, to have it cut?
    I ran my hand through mine, my fingers tingling as they met the fresh edges.
    Annevi also ran her hands through her hair, gripping it near her scalp from time to time, but she wasn’t thinking about her hair. Just about her game.
    I took the chair across from her.
    “Hi, Mathilde.” She hadn’t looked up.
    “Hi.”
    I studied the board, too.
    It wasn’t a game. It was a grid with a faint sort of map underneath. Little red ships sat on top.
    “So what are you good at?” Annevi asked, not taking her eyes off the board.
    “Me?”
    “Yes, you.”
    “Nothing.”
    She looked up then, her green-brown eyes meeting mine.
    “You have to be good at something.” She looked back down and slid one of the red ships over two places, paused, and slid it back. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
    “I’m not.”
    She looked up again, a bit bewildered, as if I was playing stupid. Her gaze moved from me to a girl absorbed in a fat book of military history. “Fredericka can remember anything she reads.
Anything.
” Her gaze moved to a tall boy who seemed to be