Free Life's Lottery by Kim Newman Page B

and Paul failed as easily – Paul, whose dad works on a farm, picked ‘goat’ as the odd one out from ‘cow, goat, lion, chicken, pig’ – and are going, along with almost everyone else, to Hemphill. Your resolve to go with them, so strong that you picked ‘chicken’, is taking a battering. Grown-ups are making a fuss, as if this were as important as the custard row.
    Your parents seem to think it their right that you to go to Marling’s and wear a silly cap, do a hundred hours of homework a week and be keelhauled by prefects. They elaborately do not blame you for your failure. They take you to the school for your interview and keep on at you in the car. ‘If they ask you why you want to go to Marling’s, say you want to work in the bank,’ Dad says. ‘Just don’t get nervous,’ Mum puts in. Mum thinks you panicked under pressure and says it’s ridiculous to decide a person’s entire life based on how they feel on a random day in early spring when they are eleven. Dad just huffs and insists you say (pretend) you want to work in a bank. That would be a lie. You now think the Exam People can tell when you are lying. When you grow up, you want to walk on the moon like Neil Armstrong.
    Your parents sit outside Mr Brunt’s office, as if waiting to be punished, and you’re sent in. The Exam Person is called Mrs Vreeland, and has glasses that look like plastic bird’s-wings with windows in them. Mr Brunt smokes cigarettes throughout the interview, which makes the room stinky. It is Mrs Vreeland who talks to you.
    First, she takes out your test paper – you recognise your name neatly printed at the top – and looks it over. You see red ticks and crosses by your answers.
    ‘Cow, goat, lion, chicken, pig,’ she says. ‘Why is chicken the odd one out?’
    You didn’t expect to have to explain why you gave an answer.
    ‘Because it’s a bird,’ you say.
    Mrs Vreeland looks at Mr Brunt.
    ‘And what are the others?’
    You can’t say ‘Farm animals’, because no one would believe you thought lions were kept for meat or milk.
    ‘Animals,’ you say, mumbling.
    ‘Mammals?’
    You nod. Mrs Vreeland looks at Mr Blunt again and writes something down.
    ‘You don’t like mathematics much, Keith? Sums?’
    You shake your head, no.
    ‘What’s six away from twelve?’
    That’s easy. ‘Six.’
    ‘Not five?’
    You remember that’s what you put in the exam. Mrs Vreeland makes another note and puts your exam paper in a folder.
    ‘Are you afraid of anything, Keith?’
    Almost everything, you think. Prefects.
    ‘No.’
    ‘We want to help you. You haven’t done anything wrong. You aren’t being punished.’
    You don’t say anything.
    ‘Draw me a picture,’ she says, giving you paper and a pencil. ‘What do you like to draw?’
    ‘Outer space.’
    ‘Draw me an outer space picture. Draw me a grown-up in space.’
    As you work on the picture, Mrs Vreeland talks to you, asking who your friends are (Shane and Paul), what you would like for Christmas (a bigger bicycle), if you have brothers and sisters (yes), what you like on television (
Doctor Who, Captain Scarlet
).
    ‘Keith, what do you want to be when you grow up?’
    If you say you want to work in a bank, read 20 and go to 66. If you say you want to be an astronaut, read 20 and go to 21.

16
    A t Dr Marling’s, you excel in Latin and French. You get bashed about a bit on the rugby pitch but develop a lifelong passion for cricket. You find most schoolwork stimulating and engaging. You make new friends: Mark Amphlett, Roger Cunningham, Gully Eastment. You realise the kids you knew at primary school were put off by the way your mind skips ahead; at Marling’s, others can keep up with or outpace you. Everybody hates the uniform and writhes under the tyrannical rule of prefects. You bond for life, as if you’d been through a war together rather than suffered double geography on Thursday afternoon.
    ‘That school’s certainly bucked him up,’ you