Inspection

by Josh Malerman

  At the edge of the pines, the second Yard stretching so far in front of her until it reached the sidewalks and the brick base of the second Turret, K crouched. She watched. And she heard a sound behind her.

  “Oh!” she said, turning quick, expecting to see B, perhaps, or Q.

  Or maybe the lumbering Inspector.

  She didn’t want to use her voice, didn’t want to talk at all so close to this tower. But she spoke all the same.

  “Is someone there?”

  Yes, her eyes told her. Someone only half-hidden by a tree.

  K wasted no time. Rather than remain frozen-still like her mind told her to do, K bolted toward the very tree that hid someone. She gripped the bark and spun around it, then around it again, then once more, before being convinced that nobody was there.

  Yet…

  “Yet…you’re scared silly,” she said. She scanned the woods as best she could. The considerable light from the tower helped. She listened.

  When she faced the tower again, she saw figures through the glass of the first-floor hall. Three short-haired girls, taller, it seemed, than the Letter Girls back home. K had to consciously stop herself from stepping out from the pines, crossing the Yard, pressing her face to the glass. Knocking.

  Seeing life in this tower for the second time was no less astonishing than it had been the first.

  She wished she had the means by which to view them closer. A magnifying glass like the ones used by the Inspectors every morning of her life.

  The girls in the hall laughed. It was the sort of communal laughter that, no matter how K or B might spin it, indicated legitimate happiness. The Letter Girls learned about happiness in Professor Hjortsberg’s class. Learned about innocence and sorrow, too. What K was seeing, the large smiles, the cocked-back heads, the hands to their chests: It was all incompatible with the idea of the place being the Corner. Surely girls sent to the Corner didn’t enjoy being there…

  …right?

  “It’s not the Corner,” she told herself. But she wasn’t sure. Not yet.

  From a window above, K heard a voice cry out a single name, a single letter, that broke her heart.

  “J!”

  J. The very name she sought. Proof that the lost Letter Girl was here after all.

  K stepped out of the pines, onto the grass of the enormous Yard.

  She wanted to be, had to be, closer to the window on the eighth floor, where she’d heard the name shouted, where she now saw four girls by the window. Two of them had their backs to the frame; the other two faced them. K didn’t recognize J at all. None of these girls had J’s blond hair, her lithe build, her way of standing, of sitting, of moving.

  None of them had the face that K once drew.

  If that was J up there (and it had to be, it had to be!), what had this place done to her that she’d changed so much?

  K stepped back into the cover of the pines. The first floor looked vacant now. No girls. No Inspector. Nobody.

  Up in the window, the girls talked. And their voices carried.

  “It was his idea!” one said. One with glasses.

  His. K guessed His was a name.

  “It was not!” said another. This one with short curly hair.

  “He didn’t mean it that way,” another said.

  He. Another name?

  “Oh, he most certainly did.” The one with glasses. “J always means what he says.”

  J always means what he says.

  Too many words for K to process. She had to get closer. She wanted to see them up close. Wanted to hear them up close. Wanted to be able to draw them, wanted to be able to—

  An alarm sounded. A sound so familiar to K that, at first, she mistook it to mean she was home.

  It was the bedtime bell. The gentle sound of a wooden horn, blown by the night Inspector on duty. K looked to the first-floor hall. Saw nobody. Looked up. Saw the girls stepping away from the window. One of them (the one they called J? J always means what he says) closed the window and waved to the others.

  Bedtime.

  Just like at home.

  K looked into the pines. Had the same bell sounded back home?

  “It’s not the Corner,” she repeated, eyeing the tower again, still trying to process the words, the names, the gibberish she’d overheard.

  One by one, lights went off in the mysterious tower. And just like at home, girls shouted good night to one another through the walls of their bedrooms, through the floors and ceilings, too.

  But what voices they had. The girls in this tower spoke in a different register.

  “Good night, Q!”

  “Good night, L!”

  “Good night, D!”

  “Good night, J!”

  Good night, J.

  His.

  He.

  When the last light in the tower went out, K thought of the same happening back home.

  K checked her watch. She looked once more to the dark windows going up and down the Turret.

  Then she ran home. Through the pines, carrying so much new information, so many confusing words and images.

  And feelings, too. Yes. K was experiencing so much at once that she couldn’t be sure if she was excited, scared, or if she’d somehow discovered new emotions out there in the pines.

  But she remembered how to run. Run home. Yet, the closer she got, the less like home it felt. For if there was a place just like your own, only three miles out in the woods, a place with the same windows and walls, the same Yard and pines, the same bedtime bell…who was to say what home was anymore?

  Live Like You’re in a Judith Nancy Book

  At the next morning’s Inspection, Krantz and Rivers spent a lot of time examining a scratch on K’s neck. M.O.M. asked where she’d gotten it. K said she didn’t know. Which, in its way, was true. K might’ve known it was from a branch, but which?

  She was declared clean, but nothing about the day following was ordinary, and K understood that it was possible no day would ever be again.

  She didn’t mind it. She had an objective now. A puzzle. A legitimate problem to solve.

  First, eyes and ears. K needed better of both if she was going to observe the second tower from so far away.

  “You’re talking about super glasses,” Q said. “And I know what you want them for.”

  “Super glasses,” K echoed. They stood in the Hall of Classes before the day’s lessons had begun.

  “I’ve actually considered this before,” Q said. She raised and lowered her own glasses, as if to prove to K that she had indeed thought of this before. “You think I don’t want to be able to see better?”

  “Shh,” K said. Then she wished she hadn’t shushed her. It could make Q nervous.

  Why so much secrecy, K?

  “Numerous lenses,” Q whispered. “Obviously.”

  “Girls?” Professor Hatch was peering out the physics door at them. “Now.”

  As the tardy Letter Girls hurried into the classroom, Hatch eyed the space they’d just occupied in the hall. As if she might see a trace of what they were talking about.

  * * *

  —

  “MICROPHONES,” Q SAID, later that same week, as K and Q treaded water in the shallow end during Free Swim. B was attempting dives off the high dive, but K saw her watching them talk. “Obviously.”

  “But could you do it without the cords?” K asked.

  “Probably,” Q said. “But we’d have to think hard on that one.”

  “Well, then let’s.”

  * * *

  —

  B LAUNCHED HERSELF from the ten-foot board, split the water nicely. When she came up for air, the other Letter Girls applauded. B looked to K and Q in the shallow end. Saw they hadn’t seen the dive. Saw they were still talking quietly like they had
been for a week now.

  * * *

  —

  “IF I HAD to change one thing about myself,” Y said, sitting in the front seat of the far-left row in Professor Hjortsberg’s class, “it would be to become more…heroic.”

  “Heroic?” Hjortsberg asked, setting her glasses on the desk by the chalkboard. The Letter Girls liked when she did this, because it meant she was interested in a topic and didn’t plan to read from her books for a minute or two. Y had struck a chord.

  “Yes. I often find myself keeping quiet when I would rather speak up.”

  “But here you are…speaking up in class.”

  The Letter Girls laughed at this. Y said, “Well, I’ve got a new theory.”

  “Oh?” Hjortsberg said. “Please…out with it, then.”

  Y breathed deep. She looked over her shoulders at her sisters.

  “Well, it’s like this,” Y finally said. “I think Judith Nancy is…the best.” The Letter Girls cheered behind her. “And if you line up all fifteen of her books, if you read them back to back, and you really pay attention to the pattern that carries over from one book to the next…”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, you begin to see that all of Nancy’s characters research a problem until it’s solved. They don’t let pesky bad thoughts and doubts get in the way. If the star of a Nancy book wants to get to the bottom of something…she does it.”

  “She does indeed.”

  “And so…my new theory is…my mantra…”

  “We’re waiting, Y.”

  Y practically shouted it. “If you want to get something done, you need to live like you’re in a Judith Nancy book.”

  Professor Hjortsberg smiled. The Letter Girls laughed and cheered. All but K, who sank back into her seat, relieved, as if Y had just handed her the answers to all her newfound and borderline unfathomable questions.

  Live like you’re in a Judith Nancy book. Right. What other way was there to be? And what would K do if she were in a Judith Nancy book? Where would she start in trying to get more details about a tower she’d discovered that so resembled her own?

  She’d start by studying her own.

  The thought came so powerful, so loud, that K looked around the room, half-expecting her sisters to be staring in confusion. But Professor Hjortsberg was already debating the merits of Judith Nancy characters and how fiction is not the same thing as real life. The Letter Girls all had their hands up with something to say. K raised hers, just so she would fit in, just so Hjortsberg wouldn’t wonder what she was thinking.

  Hjortsberg called on her first.

  “K? Add something?”

  K slowly lowered her arm as the class went silent. She wasn’t exactly sure what to say, but she knew enough of what everyone was excited about to say something. Anything. Yet she was fearful lest the words that came out of her mouth reveal her true thoughts. As if her lips held back the reality of her two sojourns through the pines, the images of the frightening Inspector out there. The growing evidence of the place J may have been sent to.

  “I just wanted to say that, um,” she stammered, tried to compose herself. Then, just as she was about to let anything pour forth, anything that might be accepted as a classroom contribution, K realized she wanted to say something real instead. She stood up. “Y is right, of course. We should all live like we’re in a Judith Nancy book. But since we’re not, we need to take stock of what makes a hero in our world. In the Parenthood. The real Parenthood.” Hjortsberg nodded acknowledgment and made to reach for her glasses, as though K was done speaking. But K was not. “And the most heroic thing any of us Letter Girls can do, the absolute most important thing in our lives and what we must devote our lives to…is the defense of one another.” Hjortsberg raised an eyebrow. K’s sisters were silent. “If one of us falls, the rest of us must pick her up. If one of us gets ill, the rest of us must discover a cure for her illness. And if one of us should go missing…” She thought the name J. She heard it as it had been hollered from the eighth-floor window of the Turret in the pines. “The rest of us should never stop trying to find her until she’s found.”

  K sat again. The room was very quiet. Her sisters turned to face Professor Hjortsberg, who, glasses already on, said, “Back to the textbooks, girls. The ones that count.”

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS PARENTHOOD law that no Letter Girl was allowed below and, until now, that was good enough for K. There might be Rotts down there. Vees. The diseases the Parenthood Inspected for daily. Besides, as far as being tempted to see the basement, the staff offices, Judith Nancy’s office, the Corner…there simply was no known door.

  Jogging the indoor track that made an oval around the Yellow Ball court, it struck K how unbelievable it was that she’d never thought to seek out the basement before. The place had played such a large part in the Letter Girls’ lives. Their favorite books were written down there. The Corner was (allegedly) down there. The good and the bad of the tower seemed to rise up from that subterranean lair, and never, not once, had K thought to see what it looked like.

  Why?

  “Are you going to go out there again?” B asked, jogging beside her.

  The question felt too sudden. Here B asked about going out and K was thinking about going farther in.

  “I don’t know yet,” she said.

  “Well, I don’t think you should.”

  “I know you don’t.”

  “Isn’t two times enough, K? Come on. I can’t believe you’re turning me into this kind of a girl.”

  “What kind?”

  They went quiet as they jogged the front straightaway, as they passed Coach Leslie.

  “You’re making me say no,” B said. “When I’m the kind of girl who always says yes.”

  “Then say yes,” K said.

  “You know how I feel. Two times is enough. Now you can talk to M.O.M. about it.”

  “Not yet. I wanna check something out first.”

  “K?”

  “What?”

  “You’re acting insane. If I was in charge? I’d send you to the Corner.”

  It was partially funny because B said it. But mention of the Corner was never entirely funny.

  “It’s interesting you mention that,” K said.

  “Oh? Why? You thinking of checking out the Corner next?”

  K was silent.

  “K? Please tell me you’re not.”

  K was silent. For the duration of the jog she was silent.

  * * *

  —

  “WELL, M.O.M. GOES down there all the time,” Q said, the two of them in line for dinner. Both dressed in black, but Q seemed extra-hidden by her hair. K felt exposed. Q had whispered but K spoke even quieter.

  “Right. So…how does she do it?”

  “How do they all do it?” Q asked back. Then she nodded toward Professor Ullman. Ullman had long been a Letter Girl favorite. With her big worried eyes magnified behind her big worried glasses and the way she stammered through every lecture. Always nervous, always fearful, might Ullman tell them where the door was? Even by…accident?

  Once K was seated and eating, Ullman was all she could think about. The meek math teacher ate with three more professors at the table closest to the window. K needed her alone. How? And if she got her…what would she say?

  “Exams in two days,” Y said, splitting a dinner roll in two. “Are you all ready?”

  “Of course we are,” B said. But she looked to K as though questioning whether her best friend was.

  “I’m ready,” V said.

  “So am I,” K said. But was she? She didn’t feel ready. In fact, she hadn’t studied nearly enough for what lay ahead. No Letter Girl had ever failed an exam, just like no Letter Girl had ever failed an Inspection.

  Could the others tell how
unprepared she was?

  Across the room, two of the professors seated with Ullman dabbed their lips with napkins, got up from their chairs, and left the cafeteria.

  “I can help if you’re behind,” B said. The way she said it, K felt like B had just shouted across the hall, K hasn’t studied, everyone! She’s been too busy THINKING ABOUT A SECOND TOWER!

  A table away, Q got up and slouched her way to the two remaining professors still seated by the window. Hjortsberg and Ullman. K watched closely as Q tapped Hjortsberg on the shoulder. At K’s table, B, Y, and V discussed physics and engineering. Exams.

  “K?” B asked. “Aren’t you gonna even say thanks?”

  K didn’t hear her. Q had gotten Hjortsberg to get up from the table and join her at the dry-erase board, where the daily meals were written in marker. There, Q wrote a quote in black. Hjortsberg immediately explained it to her.

  “Know who can help me most of all?” K said, staring at Ullman alone.

  “Anyone but me?” B asked.

  “Her,” K said. “Excuse me, girls.”

  She got up and crossed the cafeteria. Professor Ullman looked especially vulnerable, hunched at her table, nibbling on bread, seen from standing above her.

  “Professor Ullman?”

  Ullman turned quickly. In her eyes, seen so close, K saw sadness. “Yes? What is it?”

  “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  Ullman’s wiry hair was pulled so far back from her face it appeared to stretch her cheeks and chin with it. The professor looked skeletal, her teeth bared, her eyes darting about the big, noisy room. “Go ahead,” she finally said. “I can’t stop you.”

  Not How can I help you, K?

  “It’s the textbook, Professor,” K said, adopting a voice that was still new to her. One that was comfortable with lying.

  When Ullman frowned, her entire face tightened. “The textbook? What’s wrong with the book?”

  K feigned disappointment. “It’s the print. We can hardly read some of the formulas. The print is…too small.”