Sue giggled enthusiastically at his lame attempt to be charming. He hadn’t even tasted the food, so it made no sense.
She made her way around the table, filling Elijah’s, Vanessa’s, and Claire’s plates, before finally coming to mine.
“Thank you,” I said, taking my plate carefully and meeting her eyes. She filled my glass and handed it back to me.
“You’re most welcome, my dear.” She had a calming presence, like a grandmother, and I couldn’t help feeling safer with her there.
As she walked away, Elijah cleared his throat. “Did everyone bring their signed media permission forms?”
I took mine from the pocket of my cardigan, unfolding it carefully as I handed it across the table to him, careful to keep my legal name hidden. The group slowly rustled theirs out of pockets and purses, handing theirs to him as well.
He looked them over enough to make sure they were signed, and then folded them over once. “Excuse me for a moment.” He stood from his chair, disappearing from the room with the forms.
When he was gone, there was a collective sigh of relief, and Vanessa laughed, causing Lincoln to chuckle as well. Before long, we each had grins on our faces. It was the one thing connecting us—our confusion and fear about our mysterious predicament. Well, that, and the desire to make half a million dollars a year doing God-knew-what.
“Should we wait for him?” Caleb asked, rubbing a fork across the meat on his plate.
“Obviously,” Lincoln answered, a lightness to his tone that said he was joking, but no one ate anyway.
“I’m starving,” Victor announced, lifting his cloth napkin from the table and placing it in his lap.
“What do you think they’ll have us doing?” The question seemed to catch everyone off guard. I looked to the end of the table, where it had come from. Vanessa wasn’t looking at any of us, and for the first time, her expression seemed weak. Worried.
“For the job? Or for this week?” Lincoln asked.
She looked up. “Both, I guess.”
“I wish I knew,” Caleb said, still rubbing his fork across his plate.
“Whatever it is, we gotta do it, right? I mean, it’s a lot of money. Whatever it takes, Victor’s all in,” Victor said, proudly speaking of himself in third person.
I nodded, though I didn’t speak. I wasn’t sure I could say the same. I’d do a lot for money, life-changing money like this. Could I truly do anything? I wasn’t sure.
Before we could discuss it anymore, Elijah’s footsteps could be heard coming back down the hall, and we all grew silent. When he appeared, the forms were no longer in his hand.
“Sorry about that, everyone. I needed to file those before they were lost. Now, let’s all dig in, shall we?” He sank into his chair, laying his napkin across his lap and picking up his utensils as we all followed suit.
It didn’t matter what we were going to be expected to do. Tonight we were guests, and hungry guests at that. As the food hit our tongues, all worry seemed to fade away.
At least for that moment.
Once we had eaten dinner, the plates were carried away by Sue and another younger woman they called Maureen. Elijah let us know Maureen was another employee and she’d be keeping the house tidy while we were there.
Before they disappeared, Sue filled our glasses once more, though mine wasn’t completely empty. We all waited for Elijah to tell us what would happen next.
Once the dining room doors had closed and we were alone again, Elijah pointed at me. “Lark, could you hand me that basket from the end of the table?”
I looked over, where a large, wicker basket had remained for the entirety of our meal. What was in it? What was he going to do with it? I stood from my chair, the wood scraping across the floor and creating a loud screech that tore through the air.
I felt my cheeks burning red from the embarrassment but walked toward the end of the table and grabbed the basket. It was filled with a stack of small note cards and pens.
I came back to my seat after handing Elijah the basket and sat down, watching as he took out the note cards and began to pass them around. While I was up, he’d pulled a small wastebasket to rest at his feet and a notebook from his pocket. “Each night during your stay, we will end dinner with a series of questions. You will write down your answers and I will read them aloud. Some of the questions will be relatively simple, some will be much harder. The most important thing is that you’re totally honest in your answers.” He passed the pens around next. “Of course, you’ll likely be the only one who knows whether or not you’ve told the truth.”
The papers were completely blank. What was he going to ask?
“The rules to this are simple: I’ll ask the question, you write down the answer. When you’re done, fold it and place it in the basket. I’ll read them aloud, at which point you’ll have a chance to come clean about your answer and explain it, or remain anonymous.” He paused, looking around at each of us. I hoped he couldn’t see how worried I was. I was going to fail already, and the true competition hadn’t even begun. “We’ll start with an easy one. How many years of university do you have?”
Now, that was an easy one. I scribbled down my answer, the number six. I added in a period, as if it were a sentence, and closed the note card, folding it twice and placing it in the basket. Elijah waited patiently as everyone put theirs in, then shook it up.
“All right then, let’s get started.” He picked up the first one. “Four years,” he read aloud. “Anyone like to claim it?”
Lincoln’s, Claire’s, Vanessa’s, and Victor’s hands all shot up. Elijah smiled. “Looks like we have a few with that answer.” Only myself and Caleb remained. He pulled the next one out, confirming. “Another four years.” Then the next. “And another.” The next one, his eyes grew wide. “Six years, impressive. Who wants to claim it?” I raised my hand, watching Caleb. To my surprise, his hand didn’t rise.
When Elijah reached for the last answer, Caleb’s face pinkened. I lowered my hand, watching him carefully.
“Zero,” he read, and I can’t imagine I was the only one who gasped.
“You didn’t go to school?” Vanessa asked, staring at him.
“No,” he said. I tried to determine whether he looked embarrassed, but he was difficult to read. Not going to school wasn’t embarrassing, of course. I knew plenty of successful people who hadn’t, but how was he there? Amongst the rest of us with degrees. Even though we still didn’t have any idea what the job would entail, I expected it to have high requirements. “I’m self-taught,” he went on.
“What do you do?” Lincoln asked, but Elijah held up a hand.
“You’re all perfectly welcome to ask questions outside of the game, but we should move on,” he said matter-of-factly. “Next question: true or false, for the right amount of money, there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do.”
I swallowed, watching the seriousness in Elijah’s expression. My pen trembled as I wrote my answer, the answer I believed with my whole heart. I was terrified what had happened to Caleb would happen to me. What if everyone else answered true, and I was the only one to say false? What if it was obvious I was the one who’d said it? What if it meant I wouldn’t get the job? What if I’d already ruined my chances?