By the time the nurse admits me into the waiting room, Hana is gone—vanished down one of the antiseptic white hallways and whisked behind one of the dozens of identical white doors—although there are about a half-dozen other girls milling around, waiting. One girl is sitting in a chair, hunched over her clipboard, scribbling and crossing out her answers, and then rescribbling. Another girl is frantically asking a nurse about the difference between “chronic medical conditions” and “pre-existing medical conditions.” She looks like she’s on the verge of having some kind of fit—a vein is standing out on her forehead and her voice is rising hysterically—and I wonder whether she’s going to list a tendency toward excessive anxiety on her sheet.
It’s not funny, but I feel like laughing. I bring my hand to my face, snorting into my palm. I tend to get giggly when I’m extremely nervous. During tests at school I’m always getting in trouble for laughing. I wonder if I should have marked that down.
A nurse takes my clipboard from me and flips through the pages, checking to see that I haven’t left any answers blank.
“Lena Haloway?” she says in the bright, clipped voice that all nurses seem to share, like it’s part of their medical training.
“Uh-huh,” I say, and then quickly correct myself. My aunt has told me that the evaluators will expect a certain degree of formality. “Yes. That’s me.” It’s still strange to hear my real name, Haloway, and a dull feeling settles at the bottom of my stomach. For the past decade I’ve gone by my aunt’s name, Tiddle. Even though it’s a pretty stupid last name—Hana once said it reminded her of a little-kid word for peeing—at least it isn’t associated with my mother and father. At least the Tiddles are a real family. The Haloways are nothing but a memory. But for official purposes I have to use my birth name.
“Follow me.” The nurse gestures down one of the hallways, and I follow the neat tick-tock of her heels down the linoleum. The halls are blindingly bright. The butterflies are working their way up from my stomach into my head, making me feel dizzy, and I try to calm myself by imagining the ocean outside, its ragged breathing, the seagulls turning pinwheels in the sky.
It will be over soon, I tell myself. It will be over soon and then you’ll go home, and you’ll never have to think about the evaluation again.
The hallway seems to go on forever. Up ahead a door opens and shuts, and a moment later, as we turn a corner, a girl brushes past us. Her face is red and she’s obviously been crying. She must be done with her evaluation already. I recognize her, vaguely, as one of the first girls admitted.
I can’t help but feel sorry for her. Evaluations typically last anywhere from half an hour to two hours, but it’s common wisdom that the longer the evaluators keep you, the better you’re doing. Of course, that isn’t always true. Two years ago Marcy Davies was famously in and out of the lab in forty-five minutes, and she scored a perfect ten. And last year Corey Winde scored an all-time record for longest evaluation—three and a half hours—and still received only a three. There’s a system behind the evaluations, obviously, but there’s always a degree of randomness to them too. Sometimes it seems the whole process is designed to be as intimidating and confusing as possible.
I have a sudden fantasy of running through these clean, sterile hallways, kicking in all the doors. Then, immediately, I feel guilty. This is the worst of all possible times to be having doubts about the evaluations, and I mentally curse Hana. This is her fault, for saying those things to me outside. You can’t be happy unless you’re unhappy sometimes. A limited choice. We get to choose from the people who have been chosen for us.
I’m glad the choice is made for us. I’m glad I don’t have to choose—but more than that, I’m glad I don’t have to make someone else choose me. It would be okay for Hana, of course, if things were still the way they were in the old days. Hana, with her golden, halo hair, and bright gray eyes, and perfect straight teeth, and her laugh that makes everyone in a two-mile radius whip around and look at her and laugh too. Even clumsiness looks good on Hana; it makes you want to reach out a hand to help her or scoop up her books. When I trip on my own feet or spill coffee down the front of my shirt, people look away. You can almost see them thinking, What a mess. And whenever I’m around strangers my mind goes fuzzy and damp and gray, like streets starting to thaw after a hard snow—unlike Hana, who always knows just what to say.
No guy in his right mind would ever choose me when there are people like Hana in the world: It would be like settling for a stale cookie when what you really want is a big bowl of ice cream, whipped cream and cherries and chocolate sprinkles included. So I’ll be happy to receive my neat, printed sheet of “Approved Matches.” At least it means I’ll end up with somebody. It won’t matter if nobody ever thinks I’m pretty (although sometimes I wish, just for a second, that somebody would). It wouldn’t matter if I had one eye.
“In here.” The nurse stops, finally, outside a door that looks identical to all the others. “You can leave your clothing and things in the antechamber. Please put on the gown that is provided for you, with the opening to the back. Feel free to take a moment, have some water, do some meditation.”
I imagine hundreds and hundreds of girls sitting cross-legged on the floor, hands cupped on their knees, chanting om, and have to stifle another wild urge to laugh.
“Please be aware, however, that the longer you take to prepare, the less time your evaluators will have to get to know you.”
She smiles tightly. Everything about her is tight: her skin, her eyes, her lab coat. She is looking straight at me, but I have the impression that she isn’t really focusing, that in her mind she’s already tick-tocking her way back to the waiting room, ready to bring yet another girl down yet another hallway, and give her this same spiel. I feel very lonely, surrounded by these thick walls that muffle all sounds, insulated from the sun and the wind and the heat, all of it perfect and unnatural.
“When you’re ready, go on through the blue door. The evaluators will be waiting for you in the lab.”
After the nurse clicks away I go into the antechamber, which is small and just as bright as the hallway. It looks like a regular doctor’s examination room. There’s an enormous piece of medical equipment squatting in the corner, emitting a series of periodic beeps, a tissue-paper-covered examination table, a stinging, antiseptic smell. I take off my clothes, shivering as the air-conditioning makes goose bumps pop up all over my skin, the fuzz on my arms standing up a little straighter. Great. Now the evaluators will think I’m a hairy beast.
I fold my clothes, including my bra, in a neat pile and slip on the gown. It’s made of super-sheer plastic, and as I wrap it around my body, securing it at the waist with a knot, I’m fully aware that you can still see pretty much everything—including the outline of my underwear—through its fabric.
Over. Soon it will be over.