I went over my notes. It wasn’t a lot to go on. “I guess we do the whole thing.”
Greer nodded solemnly. “Agreed.”
He returned to his chair and pulled the cardboard box and note cards to him. Greer had tests designed for older kids and younger kids. Boys and girls. He flipped through the box, selected a packet, and laid it in his lap.
“Now! There are a few different types of memory—”
“Card went over that already.”
He turned and glowered at me. I laughed. He hated having his thunder stolen.
“Okay, well, what we’re going to do is try and get a sense of what kind of person you are by seeing what’s in your procedural and semantic memory.”
“I thought semantic memory was common knowledge type stuff. Stuff everybody knows.”
“It is,” I chimed in. “But what you’ve got in there depends on where you grew up and how. Like if I’d asked a kid from China who Superman was, they wouldn’t necessarily know since he’s not a big part of their culture.”
“Right,” Greer said. “An infected person who studied, like, birds all their life would be able to identify more birds than an infected person who hadn’t. Someone who studied math would have absorbed more math.”
“And doing this will help you figure out who I am.”
“Exactly.”
“So how will you—”
“Think fast!”
Greer scooped up the baseball and chucked it at her. She didn’t even flinch. The ball sailed past her and into the trees.
“Interesting.” He held up a card with pictures of Lebron James, Derrick Jeter, and Serena Williams on it. “Who are these people?”
“No idea.”
“How many players are there on a football team?”
“Uh . . .”
“Don’t think, just answer.”
“Eight?”
“Finish this sentence: ‘We’ve got spirit, yes we do, we’ve got spirit—’”
The girl tilted her head as if he were speaking Arabic.
“Can you describe how to play Quarters?”
She shook her head.
“How about beer pong? Flip cup? T-Rex arms?”
“Those are games?”
“If you wanted to buy beer and didn’t know anyone over twenty-one, would you go to Black River Beverages, Quik Stop, or Harry’s Gas?”
“I don’t think I like beer.”
Greer draped one arm over the back of his chair. “That’s a hard no on cheerleader, party girl, and athlete.”
I made a note. “Got it.”
Greer did pop culture next. Not much help there. Beyond things that pretty much any teenager in America would know, she was kind of a blank slate. So not a huge movie or TV fan. As for physical abilities—she couldn’t draw, sculpt, juggle, tie a trucker’s hitch, or start a fire using two sticks and a length of shoelace. When Greer had her sing the Happy Birthday song, she was enthusiastic, but painfully out of tune.
After about an hour of this she started to get restless.
“Is this getting us anywhere?” she asked. “I mean besides establishing the fact that I don’t know anything about anything.”
“Finding out what you don’t know is just as important as finding out what you do,” Greer said. “Which means you’re giving us a ton to go on.”
She scowled at him. He grinned and held up another three-by-five note card.
“What does this say? Come on! Time’s a’wasting.”
The girl sighed, then sat up and squinted at the card. “E equals MC squared.”
“Hey, you got one! And what does E equals MC squared mean?”
She gave him the same look she gave me when I asked about Superman. “Energy equals mass times the speed of light, squared.”
“And what’s the speed of light?”
“One hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second,” she said. “In a vacuum.”
Greer looked back at me, impressed. He held up another card. The girl got it instantly.
“The Pythagorean theorem.”
He held up another.
“Pi.”
Another.
“Deoxyribonucleic acid.”
Another.
“The War of 1812.”
She got ten more right without a single miss. The girl wasn’t bored anymore. She was teetering on the edge of her chair, practically trembling. Greer was too. He shuffled through his cards with unsteady hands.
“Quick, Greer! Give me another!”
“Uh . . . Okay! Literature. Finish this quote: ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family . . .’”
“‘Is unhappy in its own way.’”
“‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune . . .’”
“‘Must be in want of a wife!’ Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice. Oh! Give me another one!”
“What book includes the characters Ponyboy, Sodapop, and Cherry?”
“The Outsiders!”
“Merricat, Constance, and Julian?”
“We Have Always Lived in the Castle.”
“Aslan and Mr. Tumnus?”
“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe!”
“Who killed James and Lily Potter?”
The girl shot to her feet, her arms raised in triumph. “Tom Marvolo Riddle, also known as Lord Voldemort!”
Greer and I broke into rowdy applause. The girl’s cheeks reddened as she bowed grandly.