The Test Prep Gift My Neighbor's Daughter Gave Me

The pen was already warm when Maya pressed it into my palm. I had walked out to the mailbox on a Saturday morning in late October, and she was standing at the low fence between our yards, holding a slim black pen with a gold clip. Her backpack hung off one shoulder, heavy with practice books. Maya Alvarez had lived next door for three years, long enough for me to know that she never gave anything away, not even a pencil. Her father ran a landscaping crew. Her mother cleaned houses in the hills. Every dollar in that house was counted twice, and Maya counted hardest. "You need this more than I do," she said. I laughed because it was a joke. She had the highest GPA in our grade. I had a decent transcript and a part-time job at a grocery store that ate my study hours. The Westbrook Merit Scholarship was down to two finalists from our school, and everyone knew it was Maya and a girl from the magnet program across town. I was not on that list. "I mean it," Maya said. "My mom got it blessed. My cousin used it for her nursing exam in June. She passed. Just take it." She looked tired. Her eyes were puffy, and she kept shifting her weight like her shoes hurt. I took the gift because refusing would have made a scene, and I did not want a scene on my morning off. The neighborhood was quiet except for a lawn mower three houses down. A dog barked once behind us. "Thanks," I said. "Use it on something important," Maya said. She turned and went inside. I stood there with the pen in my hand, already certain I would not use it. I had no important test. But my brother Eli did. Eli was seventeen, one year behind me, and he had spent the last two years pretending he did not care about anything. He worked nights at a gas station and came home smelling like gasoline and mint gum. He had a reading problem he refused to talk about, and his grades put him at a community college at best. My mother cried in the bathroom when his report cards came. She thought I did not know, but the walls in our house were thin. That afternoon, I found Eli at the kitchen table with a test prep booklet for the placement exam. He was chewing the cap of a cheap ballpoint. The test was on Monday. He had one shot to place into the transfer track, and everyone in the house knew it was not going to happen. I put the pen down next to his hand. "Lucky pen," I said. "Use it." He looked at it, then at me. "Is this from a girl?" "From a neighbor." "You're giving me a girl's pen?" "Just use it." He took it because he took everything I handed him, and I went upstairs to change for my shift. I did not think about the pen again. Not that night, not the next day, not until Monday, when the phone calls started. The first one came from my school's front office at 11:40 a.m. They wanted to confirm that I was home sick. I was. I had taken a double shift on Sunday and felt like a wet towel. The office said someone had signed out my name for the placement exam that morning, then left early. I told them it was a mistake, and I went back to sleep. The second call came at 2:15 from Maya's mother. She said Maya had fainted at the exam, and they were at the clinic. She asked whether I had seen Maya that morning. I said no. She hung up without saying goodbye, which was not like her. The third call came from the assistant principal at 4:30. Her name was Mrs. Calder, and she had a voice like a door closing. She asked if I had given Eli anything before the placement exam. I said I gave him a pen. "Where did the pen come from?" she asked. I did not answer right away. A small, cold feeling started in my chest. "From our neighbor," I said. "Maya. She gave it to me." Mrs. Calder was quiet for a long moment. Then she asked me to come to the school Tuesday morning and to bring Eli. She said the exam room had been flagged for irregularity, and she would not tell me more over the phone. When she said the word irregularity, I heard the click of something closing. I went downstairs. Eli was in the den with his shoes still on, playing a game with the volume off. He had come home early. He had not said a single word about the exam. "Eli," I said. "What happened this morning?" He did not look at me. He kept his thumb on the controller, moving a little man across a screen. "I passed," he said. "I think I passed." "That's not what I asked." He paused the game. The room got very quiet. Then he turned and looked at me, and I saw a thing in his face I had never seen there before. It was not pride. It was fear. "There was something weird," he said. "Our proctor said somebody else was supposed to be in that seat. She kept looking at the sign-in sheet. And there was a paper in my booklet that I didn't write on. It was already filled in." "Filled in how?" "I don't know. It was a handwriting page. The lady asked me about it. I told her it was there when I opened the booklet." I sat down on the arm of the sofa. Outside, the streetlight clicked on. My mother's car was not in the driveway yet, which was a mercy. "Where's the pen?" I said. Eli pulled it from his pocket. He held it out to me, and I saw what I had not bothered to see on Saturday. The gold clip was engraved with small letters, worn but readable. M.A. Maya Alvarez. She had not given me a lucky pen. She had left evidence in my house and put her initials on it. And I had carried it to my brother, the easiest person in the world to pin with it. I did not know yet what she was doing or why. I only knew that in less than twelve hours, I was supposed to walk into a school office and explain a pen that belonged to a girl whose mother was already crying on the phone. I took the pen from Eli and put it in the pocket of my coat. Then I went back upstairs and sat at my desk with the door shut, and I opened my laptop and started looking up what a placement exam irregularity actually was. I did not sleep that night. I listened to the house settle and wondered if Maya had already told them my name.