Second Son_ A Reacher Story - Lee Child [3]
Reacher said, “Why?”
“Placement,” his father said. “They need to know how well you’re doing.”
“Tell them we’re doing fine. Tell them thanks, but no thanks.”
“For what?”
“I’m happy where I am. I don’t need to skip a grade. I’m sure Joe feels the same.”
“You think this is about skipping a grade?”
“Isn’t it?”
“No,” his father said. “It’s about holding you back a grade.”
“Why would they do that?”
“New policy,” his mother said. “You’ve had very fragmented schooling. They need to check you’re ready to advance.”
“They never did that before.”
“That’s why it’s called a new policy. As opposed to an old policy.”
“They want Joe to take a test? To prove he’s ready for the next grade? He’ll freak out.”
“He’ll do OK. He’s good with tests.”
“That’s not the point, mom. You know what he’s like. He’ll be insulted. So he’ll make himself score a hundred percent. Or a hundred and ten. He’ll drive himself nuts.”
“Nobody can score a hundred and ten percent. It’s not possible.”
“Exactly. His head will explode.”
“What about you?”
“Me? I’ll be OK.”
“Will you try hard?”
“What’s the pass mark?”
“Fifty percent, probably.”
“Then I’ll aim for fifty-one. No point wasting effort. When is it?”
“Three days from now. Before the semester starts.”
“Terrific,” Reacher said. “What kind of an education system doesn’t know the meaning of a simple word like vacation?”
CHAPTER FOUR
Reacher went out to the concrete street and looked at the patch of ocean in the distance up ahead. The East China Sea, not the Pacific. The Pacific lay in the other direction. Okinawa was one of the Ryuku Islands, and the Ryuku Islands separated the two bodies of water.
There were maybe forty homes between Reacher and the water on the left hand side of the street, and another forty on the right. He figured the homes closer to him and further from the sea would be off-post housing for Marine families, and the homes further from him and nearer the water would be locally owned, by Japanese families who lived there full-time. He knew how real estate worked. Just steps to the beach. People competed for places like that, and generally the military let the locals have the best stuff. The DoD always worried about friction. Especially on Okinawa. The air station was right in the center of Genowan, which was a fair-sized city. Every time a transport plane took off, the schools had to stop teaching for a minute or two, because of the noise.
He turned his back on the East China Sea and walked inland, past identical little houses, across a four-way junction, into a perfect rectilinear matrix of yet more identical houses. They had been built quick and cheap, but they were in good order. They were meticulously maintained. He saw small doll-like local ladies on some of the porches. He nodded to them politely, but they all looked away. He saw no local Japanese kids. Maybe they were in school already. Maybe their semester had already started. He turned back and a hundred yards later found Joe out on the streets, looking for him.
Joe said, “Did they tell you about the test?”
Reacher nodded. “No big deal.”
“We have to pass.”
“Obviously we’ll pass.”
“No, I mean we have to really pass this thing. We have to crush it. We have to knock it out of the park.”
“Why?”
“They’re trying to humiliate us, Reacher.”
“Us? They don’t even know us.”
“People like us. Thousands of us. We have to humiliate them back. We have to make them embarrassed they even thought of this idea. We have to piss all over their stupid test.”
“I’m sure we will. How hard can it be?”
Joe said, “It’s a new policy, so it might be a new kind of test. There might be all kinds of new things in it.”
“Like what?”
“I have no idea. There could be anything.”
“Well, I’ll do my best with it.”
“How’s your general knowledge?”
“I know that Mickey Mantle hit .303 ten years ago. And .285 fifteen years ago. And .300 twenty years