Page 20 of Where Are You Now
“All right. Let’s go over to the testing room and get going with the assessments.”
She followed him across the hall to an office with a table in the center of the room and windows to the outside that let in sunlight that filled the space, giving it a cheerful feel.
“Have a seat.” Lucas pulled out a padded chair and then gathered a few bins from a nearby shelf full of puzzles, blocks, and flashcards.
She sat across from him, the usual pain dulled by the distraction of his presence.
He grabbed a pencil, opened a file folder, and wrote her name at the top of a Scantron-style sheet with rows of bubbled numbers. Then he flipped a tablet around on its stand. The screen was white with a blue dot in the center.
“Keep your eyes on the central point. Different objects will appear in various locations, but don’t take your eyes off the dot. We’re testing your peripheral vision. Just tell me what you see, if you can make it out.”
Objects began to pop up on the screen.
“Dog.”
“Good.” He bubbled in a five.
“Key.”
“Yep.” He circled another five.
“Leaf.”
“You got it.”
They carried on with the test, moving along to a few others where she had to identify objects that had been broken into various pieces and scattered around the screen. Following that, she had to match various figures and recall geometricdesigns in order. Ava got every single one, though the whole time she’d been preoccupied with his movements, his gestures, the looks he gave her. One time, he’d done a little tap on the table with his thumb, something she remembered him doing regularly in biology when they were lab partners.
When they finished the last test, he looked down at the score sheet. “Your visual perceptual functioning is perfect. Let’s try some executive functioning now.”
“I’m surprised you’re the one testing me,” she said, wishing she knew the man instead of just the boy. “Weren’t you a surgeon in New York?”
There was an indecipherable flash behind his eyes. “I was, yes. But not here.” His answer sounded final, as if something had changed.
Maybe he’d lost his job back in New York or had a falling out of some sort. She hadn’t meant to upset him.
He opened the next file, moving right along.
“On this test, I’m going to show you a series of geometric designs that begin as simple but get more complex. Your job is to see if you can copy them.” He handed her a piece of paper and a pencil. He tapped a few times on the tablet until a shape appeared. “Here’s your first one.”
“Sorry I asked a personal question,” she said while reproducing the hexagon shape in front of her. “Now’s not the time. But it would be nice to catch up at some point. I tried to find you on Facebook.”
“I don’t have any social media.”
She finished drawing.
“Great. Here’s the next one.”
“You could’ve emailed me. You don’t still have my email?” She offered a playful grin.
“No, sorry. I don’t,” he said gently but firmly.
Ava immediately pulled back, worried he’d think she was flirting. She hadn’t meant to. She’d just slipped back into theireasy banter from when they were kids. She reminded herself she didn’t know the man in front of her—she had to keep herself in check.
He showed her the next shape—a series of various polygons, all interwoven with crooked lines.
Ava kept to the tests for the rest of their time together. When they’d finished, Lucas gathered up his paperwork and slipped it into the file folder. Then, on his laptop, he checked his schedule for the week.
“I actually have you down tomorrow at ten, so I’ll see you then.”
