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After sitting there flipping pages for too long, Bishop quietly got the kid’s attention. He frowned but got up from his desk and came over.
“Yeah?”
Bishop tried to keep his voice as quiet as he could, but he could feel eyes on him. “I need… I um… wanted to know if it’s possible to have some of the questions read?”
The kid gave him an incredulous expression that made Bishop want to melt into the wall behind him and disappear. “No sir. I can’t read the questions to you. I can’t provide you any assistance on the testing.” The guy could’ve at least tried to whisper back to him.
Bishop could feel his face scorching. He scrubbed his hand over his beard. He lowered his voice even more. “I don’t need you to read it. I have a friend out there—he can just read the question only and then—”
The guy scoffed. “No. That wouldn’t be fair. You don’t have to worry about getting each question correct, sir. These tests are for evaluation purposes only. If you don’t know the answer just shade in the last answer that says ‘I don’t know’ and go to the next question.” The guy didn’t give Bishop a chance to make another request before he turned and walked away.
The other two people hurried to avert their eyes back to their monitors when Bishop glanced in their direction. He was so close to taking that thin test booklet and shoving it into the trashcan on his way out of the door, but he wouldn’t be able to face Mike once he got outside. He wouldn’t be able to concentrate on his business meeting with Edison tonight if he just quit. He wasn’t a quitter and he didn’t want to be seen as a coward or a failure. He had to try. Because Bishop had a feeling if he gave up now and let this thing, this illiteracy, defeat him, then he might take another six months before he came back a second time.
Bishop swallowed down his nerves and went through each question, picking and dissecting words the best he could, but it was a lot and the words only got bigger. He answered I don’t know on far more than he’d answered knowingly. The social studies section had maps and graph questions, so he believed he may’ve gotten a few of those right. When Bishop finally reached the end, he thought his head was going to explode. His neck was stiff, and his fingers were sore from clutching the pencil so hard. He stood to take his test to the front when he noticed the other two testers had already gone. He hadn’t even heard them leave.
Bishop handed the guy his test and tried to high-tail it out of there, but the kid stopped him. “Hey hold on. I need to give you some information so you can check your scores. They’ll be uploaded in forty-eight hours. Once they’re in the system then you can enroll in classes, and it’ll only let you register for ones that you qualify for. So, it’ll recommend any prerequisite classes, or prep course you might need first.”
Bishop was glad the guy wasn’t going to grade his shit right in front of him. He’d always hated that. Yeah, he didn’t want to know how dumb he was until he was home and preferably near a case of beer. Bishop tucked his Adult Learning Center Welcome folder under his arm and met his dad in the lobby. Mike gave him big smile when he came out, and hard slap on the back. It felt good, he had to admit. Good, that that was fucking over. He knew there was a lot more to do, and that the real hard part was yet to come. But he’d jumped his first hurdle.
“Come on, let’s get to the job site,” Mike said.
They walked out into the heat, across the blazing parking lot, and got into the truck in silence. He was glad his dad didn’t ask him how he did. He didn’t want to discuss how it felt to admit how much he didn’t know.
“Man, if it wasn’t Friday, B, I’d say let’s play hooky and go fishing or bowling or something. I’m proud of what you just did and I wanna… I don’t know… do something for you.”
Bishop turned from where he’d been staring out of the window as Mike drove down Virginia Beach Boulevard towards Town Center. “That’s not necessary. You went with me… that’s… that’s what I needed. I don’t need to go bowl right now. I wanna go to work and make sure no one’s screwed up my vincas. They were only supposed to go around the bushes on the right side.”
Mike laughed. “We got more coming in today, too.”
“I know.”
“All right, let’s get at it.”
