There’s a slow and steady ache in her right hand, but she can’t stop yet. No not yet. The clock looms over her like her professor does in the classroom, but it's presence is much more menacing. The face of the clock watches her and she sweats nervously under it. Each tick of the clock is embedded in her brain so much that her brain starts to move with those ever twitching hour hands.
A hand cramp. She clenches her hand and massages it quickly before she once again, picks up the pencil and begins to write. This is the essay that will decide the rest of her future, and she might as well make sure she gets the best possible future this essay can buy her. Her hand slides across her forehead and she stares at the page, the next line of her essay not coming to her. Think, think, think.
Her hand starts to move on its own, and slowly the next line comes onto the page. She rereads it, erases it, and rewrites it.
By now, her side of the table is covered in shreds of eraser, but she can’t worry about that now. She has to keep going. The last line of her essay, the big closure, she’s written it in her brain nearly a hundred times now, but now as she begins to write the first word, she finds her fingers faltering. Was it good enough? It has to be, this has to be her closing sentence.
Three pages, front and back, is that long enough? Gosh she hopes so.
She turns to the front page and begins to read over her work, will this-
“Time’s up, pencils down.”
Her heart is pounding, and shakely she looks to make sure her name is on each sheet. Slowly students all around her begin to stand up, exchanging nervous glances with each other and stretching. This is it.
She steps up to the table with the teachers and pushes her paper in front of an older woman, Mrs. Coy, she was always one of her favorite teachers. “How’d it go Flora?” she asks cheerfully, almost as if her whole life doesn’t rest in those sheets of paper, almost as if if she didn’t say the right words on those pages, like it would be no big deal. She’s so calm about it all, and Flora wonders if perhaps it’s because she’s seen this happen for so many years now.
She looks up at her expectantly, waiting for her answers, through big, celeste blue eyes, her old, skinny withered hands folding together, bending against each other in weakness. “I thought… I hope it went well,” she says shakily, doubt suddenly taking hold of her entire being.
Mrs. Coy smiles widely at her, her crooked teeth poking out from under dry lips. “I’m sure it did, you were always one of the best students in my class.”
She’s nodding and then she’s leaving. One of the best? Only one of the best? Not the top, not the bottom either, but this is the blade that she’s created that will bring about her execution. She exits out of the large testing room, and the outside air is less tense, and she lets loose a deep breath. The air is cleaner in here almost.
Sh turns back only once and sees that darn clock watching her from it’s spot on the wall. It seems to be laughing at her.
“Gosh you’re sweaty,” a voice says before a heavy hand lands on her shoulder.
Roy stands over her and she tries her best not to shrink away. “Why aren’t you is the better question?” another voice says from the other side of hr.
Lulu presses next to Flora, her face curved in a sneer that gives away her entire personality all to well. Confident, brave, and headed for greatness. Roy snaps his fingers and presses his hands behind his head, stretching, the bottom of his navy blue shirt lifting just enough to reveal the doppy fanny pack he wears around all the time. “It’s really just another essay, I’m not worried,” he says so nonchalantly Flora’s jaw drops open.
Lulu raises her eyebrows in mock humor, and places a hand sassily on her hip. “Just another essay, goodness sake Roy, you seem so confident.”
“Don’t act like you aren’t,” he counters.
The other girl bobs her head in amusement, before turning to her. “So, how do you think you did Flora?”
Her hands are shaking too much and she just stares at her. Lulu waves a hand in front of her face and she shakes her head in response blinking. “Not as well as you all I suspect.”
When Lulu laughs, she’s shaken at her core and she almost wants to run away from the school for the second time today. “That’s a good one. We both know you and Roy always did better in the writing sections. C’mon, how about we treat our hard work with some ice cream?”
“I’m all in for that,” Roy says laughing.
The two begin the walk towards the double doors but Flora stays rooted to her spot. There’s no way they’re absolutely not serious about this. They turn around at the same time and look back at her. “You coming?”
“There’s no way you two aren’t even slightly scared about this essay.” She instantly regrets the menace behind the tone of her voice, and she cringes slightly.
Lulu tilts her head. “Why are you so scared?”
When she was younger, Flora’s mother used to tell her stories about Flora’s uncle. How after he had taken the essay, he was assigned a life in the coal mines. He had been working in them for nearly twelve years, when one day, became the last day he ever went in. Her mother was assigned the role of a taylor and told Flora she had never touched a needle until after they gave her her job.
Her father has been giving Flora mock essays ever since she thinks she can remember, all of them long and tedious, and after every crappy draft he’d crumple it up in front of her and throw it away. “Your life depends on this!” he’d yell. “What do you think happens to the people who can’t roles? They die! All of them!”
Fear for this essay became a daily routine, a nightmare, and soon, with each passing year, she began dreading this day, because she knew one day it would come. They’re not jobs like the professors and teachers make it out to be, they’re roles and it was a hard truth, which she learned shortly after she saw her father's own role card.
You’ll be a well respected businessman until the day you are ‘accidently’ killed.
Threatening and powerful, the puppeteers who control the system, force everyone into these roles to make this world somewhat like a fairytale to them, a simple story. She doesn’t expect either of her friends to understand the way she does. Not after the day she watched her dad get run over. Not before that day either. She always wanted to destroy the system that forced fear into her parents eyes and made them hold each other at night, so scared of what was to come for them. Flora was scared.
She shakes her head. “You’ll have to see for yourself.”

Weeks pass after the end of school, and one day, everyone is called back. Flora sits down next to Lulu and Roy and listens to the professors as they explain that each class will have to go in separately and then come out separately once they’ve been assigned their jobs. They fidget nervously as they wait for the teachers to call the first class first, though Lulu and Roy are both much more calm.
“Stop worrying,” Roy says after he’s laughed at the creases on Flora’s forehead, “you’ll be fine. We all will be fine.”
“Class D, would you please gather yourself by the doors?”
Roy stands up and then disappears inside the testing room for the last time to receive the news. An hour later, “Class B, would you please gather yourself by the doors?”
Flora feels rooted in her spot. Her legs don’t want to move. She doesn’t want to move. Lulu smiles warmly at her and nudges her in the side. “Your time to shine!” she says something like that, and finally, Flora stands.
She gathers around the doors, her classmates from the years pressing in around her on all sides, whispers winding all the way through the crowd. She’s more scared than she’s ever been in her life, more scared then she was when she saw her dad get hit by the black van and hurled halfway down the street. No. She’s not scared. She’s terrified. 
The doors open and the students from Class D come out, some of them looking overly pleased with themselves, others of them in shocked silent that’s so eerie her skin starts to crawl. She scans the crowd looking for her friend. She spots Roy over everyone else, and even from here she can see the tears on his face. So confident, so enthusiastic, now wrecked with the news. They make eye contact and his shoulders shake, he looks like he’s going to collapse.
Panic grips her like a lion’s teeth around its kill. If Roy’s future is as awful as it looks, how much more so will her future be? Her breath comes quickly and her hands start to shake. Through those doors in a few moments, her death sentence awaits her.
The doors to the testing room open once more and suddenly she’s being pushed forward. In this crowd of bodies, she looks as far as she can into the room, at the board that will present their futures. The clock grins menacingly down at her from the wall, and all at once, she doesn’t think she can breathe anymore.
Their principal scans their faces, almost grimly and waves at the seats scattered throughout the room.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats.”