2025: Year 9 & 10 Category: Judges’ Choice
Test Conditions
by Chloe Duff, St Clare’s College
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Repeat. You’re okay.
Look at this analytically, yes?
Be normal. Be normal.
Exhale and look down at the paper. You have a pen; blue, ballpoint, close to running out of ink. Mikey’s pen; he gave it to you on Tuesday when the plastic shaft of yours cracked.
You have a three-page booklet of lined paper with instructions at the top of the first page. The words are not jumbled, they are not blurry, and they are not warping together into a mess of off-black printed ink. Be normal.
The room is silent, except for the blinds tapping against the window, and the teacher’s nails clicking against her keyboard, and the scratching of Lily’s pencil across the room, and the blood rushing in your ears, and the deafening sound of your own breathing. The room is silent. Be normal.
The tapping of your finger against the table is muffled by the white band-aid wrapped around it. The tapping of your heel against the floor is muffled by the new carpet. You’re okay.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat.
Repeat.
Pick up the pen. Close your eyes, breathe in; open, breathe out. Read the instructions.
Repeat.
Watch as Lily checks the smudged ink on her thigh and goes back to scratching away with her pencil.
Breathe. Breathe.
Place the ball of the pen on the paper.
Look at your scaffold.
Be normal.
Seven seconds (forty minutes?) and the teacher is tapping her plastic nail on your desk, extending her unprofessionally manicured hand for your paper. You look down at the paper, your scratchy blue ink, your smudged letters and haphazard spacing. Exhale, hand it over.
You’re okay.
The bell rings. Lily tugs her skirt down and joins the crush of students pushing out the door. You pack up your things, move slowly, breathe slowly, and keep your eyes unfocused on the carpet as you walk out the door.
Mikey is waiting in the corridor outside, laptop hugged to his chest, glancing down at you as you close the door. His voice is not sharp, yet it cuts through your mind like a papercut. “How was the test?”
Inhale. Exhale. Look up at him. Hand back the pen, manage a smile and let the lie scrape easily over your dry tongue.
“Fine.”
JUDGES’ COMMENTS
Every element of this story works together to evoke the experience of a student who faces learning challenges and must survive a test. It is a situation to which most readers can relate. The title, style, pace, sparing language and description, characterisation and theme are cleverly and succinctly combined to give the reader empathy with the main character. Although the test was clearly a trial for the central character, there is hope because they survive it!