Turn 22 of 26

Priya answers #2 and sounds the same as you and she giggles-snorts due to it as everyone giggle-snorts due to the voice. Soon, everyone else answer a question with the same voice and giggle-snort coming from them first and then everyone else after. Soon you all leave and head to the event building for a math internship event. You separate into a group with Ruth, Peggy and Penelope.

Priya stands for problem two and delivers it in the identical wrecked voice, and the giggle-snort starts with her and rolls through the tiered rows like dominoes — thirty girls laughing at thirty identical voices, until Dr. Ambrose taps the board and it dies to silence again. But it keeps happening. Trudy answers problem four and sounds like you; a low-pigtailed girl in the back answers problem seven and sounds like Ruth; every single girl is called up eventually, and every answer comes out of the same metal-ground lisp, and every first snort sets the whole room off behind it. By problem twenty the class has become a rhythm: answer, snort, wave of giggles, tap of the chalk, silence. You take your turn twice more, and each time your own voice delights you the way it would delight anyone hearing a perfectly pitched impression of a nerd.

When the last problem is checked, Dr. Ambrose sets down the chalk, looks over the thirty of you with that unreadable machine-watcher's expression, and says only, "Event building. Six o'clock. You're expected." Then he's gone, and no one wonders what he means, because you all already know: tonight is the math internship event, and the class is going together.

The sun is low when thirty cardigans cross the quad toward the event building, lisping happily, comparing rubber bands on the way. Inside, a banner reads ANNUAL MATH INTERNSHIP RECEPTION over a table of punch and cookies, and a handful of professionals in blazers stand waiting with clipboards — recruiters, apparently, though something about how they look at the thirty of you arriving in unison feels oddly like an inspection. Before you can drift, the crowd of girls divides itself smoothly around you, and you find you've been separated into a small group: Ruth on one side of you, and on the other two girls you know from the class — Peggy, round-faced with her tag stitched in green thread, and Penelope, tall for one of you, with her pigtails braided higher than anyone's.

"Thith ith the good group," Peggy lisps, snorting, and Penelope nods so hard her glasses slip.

"They pair uth with internshipth by groupth of four," Penelope whistles through her wire. "Ruth already knowth which one we're getting. She alwayth knowth." Ruth smiles at you, proprietary and pleased, and pats your soft arm, and a recruiter with a clipboard is already walking toward your little group with her pen uncapped, and the knocking thing under the warmth hammers once, hard, at the word pair.