Text Leveling System

The Egypt Game

RDQ:	2230	Max Word/Sent	63	Total Words	3599		Diff Words	1038
Lex	930	Ave Word/.Sent	15	Hi Freq occurs	2632	73.1%	Hi freq	401	38.6%
AR	5.3	Long Sentences	30.3	Low Freq occurs	275	7.6%	Low freq	218	21%

The Discovery of Egypt NOT LONG AGO IN A LARGE UNIVERSITY TOWN IN California, on a street called Orchard Avenue, a
strange old man ran a dusty shabby store. Above the dirty show windows a faded peeling sign said:
A-Z ANTIQUES CURIOS USED MERCHANDISE:
Nobody knew for sure what the A-Z meant. Perhaps it, referred to the fact that all sorts of strange things-everything from A to Z-were sold in the store. Or perhaps it had something to do with the owner's name. However, no one seemed to know for sure what his name actually was. It was all part of a
mysterious uncertainty about even the smallest item of public information about the old man. Nobody seemed certain, for instance, just why he was known as the Professor.
The neighborhood surrounding the Professor's store was made up of inexpensive apartment houses, little family-owned shops, and small, aging homes. The people of the area, many of whom had some connection with the university, could trace their ancestors to every continent, and just about every country in the world.
There were dozens of children in the neighborhood; boys and girls of every size and style and color, some of whom could speak more than one language when they wanted to. But in their schools and on the streets they all seemed to speak the same language and to have a number of things in common. And one of the things they had in common, at that time, was a vague and mysterious fear of the old man called the Professor.
just what was so dangerous about the Professor was uncertain, like everything else about him, but his appearance undoubtedly had something to do with the rumors. He was tall and bent and his thin beard straggled up his cheeks like dry moss on gray rocks. His eyes were dark and expressionless, and set so deep under heavy brows that from a distance they looked like dark empty holes. And from a distance was the
only way that most of the children of Orchard Avenue cared to see them. The Professor lived somewhere at the back of his dingy store, and when he came out to stand in the sun in his doorway, smaller children would cross the street if they had to walk by.
Now and then, older and braver boys, inspired by the old man's strangeness, would dare each other into an attempt to tease or torment him-but not for long. Their absolute failure to get any sort of a reaction from their victim was not only discouraging, it was weird enough to spoil the fun for even the bravest of bullies.
Since there were several antique stores in the area to draw the buyers, the Professor seemed to do a fairly good business with out-of-town collectors; but his local trade was very small. It was said that he sold items that were used, but not antique, very cheaply, but even for grown-ups the prospect of a bargain was often not enough to offset the discomfort of the old man's stony stare.
It was one day early in a recent September that the Professor happened to be the only witness to the very . beginning of the Egypt Game. He had been looking for something in a seldom used storeroom at the back of his shop, when a slight noise drew him to a window. He lifted a gunnysack curtain, rubbed a peephole in the thick coating of dirt, and peered through. Outside that particular window was a small storage
yard surrounded by a high board fence. It had been years since the Professor had made any use of the area, and the weed-grown yard and open lean-to shed were empty except for a few pieces of forgotten junk. But as the old man peered through his dirty window, two girls were pulling a much smaller boy through a hole in the fence.
The Professor had seen both of the girls before. They were about the same age and size, perhaps eleven or twelve years old. The one who was tugging at the little boy's leg was thin and palely blond, and her hair was arranged in a straggly pile on the top of her head. Her high cheekbones and short nose were faintly spattered with freckles and there was a strange droopy look to her eyes. The old man recalled that she had been in his store not long before, and along with some other improbable information she had disclosed that her name was April.
The other girl, who had the little boy by the shoulders, was African American, as was the little boy himself. A similarity in their pert features and slender arching eyebrows indicated that they were probably brother and sister. The Professor had seen them pass his store many times and knew that they were residents of the neighborhood.
The fence that surrounded the storage yard was high and strong and topped by strands of barbed
wire, but one thin plank had come loose so that it was possible to swing it to one side. Both the girls were very slender and they had apparently squeezed through without much trouble, but the boy was causing a problem. He was only about four years old but he was sturdily built; moreover, he was clutching a large stuffed toy to his chest with both arms. He paid not the slightest attention to the demands of the two girls that he, "Turn loose of that thing for just a minute, can't you?" and, "Let me hold Security for you just till you get through, Marshall." Marshall remained very calm and patient, but his grip on his toy didn't relax for a second.
When the little boy and his huge plush octopus at last popped free into the yard, the girls turned to inspect their discovery. Their eyes flew over the broken birdbath, the crumbling statue of Diana the Huntress, and the stack of fancy wooden porch pillars, and came to rest on something in the lean-to shack. It was a cracked and chipped plaster reproduction of the famous bust of Nefertiti. The two girls stared at it for a long breathless moment and then they turned and looked at each other. They didn't say a word, but with widening eyes and small taut smiles they sent a charge of excitement dancing between them like a crackle of electricity.
The customer, an antique dealer from San Fran-
cisco, was stirring restlessly in the main room of the store. Hearing him, the Professor was reminded of his errand. He replaced the sacking curtain and left the storeroom. It was more than an hour later that he remembered the children and returned to the peephole in the dirty window.
There had been some changes made in the storage yard. Some of the ornate old porch pillars had been propped up around the lean-to so that they seemed to be supporting its sagging tin roof; the statue of Diana had been moved into position near this improvised temple; and in the place of honor at the back and center of the shed, the bust of Nefertiti was enthroned in the broken birdbath. The little boy was playing quietly with his octopus on the floor of the shed and the two girls were busily pulling the tall dry weeds that choked the yard, and stacking them in a pile near the fence.
"Look, Melanie," the girl named April said. She displayed a prickly bouquet of thistle blossoms. "Neat!" Melanie nodded enthusiastically. "Lotus blossoms?"
April considered her uninviting bouquet with new appreciation. "Yeah," she agreed. "Lotus blossoms." Melanie had another inspiration. She stood up, dumping her lap full of weeds, and reached for the blossoms-gingerly because of the prickles. Holding
them at arm's length, she announced dramatically, "The Sacred Flower of Egypt." Then she paced with dignity to the birdbath and with a curtsy presented them to Nefertiti.
April had followed, watching approvingly, but now she suddenly objected. "No! Like this," she said. Taking the thistle flowers, she dropped to her knees and bent low before the birdbath. Then she crawled backward out of the lean-to. "Neat," Melanie said, and, taking the flowers back, she repeated the ritual, adding another refinement by tapping her forehead to the floor three times. April gave her stamp of approval to this latest innovation by trying it out herself, doing the forehead taps very slowly and dramatically. Then the two girls went back to their weed pulling, leaving the thistles before the altar of Nefertiti.
A few moments later the blond girl sat back suddenly on her heels and clapped a hand to her right eye. When she took it away the Professor, peering through his spy hole, noticed that the eye had lost its strange droopy appearance. "Melanie," April said. "They're gone. I've lost my eyelashes."
At about that point, a customer, entering the Professor's store, forced him to leave his vantage point at the dirty window. So he missed the frantic search that followed. He also missed the indignant scolding when the girls discovered that April's false eye-
lashes had fallen before the altar of Nefertiti, where Marshall had found them and quietly beautified one of the button eyes of his octopus.
When the Professor finally was free to return to his peephole the children had gone home, leaving the storage yard almost free from weeds, and a thistle blossom offering before the birdbath.
Enter April
HER NAME WAS APRIL. HALL, BUT SHE OFTEN CALLED herself April Dawn. Exactly one month before the Egypt Game began in the Professor's backyard she had come, very reluctantly, to live in the shabby splendor of an old California-Spanish apartment house called the Casa Rosada. She came because she had been sent away by Dorothea, her beautiful and glamorous mother, to live with a grandmother she hardly knew, and who wore her gray hair in a bun on the back of her head. None of April and Dorothea's Hollywood friends ever had gray hair, except the kind you have on purpose, no matter how old they got otherwise.
It had been on that very first day, early in August, that April and the Professor first met. On that first morning of her new life April had spent half an hour
arranging her limp blond hair in a high upsweep, such as Dorothea sometimes wore. It was hard work, much harder than it looked when Dorothea did it. As she pinned and repinned, April told herself with righteous bitterness that Caroline was sure to make her take it all down again anyway, and all her hard work would be for nothing.
But if her grandmother noticed the hairdo, she said nothing about it at the breakfast table. She didn't even seem to notice how quiet and depressed April was and try to cheer her up with questions and conversation. April decided that Caroline must be the uninterested kind of person who didn't notice much of anything. Well, that was good. Because, for the short while she was here, April intended to go right on leading the kind of life she was used to, and if Caroline didn't even notice-well, at least there wouldn't be any trouble. All through breakfast Caroline went on saying almost nothing, but finally when she was almost through she did say that she wouldn't mind being called Grandma or even Grannie, if April liked.
"Oh, I guess I'll just go on calling you Caroline," April said. And then with pointed sweetness she added, "That is, unless you'd rather I didn't." Dorothea always called her Caroline instead of Mother, so what was wrong with Caroline instead of Grandmother? Of course, Caroline wasn't Dorothea's mother. She was the mother of April's father, who had died in an accident before April even had a chance to get to know him.
Nothing more was said until Caroline began to clear the table. Then she said, "I've arranged for you to have lunch with Mrs. Ross and her children on the second floor. She said she'd send Melanie, her little girl, up for you about twelve o'clock. The rest of the time you'll be more or less on your own, but I'd appreciate it if you'd let Mrs. Ross know if you leave the building. just tell her where you're going and how soon you'll be back."
"I could get my own lunch," April said. "I cooked a lot at home."
"I know," Caroline said, "but I've made this arrangement with Mrs. Ross, so we'll try it for a while, just till school starts. The Rosses are very nice people. Mrs. Ross teaches school and her husband is a graduate student at the university. Their little girl is about your age, and they have a boy about four. They're African Americans," she added.
April shrugged. "Dorothea and I know a lot of black people. There are a lot of black people in show business."
Caroline smiled. "I see," she said. "Tell me, April, what do you think of the Casa Rosada?"
"The what?" April said.
"The Casa Rosada, this apartment house."
"Oh." April repeated her shrug. "It's okay." Actually it had been a pleasant surprise-that is, it would have been if she'd been in the mood for pleasant surprises. The last time she'd visited Caroline, she'd lived in a tiny supermodern apartment, like a cell, only with paintings. The Casa Rosada was very different. Somehow it made April think of Hollywood and home. It was very Spanishy-looking with great thick walls, arched doorways, fancy iron grillwork, stained glass panels in the windows and tile floors in the lobby. Outside it was painted pink.
Caroline smiled her small prim smile. "Mr. Ross calls it the Petrified Birthday Cake, and I'm afraid that's a pretty good description. It must have been quite the thing when it was built back in the twenties. Of course, it's terribly run down now, but the apartments are roomy. It's so hard to find a modern place with two bedrooms that's not awfully expensive."
It hadn't occurred to April that Caroline had moved because of her-so she could have a bedroom of her own. She knew she ought to feel grateful, but for some reason what she really felt was angry. What made Caroline think that April was going to be with her long enough for it to make any difference whether she had a room of her own or not? Dorothea had promised it would only be for a little while. Only until
Nick, Dorothea's agent and good friend, had put April on the bus the morning before, they had each slipped her some money. It added up to quite a bit more than April was used to having all at once, and she wanted to make some purchases before Caroline found out about it. Not that she really thought that Caroline would take the money away, but it would be just like a grandmother to insist that it be spent on something "sensible" like new shoes or a school dress.
A few minutes later April was taking the old-fashioned elevator, with its door like a folding iron fence, down to the lobby. It wasn't until she was out on the sidewalk that she remembered what Caroline had said about reporting to Mrs. Ross before she left the building. She paused long enough to decide that reporting wouldn't be possible until that afternoon. After all, Caroline hadn't even told her where the Rosses lived, at least not exactly. With that settled to her satisfaction she went on up the street.
The girl in the drugstore looked surprised, but she didn't make too much of a big deal out of April's purchases. When she got out the false eyelashes, she did ask if they were to be a present for someone. But when April made her smile poisonously sweet and said, "Oh no," she seemed to get the point and stopped asking questions. On the way home April decided that since there was still plenty of time before
twelve o'clock, she might as well explore the store she had seen from the balcony.
The store was called A-Z, and its dusty show windows were crammed with a weird clutter of old and exotic-looking objects-huge bronze oriental vases next to some beat-up old pots and pans. An old fashioned crank telephone, a primitive-looking wooden mask and a treadle sewing machine. Two kerosene lamps and a huge broad-bladed knife with a carved ivory handle. April felt a tiny tingle of excitement. She always felt that way about old stuff. It had been one of the few things that she and Dorothea didn't agree on. Dorothea always said, "I'll take mine new and shiny."
It was dusky inside the store after the outdoor brightness. There didn't seem to be any clerks at all. Not that it mattered, because April was only looking. She squatted down in front of a glass case full of small objects: vases and jars, some partly cracked or broken, crudely made jewelry and tiny statues. All of it looked terribly ancient and interesting. She was pressing her nose to the glass when suddenly she knew she was being watched.
An old man was leaning over the counter right above her head. "Oh hello," April said and went on looking at a tiny statue with broad shoulders, short legs and a hole in the top of its head. It looked almost Egyptian and April had always been especially inter-
ested in Egyptian stuff. After a moment she looked up again and the man was still there. "What's that?" she asked, pointing to the tiny figure.
"That is a pre-Columbian burial figure. It was made in Mexico about two thousand years ago." The old man's voice was slow and rusty.
April looked up again quickly. "Two thousand you're kidding," she said. But on second glance she was sure he wasn't. He wasn't kidding and he wasn't quite like anyone she'd ever seen before. He had a
strange skimpy-looking little beard and his eyes were deep set and as blank as an empty well. He said nothing more, and not by so much as a flicker did his face reveal what he was thinking.
April was impressed. A deadpan was something she'd cultivated herself, and she knew from experience that such a perfect one was not easily come by. "I mean," she said with respectful caution, "is it really that old?"
The old man only tilted his stone face downward
in a stiff nod. April went back to studying the objects in the case, but now her interest was divided. The old man was almost as unusual as the strange things behind the dusty glass. In a few moments she stood up and smiled at him. It was a real smile, small and quick, not the gooey kind she usually used on grownups. Somehow she had a notion he wouldn't fool easily.
"My name is April Hall," she said. "I've just come to live in the apartment house next door, with my grandmother. I used to live in Hollywood with my mother." She paused. For a moment it looked as if the old man wasn't going to answer at all, but at last his craggy face cracked enough to allow the escape of two small words, "I see."
April regarded him with grudging admiration. It usually wasn't very hard to pick the real meaning out of things people said, if you watched them closely. But this one wasn't going to be easy. The "I see" said nothing at all. It wasn't friendly, or angry, or curious, or even bored. In fact, there was something about the absolute nothingness behind it that was a little bit frightening, like putting out your hand to touch something that wasn't really there. April began to chatter a little nervously. "I'm a nut about things like that." She motioned towards the case. "I'm always reading about ancient times and stuff like that. You know, Babylonia and Egypt and Greece and China.
It's kind of a hobby of mine. As a matter of fact, I'm even planning to be an archaeologist when I grow up. Some people think that's a pretty kooky ambition for a girl-but I like it. You see, I have this theory about how I was a high priestess once, in an earlier reincarnation. Do you think that's possible?"
"Possible?" The old man's voice quavered the word into a whole flock of syllables. "Many things are possible."
"That's what I think, too. A lot of people don't think so, though. When I told Nick-he's my mother's agent-about the high priestess thing he just laughed. He said, `I don't know about those other reincarnations, kiddo, but in this one you're a nut.' "
Before the old man could answer, if he was going to, a couple of ladies breezed in the doorway. Of course, they interrupted right away when they saw that April was just a kid.
As she drifted out the door and back to the Casa Rosada, April wondered why she'd gabbed so much. It wasn't really like her. She'd started out just trying to get the old man to talk and then somehow she couldn't quit. It was almost as if the old man's deadly silence was a dangerous dark hole that had to be filled up quickly with lots of words.

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: Many difficult words

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Many Long Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Several Implications

Complexity: Several unrelated ideas

Concepts: Concrete/Simple Social

Chapters

Features

Character traits

Simple Plot

Topic

Mystery

Games

Neighborhood

Imagination

*Entertainment & Fun

*Family & Friends

Relationships

Low Frequency Words

absolute	admiration	agent	aging	altar
ambition	ancestors	announced	antique	antiques
apparently	appreciate	appreciation	approval	approvingly
archaeologist	arched	arching	balcony	bargain
beautified	bitterness	bouquet	breathless	breezed
burial	busily	buyers	caution	cheekbones
collectors	conversation	craggy	crudely	cultivated
curios	curious	curtain	curtsy	deadpan
depressed	dignity	dingy	disclosed	discomfort
dramatically	dusky	egyptian	electricity	elevator
enthroned	enthusiastically	errand	ested	exotic
expressionless	fashioned	features	frantic	freckles
frightening	gabbed	gingerly	glamorous	glance
gooey	graduate	grannie	grateful	grillwork
grudging	gunnysack	honor	huntress	impressed
improbable	improvised	indicated	indignant	inexpensive
innovation	inspiration	inspired	instance	intended
inter	interrupted	ivory	jewelry	kerosene
kiddo	kooky	ladies	language	lashes
lobby	lotus	marshall	mattered	melanie
merchandise	moments	moreover	motioned	mysterious
nefertiti	neighborhood	nervously	nothingness	notion
objected	objects	occurred	offset	orchard
oriental	ornate	otherwise	ought	paced
palely	panels	particular	patient	paused
peephole	peered	peering	pert	petrified
pillars	plank	plaster	pleasant	plush
poisonously	presented	prickles	prickly	priestess
primitive	professor's	propped	prospect	public
purchases	purpose	quavered	recent	referred
refinement	regarded	reincarnation	reincarnations	reluctantly
repinned	reproduction	residents	respectful	restlessly
reveal	righteous	ritual	rosada	rosses
rumors	sacking	sacred	sagging	satisfaction
security	seldom	sensible	shrug	shrugged
skimpy	slender	spanishy	spattered	splendor
squatted	statue	statues	stirring	stony
storage	storeroom	straggled	straggly	strands
strangeness	sturdily	supermodern	surrounded	surrounding
sweetness	syllables	taut	terribly	theory
thistle	thistles	tilted	tingle	torment
towards	treadle	twenties	uncertain	uncertainty
undoubtedly	uninterested	uninviting	upsweep	vague
vantage	weird	witness