Text Leveling System

Three Black Swans

RDQ:	2653	Max Word/Sent	53	Total Words	3881		Diff Words	1135
Lex	1000	Ave Word/.Sent	10	Hi Freq occurs	2735	70.5%	Hi freq	462	40.7%
AR	6.1	Long Sentences	13.3	Low Freq occurs	349	9%	Low freq	251	22.1%

TUESDAY October
MISSY VIANELLO AND her mother were running errands. Mom was in line at the post office sending a package while Missy walked down the block to the dry cleaner's.
The front door was propped open. Missy entered a large hot space, full of clothing, empty of people. The old-fashioned floor fans rotated slowly on their heavy metal posts. A radio sat on a sorting table. It was small and black with a long cord, and probably as old as her mother. It was tuned to a talk station. A doctor was chatting excitedly about babies.
Missy did not care for talk shows. Politics and angry raised voices did not attract her. Gentler topics-gardens to visit; diseases to worry about-offered nothing to a sixteen-year-old.
On the counter sat a small bell for customers to ring. Like the swirling fans, it was something from a schoolroom in another century. Missy had the odd sensation that she had fallen out of her own time. She tapped the little bell, which made a pleasing musical ding.
Missy was mildly impatient. Usually the couple who ran the shop were so attentive.
The interview on the radio station continued. At first, the doctor's remarks stayed outside Missy, hanging there like the clean clothes dangling from ceiling racks. And then the meaning of his statements penetrated Missy's mind. If there had not been a counter separating customers from the workspace, Missy would have snatched up the radio and pressed it to her ear.
She who had never given a thought to babies, who wasn't interested in babysitting, who hadn't even met any infants lately-she was stunned by what the doctor was saying.
The fact that had kept Missy safe, the fact that had allowed Missy to laugh at her crazy guesses for the last few years-was that fact a lie?
This doctor is an expert, she thought. He knows what he's talking about. Or does he? Can I trust him?
A clerk she did not recognize hurried over, smiling, saying how are you, good to see you, but Missy, transfixed by the talk station, did not answer. The clerk took the small white ticket from Missy's hand and went to find the clothes.
The interview ended. A new voice discussed weather. Missy found herself holding a stack of neatly folded, plastic-wrapped sweaters. She handed over the cash and even managed to say thank you. She left the dry cleaner's. On the sidewalk, she could no longer hear the radio, but the words had come outside with her.
Missy Vianello had not fallen out of her own time. She had fallen out of her life.
WEDNESDAY The following day MISSY HAD NOT slept well. Every time she lay down, some internal engine propelled her back off the bed. Half the night, she stood in the dark, while the facts of her life sorted themselves like a pack of cards being dealt. In school, though, she was surprisingly alert. The lines from the radio vibrated in her head, and yet she was able to participate in class and do her work. She felt weirdly multiplied by the new information.
By the time it was third period and biology class had begun, Missy's energy was fading. Mrs. Stancil discussed fake science, describing a hoax in which the perpetrators aged bits of human skull and jawbone, buried the bone fragments and then arranged for them to be dug up. They convinced museums and anthropologists that these were the remains of an ancient humanoid. They called the "fossils" Piltdown Man and the world was enthralled by what seemed to be its new ancestor.
Maybe what Missy had heard on the radio was also pretend science. Maybe her new "fact" was as silly as Piltdown Man. Mrs. Stancil adored classroom discussion. She was delighted when Graham argued with her. "I love archaeology," he said. "I read about it all the time, and that hoax wouldn't work, Mrs. Stancil. You'd test the bones for fluorine, uranium and nitrogen. You'd know immediately how old those bones were."
"Now you would. But this was 1912," explained Mrs. Stancil. "Those testing techniques were unknown."
The class had only six weeks' experience with Mrs. Stancil, but they knew already that she preferred projects that were
"outside the box," and quickly tired of projects that were "in the box."
In Missy Vianello's mind, a hoax blossomed. She could see the entire hoax from start to finish. It would be cruel. But it would work. She said softly, "What hoax would you do, Mrs. Stancil, if you could pull one off? A science teacher would be so good at hoaxes. A scientist like you could offer a string of lies, but package them so believably that the public would accept your story as fact."
The kids were on board immediately. "Let's do a class hoax," said Anthony. "We could pretend that a lamb bone from somebody's dinner roast is the shin of a pterodactyl."
"And get very scientific about it," agreed Kelsey. "Buttress our claim with bone details, like porosity, and present the measurements of real pterodactyls, or pretend to, and establish that we have a match."
"I think the hoax should be more trendy," said Carlotta. "How about a fake alternative fuel for cars? We could print pages of chemical testing we haven't done, and convince people we can make fuel from, say, pond scum."
Mrs. Stancil was excited. "People! This is truly outside the box. If we format our project so that our research provides us with a deep understanding of the truth, it will be a fun approach. I like Carlotta's idea. Corn is being used for ethanol, so it's not outrageous that we too could create a vegetable fuel."
"That's not my kind of hoax," said Zach. "I'd rather have a murder victim and convince people it was suicide and get away with murder."
If Missy shouted her own idea out loud, the class would be impressed. But a hoax worked only when nobody suspected. Nobody, thought Missy, already feeling guilty; already aware that her hoax might destroy instead of reveal.
"I wouldn't actually have a corpse," explained Zach. "I'd just pretend to. I've seen at least a thousand TV shows with this plot, so I've pre-researched and I'm ready to go."
"Let's do hoaxes in groups," said Emily. "People who like bones can be in the bone group, people who like murder can be in the corpse group and people who like fuel can be in the pond scum group."
In science, what mattered was truth.
But in life? wondered Missy. What mattered most in life? EVENING
The same Wednesday
CLAIRE LINNEHAN WAS doing her homework.
Only six weeks into the school year, Claire loved all classes and all study. The textbooks still felt like treasures in which fascinating topics were waiting. Usually this feeling lasted through Thanksgiving. By December, when it got cold and dark early in the day, and she began hoping for snow and ski weekends and wanted to shop for more sweaters, the books felt used up; Claire would have mined the vein of gold that had been so promising and she'd be ready to move on.
Her cell phone rang. The ring tone was her cousin Missy's,
but Claire would have known who was calling anyway. She and Missy could practically read each other's minds. "Hi, Missy." Claire settled in for a long talk. She and her cousin texted on and off all day long, but also had to hear each other's voices at least once every twenty-four hours.
"Hey, Clairedy." Missy had a very chipper voice; very upbeat. People said that Missy and Claire sounded exactly alike, but Claire disagreed. Her own voice was slower and deeper. "Listen," said Missy. "I need an identical twin."
Claire laughed. "Even on the Internet, Missy, there aren't that many identical twins being auctioned off."
"In biology," said Missy, "we've been assigned to pull off a hoax."
"Like filming Bigfoot? Or finding Paleolithic writing on a stone in your backyard?"
"Exactly. Here's what I've decided for my hoax. Out of nowhere, like an asteroid in the night falling through my roof, I will suddenly meet my long-lost, totally unknown identical twin. Everybody will believe my hoax because I will bring my identical twin to school."
Claire was giggling now. She never giggled with anybody but Missy. "When I took biology," said Claire, who was a junior while Missy was a sophomore, "we learned facts. A hoax assignment is pointless. Guess what, Missy? This morning when Aiden and I happened to enter the building at the same time, he said hi to me. And then he smiled." Arriving at high school at the same moment as Aiden had not been accidental. Missy
had been part of the planning. Discussion of boys was a major portion of the cousins' nightly talks.
"Nobody cares about Aiden right now," said Missy. "We care only about my assignment. You have to be my identical twin, Claire."
There was a strong family resemblance between the cousins. When they were little, maybe seven or eight, Missy and Claire used to dress the same, wear their hair the same and loudly pretend to understand each other's thoughts and finish each other's sentences. "We're twins!" they would lie to anybody paying attention. People didn't fall for it, because Claire was taller and heavier, but the girls thought they had a great act. Their parents tired of it and put an end to the fake twin thing. Even now Claire's mother could get bent out of shape if she perceived Claire copying Missy or the other way around.
"There is a strong family resemblance," agreed Claire. "But I'd need plastic surgery to be a perfect match, even if I wanted to look exactly like you. I think you should have the surgery and look exactly like me instead."
"There isn't time for surgery," said Missy. "The project is due."
A phone call with Missy was relaxing. Claire wouldn't even know she was tense until she heard Missy's voice, felt her body soften. She could get so relaxed that if she was sprawled on the bed, she'd fall asleep, and Missy would yell into the phone, "Hey! Clairedy! Wake up!"
"Identical twins have to be identical," Claire pointed out.
"There's the problem that I am a year ahead of you in school, an A student, in six activities, on two teams, and planning to be a doctor, whereas you-I'm sorry to put this so bluntly are an average student with no activities except communicating and shopping."
They laughed. In fact the cousins were pretty similar. But with one cousin a sophomore and the other a junior, and living in different states with different curricula and exams Missy was in Connecticut while Claire was in New York-comparisons were iffy.
"You can dumb down, Claire," said Missy cheerfully. "Here's my plan. I go to school tomorrow sobbing and trembling and tell everybody that my missing identical twin has just shown up."
"Meaning me? Finding me makes you cry?"
"Okay, I'll clap my hands and dance in little circles." "Better," said Claire. "Now, where will you do this? Biology lab?"
"No, no. Our school-being superior to yours-has an in house television broadcast. I happen to be friends with the morning announcer. His sister is in my Language Arts class and I was over at their house once. I'll call Rick and regale him with my astonishing news, and arrange for him to interview me."
"They do interviews during your school announcements?" "They never have before, but they've never had a long-lost identical twin before. I can talk Rick into it. It's quite a story, you know. He'll be all over it. The thing is, Claire, I can't use
photographs of my identical twin. Anybody can show up with two photographs of herself and pretend that the picture on the left is her twin. You will be my living, breathing proof that I have an identical twin. You and I are going to have an identical twin debut."
With Missy, either in person or on the phone, Claire felt safer. The sensation was always present, and Claire could never quite get hold of it. Safer from what? But now the safe feeling drained away. "I don't think so, Missy."
Missy was not deflected, which was typical; she was a pit bull. "I saw a TV show once," said Missy, "where they found identical twins who had been separated at birth. The show brought them together for the first time when they were in their thirties. Can you imagine? These two men showed up wearing the same shirt, and here they had the same bowling score, and had gotten married the same month of the same year, and had even married women with the same first name. But they didn't know the other one existed. That's how bonded identical twins are."
Claire could not work up any interest in thirty-year-old men with identical bowling scores. "Missy, get real. I can't show up at your school in the morning. I have school of my own. I live twenty miles away. And I don't drive." Her parents had finally agreed that next spring she could get her driver's license. Sometimes Claire couldn't eat or read from the excitement of picturing herself in her own car, driving to her own destinations, the little plastic ID window in her wallet holding a license and a credit card for gas in the opposite slot.
But the thought of driving did not excite her this time. She sat down on her bed and pulled her feet up, as if nightmares under the bed might yank her down by the ankles.
Missy, who usually picked up any mood of her cousin's over the phone, did not notice anything. "Your father can drive you, Claire. Uncle Phil is always obedient to your wishes. School announcements are nice and early. They're over by seven fifty five so the first class can start at eight, but since your school starts at eight-thirty, you'll almost be back in time. Tell Uncle Phil I need help for one minute on a biology project. Come on, Clairedy. How many people get to be identical twins for a day?"
.
Becoming an identical twin sounded like quite a step to Claire. Like marriage, only more so.
What was an identical twin, anyway? At conception, it was a single, which then split in two. At birth, the babies had separate bodies and souls, yet they had once shared the exact same body. Or egg; Claire was a little vague. "Do fraternal twins instead," she suggested. "If your hoax is about fraternal twins, you can use anybody. Remember how in your kindergarten there were two sets of fraternal twins and nobody even believed they were related?"
"It wouldn't be fun with just anybody, Clairedy. It'll only be fun with you. And how exciting are fraternal twins, anyhow? People daydream of being identical twins."
"Speak for yourself," said Claire, whose daydreams involved Aiden, a wide assortment of other cute boys, and of course cars. "Anyway, there are flaws in your plan. What about your friends
who know me? I'm always at your sleepovers and I've gone to lots of school games with you."
"That was middle school. That was years ago. I haven't given a party in ages. Literally a thousand kids at my high school have never seen or heard of you. And back when they were coming to my parties, you and I didn't look this much alike."
That was true. Missy's low birth weight had resulted in years of illness and slow growth. But by ninth and now tenth grade, the puny cousin had caught up.
"You and I will wear exactly the same stuff for the interview," said Missy. "I'm thinking the pale pink cashmere sweaters we both got for our birthdays. Our hair is the same length now, and we'll wear the same color ponytail holders, and the pink and silver bead earrings we got at the mall a few weeks ago. When I instruct people to see identical twins, they will. That's the essence of a hoax. Obedience to the hoax master."
Claire felt unsettled. Missy seemed too enthusiastic. "Are you sure you understood the assignment, Missy? You're in high school biology, not summer camp."
"I admit I'm not following the guidelines. Mrs. Stancil wants us to be very scientific. Like if you're pretending your lamb bone is actually the shin of a pterodactyl-assuming pterodactyls have shins, which I don't happen to know-you need the right dimensions and bone porosity and all that. We're supposed to do our hoax in groups, but I got assigned to Carlotta's and I don't want to make pretend alternative fuels out of pond scum."
Claire couldn't laugh. The hoax disturbed her. But there was
an easy way out. "What do your mom and dad think of your plan?" she asked.
Claire adored her aunt and uncle. They were totally fun people. Former elementary school teachers, they lived in a welter of projects. Even now, when their daughter was sixteen, there was always some family project going on, like making bookmarks or birdhouses or even bricks. A visit to Uncle Matt and Aunt Kitty's was like changing planets. Claire's parents shared stuff like cooking and cleaning-"Let's vacuum!" her mom and dad would say to each other-but Missy's parents would say, "Let's weld our own garden sculpture!"
Missy lowered her voice. "I wasn't going to bring my parents into this."
"When identical twins are first revealed," said Claire, "viewers want to see how thrilled the parents are that their long-lost daughter is found." Claire was confused by her own statement. Under what circumstances could a daughter be lost?
"Why would the parents be thrilled?" countered Missy. "Obviously they didn't want you. If they had wanted you, they would have kept you. And here you are, like a lemon of a car, back from the garage again."
If twins were separated, Claire reasoned, then one of them had been adopted. Claire pictured a teen mother surrendering her babies. Perhaps with so many would-be parents in the world, the social worker had divided these pretend twins in order to satisfy two families instead of just one.
Claire imagined a heavy middle-aged woman, a Department of Social Services name tag pinned lopsidedly to her ill-fitting
shirt, holding a blanket-wrapped newborn in each arm, tossing one baby in one direction and the other baby in the opposite direction. "Good luck!" she called, making a quick entry in her handheld computer.
That would be the end of twins. Babies who had been conceived with a life companion-an in-house best friend, as it were-would grow up alone.
Would they feel the loss?
How could they? Those thirty-year-old men Missy had seen  on television hadn't known they had an identical sibling. And yet their bodies and lives had gone on behaving like twins, even to the point of bowling scores. Spooky.
Claire's mother and Missy's mom were sisters. The two families were close. Just about every Friday night either Claire stayed at Missy's house or Missy went to Claire's. Claire and her cousin were more intensely connected than most sisters she knew:
It was something she didn't talk about with her other friends. At age six or ten or twelve, it was okay for your cousin to show up now and then for a sleepover. But Claire Linnehan was nearly seventeen. At seventeen you did not look forward with longing to spending your Friday night with your cousin. A seventeen-year-old wanted parties and boys, movies and gangs of friends. Claire had those, but not on Fridays, which were Missy time.
For years, both sets of parents had been trying to dull the excessive friendship between the cousins. You don't need to show up weekly, they would say. How about once a month instead?
Claire could get clammy hands thinking about lasting four weeks without Missy. Maybe their parents were right. Maybe the degree of friendship they shared was a little off. Normal teenage girls did not consider a cousin's visit the most important event of the week. If Claire pretended to an entire high school that she was actually Missy's identical twin, it would be off the charts.
It was also the ultimate don't-we-look-alike? fantasy. Claire was attracted to that. And if Missy and I were identical twins, thought Claire, nobody would say it's weird that we need each other. They would say it's a biological imperative.
"Parents do pose a hoax problem," Missy admitted. "But I don't need to bother with details, Claire. People just have to believe me for a little while. They don't have to believe me forever. Biology is third period, so my hoax only has to last until ten-thirty."
"Short hoaxes are probably the best kind," agreed Claire. It could be fun just the kind of crazy thing she and her cousin would do. "Okay. Call me back if Rick says yes, and I'll work on Dad for a ride."
Missy never postponed a task. She was a full-speed person, which was the main reason her patents were not allowing her to drive any time soon. Missy did not slow down for corners.
She called Rick, who was startled to hear from her: he was a standout senior and she was an ordinary sophomore. They
were in no classes together. They knew each other because one day she was at his house doing homework with his younger sister Alaina and Rick had gotten Missy a soda out of his refrigerator. That was exaggerating. He had been getting himself a soda, and when Missy said she was thirsty, he silently delivered a can.
"Rick, you won't believe it!" cried Missy now. She ran her sentences together to give him less time to think. "The most amazing thing has happened! Oh, Rick, I'm so excited I'm ricocheting off the walls. I have the best news in the whole wide world and I have to share it with everybody. I think the way I want to announce this is, I want to be on TV with you in the morning."
"I don't have live guests, Missy. Or dead ones. I sit there and read announcements."
"This will boost your ratings."
"My ratings are one hundred percent. I'm on the air in every classroom every day."
Missy lowered her voice. She gasped for breath. "Rick, a girl got in touch with me. She found out that she was adopted. She's my twin." Missy let herself sob. "And what's truly unbelievable, and shocking, and I don't even know how to think about it yet-we are identical. When we met-oh, Rick!-it was like seeing myself walk toward me. She's me. I'm her."
"You are a separated twin?" said Rick. "I can't even picture that. Missy, you're so beautiful. There are two of you? What did your mother and father say? I mean, if your twin is adopted, you must be adopted, too."

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: Many difficult words

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Some Long/Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Several Implications

Concepts: Abstract/Complex Social

Chapters

Sequence of Events: Mostly chronological

Mature Concepts: With some uncommon experiences

Features

Clear cause/effect

Complex plot

Topic

Mystery

Appearances

Tricks

Twins

*Family & Friends

Adoption

Parents

Relationships

Low Frequency Words

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average	believably	biological	biology	bluntly
buttress	cashmere	chemical	chipper	circumstances
claire's	clairedy	cleaner's	communicating	companion
comparisons	conceived	conception	convinced	corpse
countered	cousin's	cousins	cruel	curricula
customers	dangling	dealt	debut	dimensions
disagreed	discussion	diseases	disturbed	earrings
elementary	enthralled	enthusiastic	errands	essence
ethanol	exaggerating	excessive	excitedly	fascinating
fashioned	filming	fitting	flaws	fluorine
former	fridays	fuel	fuels	gangs
gentler	giggling	graham	growth	guilty
handheld	heavier	hoax	hoaxes	holders
hoping	humanoid	id	iffy	illness
imagined	immediately	impatient	imperative	impressed
infants	instruct	intensely	internal	internet
interview	interviews	involved	jawbone	junior
kelsey	kindergarten	language	license	linnehan
literally	longing	lopsidedly	lowered	major
marriage	mattered	measurements	mildly	mined
missy	missy's	multiplied	murder	museums
musical	newborn	nightly	nightmares	ninth
nitrogen	nowhere	obedience	obedient	opposite
ordinary	outrageous	paleolithic	participate	patents
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pictured	picturing	piltdown	pleasing	pointless
politics	porosity	portion	pose	postponed
practically	preferred	project	projects	propelled
propped	provides	pterodactyl	pterodactyls	public
puny	racks	ratings	reasoned	recognize
refrigerator	regale	related	research	researched
resemblance	resulted	reveal	revealed	ricocheting
rotated	schoolroom	science	scientific	scientist
sculpture	scum	senior	sensation	separate
separated	separating	services	shared	shins
shown	sibling	similar	sleepover	snatched
social	soften	sophomore	souls	spending
sprawled	stancil	startled	statement	statements
stunned	suicide	superior	surgery	surprisingly
surrendering	suspected	sweaters	swirling	techniques
thirties	topics	transfixed	trendy	truly
tuned	typical	ultimate	unbelievable	understanding
unknown	unsettled	upbeat	uranium	vacuum
vague	vein	vianello	vianello's	viewers
wallet	weird	weirdly	weld	welter
whereas	workspace	yank	younger	zach