“Officer Miyamoto told me the high score was 77.8, but a 45 passes,” said Jim Brightest as he walked through the morning fog toward the BART station.
“Did she give you any frame of reference for that, whatsoever?” asked his friend, Devonte Best. They were on their way to the police station again, this time to take a written examination.
“No. She told me if I couldn’t pass I didn’t deserve to be a police officer, which seems kind of self-evident.”
“Not the most enthusiastic to lend a hand, that Officer Miyamoto. I guess desk duty does that to you.”
“Maybe it’s just that she only has one hand.”
“Really?”
“Ya, she told me she lost it breaking up a brawl at a Raiders game, some lunatic’s spiked shoulder pads stabbed her and gave her sepsis, they had to amputate. But because there were so many idiots wearing spiked shoulder pads, they never could find out exactly who did it. Goddamn, there are so many idiots at Raider games.”
“Says the man who’s never stopped rooting for the Lions, not even when they managed to not win literally every single game they played.”
Jim stepped through the BART barrier in silence, and didn’t speak to Devonte again until the train came up on the other side. Even then, he was quiet. “You know, I can barely think of the number 16 without crying.”
“Dude, I’m sorry. Like, actually. I made you feel bad right before this really important test.”
“Naw, I’m just fucking with you. Gets me ready for tests.”
“You’re actually the worst person.”
They walked into the lobby of Oakland Police Headquarters together, got sent upstairs together, sat outside the examiner’s door together. The building was indistinguishable from any other office, except for the fact that there was a massive, transparent gun safe right next to the door marked “Test Room.”
A mountain lion of a woman, surprisingly small and startlingly powerful, with a military buzzcut that she kept despite (or perhaps to spite) the fact that it was a beacon for unwanted attention from lesbians whenever she went to a bar with her colleagues, Captain Elisa Miyamoto had worked for the Oakland Police for nearly 20 years. She and her husband Shaun O’Nora owned RolledOak, the hipster rebranding of his family’s bowling alley and roller rink. (“The First Integrated Roller Alley in Oakland, Since 1932”) And since she had received a debilitating hand injury in the line of duty, she had insisted on continuing to work as a police officer, a job which she had sacrificed so much to get. She was assigned to head up recruitment and evaluation, a long way from the tenacious beat work and crime-reducing relationships that had seen her promoted all the way to being the first Asian-American Captain in the Oakland Police.
Since there were so many officers in the field, and since she could do her job mostly from behind a desk, she had assigned herself test proctoring duties. Today, only two candidates had showed up on time to the morning session to take the Police Officer Standards and Training test.
“Today, gentlemen, I have the distinct pleasure of offering you this POST test. I hope that you will show your aptitude for the potential for police officer training. There are multiple choice questions, in Spelling, Reading Comprehension, Vocabulary, Clarity, and CLOZE.”
Devonte raised his hand.
“Yes, sir?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. Clothes?
“Ah, no. C-L-O-Z-E. Context evaluation. Anyway, as I was saying, you’ll have two and a half hours. The test begins when you sit down at your station over here.” She gestured to a bank of computers. “The first section should take you thirty minutes. Find your name. Good luck.” She gestured over to a bank of about ten computers. Four of them were labeled with names.
Devonte and Jim walked over, sat down, and began to read the test. It reminded Jim immediately of the MME, the state standardized test he had taken back in seventh grade at Amelia Earhart Elementary-Middle in Southwest Detroit.
