"Congratulations, jackass, you just got us sued." My editor, Sharon, was standing in front of my desk. She was apparently not happy. I shrugged, slouching further down in my chair, trying to hide from her gigantic crazy eyes behind my computer. It was a white laptop with a sticker that said "This Machine Kills Yuppies" slapped over the corporate logo on back. She reached out with one of her freakish man-hands and slammed the screen shut. "Let me try this again. You just got us sued six times over." Sharon Sinclair was a six-foot-tall beast of a woman with a huge mane of wiry black and gray hair pulled back in a pony tail. I had every confidence that she could tear me in two and use my bloody carcass in some kinky hedonistic lesbian cult ritual or something. So I usually tried to choose my words with the appropriate care around her. "Jesus-fucking-Christ, I haven't even had my morning coffee yet, and my head's still reeling from the Louisville Slugger that pummeled it last night. So I really don't feel like dealing with whatever annoying hormonal episode you have going on here." She glared at me silently, watching me squirm a little before asking, "Are you done?" "Probably." "Good," she said with a suppressed grin as she took a seat next to me. "Because I just let you publicly accuse the mayor and the valley's most powerful corporations of conspiring to defraud the taxpayers. So what's your plan for keeping my ass off the firing line?" I tilted back in my chair and met Sharon's gaze. "Look, we knew we'd get a strong reaction. Let them sue. We have e-mails to back us up." "These legal briefings say your e-mails were forged," she responded, waving a thick stack of papers in my face. "Of course they're gonna say that. That's why I made sure to get corroboration. Abrasax confirmed that the e-mails between Dylan Maxwell and City Hall are legit. But you know all this, so I don't know why we're wasting time going over it again." How long did it probably take Sharon to confront the narrator about the situation?  A. almost immediately  B. not enough information  C. several hours  D. 1 week
A
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I was lost. As I sat parked at the old service station, I pulled out the maps and tried to do a little backtracking. It didn't take me long to figure out where I had made the wrong turn. I had tried following my memory instead of Luna's directions and wound up about eighty miles off course. My gas tank was pushing 'E' but fortunately the service station was open. When I stepped out of my Jeep, I could feel the soles of my boots melt on the asphalt. The heat coming off the cracked and pitted cement peeled off in waves that rolled out in every endless direction. The barren mountains in the distance looked unstable, like I was looking at them through a window pane slicked with olive oil. I slogged my way over to the gas pump and wrapped my shirt around the handle to keep my skin from burning against the desert-baked metal. The heat was so great I worried the fumes would ignite. A dirty round man stood in the shadowy doorway of the ramshackle service station and stared at me while he rubbed his hands inside an oily red rag. The oval name-patch stitched to his coveralls was loose at one end and curled like a leaf in the heat. His name was Jack. I topped off the tank and then walked over to him. "You work here?" I knew it was a stupid question the second it left my mouth. He and I were the only living things for fifty miles in any direction. Who the hell else would be working here? "Who the hell else would be working here?" he said. I shrugged my shoulders and pulled out my wallet. Jack wobbled inside behind a glass counter filled with everything from belt buckles to oil funnels. "That your momma's car?" he asked. It's impossible to tell what kind of psychological impact this heat would have on a man who lived out here alone, but I was sure it wasn't positive. Where is the narrator?  A. At a gas station in the desert.  B. At Luna's house.  C. not enough information  D. At his mother's house.
A
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Surely the best thing about colomba, the Easter equivalent to panettone, is the sugared, toasted almond topping that covers the whole thing and crumbles when you cut it, so you sort of have no choice but just to pick up the crusty sugary bits and eat those on their own. I’d always thought that colomba would make a very good baking project but was somewhat intimated by getting the right shape  — it’s vaguely in the shape of a dove, if you use your imagination — and texture — wonderfully soft, fluffy, sweet yeasted bread. I had attempted making panettone (this fig, walnut and date panettone) a few years ago with fair results — absolutely delicious results, actually, they were just not as fluffy and bouncy as expertly made ones from your favourite pastry shop where panettoni are hung upside-down to maintain their height and airiness. But when I came across the familiar brown and gold paper forms for making colomba at the supermarket, I thought I’m only ever going to get a chance to make this now! Like the panettone, I referred to my favourite baking book for Italian specialties, Carol Field’s The Italian Baker. Field recounts a bit of history behind the colomba, which I’m sure is little known to anyone these days. Colomba is a fixture at Easter tables all around Italy (and is often given as presents), even though it comes from the north of Italy, Pavia. It is one of those traditions that are now a given, where a slice of colomba, perhaps eaten with pieces of a cracked chocolate Easter egg and an espresso or a glass of dessert wine, is a welcome end to the meal (or indeed breakfast the next day). But the legend behind it is a medieval one and rather disturbing — maybe it was made up to encourage young girls to learn how to bake their own colomba (and make sure it was good) to get themselves out of sticky, undesirable situations. What did the narrator make?  A. Something savory  B. not enough information  C. Something sugared  D. Something sour

C
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