Henderson leaned forward. "A Band 9 candidate doesn't say 'I utilized a vessel to traverse the aquatic expanse.' They say, 'I took a boat across the lake,' but they might add that the water was 'remarkably calm' or the journey was 'surprisingly seamless.' They use and natural phrasing ."

Mr. Henderson stopped him with a raised hand. "Elias, you sound like a broken dictionary. You’re using 'secrets' that are actually sabotaging you." Elias blinked, confused. "But these are Band 9 words!"

The library was silent, save for the frantic scratching of Elias’s pen. Before him lay a mountain of high-level word lists titled He had spent months memorizing "sesquipedalian," "recalcitrant," and "plethora," convinced that the secret to the elusive Band 9 was simply to sound like a 19th-century philosopher.