(Still watching TV, or possibly staring off into space in its general direction.)

They don't seem to have tried to get her to type at all; some of the exercises when they were trying to get her to be able to use writing implements involved tracing letters in their alphabet, but that wasn't a focus, most of them used shapes or simple drawings. When they tried to teach her to read, they didn't get that far; they started by trying to get her to identify letters by pointing, and according to their notes she wasn't able to do it reliably, even after several months of trying.

...not that it would not be more than understandable and legitimate to hide things from or deceive 'them' without any further reason, but do the records have anything that would be a more specific reason to hide reading abilities? Would showing them have been dangerous or led to negative consequences in some way?

Nothing obvious. Possibly there'd be something in one of the other kids' records.

She'll look at general records first - policies, scheduling...

They do demand more academic work of children who are more able to do it.

She's assuming even worse meanings to 'demand' than the general ones. Should she be reading the same into 'academic work'?

Not especially, actually. There are laws about what benchmarks children are expected to meet, when they can; they don't seem to care about surpassing that standard.

Alright. And, she thinks she knows enough that there's not current call to be looking at should-be-warded records of people who aren't here in front of her.

It looks like she might be wary of reading if she knows they'll see her doing it (with good reason...). Which would be easier to arrange something for if they could find books in her language...

But, as the meanwhile is -

She consults silently with Shen again. (Denice has seemed to be doing well enough, acutely, and time without watchers in the room is an important thing, and knowing she may leave it is also.)

"We're going to go do some things out of this room for a little. You're welcome to stay here, or to also look around the house, if you want. If you need us again, that button on the remote will call us back." (House is already warded - for children, but there's no reason it should be dangerous to Denice.)

Does she respond in any way?

She looks up, a second after Heria starts talking, and nods slightly and goes back to watching the TV when she's done.

They leave.

She stays on the couch for a while - about fifteen minutes - in case this is a test, and then she gets up to check out the room's exits.

The room has one of those! It leads out into an entrance-hall type thing. 

...yeah, no, she's not going out there.

Anything else interesting in the room?

Aside from the couch, chairs, and wallscreen, there's bookshelves with spines in languages she won't recognize, drawers she won't be able to open, decorations on the walls and some of the shelves. One corner has various children's toys and games.  

She doesn't try to open the drawers, or touch the books. She does take a closer look at the toys.

There's a variety. Dolls of various sorts, some costumes, little tool and craft kits, some table games and some floor games, construction sets, what she may or may not recognize as little spaceships and little flying-transport looking things. 

Nothing very interesting, and anyway she'll probably be introduced to them soon enough. (...probably. These adults are very strange.)

Does this room have any windows?

It does. Large windows, with curtains that are currently open.

And what's outside?

More houses. Apartment building-looking, if she know what that looks like. A street in between. No cars anywhere to be seen. 

...that's new. That's very new. And a little alarming. She stays there, watching.

If she keeps watching, she might see people! Three adults and a kid go into one of the buildings together. A teenage-looking person comes out of one of the other ones. They have an unfamiliar-to-her square thing slung over their back. They take it off, step onto it, and fly away on it.

The TV coming to the end of one show and beginning another startles her out of her daze, after a while. She considers her situation: this isn't the kind of thing it'll be hard to refuse, if they try to use it to manipulate her, it's safe enough that way. But it is something she wants to keep being able to do - people, gosh, outside people, people who are probably not staff, and they're just right there somehow - and there's a chance they'll take it away just on general principle, if they see that she cares about it. On the other hand, there's not a huge risk of that, and if she limits herself to only watching out the window when they can't see her, that's almost as bad as not being able to do it at all, probably. (Surely they aren't going to leave her alone like this on a regular basis; it doesn't even occur to her to consider that they might.) So the answer is pretty straightforward.

She goes and gets the food bar, quickly finishes the rest of it, and finds somewhere comfortable to sit and people-watch.

Then she will see some more people. 

People come in down the street and enter buildings, or exit buildings and walk away down the street. Some kids meet up outside and race around the street on wheeled contraptions. Two people appear out of nowhere outside of one of the buildings, have what looks like an argument, then go inside.