His blue eyes, which match mine, ping-pong around the room before landing on me. “Shh … you don’t need to be so loud.” He smooths his hand over the top of his mostly bald head, like I ruffled his feathers, what few he has left.
“Let’s just go, dear.” My mom reaches for my hand.
I jerk away.
“Swayze.”
As if giving me such a stupid name wasn’t enough, she has to draw it out. “Swaaayzeee.” Who wants a name that rhymes with lazy and crazy?
“Well, you said you can’t hear me when I talk to my feet. Can you hear me now?!”
They hear me. The guy who tested me peeks his head out the door, squinting at me. He hears me too. I can’t find my inside voice. Something has tripped my volume and it’s stuck on playground voice.
“Potty is what toddlers do. I’m not a toddler! I’m eleven. And I know stuff that other eleven-year-olds don’t know. So what? That doesn’t mean something is wrong with me. You keep bringing me to places like this to take stupid tests and sit in stinky waiting rooms with weird kids who have crazy names and like to chant unsolvable riddles, pull their hair, and pick their noses!”
Balling my hands, I resist the rare urge to pull my own hair. My parents each take one of my arms and drag me out of the office. Just before we reach the door, I give Nevaeh a small grimace of apology. She slides her finger back into her nose.
“Am I a genius yet?” I ask in a much calmer voice as my parents rush me to the elevator and down fifteen stories like someone’s trying to kill the president. Next to our blue hybrid car is a red convertible. Maybe it belongs to Nevaeh’s parents. Then again, that car is a little too cool for people who would name their child Heaven backwards. Heaven in the opposite direction … wouldn’t that be Hell?
After checking my seatbelt, as if an eleven-year-old can’t be trusted to listen for the click and give it a tug, my dad glares at me, jaw clenched. He’s too mad to talk. That’s fine. I’ll know when he’s ready to talk; his first demand will be an explanation. There really isn’t anything more I can say. My words, although louder than necessary, were self-explanatory.
After long minutes of some self-imposed timeout on himself, my dad looks at my mom and nods.
“Swayze?” She glances over her shoulder at me, curling her dark hair behind her ear. I don’t detect any anger in her voice. It’s sweet and juicy like the Starburst candy I get at the movies.
I fear her words will feel like the cavities I get from eating too much sugar.
“How would you feel about trying a new school?”
Yep. She’s drilling without numbing anything first. I’ve attended four different schools. Every educational psychologist and child development expert in a fifty-mile radius has evaluated me. They figured out I’m gifted, but not in a typical way. Smart. But not necessarily a genius.
My random recollections of historical events, that are not at all noteworthy, are most puzzling. I’m not playing Chopin or speaking fluent Spanish. I enjoy talking with adults, but I fit in just fine with my peers as well. I can’t name that many famous war generals. Even naming the presidents in order is a challenge. But random things that happened in Madison, Wisconsin, a few years before I was born seems to be my specialty.
“Move? Again?” I sigh as we pass the UW-Madison Arboretum, one of the places I like to go in the summer.
“We just want to find a good fit for you.”
“I fit fine where I’m at.”
“But they’re not challenging you enough.”
I shrug. “What does it matter? If I already know what they’re telling me, then I don’t have to do as much homework as my friends.”