The Gifted School

by Bruce Holsinger

No, she replied, without further comment.

  At four o’clock she logged out of her email and logged back on just to make sure the system was working correctly. Nothing. She walked down to the vending machines on the first floor, bought herself a Snickers bar, and gobbled the whole thing on her way back upstairs. Still nothing.

  Finally, three minutes before five, an email dinged in.

  Sender: Bitsy Leighton, City of Crystal School District

  Subject: Crystal Academy Admissions Results, Round One

  Rose took a deep breath and held it in like a cigarette drag. Blew out. Clicked.

  A salutation, then three paragraphs.

  Dear Dr. Holland:

  We are writing to share the results of our initial round of admissions screening for Crystal Academy. We have been working with an excellent team of consultants to ensure that our review process is carried out with the utmost integrity and transparency. Nearly one hundred thousand students in grades five through eleven from throughout the Four Counties and the City of Crystal were given the opportunity to test, and nearly half of these students showed up for one of our testing sessions in March. The tabulated results have allowed us to emerge with a pool of roughly three thousand students from which the initial cohorts in the upper and lower schools will be selected.

  Your child’s scores on the Cognitive Proficiency test (CogPro) appear on the next page, along with a key to interpreting the results in each category. We wish to stress the importance of multiple assessment measures in determining each child’s suitability for Crystal Academy. The results reported here are merely one such measure and do not necessarily reflect your child’s abilities as a student or his/her/their promise for future matriculation in the academy itself or in one of the existing school-based programs for exceptional learners. However, this process requires us to make hard choices and clear distinctions so that the end result will be a truly distinguished cohort of young learners in the upper and lower schools.

  Your child has scored sufficiently high on the CogPro to be advanced to the next round in the admissions process. Details of the subsequent steps will be provided at an upcoming orientation session for parents, to be held in the main auditorium at East Crystal High School on April 22 at 7:00 p.m. We look forward to seeing you there, and we will of course be happy to answer any additional questions that might arise during or following the information session.

  Regards,

  Bitsy

  Elizabeth Leighton, Head of School

  Crystal Academy

  As a lapping sea of warm pride spread in Rose’s chest a text popped up on her phone. Samantha, edging in.

  Hey.

  Hey, Rose replied.

  Did you just hear?

  Yes.

  Want to rip off the Band-Aid?

  Sure.

  I’ll go first. Just heard from Kev: Z made the cut.

  Bravo!

  What about Q?

  Rose read the email a second time, just to be sure. Happily she tapped in her reply.

  Yup.

  Then, from Samantha: ☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺

  Rose smiled fondly at her phone. Crazy how a single email could be such a mood lifter. For weeks—months, really, since Thanksgiving at Twenty Birch—a growing part of her conscience had been thinking of the admissions process as a threat to the web of relationships between her family and Samantha’s. Emma Z would get in, Emma Q wouldn’t, and Rose’s constant and low-burning envy of the Zellars would erupt into an open flame.

  But perhaps the gifted school would prove less a threat to their complicated friendship than an opportunity for its growth in new and different directions. If the girls were both lucky enough to get a spot, there was no telling how their friendship might develop in the years ahead. The Emmas could continue sharing their interests, Rose and Samantha could continue carpooling and swapping weekends and evenings, their intertwined lives could continue to unfold as they always had.

  Maybe nothing had to change.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  BECK

  Leila, an upspeaking millennial and the only full-time designer on staff, was trying to talk Beck into adopting a fancy new software package for their shrinking client base, hoping a new look and new approach might scrape up new business. But Beck was old school. He liked the familiarity and ease of their current package, which happened to be free, unlike the one Leila was pushing, which would set the firm back two grand they obviously didn’t have. Plus, the lazy side of him, which was most of him, didn’t want to learn all the bells and whistles attached to this new stuff when Adobe worked just fine.

  He’d been patiently explaining this to Leila for probably forty-five minutes, demonstrating on her own desktop all the things the current platform could do. She nodded along, reminding him of a shortcut or alternative methodology now and then—Oh right, yeah, of course I knew about that, Beck would sputter in reply. He had to admit, she was making a convincing case for this new package, ideal for navigating what looked increasingly like “a post-Adobe world,” she’d claimed. Unfortunately, though, they just couldn’t afford it—or much of anything else these days.

  “Well,” Beck said when he decided they were done, leaning back in his chair with his fingers interlaced behind his head. “You raise some good points, Leila. I’ll make my decision by early next week, then we’ll circle back on this. How’s that sound?”

  “Fine.” She pushed her glasses up her nose. “Though—”

  “Look, you made a strong argument here, Leila, don’t get me wrong. But as CEO I need to see the big picture, you know? I have to think about overhead, accounts management, payroll.”

  “Right,” Leila said, drawing it out. “Though . . . about that?”

  “About . . .”

  “Payroll?”

  “Uh-huh?” He swallowed.

  “My—sorry, but my paycheck hasn’t been deposited the last two cycles?”

  “Wait, what?”

  “I’m on biweekly? And my salary hasn’t shown up in my account, which I only noticed because I bounced a check.”

  “Join the club,” Beck muttered.

  “Huh?”

  “I just meant—that can’t be right. Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “Well damn, Leila, I’m really sorry about that. I’m sure it’s just an accounting glitch. In fact there have been some other funky things going on with the financial software. Let me check into it tomorrow and I’ll—”

  “Circle back?” she said. Her jaw was set and she was coming close to glaring at him. She pushed her glasses up again.

  “Yes, I’ll circle back,” Beck said. “Tomorrow. I promise, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, and pushed herself up from her chair, grabbed her purse, and left the studio without another word.

  After she was gone Beck settled his frame back in his swivel chair and surfed porn, letting his nerves calm, delaying the drive home. He liked the vintage seventies stuff, straight-haired hippie girls in Woodstock scenarios, less hardcore than today’s nastiness, though these days nothing really did it for him, and the sex drought was the least of his problems. Sonja’s silent housekeeping strike was well into its second week by now. Stacks of unwashed dishes, Beck’s laundry starting to sour, his wife doing the bare minimum to keep herself and Roy healthy and fed. As a result Beck had been spending more and more time at the design studio and in coffee shops, places where his creative juices could flow. There were also some emails from a few credit card companies that he’d have to handle creatively, with some wheedling on the phone. Nothing too worrisome, but things would go more smoothly if Sonja wasn’t around for that.

  Just after six he was transferring a balance from his corporate Platinum Visa to a somewhat dodgy high-annual-fee Discover card, his plan to deposit just enough of a cash advance to cover
Leila’s missing pay (or at least half of it), when his phone buzzed. Not a number he recognized.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Chaudhury?”

  “Unsworth.”

  “Right, right. Andy Millward, from Rocky Mountain Fútbol, calling about your lads. Got a few minutes?”

  “Absolutely,” he said, heart rate notching up.

  “Fine, then. We’ve reviewed Aidan and Charlie’s applications, and we’d like to take a look. So let me tell you about our identification process.” The coach detailed ROMO’s procedures, the levels of evaluation that went into putting together the elite team, the cost for the season. Basically he wanted Beck to know what they might be getting into if the twins got spots on the squad. “A lot of our process will depend on position and fit. What it is, right, we can put twenty kids in the pool, and even with that, only eighteen will be rostered for any given game. The current side’s spectacular. Deep. Honestly we could put together two squads in this age group without kicking a lamb.”

  “Wow.” Beck had a lightning flash of the ski slope, Aidan’s injured ankle. The sprain was mostly healed, but who knew how he’d feel once he was cleared to play.

  “Other thing is, we’re strong in the midfield but a little weak up top, meaning we’re a tad more interested in Charlie than we are in Aidan, though we haven’t seen either of them play yet.”

  “You don’t have a sibling policy? You know, where a sibling gets preferential treatment if his brother’s on the team.”

  Millward chuckled. “Not at this level, friend. ROMO’s one of the top youth soccer academies in the country. Every lad for himself.”

  “I see.”

  “In any case we’d like to invite your boys to our next talent ID session.” Millward gave him the details, then said a hasty goodbye.

  Beck stood at a window overlooking the Emerald Mall. With his forehead resting against the glass he remembered the twins, not quite two, in the tub. Azra usually gave them their baths, but that night Beck had been in there with them, having a blast, wondering why he didn’t do this more often. Aidan was trying out the word brother, a new acquisition, pronounced with his adorable lack of r’s as he pointed furiously at Charlie.

  “Bwudduh. Bwudduh. Bwudduh.”

  “That’s right, Aidan,” Beck said. “Charlie’s your brother.”

  “Bwudduh bwudduh bwudduh bwudduh bwudduh.”

  “That’s right.”

  Then, after a grunt of effort: “Chahwee bwudduh. Chahwee bwudduh.” Aidan’s first attempt at a sentence, a full thought. Not Mommy milk, not Daddy carry, but Charlie brother.

  Beck clapped for him, thrilled to witness a leap like that. “Babe, you have to come in here!” he called out the bathroom door to Azra.

  Then Aidan, getting up on his knees, arched himself forward and tackled Charlie in the bathtub, pushing him against the side and giving him a long, tight hug, their pinkish-amber skins joined in the water like the slick sides of seal pups as he yelled his two-word string over and over and over into his brother’s ear. Chahwee bwudduh Chahwee bwudduh Chahwee bwudduh. Meanwhile Charlie smiled against his brother’s shoulder and laughed and clapped his hands against Aidan’s back—but that was all he could give him, because Charlie had only a few words at that point.

  When they separated, Aidan got a confused little frown on his face at his brother’s failure to respond. “Chahwee bwudduh?” he said in a squeaky voice, sadly this time. “Chahwee bwudduh?” Peering into his brother’s eyes as if to say: Don’t you get it?

  * * *

  —

  Beck was heading out of the studio when his phone rang again. Azra.

  “Any news yet?”

  “About ROMO?”

  “Didn’t you get an email? Rose did and so did Samantha.”

  “What email?”

  “About Crystal Academy, Aidan’s CogPro score.” She sounded frantic and sharp, as if she’d done a few lines of coke.

  “Oh, I might have seen that.”

  “Well, what does it say? Tell me tell me!”

  “Just a sec.” He held his phone away, putting her on speaker. He tapped open his email and swiped down to the message from Leighton. “Okay, got it.”

  “Well?”

  “Let’s see, uh, ‘share the results of our initial round of admissions’ yadda yadda, ‘pool of roughly three thousand students’ yadda yadda—”

  “Beck, come on.”

  “Okay, hold up.” He scanned down until he found the key sentence. “Well, huh.” Tormenting her.

  “Beck, goddamnit!”

  He turned off the speaker function and propped the phone against his ear, listening to her soft panting, wishing he could see Azra’s face right now. Then he told her:

  “Aidan made the cut.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  EMMA Z

  What was my score, Daddy?”

  “That’s none of your business, sweet pea.”

  “Of course it’s my business, silly,” she said. “It’s my score.”

  The Zellars were all in the kitchen, where her mother was putting the finishing touches on something with lamb that smelled delicious. Daddy’s old music scratched from the speaker, a man with a very low voice singing about a ring of fire. He Spotified this playlist at least once a week, but Z didn’t mind.

  “Well?” she said.

  Her father took a sip of his whiskey drink, clanking the ice cubes around, then gave a long, exaggerated, funny sigh and shook his head at her mom. “What do you think, kitten?”

  Her mom spun halfway around with one hand on her hip and a paring knife in the other. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “It’s kind of private, Emma Z.”

  “Aw, let’s just tell her,” Kev said.

  Her mom shrugged. “Fine by me. But don’t let it leave this house, understood?”

  “Understood,” said Emma Z.

  “You too.” Her mom pointed the knife at her dad.

  “Heart crossed.” He reached to swat her on the fanny as she turned back to the stove.

  “Kev,” she said with a frown, nodding at Z, but then smiled secretly as she basted the lamb. Whenever she frowned at him she never really meant it. Not like Rose, who frowned at Gareth all the time and always meant it.

  “Okay, then,” he said, leaning over the counter with his mouth near Emma Z’s hair. “You ready?” he whispered.

  She nodded.

  He leaned closer. “You sure?”

  “Daddy, come on.”

  He put his mouth right up against her ear as if he were about to gobble it up. “You got a one-forty-five,” he whispered.

  “Really?”

  Her mom looked over her shoulder.

  “Really,” her father said.

  “Can I call Grandpa to tell him?” Z asked.

  Her father straightened up and clanked his ice some more. “Sure, give the old man a call,” he said, and took a big, long gulp of his whiskey drink.

  TWENTY-SIX

  ROSE

  An April rain shower had blown east, sharpening the air and leaving behind low-swirled mists among the foothills. Rose unlocked her bike and was about to head home when she had a burst of inspiration. She made a few arrangements with a text and a call, then phoned Gareth.

  She told him the CogPro news; then, “Let me take you to dinner,” she said.

  He hesitated. “A little premature, isn’t it? And what about Emma Q?”

  “Tessa can come over if we want her.”

  “Kind of a splurge,” he said; and spontaneous, he didn’t need to add. An impromptu dinner date wasn’t like Rose at all: more the kind of annoying thing Gareth would spring on her when she had loads of work to get through.

  She gently parried his objections, then made the proposition more appealing. “Plus I’ve achieved the impos
sible. Reservation for two at Xiomara.” A new Chilean place on the mall. The Zellars were the only people Rose knew who had managed to dine there so far. It was too popular after a gushing write-up in The New York Times the week it launched: one of LA’s top chefs relocating to the Rocky Mountain heartland to explore the diverse cuisines of his Chilean homeland infused with the subtle influence of the American Southwest. Or something like that.

  “Six-thirty,” Rose said, feeling adventurous. “Two spots at the bar, but they serve the full menu.”

  “See you in fifteen minutes.” Her husband sounded pleased.

  * * *

  —

  Unlike most restaurants on the Emerald Mall, Xiomara offered no outdoor seating. Its modest entryway was guarded by window boxes and a phalanx of potted ferns that brushed Rose’s neck as she passed by, her hands teasing her hair after the tight press of her bike helmet. Inside, the place had an almost bohemian feel, though the clientele was anything but: the first face she recognized belonged to one of Colorado’s US senators.

  Eight stools stood at the bar, one empty. Gareth smiled at her from the next. When she walked over, he kissed her on the mouth, lightly, without show, which she liked. He handed her the martini she had just tasted on his lips.

  “Dry and dirty,” he said. “With top-shelf vodka.”

  She hadn’t intended to drink more than a single glass of wine but ended up ordering a pisco sour, which arrived along with a menu backed with tooled leather. “Meanwhile an amuse-bouche,” the waiter said, and put two small cut-glass bowls in front of them, one sea green, one cobalt blue, each mounded with a delicate ceviche of sea bass and lime zest. The flavors bloomed on her tongue.

  “This was a good idea,” Gareth said. Rose put a hand on her husband’s, a small concession.

  “How was your day?” she asked.

  “Believe it or not, I actually sent a short story in.”