The Gifted School

by Bruce Holsinger

Nothing about the warmth of bodies, or their smells, or nonhuman factors like dogs. The algorithm might need some adjustment. Though even so it would never capture the profile Xander most wished he could recover.

  Julian Frye: . . . ???

  It was his father who had played Xander in his first match, and his second, and his third, and all the way up to his two hundredth, probably; and yet the only game Xander could recall move-for-move was their last, the game that changed everything. Xander won on his own, for the first time. He remembered his father’s widening eyes, the stunned look on his face during Xander’s endgame as he stared down at the bishop pair and those passed pawns, the way he reached proudly across the board to concede to his three-year-old son. His hand was big and warm and it was shaking a little, and sometimes Xander could still feel his father’s touch if he brushed his own hand just the right way.

  After a while Tessa turned over on the couch and her arm dropped down again. Her knuckles grazed the dog’s back, right next to Xander’s face. He looked through the slats of his sister’s fingers and out the back window at the lightening sky.

  SEVENTY-SIX

  CH’AYÑA

  She stood unmoving in the doorway, watching her grandson’s fingers skitter over the keys and move on the square pad. On the screen a thin-lined triangle bent and folded. He used a finger to move it on top of a rectangle, where it sat as he adjusted it to fit, then used some other way to color and shade the combined shapes. Next he made a circle, then a tube. He floated it across the surface and brought it down to rest against the other shapes. Another triangle but this one turned into a cone that he moved to the top of the cylinder. All of this took him no more than two minutes. Now other shapes, smaller ones he used to fill in the plain surfaces.

  She squinted over his shoulder, seeing it now. Windows, door, tower, porch: Atik was making a house. Not just any house but the Zellars’ house in Crystal, with its wide front porch and its three-story tower, the dormer window in Emma’s room. He had even copied the siding and the trim, colored in soft peach and white. Capturing all the details as in his paper model of Mountain View.

  Her lips tightened and she shook her head, disappointed. Fancy new computer, not a used one like Tiago tried to give him—and the first thing he makes on it is this?

  But then his fingers moved again. He took the cone from the top of the tower and flipped the tower on its side, turning it into a tubular passageway from the square house to another building he started assembling with lines and angles and curves. Next the roof came off the Zellar house. He used it to make a second story over the tube, stretching out the corners until the two pieces fit. Then he added round windows and an outer staircase connecting the bottom to the top. He clicked something and made the staircase move, and soon the structure on his screen began to resemble some building from an imagined future where rooms floated in the air and escalators led only to the sky.

  She left him to it. In the kitchen, standing at the sink, she asked Silea, “Where did he get that thing?”

  Her daughter half turned from the burner where she was overcooking something. “They’re allowed to bring them home, Mamay. The school loans them out so the students will have them for the whole summer. Like books.”

  Ch’ayña sniffed. “Well, he hasn’t been outside all day.”

  “It’s a good thing. With what’s on the computer he’ll learn how to make buildings and bridges. Ships, planes, tunnels. Solar engines, that kind of thing.”

  “Like Pachakuti but without all the mess.”

  Silea smiled at her. “He’s just a boy, not a god.”

  “We’ll see,” said Ch’ayña, making her daughter laugh. “That’s why they let him in. He knows how things go together and how they come apart.”

  “I suppose,” Silea mused. “That’s what Tiago says.”

  “How will he get to the school?” Ch’ayña reached over to turn down the burner.

  “There’s a bus. It will pick up every kid in Beulah County who goes.”

  Ch’ayña grimaced. “An extra hour every day. Better to take him ourselves.”

  “Not with our schedule,” Silea said with a shrug. “He’ll manage.”

  Ch’ayña thought about it. The Crystal kids all had their own drivers. Maybe that was important. Maybe you needed that, to thrive up here. Well, if she couldn’t give him rides, she’d give him something else.

  “He’ll need more, for those long days,” she said. “He’ll need a bigger lunch, more snacks.”

  “He will,” Silea agreed.

  “So let me make all the food.” Ch’ayña bumped hips with her daughter. “You just stay out of that. The wawa’s brain won’t stay gifted for long if he has to eat your chicken every day.”

  A Touch of Tessa:

  One Girl's Survival Guide to Junior Year

  A Video Blog

  Episode #202: THE ENVELOPE, PLEASE . . .

  . . . 5 views . . .

  TESSA: Aaaaaaaand she’s back, this time with privacy settings. Guys, I can’t even tell you what these last few weeks have been like. Read my DMs if you aren’t caught up, but god, everybody I know hearing all the shit I’ve dished about them and their kids this year, watching all of that? The worst part was feeling their old scorn coming back, that snotty condescension I used to talk about in group. So it’s been hard, and okay, I got fucked up a couple times with this one girl I hang with, and I even swiped a bottle of smarties from her mom. But you guys’ll be proud of me, because I put it back in the medicine cupboard right after without popping a single pill. You believe that?

  And I have to say, my mom’s friends have really surprised me, like Rose came and picked me up and took me out for lunch the other day, just to see how I was doing, she said. It was awkward and all, but it was nice. And then Samantha and Kev came into the store and Kev got a vintage sports coat that’s not him at all and Samantha bought one of my TessaRacks, this sweet jacket I designed, I mean she’ll probably just forget about it in a few weeks and toss it in a Hefty bag for her maid and it’ll end up back at the store, but still, it’s the thought, you know? Oh, that’s right, I got to keep my job! Azra’s been amazing.

  So, they’re kind of here for me, these crazy women, and it’s a weird surprise. I’ll never forget how they pulled my family out of a really dark well after my dad died. They can be so bitchy and sneaky and competitive sometimes, like about who’s going to more parties, or whose kid is busier or whatnot, especially my mom. But even when they’re stabbing each other in the back, they know how to help you through things, you know? It makes me think of this story Beck told me, that hairy guy in the Jacuzzi. Him and my dad were on this cliff, and one of them started to fall and the other caught him and saved his life, like these two climbing bros clinging to each other hundreds of feet above the ground, laughing over something that almost killed them. Maybe that’s what we all need, you know? Someone to grab you and swing you to safety when you’re losing your grip. Someone to keep you up and hold you there, pinned against the stone. For me that was you guys, seriously, and I hope I’m there for you too, helping you stay up. But maybe we also have to learn to let go, which is a lot harder. Anyway.

  [Leans off screen, comes back waving an envelope from City of Crystal School District addressed “To the Parents of Tessa Frye.”]

  And now, the moment of truth. Will Tessa’s sizzlingly high CogPro scores and her immense talents in fashion design earn her a highly coveted seat? Or will she be one of the also-rans, the hoi polloi, the plebes? The suspense is killing you, am I right? Okay, here goes, you guys.

  [Works envelope open with finger, pulls out letter, reads. Looks up with enigmatic smile.]

  ENDGAME

  On the eighth of May, two weeks and three days after the open house, the letters arrived.

  No email this time but hard copy, a thin envelope from the school district that Rose found
in the mailbox that afternoon. When she opened it and read the form rejection, she felt next to nothing: a small prickle of regret, a shiver of new embarrassment sparked by visceral memories of her fifteen minutes of fame as the hysterical mom who lost it at the gifted school. The act of staring blankly down at those meaningless words stirred a different longing that surprised her with its keenness and depth.

  She hadn’t spoken to Samantha since that day. Azra was doing her best, running peace missions back and forth with texts and stop-bys, acting like a NATO treaty negotiator as Zellars and Hollands and Quinns and Holland-Quinns started adjusting to the all-too-public revelation about their families and what it all might mean. Yet these potential new configurations seemed less important at the moment than taking care of the two little people all of this change risked hurting the most.

  She was tossing the letter and envelope in the recycling bin when a text from Samantha flashed up on her screen.

  Rose, I love you. Can we try to get past it, for the Emmas?

  She smiled sadly at her phone.

  * * *

  —

  They met at the corner of Azure and Main. Neither spoke as they walked west toward the foothills. Rose paced slightly behind Samantha and cast furtive glances at her friend’s face, as if scrutinizing one of her neurology patients for a visible symptom.

  Finally she plunged in. “Just got the official rejection. For some reason we were still in their database, even after that scene.”

  “We were too,” Samantha replied. “Which, I have to say, does not speak well of our friend Bitsy Leighton and the all-star admissions team over there. I mean if they can’t get something like this straight, how can they expect to hire the best teachers or come up with a cutting-edge curriculum?”

  “Or design a strong slate of extracurriculars for the brilliant little Crystals?”

  Samantha said, “Aside from the sour grapes, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

  They laughed, though tentatively, testing the waters. Samantha was about to speak again when their phones buzzed together. A group text from Azra.

  Rejected.

  Same, Rose replied.

  Ditto, Sam wrote.

  Five seconds later Lauren chimed in: Been meaning to tell you guys. We heard yesterday. Both of mine were accepted! Go figure.

  They looked at each other and burst into laughter, happy for the one parent among them who needed this most.

  Finally Samantha took a deep breath and reached for Rose’s hand. The story she told began with what she once regarded as her own failure: her inability to conceive in the five years following her marriage to Kev. The eldest Zellar child but the last to reproduce, constantly harangued about it by Kev’s progeny-obsessed parents and siblings. Kev, of course, had acted the typical caveman: the problem couldn’t possibly be his sperm count, as a test soon confirmed. They’d been headed for more serious testing and possible IVF, fighting all the time, when she met Gareth.

  He could have been anybody, Samantha claimed now. “It was such a bonehead, ugly thing to do, but I was so angry at Kev, so ready to walk out. Screwing a client was just an escape valve, and I wasn’t even thinking about pregnancy, I thought that was all over for us so we didn’t even use birth control, I just told Gareth I was on the pill. But then right after it ended, Kev and I finally decide to go for it, and we’re literally at the initial appointment with a fertility specialist when I find out I’m pregnant.”

  “Kev was thrilled, I’m sure.”

  “And I was terrified. I even considered an abortion, but after six years of trying to get pregnant I just couldn’t. Then, when Emma Z came along, everybody said she was pure Zellar. They saw Kev in her eyes, Edgar in her chin, freaking Blakey in the shape of her hairline. And I let myself believe it too, I mean with the timing it could have gone either way. Genes be damned, we see what we want to see.”

  “What did you see?”

  She considered it. “After a certain point I didn’t care anymore. Emma Z is Kev’s daughter in every way that matters. Though . . .”

  “What?”

  Her face sagged. “Honestly it was this admissions process that made me wonder for the first time whether that was really true. Whether there might be—something of Gareth in my daughter that I’d never recognized before. Whether I should be doing things to nurture it, help it grow. So a few weeks before the CogPro, I was reorganizing the library and came across Gareth’s novel.”

  “Gallows Road,” Rose said. “You loaned your copy to Tazeem.”

  “I reread it,” Samantha said, “and it wasn’t as if the story itself moved me or anything, but the experience made me question things in a way I never had. About Z, about Gareth. My Emma’s never been a reader, not like Q. But then neither have I, and neither has Kev, even though we have a library at Twenty Birch, for god’s sake, and buy ourselves books all the time and spread them around the house like wallpaper.”

  Rose smiled.

  “But what if Z was supposed to be a reader, or even a writer?” Samantha went on. “What if that was supposed to be her gift? Is it fair to keep it from her, the knowledge that this might be a hidden talent, like some atrophied muscle that hasn’t been exercised? So one day at drop-off I suggested casually to Gareth that maybe he could work with Emma Z on her essay, give her some writing tips. He didn’t even register why I was asking. But it just shows you how messed up these last months have been. The way they’ve twisted us with these crazy fantasies about our kids’ unrecognized genius.”

  They stopped at the corner of Zircon Lane to wait out the loud beeps of a truck backing up. When the vehicle moved, they passed out from beneath a long row of shade trees and Samantha lifted her face to the sun. “I’m sorry, Rose. I’m so sorry, and someday I hope you can forgive me.”

  Rose swallowed against a hardness in her throat. “Forgiveness is overrated.”

  “You should put that on a mug.”

  “No more mugs,” Rose snapped.

  “Deal.”

  “Maybe the school was just an excuse,” Rose said a few moments later, startled by the thought.

  “For what?”

  Rose Holland: deceptive and sneaky . . . ruthless but insecure . . . squanders pawns, hoards opportunity . . . unwilling to sacrifice for tactical advantage . . . tendency to risk everything in pursuit of a weak endgame . . .

  “For doing openly what we’ve been doing since before our kids were even born.”

  “For lying, you mean,” Samantha said, almost under her breath.

  “Well, there’s that. We tell our kids these innocent lies about Santa Claus, about how, no, of course not, there won’t be a war, or a school shooting in our town—”

  “Comforting lies.”

  Rose thought of Gareth’s parting shot; the hard truth in it. “Maybe what you did with Gareth was just a version of all this. Thinking you could control what would ultimately happen with Emma Z, that she’d never find out. And even if she did, that she’d somehow believe you were acting in her best interests. Parents always want to manage the narrative instead of letting kids write their own.” She clapped a hand over her mouth.

  “What?”

  “I think Gareth said that. I think he wrote it, in some godawful freelance parenting piece.”

  Samantha snorted. “Well, I guess it’s mostly true. But then you leave them alone for a second and look what happens. Tessa’s vlog, Xander’s experiment. Total catastrophe.”

  They had reached the peak of Azure Hill, a gentle rise before the first foothills, their beautiful town spread out below them like a brain scan, the colors, the forms, the unknown dangers lurking among the wobbly shapes and blurry lines. Somewhere down there a mother was ripping open an envelope and chirping with delight, like the thrush Rose heard warbling and trilling from a nearby tree. Up past the reservoir and over the shimmering mirage of the plains, an endle
ss space stretched east a thousand miles and more.

  Who could ever leave this perfect valley? she asked herself for perhaps the hundredth time, though the question felt tainted now, hollow.

  Samantha’s hand brushed her shoulder. Rose felt the sharp tip of a diamond ring as she turned away from Crystal Valley. Together they looked west.

  High against the serrated crest of the Continental Divide two eagles danced in an updraft. The majestic birds climbed the thermal until they hovered in tandem above the horizon, almost motionless in a deep and cloudless blue. They spiraled lazily until one of them glimpsed movement below. The eagle separated from its companion and took a line downward, straight and sure, dropping for the kill. When it reappeared above the tree line, a young rabbit was dangling from its talons.

  Samantha gasped. Rose pressed a hand to her throat. The eagle’s wings beat the air, the bird rising with its struggling prey.

  Then, as they watched in astonishment, the second eagle swooped in and knocked the rabbit loose. It plummeted back to earth like a dropped stone. The first eagle dove again—but this time, when it emerged, its talons clutched only air.

  “Poor thing must have gotten away on its own,” Samantha said, her voice full of hope as the majestic birds lifted away.

  Rose wasn’t so sure, and the scene would stay in her mind for weeks, years even, and she would always wonder whether the rabbit had learned enough to save itself when the eagles came again.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Gifted School was conceived and its earliest sections drafted some fifteen years ago while I was living in Boulder, Colorado, the inspiration for Crystal and its surroundings, including the (fictionalized) Four Counties, the Emerald Mall, the Redirons, and other features of the landscape and built environment. I have taken some necessary license with the details of IQ testing (for example, there is no “CogPro” test, my answer to the ubiquitous CogAT), though depictions of the admissions process, selection bias, and evaluation are based on research and interviews with experts. For their input and thoughts on these subjects, I am especially grateful to Jeff Danielian of the National Association for Gifted Children as well as to Ruth Lyons, former director of the Renzulli Gifted and Talented Academy in Hartford, Connecticut. Many thanks as well to Dr. Laura Jansen at the University of Virginia’s School of Medicine for inviting me into her pediatric neurology lab and answering my uninformed questions about brain scans and hospital rotations; to Officer Eric Ketchum of the City of Charlottesville Police Department for his informed views on assault and battery (and aggressive sports parents); to Campbell and Malcolm Brickhouse for their soccer pointers and play-by-play suggestions; and to Yuliana Kenfield, who lent the manuscript her expertise and experience in Quechua language and Andean culture. I have benefited greatly from the reading and critique of early drafts by a number of friends, colleagues, and fellow writers, including Jabeen Akhtar, Steve Arata, Carol Holsinger, Christian McMillen, John Parker, Jim Seitz, Andy Stauffer, and Rachel Thielmann. Thanks to my students at WriterHouse and the University of Virginia for their energy and enthusiasm, and to my friends in the Fiction Writers Co-op for their discretion and support. I owe an enormous debt to my agent, Helen Heller, for championing my work at every turn, and to the remarkable team at Riverhead and Penguin Random House, including Alison Fairbrother, Delia Taylor, Candice Gianetti, Jaya Miceli, and especially Sarah McGrath, a brilliant, tireless, and truly collaborative editor whose vision for this novel far surpassed my own. Anna Brickhouse gave the manuscript the inestimable gifts of her attention and insight. My mother, Sheila (née Moore), is responsible for the opening epigraph, and the dedication speaks for itself.