Most Unnatural

by Liam Llewellyn

  The pediatrician told her everything and then the three men waited for her to respond.

  “So I would just skip elementary, middle, and high schools?” she asked.

  “There are a few more tests you would have to take to satisfy the school boards, as well as to enroll in a university, but if that’s what you want, you should have no difficulty in doing so,” the psychologist said.

  “Remember, it isn’t something you have to do, sweetheart,” Cordo reminded her. “You can start elementary school and see how it goes. If you decide later you want to—”

  “I’d like to go to college. No sense in wasting time.”

  The psychologist glanced at Cordo.

  “What do you mean, ‘wasting time,’ sweetheart?” Cordo asked.

  She looked around, then out the window at the drizzly afternoon.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you hearing the whispering right now, Amelia?” the psychologist asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s it saying?”

  “That…we have to do as much as possible…as soon as possible.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “My mother.”

  “How can you know?”

  “It told me it’s her.”

  The three men watched her strangely.

  “I’d like to start college,” Amelia said. “Is that OK?”

  The men looked between themselves, concurred.

  “We’ll start the process,” the pediatrician said. “Let you know when to take those other tests.”

  “Any idea which university you’d like to go to?” the psychologist asked.

  “University of Washington – Seattle.”

  “Mom’s alma mater,” Cordo said.

  The psychologist nodded.

  The testing and enrollment process took all of the fall.

  One night Cordo and Tom were in the backyard drinking beer while Amelia was in her room, undoubtedly reading something about plants or science, as was her preferred pastime as she got older.

  “Do you think it’s a good idea?” Cordo asked.

  “It’s not my decision.”

  “You’re her godfather, for Christ’s sake.”

  Tom shrugged.

  “I think she would quickly realize how out of place she would be in lower

  grades,” he replied.

  Cordo nodded.

  By January, before the start of the spring semester, Amelia was enrolled at UW as a freshman and a declared plant-biology major.

  In November Amelia had been selected from a waitlist at a dog-training center near the Canadian border and Cordo took her to get her service dog. It was a two-year-old Great Dane named Hester. She weighed 150 pounds and stood nearly six feet tall when she stood.

  There was visible concern on Cordo’s face when Amelia stood beside the dog but the trainer assured him Hester was docile and had never bitten nor trampled anyone.

  “Can she protect Amelia? From…people?”

  “If anyone has the B-A-L-L-S to try anything when they see her with Hester, Hester could tackle them like Richard Sherman.”

  Cordo smiled.

  “Good.”

  He watched Amelia stroke Hester’s head as she sat on her haunches and stood almost half a foot taller than Amelia.

  “You like her?” Cordo asked.

  “She’s gorgeous.”

  “She is at that,” the trainer said.

  He then gave Amelia a brief rundown on how to command Hester and gave her a small blue book should she need a refresher.

  Cordo went with Amelia to the campus the day before classes started and helped her find each of the buildings and rooms for her classes. Hester walked closely by her side and Amelia held onto the nylon handle on the top of Hester’s service vest.

  Appropriately, many of her classes were in the Life Sciences Complex. They found Tom in the lab and he hugged both Cordo and Amelia, who addressed him as Uncle Tom, and Tom rubbed Hester’s ears and Amelia introduced her to him and after some more talk, Tom led them to his upstairs office.

  “If you ever need me or need a quiet place, come find me,” he told Amelia. “I’m either here or in the lab. Do you have a cell phone?”

  “We’re going after this,” Cordo said.

  “Your daddy will give you my number, call me anytime. OK, sweetheart?”

  Amelia nodded. Tom kissed her forehead, then she, Hester, and Cordo left.

  The arrangement was for Margaret to take Amelia to school in the morning and Margaret would hang around campus or nearby off campus until Amelia was finished in the evening.

  Cordo, however, took her on her first day. He didn’t hold her hand as he stiffly walked beside her and Hester to the chemistry building, her hand on Hester’s vest.

  At the building’s front steps, Cordo knelt in front of her and asked if she were nervous.

  “No. I’m excited.”

  She looked it too. Cordo nodded. He told her to stay with Hester and call me, Uncle Tom, or Margaret for anything and gave her $20, which she put in her pocket, and kissed her forehead. He watched the little girl ascend the stairs, her small mint-colored backpack nearly empty, Hester carrying the majority of her textbooks on her vest’s sides. Amelia opened the door and entered among the crowd inside and after looking around with sweat on his upper lip, Cordo left.

  Things went quietly for a little while. Cordo was offered the position of features editor and he took it and now worked harder but for fewer and more consistent hours and was home typically by seven or eight at night.

  Amelia came home excited about what she was learning and whenever Cordo checked her grades, they were all As.

  Then one day in late February, an intern from the university casually remarked to Cordo on a story he’d read on The Daily’s website.

  “It was about a girl named Amelia Tendler and I wondered, ‘Is she related to Cordo?’”

  When Cordo was back in his office, he looked up the story.

  ‘Seven-year-old Amelia Tendler walks into the classroom with one hand clasping the handle on her service dog Hester’s vest. She claims a seat in the front row, where she is surrounded by other college students at least a foot taller and 12 years older than her.

  “I’m a plant biology major,” she says.

  This class is organic chemistry, a prerequisite of her major. She is not taking any common core classes.

  “I tested out of them,” she says.

  With an IQ of 191, Amelia was able to skip elementary, middle and high school. She says she does not know “consciously” how she is able to, for example, calculate the atomic mass of radium but says she thinks it has something to do with her mother.

  Lourdes Tendler (née Esterbrook) was formerly a graduate student at UW in the Environmental Sciences lab. Most notably, seven years ago she was the object of an intense manhunt spanning the Washington, Oregon and even northern California coasts.

  Pregnant at the time of her disappearance, a child later identified as Tendler’s and subsequently named Amelia was found just west of Seattle on a beach near Forks. Lourdes was never found and was subsequently pronounced dead in absentia.

  Amelia says she has felt an intrinsic need since she was younger to carry on her mother’s work, though when asked what this work entailed, Amelia said she was unsure.

  “I’ve just started looking through her published articles dealing with diplospory, apospory, and adventitious embryony,” she says. “Once I understand better what she was doing, I’ll be able to aim my research better.”

  Amelia’s advanced grasp of material is not limited to only sciences. She is also fluent in French and, when she has time, enjoys reading Michael Crichton “to debunk the pseudoscience he uses to advance his plots,” as well as John Steinbeck “for his picturesque descriptions of flora and landscapes…’”

  Cordo tore himself away from his computer screen, fists clenched.

  The next morning he met The Daily’s editor, the articl
e’s writer, and the dean of students in The Daily’s office.

  They sat at a table in the office’s common area, where computers were arranged, though currently unoccupied. Three sat on one side, Cordo on the other.

  “So I’m extremely irritated that my daughter was the subject of an article,” Cordo said.

  “Why?” asked the editor.

  “Because she’s seven years old and if you’ve taken journalism 101, you’d know minors should be accompanied by an adult guardian when talking to the press.”

  “Skyler talked to me about it,” the editor said. “I told him if she was in his class and a full-time student here, then she was fair game.”

  Cordo ground his teeth.

  “Fair game? You sound like a fucking sex offender.”

  The dean sat forward, clearing his throat.

  “Let’s not use escalating language, please. Is it true that Amelia is a full-time student here?”

  “Yes.”

  “And is it true that she consented to come here, precluding lower levels of education?”

  “…Yes.”

  “It sounds to me that she’s able to make informed decisions on her own,” the editor said.

  “Why are you upset, Mr. Tendler?” Skyler, the writer, said. “There was nothing controversial or muckraking in the article.”

  “Because she is seven years old and she doesn’t know better than to talk to you, she is a child, she doesn’t need her name in the headlines, she—”

  “She seemed perfectly happy when I asked to interview her,” Skyler said. “We talked for two hours, she gave me more info than I could have hoped for, she wasn’t shy.”

  “Of course not, she’s a child, children love talking about themselves, combine that with her intelligence, she could drone on for hours but that doesn’t make it right—”

  “Mr. Tendler, what do you want out of this?” the editor asked.

  “I want you to stay the fuck away from my daughter.”

  “I can’t say that’ll happen,” the editor said. “If she does something newsworthy, we’d be obligated to cover it.”

  Cordo glared at the editor, seeing the self-righteous assurance that comes to all journalists convinced their cause is right and constitutionally protected. He looked to the dean then.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Tendler. The administration has next to no say in how The Daily is run. So far as I can tell, no laws have been violated. There’s nothing to do.”

  Cordo looked between the editor and Skyler.

  “In the professional world, you’d both be fucking fired and blacklisted.”

  He stood, pushed his seat in.

  “Enjoy working for TMZ, cocksuckers!”

  He left.

  That night after he got home from work, he talked to Amelia, who was sitting on her bed in her pink and teddy-bear-decorated room reading a statistics book, Hester curled up in the floor beside her.

  “If anyone comes up to you, you don’t have to talk to them,” he said.

  “I know I didn’t have to talk to him.”

  “So why did you?”

  “I thought it was a good idea.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. The voice told me to.”

  “Not with the voices in the head again, please.”

  “I’m sorry you don’t like that explanation but it’s the only one I have.”

  “Have you been taking your medication?”

  “Of course, Dad, have you?”

  “I don’t want you talking to them, to…”

  “To whom, Dad? To anyone?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But if you had your druthers and you were with me all day like Hester, that’s what you’d do.”

  “Amelia, you’re seven years old.”

  “And next year it’ll be, ‘Amelia, you’re eight years old,’ then nine years old, it’ll never stop.”

  “Of course not, I’m your father.”

  “And I’m not the typical seven year old, Dad.”

  “Nobody knows that better than I do, sweetheart.”

  “You’re overprotective.”

  “So what if I am? Nothing about your life has given me any reason to relax, it’s always been one crisis after another.”

  “Maybe the crises are over and it’s time to decompress a little.”

  “Amelia, I know these kind of people, they can be exploitative, take advantage of you.”

  “Really, of me? If they were as cunning journalists as you fear, wouldn’t they be at Northwestern, Columbia, Missouri instead of UW? And I certainly could have gotten into other universities, do you think I’d be here instead of Harvard or MIT if I didn’t feel I had to be here?”

  “Why, for me?”

  “No, not for you. To satisfy the voice.”

  “If you were as smart as you think you are, you would know that voice in your head is your subconscious, it knows you want attention, so it tells you to talk to the newspaper, that you’re afraid of the world, so it tells you to stay at home.”

  “I assure you it’s not my subconscious and I’m not afraid nor do I crave attention.”

  “Then why does it talk to you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Cordo groaned. Amelia was stoic. Hester had lifted up her head, perturbed. For a minute there was only her breathing filling the air.

  “Think you’re so goddamn smart—don’t talk to them again!”

  Cordo left the room in a rage.

  “I will if I have to.”

  Days later Tom visited in the evening. Amelia let him in and told him Cordo was outside. He found Cordo sitting down in the grass of the backyard in a camping chair. He had a red plastic cup of red wine and was smoking a five-inch curved briarwood pipe as he read Moby-Dick by the light from the porch. He turned his head as he heard Tom coming down the porch steps, bringing one of the table chairs with him.

  “You having a nervous breakdown?” Tom asked as he sat the chair in front of Cordo.

  Cordo smiled.

  “I wish. My daughter might give me a break then.”

  “Uh-oh. What happened?”

  Cordo summarized the fight, ending with, “She thinks I’m overprotective.”

  “And you disagree,” Tom smirked a little.

  Cordo looked away, took a drag of his pipe, exhaled.

  “What the fuck are you smoking?”

  “Chamomile tea leaves.”

  “Oh fuck you.”

  “It’s healthier than tobacco.”

  “You know weed’s legal here?”

  “I’m a father, I can’t get high.”

  “So you smoke tea leaves, you ball-less hipster.”

  “Got more balls than those E-cig pussies.”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  Cordo smoked more while Tom took a sip from his wine.

  “Everything I’d prepared for, been told, learned…it all goes against…”

  Tom tried to follow. Cordo shook his head, blinking rapidly.

  “I thought she’d need me longer, more than just for paying tuition.”

  Tom nodded.

  “Mind you, I don’t have kids but I would think a lot of parents might envy you. You’re able to just sidestep a lot of the tribulations with raising a kid.”

  “I’m also gonna miss a lot of stuff.”

  “Sure. But this is the hand you’ve been dealt.”

  “Have to make the best of it.”

  “Right.”

  “How?”

  Tom thought.

  “I’m not saying you drop her, leave her to her own devices, but at least take some steps back, let both of you breathe more.”

  Cordo smirked.

  “I was never good at breathing. Had to be intubated when I was born.”

  Tom smirked too.

  “You could start dating again.”

  Cordo was quiet.

  “It’s been seven years,” Tom went on.

  “Don’t I know it
.”

  Cordo’s fists were tight.

  “I’d tell her the same thing,” Tom said.

  Cordo nodded, eyes shimmering, not blinking now.

  “She wouldn’t have listened.”

  “She was stubborn,” Tom said. “Doesn’t mean you have to be.”

  Eventually they moved onto different topics. Tom soon told Cordo he’d started seeing someone and Tom said it could get serious, he wasn’t sure. Keep me posted, Cordo said, love to meet him. Tom smiled.

  It was started by the local press, picked up from The Daily and then blown up: the seven-year-old genius at UW.

  The Herald in Everett, The Stranger in Seattle, The Weekly, couple other small publications, then the A.P.

  Amelia talked to reporters from the larger ones and the small ones borrowed quotes. TV stations tried to talk to her as well but she, perhaps to Cordo’s delight, declined, saying she found TV reporters infinitely more corrupt than their print counterparts. That didn’t stop the TV stations. They ran packages with interviews from classmates, professors, and even some of Amelia’s former nannies. These were also used in the written stories and after the A.P. story, Amelia went national.

  Of course without a picture, the story would have been hearsay. So, perhaps using The Daily’s reasoning, these outlets started running Amelia’s picture from the original story, her and Hester walking on campus, taken by Skyler the writer.

  Cordo talked to The Times’ retained lawyer in regard to grounds on which to found lawsuits against all these outlets but was told such cases would never get very far, as Amelia had consented to all the interviews and pictures.

  “No judge is likely to bite that a girl with a 191 IQ is unable to make informed decisions, seven years old or not,” the lawyer said.

  So that was that. The Times was nearly the only publication that didn’t feature even a blurb about what a Nevada paper called “a child prodigy,” a psychologically incorrect term but nonetheless widely adopted. And Cordo was berated with phone calls and emails from reporters, viewers, readers, hecklers, and society’s abundant weirdos calling to inquire about everything:

  “What was Amelia like as a baby?”

  “What really happened with Lourdes?”