One corner of my mouth pulls upwards, in spite of myself.
Dean: Sorry, not sorry
You know what? Fuck it.
I open a Google page and type in the nameLiaden O’Brien, blinking when it’s offered as a suggestion before I’ve finished keying it in.
And then I stare.
And then I laugh to myself.
Leo was right to say ‘holy fuck’. If anything, that’s an understatement.
Dr Liaden O’Brien is the De Schepper Hosenstein Trust’s Professor of Linguistics at the University of Foxton, specializing in Low Franconian languages, according to her Wikipedia entry.She has her own Wikipedia page.
What evenareLow Franconian languages? I look it up. West Germanic, Dutch, Belgian, that kind of thing. Some African dialects as well. That’s…a lot of languages on that list. Some I’ve never even heard of.
I scan her Wiki rapidly, stunned when I see the length of her bibliography. She’s had countless papers published, and a few books.
I read further, and my eyes get wider.
O’Brien is a former child star of the Channel Four documentary, Britain’s Next Stephen Hawking, which followed the childhoods of ten children with genius level IQ scores. Her IQ was measured at 190, one of the highest in the show and the same score as Hawking himself.
Liaden: OK, I’m definitely watching Parks and Rec again, thanks to you. I take it you’ve seen The Office US, too?
I rub my eyes and laugh mirthlessly again. It’s almost comforting that she’s as far above my touch as the stars in the sky. It’s going to stop me from entertaining any ideas about her. After the shooting, returning to school was out of the question because I was in intense physical rehab, and I’d already gotten just enough credits to graduate at that point, anyway. She’s a professor in a top university, and a literal genius to boot. I hardly read any books. She writes them. I’m a mess and a waste of flesh and blood. She’s one of the best and brightest humanity has to offer. I mean, for fuck’s sake, she used to work at motherfuckingHarvard. There are several YouTube clips of her being interviewed for documentaries about the origins of words I can no longer say out loud.
And, in spite of her clear expertise and the way she talks so knowledgeably and professionally about real highbrow shit, there’s her playful smile, letting me know that she’s the same with everyone. Whether you’re a TV host or a reclusive tattoo artist, Liaden is Liaden, with no pretence and no veneer. What you see is what you get.
I really,reallylike that about her. And the TV host, some gray haired white guy in a tweed suit, seems as mesmerised by her as I am. There’s a speculative, slightly lustful edge to the way he looks at her, and his eyes shift to her legs far too often. It makes me grit my teeth.As if she’d look at a dusty old sack of crap like you, man. She’s a fucking expert in her field. Listen to what she has to say and stop picturing her naked.
And that goes double for me, too.
I still haven’t replied to her last message. I take a look, and she’s listed as online five minutes ago. Conversation over. Disappointment and relief runs through me, twisting and coiling around each other until I don’t know which one I feel more.
I look at the other videos of her and click on another, but this one isn’t a TV show. This was filmed on someone’s cell phone. It’s a music gig at a bar, and Liaden is on center stage with a guitarist and a drummer behind her. She’s holding a violin, playing it flawlessly as she sings a slightly metal cover ofBaba O’Reillyby The Who, hollering out the lyrics with all her might. Her voice is incredible: powerful, pitch perfect, arresting. The kind of voice you stop and listen to. She deserves a recording contract, and if she got one, she’d be a huge star.
So not only is she the smartest person I will ever meet, she’s also talented as fuck.
This is hilarious. As Leo would say, I couldn’t possibly punch further above my weight.
There’s some more footage of the same gig, with her doing metal-ish covers of songs by The Cranberries and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers with the gusto you’d expect from her. There’s a full video of one of her lectures, fifty five minutes long. There’s an interview on breakfast television with two well-known presenters hanging on her every word. She doesn’t seem the least intimidated by any of these situations.
I even find a clip ofBritain’s Next Stephen Hawking.
Once again, curiosity gets the better of me, and I click onto it.
The narrator drones on in a cut glass British accent about the pressures of being a profoundly gifted child. It cuts to a little blonde girl writing out an incredibly complicated algebra equation that might even have stumped Callie, and her whiteboard pen is the same dark blue as her eyes. “Young Liaden turned eleven last week,” the narrator informs us, “and she’s already sitting her A-Levels.” I don’t know what A-Levelsare, but the voiceover continues that she’s expected to accept a place at university later that summer, so I guess they must be far in advance of what other eleven year olds sit.
I watch this kid fluently doing math I couldn’t even begin to attempt at thirty-four years of age. The interviewer moves on and questions her about her interests, and she conjugates Latin verbs for him like a show pony performing a trick. She’s remarkably poised for a child, with level eye contact with the adult in the room and a calm smile that seems to say,I can meet any challenge you’d care to throw at me.
And then I watch as her confident smile drops and her eyes tense for a split second when the interviewer asks her what she thinks of school. Her exuberance dims and she looks…lonely. Maybe even sad.
“Well, obviously I like learning,” she offers gamely, trying to recapture her steady confidence. Her steadiness is her armor, I realize. The interviewer, scenting blood, pushes for her to elaborate, not caring that he’s wringing a child’s heart out so the world can watch. It’s probably what he’s ultimately there to do, for the ratings, but I want to punch him for hounding a little girl, however maturely she behaves.
She bites her lip, and with the huge eyes of a forlorn child in this precocious little creature, she whispers, “They’re all so much older than me at school. But peoplemyage don’t understand me either. It’s an equation I can’t solve. And I wish…” She swallows hard. “I wish I had just one friend, even if it was just so I had someone to sit with at lunch. I’m not greedy, just…justone.”
The cameras stay relentlessly on her face as she battles to master herself. She’s visibly refusing to let them see her cry, and fixes her expression into an even look at the man talking to her. But the point has been made: being a child genius is an isolating fucking business, and it’s not all high marks and amazingvocabularies and university places awarded to you before you even hit puberty. Some wistful, depressing link music plays as they move on to a different child who wrote a three part fantasy saga before he was ten.
