“Meditationsby Marcus Aurelius.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind,” I said quickly. The last thing I wanted was her to think I was making fun of her.
“Okaaay.” Emery cocked her head. “What are the bad things about being a super genius?”
A long list populated in my head. I picked the one at the top. The worst one. “I get lonely.”
Geez. I couldn’t believe I said that out loud.
Emery’s face softened. “You do? Why?”
“Because I don’t know how to talk to kids my age.” I glanced away. “Never mind. It’s dumb.”
“It’s not dumb. Maybe you just need the practice. If you didn’t go to a special school but a regular school, you’d be around more regular kids, right?”
“Yes. But…”
“But regular school is too easy for you?” She grinned. “Do you want to be famous and win a Nobel Prize? Like boring old Niels Bohr? Bohr the Bore.”
She giggled and it jumped to me, making me laugh on a day I thought laughing was impossible.
“Yeah…maybe,” I said. “Bohr specialized in atomic structure. I want to study black holes, and that’s a different kind of physics.”
“There are different kinds?”
“Oh yes—”
Emery gasped. “Oh my gosh! Your eyes!”
And before I knew what was happening, she took off my glasses and brushed a lock of brown hair off my forehead. Her face drew closer to mine—so close, our noses were almost touching. My heart beat faster.
“One is dark blue and the other is brown!” she cried. “Or mostly brown. A little bit of blue at the bottom… Wow, that is so cool!”
People had been making a fuss about my heterochromia since I was a small child, teasing me that I’d inherited one eye from my dad and one from my mom. I kind of liked that, but now my mom was gone, and I’d be stuck with the reminder of her forever. Her parting souvenir. But Emery made it seem special again.
“Special” is going to turn into “weirdo” the longer she talks to you. Just you wait.
“Whatever,” I said, trying to sound cold and stony. I took my glasses back and put them on. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Maybe not to you,” Emery said. “But I’ve never seen eyes likeyours before.”
I’d never seen eyes like hers, either. Not just their blue-green color—a standard color on the spectrum—but how they seemed lit from inside. Bright and warm, but with sadness at the edges.
She’d said she was having a bad day. I should’ve asked her about herself but didn’t know how without sounding like a creep. I had an IQ of 177. I could solve differential equations in my sleep and recite pi to the 1000th digit, but talking about normal things was hard.
Maybe she’s right. I just need to practice.
I sucked in a breath to ask about her bad day when the grown-ups at the picnic tables started calling the kids in for dinner.
“Emery!” one of the men shouted, waving a pair of tongs.
“Your dad?” I asked.
“My neighbor.” The sadness that had been lurking at the edges of Emery’s eyes came out in full. “My dad would never let us do something as fun as a picnic, but…something bad happened, so he sent Jack and me here for a little while. Jack is my brother. He’s eleven.”
“What is the bad thing that happened?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “Only if you want to tell me. You don’t have to…”
