ALSO BY BRUCE HOLSINGER
A Burnable Book
The Invention of Fire
RIVERHEAD BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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Copyright © 2019 by Bruce Holsinger
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The excerpt from the article “Inside the 5th Grader’s Brain” by Hank Pellisier was published on GreatSchools.org and reprinted by permission of the author.
Ebook ISBN: 9780525534983
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Holsinger, Bruce W., author.
Title: The gifted school : a novel / Bruce Holsinger.
Description: New York : Riverhead Books, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018057642 (print) | LCCN 2018061217 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525534976 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525534969 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Psychological fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Family Life. | FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Psychological.
Classification: LCC PS3608.O49435658 (ebook) | LCC PS3608.O49435658 G64 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018057642
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design: Jaya Miceli
Cover image: CatLane / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Version_1
For my father, Harry: teacher, builder, badass
CONTENTS
Also by Bruce Holsinger
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Question 15
Part I: SchoolingChapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Episode #28: Alone at Last!!!
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Episode #34: Happy Fucking Thanksgiving
Chapter Ten
Part II: The First CutChapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Episode #129: Pandora’s Box—or Pandora’s Bust?
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Episode #159: A Big Surprise!!!!
Chapter Twenty-eight
Part III: The Whole ChildChapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Episode #172: Tessaracks!!!
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Episode #186: Um, Wtf?
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Episode #196: Hits
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Part IV: SpikesChapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Chapter Fifty-eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Chapter Sixty
Episode #201: Tomorrow
Part V: The Final CutChapter Sixty-one
Chapter Sixty-two
Chapter Sixty-three
Chapter Sixty-four
Chapter Sixty-five
Chapter Sixty-six
Chapter Sixty-seven
Chapter Sixty-eight
Chapter Sixty-nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-one
Chapter Seventy-two
Chapter Seventy-three
Chapter Seventy-four
Chapter Seventy-five
Chapter Seventy-six
Episode #202: The Envelope, Please . . .
Endgame
Acknowledgments
About the Author
There is something so tantalizing about having a gifted child that some parents will go to almost any lengths to prove they have one.
—Sheila Moore and Roon Frost, The Little Boy Book
QUESTION 15
A girl of eleven sits hunched over a test booklet, the cold room hushed around her. In her left hand she holds a pencil and beneath her forearm is a bubble sheet speckled with gray dots. A constellation of what she knows and doesn’t, can’t and can. Her elbows rest on either side of the open test. Framing her work, giving it bounds.
She starts to fill in the next circle but at the first soft scratch of the pencil her hand freezes in place. She frowns at the booklet. Because the answer can’t be C—
Or can it?
She glances up at the wall clock, hears its soft pulsing.
Two minutes left.
Another dart of pain shoots through her tummy. She erases the mark and reads the question again.
15. There are four boxes below and five figures to the right. The pictures in the upper two boxes fit together in a particular way. In the second row there is an empty box. Which of the five figures to the right goes with the pictures in the lower-left box in the same way the pictures in the upper boxes go together?
She stares at the lower-left box. The colored shapes swarm on the page.
A square, a circle, a trapezoid, a cone, a rhombus.
Blue, red, green, yellow, purple.
She twists a length of hair around a knuckle and tugs until a s
mall patch of pain forms on her scalp. She imagines one of those coin-operated claws from an arcade reaching down into her skull to pull the correct answer from the jumble-jellied mess in her brain.
Her lower lip slips into her mouth. Taste of salt. Her teeth compress the soft ribbon of flesh. Hard. Harder, until it hurts.
But the answer won’t come.
Next to her at the table sits a boy taking the same test. His hair is black but his skin is even paler than hers. He keeps rubbing sweat off his pencil hand by swiping his palm against his pants just above his right knee, where the khaki fabric has darkened. It’s very annoying and it’s very distracting.
Another glance at the clock. One minute.
There is a bad quivering part of her that wants to look down at the boy’s bubble sheet but so far she hasn’t seen their proctor blink once.
Ms. Stark is her name. She warned them about cheating before the test. About keeping your eyes on your own work.
So the girl decides not to look down at the boy’s bubble sheet. Instead she looks past Ms. Stark’s enormous owlish glasses to the far end of the cafeteria, closed off from the foyer by a wall of mirrored windows. Several panes have been covered in posters, one of them detached at an upper corner and hanging askew. Even without the posters you aren’t supposed to be able to see through the glass. Mostly you can’t.
What you can see is the faint, swaying silhouettes of parents. They’re trying to stay quiet but she can hear their mumbling, their hissing, their breathing. They look like ghosts.
One of them is her mother.
As her gaze wanders across the glass she notices the rectangles and squares of the window panes and especially the shape formed by the folded top of the loose poster and the steel frame above. A square, a rectangle, a trapezoid—
The answer is D.
It comes to her like the bang of a gun, so suddenly she almost says it aloud. She looks down at Question 15 and sees the pattern in the lower-left box. How it goes with the pattern shown in D the same way the patterns in the two upper boxes go together.
Her shoulders relax and her nose tingles with the sweet smell of her own sweat. She starts to fill in the bubble but the moist yellow wood slips through her fingers, rolling across the desk and off the edge. A moment later she hears the whack and clatter as the pencil bounces on the floor.
She leans over to retrieve it, grasping the rubber edge of the table with her right hand. The move requires her to push up slightly from her chair and take an awkward half step as she bends forward. She pincers the eraser between two fingertips and drags it back toward her. The whole maneuver takes no more than a few clock ticks, but by the time her head rises above the level of the table Ms. Stark is walking forward and clapping her hands.
The bell rings.
“Pencils down, booklets closed,” Ms. Stark calls out over the rattly clanging. Through the big glasses her eyes scan the room like a lighthouse beacon sweeps the shore.
The girl looks down at her bubble sheet. She glances at Ms. Stark. At her bubble sheet again. Her hand glides over the surface of the table until the tip of her pencil has nearly reached the four empty circles for Question 15.
“Emma Zellar, put your pencil down this instant.”
The girl’s hand freezes with the tip of the pencil poised less than a centimeter above answer D. The ringing stops. She stares at the empty bubble, willing the cone of lead to lower and fill.
“Now.”
Voices in the lobby, growing louder. Someone out there laughs.
The parents know. The test is over.
The girl follows the strange movement of her knuckles as she tilts the pencil down and sets it neatly on the booklet. The unfilled circle gapes at her until Ms. Stark comes by and sweeps the bubble sheet away.
PART I
SCHOOLING
Gifted children are used to doing very little work to get the results they desire.
—VICKI CARUANA,
Educating Your Gifted Child
The New York Times
Education Life
Sunday, November 5, 2017
Crystal Academy / Head of School
The combined Colorado school districts of Wesley, Kendall, Madison, and Beulah Counties, along with the City of Crystal, are seeking a highly motivated and experienced educator, administrator, and advocate to serve as founding director of Crystal Academy, a new public magnet school for exceptional learners. Position to begin February 2018 in advance of initial admissions process. Duties and responsibilities to include the following:
Deep understanding of and passionate advocacy for the special circumstances and needs of accelerated and exceptional learners
Administrative oversight of a complex and challenging educational environment with statewide and national visibility
Supervision of a large body of teachers and administrative staff at two locations (Lower School grades 6–8, Upper School grades 9–12)
Service to a large student population along Colorado’s Front Range, characterized by wide racial, ethnic, religious, geographical, and economic diversity
Commitment to helping us forge a visionary, equitable, and inclusive admissions process that accounts for difference, diversity, and overall excellence
To apply, visit www.crystalcolorado.gov/humanresources/apply now and search for position #41252. All applications posted by December 1, 2017, will be considered. The City of Crystal is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin or ancestry, gender, age, religious convictions or affiliations, disability, sexual orientation, or genetic profile. The City of Crystal maintains compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
ONE
ROSE
It was on the second Thursday in November that Rose got her earliest inkling of the gifted school. Months later she would swipe back through the calendar and finger that day as the beginning of it all. The hours that planted the seed, traced the faint shape of things to come. The school was still no more than a whisper in the air when she saw her friends late that afternoon, a mere ripple of unease as she settled into bed that night with her husband. But it was already a presence among them. A lurking virus, its symptoms yet to show.
She spent that Thursday in the neuro ward, where her most severe case, a girl of fourteen, lingered at the tail end of an induced coma. Brain trauma with swelling, another helmetless cyclist felled on a city street. Her face was uninjured and serene, with good and improving color. Strong pulse, normal blood pressure, lungs ready to take over; on the edge of consciousness, though yet to return. Rose ran through the rest of the teen’s vitals, searching for something she might have missed.
The parents hadn’t left the room for hours. The mother lay sleeping on the pullout, and the father sat slumped by the bedside. The crescents of skin beneath his eyes had darkened over the last three days, bruised with his fatigue.
“When will she wake up, do you think?” he asked, only half-aloud. His hands stroked his knees, as if petting twin cats.
“Hard to say.” Rose touched his shoulder. “But we’ve weaned her from the pentobarbital and she’s breathing on her own. The rest is up to Lilly.”
At the sound of his daughter’s name he looked up wanly. Rose answered more questions while bending to wipe a line of drool off Lilly’s cheek. The moisture had scooped out an indentation on the pillow, a soft cup of foam, and the girl’s parted lips vented a sour smell.
When the father closed his eyes, Rose slipped out and strode down a row of rooms to check on an epilepsy case. Though reluctant to leave her patients behind, she would, in less than an hour, be rotating off her autumn cycle as inpatient attending in pediatric neurology, a hospital duty she performed for three two-week stretches each year. Her department chair had tried to limit Rose to shorter stints, deeming her time in
the lab more valuable, but Rose loved this part of her job and refused to surrender more of it. On-call weeks were her only chance to heal in the moment, to put a brain scan to a face. There was a part of her that thrived on the machines and the murmured consults, the cleaning agents and the collodion, even the rotten-egg stink of a GI bleed down in the ER.
The admit was an eight-year-old boy with an undiagnosed seizure disorder, doing fine now, though his latest episode had been alarming. Rose left detailed notes in the electronic file, demonstrating a few shortcuts in the new software system to a medical student on neurology rotation. She was back at the nursing station filling in a chart when a text from Gareth shook her phone.
How about Shobu?
??? she replied.
For tonight. Rez at 7:15.
Rose stared down at the screen, longing for a bath, a cuddle with her daughter, a movie—anything but date night. Canceling again, though, would only make things worse. She texted Sounds good but had to remind him of her earlier, more agreeable plans: a round of drinks with friends, to celebrate a birthday. Then she would be home by six-thirty for some time with Emma Q before the sitter came.
Did Q practice? Rose texted.
Yes.
Do her math worksheets?
Yes yes. Love u. ☺
Rose set down her phone, even the lazy u a mild irritant these days. She didn’t like casually texting about love, not anymore, and her nerves were too dulled for an emoji.
Minutes before end of shift a nurse’s voice summoned Rose back to Lilly’s room, and there she found the parents weeping and their daughter, glassy-eyed but with a weak smile, returned to a world she had almost left forever.
* * *
—
A skin-slapping wind whipped down from the Continental Divide and scared up puffs of dust from the bricks. The brittle November air lifted Rose’s spirits as she speed-walked up the Emerald Mall toward RockSalt. Pleasingly dark, not too loud, the bar served craft cocktails featuring spherical ice cubes with flower blossoms suspended inside; lavender martinis, hibiscus gimlets, daisy petals melting into gin. The place had become the favored haunt in recent months for the quartet of old friends. Inside, the youngest of the four, Azra, was already perched straight-backed at a high table, busy on her phone.