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  “Yeah, we should talk, ‘off the record.’”

  The next morning Ell was in Mandal’s office and they both unjacked their AIs. “Ell, why are you in such a rush to get off to college?”

  She shrugged, “Just want to get out of here I guess.”

  Mandal scratched his chin. He knew that Ell’s mother had remarried a couple of years ago. “Trouble at home?”

  Ell shrugged again. “Naw.”

  “Your step dad, what’s his name again?”

  She grimaced, “Jake Radford.”

  “Mr. Radford causing you any trouble?”

  “He’s a jerk. But it isn’t anything I can’t handle.”

  Mandal looked hard at her. “Is he doing anything to you?”

  “No! I don’t like the way he looks at me. But he’s harmless. I just can’t believe my mother married him is all.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes! Talk to me about colleges.”

  Mandal looked at her pensively for a few more moments. The girl was very, very attractive. She had brilliant green eyes, short, silky, strawberry blond hair and a smooth unblemished complexion with a light sprinkling of freckles on an evenly proportioned, “pixie like” face. Slender and an athletic phenom, she could easily get a softball or volleyball scholarship, but she’d already told him that she wanted to focus on academics in college. “Do you have money for private or out of state schools?” Mandal knew her mom was a schoolteacher and doubted that they had a lot of savings, but maybe there was insurance money from her father’s death or possibly the step dad had money?

  “No! In state will be hard enough. Couldn’t I could get a scholarship?

  “Athletic?”

  “No!”

  “Well your scores would get you some kind of scholarship. To be honest you probably could get a great scholarship if you’d get involved in some leadership activities and pull up that writing score on the SAT.”

  “No! I want out of here by the end of next year and I don’t want to ‘run for office.’ It’s hard enough being two years younger than my classmates without making a target out of myself by running against Mindy Martin for class president!”

  Mandal sat back, bemused. Ell’s apparent shyness and feelings of social inadequacy always surprised him. She never seemed to believe that people liked her. His personal take of the school’s social dynamics placed her as one of the most popular kids in the school. She might be chronologically younger than her classmates but she acted more maturely than most of them. She didn’t seem to belong to any cliques, but he thought she was liked by almost everyone. Her stunning looks, he was sure, contributed to her popularity—except with the country club clique of fashionable girls who might be jealous. Mandal didn’t think she acted “better than thou” like a lot of the other pretty girls did anyway. He wasn’t even sure she understood that she was beautiful. In any case, her humility regarding her sports accomplishments and her willingness to help anyone with any problem had to be a huge part of it too. Besides, just her athleticism guaranteed that she would be admired, especially because she wasn’t a “glory hound.” He wondered if she thought she wasn’t “popular” because she didn’t belong to any of the cliques? “I’m pretty sure you’d have a good chance at being elected to office,” he started.

  “Hah!” She interrupted, “Not a chance. You really have no idea what it’s like.”

  Well, he admitted to himself, that’s true; I really didn’t know what goes on within the kids’ social dynamics. Kids loved by teachers were sometimes despised by their peers without the teachers realizing it.

  “OK then. Carolina? I’m almost certain you could get in. I doubt you’d get a full ride scholarship like the Morehead without doing some of the things I’ve mentioned though.”

  “No, State. I want to study engineering. Well, maybe physics.”

  “It’s a good school. You could apply for the Park scholarship, but I really don’t think you’d get it based on your grades and a record setting math score alone.”

  “I can apply to both schools and for both scholarships though right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t any private or out of state schools have full ride scholarships?”

  “I’ll look into it for you. Would you consider a military academy?”

  A wrinkle formed between Ell’s eyebrows. “Military?”

  “West Point, Navy, Air Force Academy. They provide full rides to all their students but you owe them some time on active duty afterward. Great educations though, and they’re all big in engineering.”

  “Huh, I’ll look at their stuff on the net.”

  Kristen heard Ell come in the front door. “Ell? Did you get your SAT results today?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “Well?” Kristen said with the patiently exasperated tone of a parent having to drag conversation out of a teenager.

  “I got 94th percentile on reading but only 78th on writing.”

  “Ell, those aren’t bad! Especially for a sophomore… Wait, how’d you do on math?”

  “Oh… I got 100th percentile on math.”

  “Hundredth?! What does that mean? I don’t know the scoring system, but how can anyone get the hundredth percentile?”

  “Um, it’s the max score. It means that it was the highest score of all test takers this year.”

  “Really?! The max score for all sophomores?”

  “No, for all takers Mom.”

  “My God, Ell! That’s wonderful! I knew you were good at math but holy crap!” She paused and frowned, “How are you that good at math when the Carteret county schools don’t even have any AP classes for you to take?”

  “You can take AP classes online. They’re expensive if you take them for credit but you can ‘audit’ almost all of them for free.” She shrugged, “I really like math. After I got interested in it I audited the online AP courses and then some free online college courses. The courses had a lot of recommended reading and most of that was pretty cool too.”

  “How did you have time to do that between your sports and school and stuff?”

  “Just here and there, it doesn’t take all that long to get through a course.” Especially when you really like the subject, Ell thought to herself.

  Kristen stood stunned for a moment, wondering how her daughter could just breeze through advanced math courses without any help and tell her that, “they don’t take long.” Then Kristen threw her arms around her daughter, “Oh, Ell! You make me so proud! We’ve got to go out and celebrate!” Mother and daughter bounced up and down together in excitement. “Just wait ‘til Jake gets home.”

  Ell’s frame of mind slumped. She’d been excited to go out and celebrate with her mom. But, not with Jake. She had a feeling he’d ruin her good mood somehow. Ell heard the back door creak open. “I’m home.” Jake called out. He stepped into the room and frowned, “What are you guys all wound up about?”

  Kristen beamed, “Ell got a ‘hundredth percentile’ on the math section of the SAT?”

  Jake’s brow drew down further, “That isn’t possible.”

  Ell wondered whether he meant that there was no such score or that it couldn’t be possible that his stepdaughter got a good score. Kristen grinned though and said, “I’d never heard of a ‘hundredth percentile’ score either, but Ell says it’s the highest score of all takers this year, meaning that she did better than 100% of the other people who took the SAT!”

  Jake shook his head and said, “That can’t be right. Forward your result to my AI.” His tone was suspicious, preemptory and demanding

  Ell stared at him for a moment as ice ran down her spine and she felt her right eyelid twitch involuntarily several times. Then she said, “No.” Her resentment at a hundred little ‘put downs’ from Jake over the past few years had just boiled over.

  “What?!”

  “I said no. You can trust me or not, but they’re my results and I’m not forwarding them to you.” Ell heart throbbed and she worried tha
t she might get so wound up that bad things could happen. She still had nightmares about blinding the man who’d attacked her mother three years ago. She looked down at the floor and took a couple of deep, calming breaths.

  Kristen looked at her in shock. “Ell!” She’d often been uneasy about the rude way that Jake talked to her daughter but Ell had always let it roll off in the past. Kristen had wondered if her uneasiness about his condescension was just an overreaction. After all, mothers are often overprotective of their children.

  Ell felt calmer. She looked her mother in the eye. “Sorry Mom. You love him, but I don’t and I’m just so sick of his attitude toward me.”

  Jake had turned bright red with fury. “Look young lady. I don’t give a crap how you scored on any tests. If you want to go to college, you’ll do things my way. Send—me—those—scores!”

  Ell’s pulse throbbed harder. She took another calming breath. “No! You can’t keep me from going to college.”

  Jake strode across the room to tower over Ell, “Who do you think is going to pay for you to go to college? Your mom? She doesn’t have the money!”

  Ell felt herself going over the edge into the bad place that rage could take her. She took another deep breath to try to calm herself but it didn’t seem to help. “I don’t want your money, asshole!” Her own mind gibbered at her. She never spoke this way to adults. “Get control of yourself!” she thought. The world had slowed down and everything had started moving in a dreamlike fashion like it had when the man attacked her mom. She had a queasy flashback to the feeling of her fingers bursting into his eyeballs. She had only meant to poke his eyes to distract him. She noticed with dismay that Kristen looked mortified and had started crying but then Ell saw Jake’s shoulder tense. His arm swung back, and then forward, hand open. With everything moving in slow motion Ell realized that he intended to slap her! Her mind projected his hand’s intended trajectory, and the way the world’s movements had taken on a molasses-like motion made it easy to duck down out of the path his hand was taking toward her head. As it missed her, she realized that the powerful, un-deflected slap was going to go on to hit her mother instead! She reached out with her right hand as it passed and slapped the underside of his forearm just above the wrist in order to deflect his hand up over her mother’s head as well. Oh no! she thought to herself as agony washed up her arm from her hand. Moving so fast, she’d hit his wrist far too hard! Every time she had a “fight or flight reaction” like she was currently experiencing, the world seemed to move slowly and Ell moved so fast that she overdid things! She saw a visible dent appear in the flesh just above Jake’s wrist, then shock waves spread from and bounced back across the site where Ell’s hand had struck. Though it had seemed to be a slow bump to Ell, it obviously had been a very hard strike. She saw the effect of the blow on Jake, as he spun clumsily from the momentum of the unexpectedly missed slap. His eyebrows initially rose in surprise when he failed to make contact, then twitched together in concern. A moment later they rose again as pain messages flooded into his brain from his wrist.

  Jake and Ell both grasped their injured appendages and bent over with the pain, glaring at each other.

  Ell lay on her bed staring up into her HUD. Jake had been unable to use his hand and so Kristen had taken him to the ER. Part of the time Ell’s mind wandered over, around and through the disaster that had just befallen her family. She had managed to vigorously research scholarship and military academy options on the net though. She swore that she would pay her own way through college even if she had to work a few years before she attended a school and live like a pauper while she attended. The door creaked open downstairs and she heard her mother and Jake come in. Ell got out of bed and went to the top of the stairs where she stood uncomfortably, waiting with her arms crossed and her right hand squeezed in her armpit. Her palm still hurt where she’d slapped Jake’s arm up and away and the bases of her fingers had turned black and blue. She wondered if she might have done her hand serious damage but it seemed to work OK despite the pain. When Kristen and Jake came out from the kitchen Ell said, “I’m sorry.”

  They looked up at her. Ell’s mother looked concerned. Jake, wearing a cast, still looked pissed. He said, “You broke my ulna!” His tone carried a mixture of anger and astonishment.

  “You… you tried to slap me!” Ell’s tone was low, words uttered through gritted teeth, but there could be no mistaking the rage in her voice. She had thought that surely he would apologize to her also, especially if she went first. Even though he never apologized for anything, surely he would apologize for trying to strike her?

  “Hey! Hey…” Kristen made little downward pushing motions with her hands, trying to calm them both.

  Ell’s vision blurred with tears. A sense of abandonment swept over Ell as she realized that her mother wasn’t taking her side. She turned and marched back to her room, picking up the suitcase she’d already packed. When she reached the top of the stairs she saw that Jake and her mother were having a quiet but heated argument. They looked up at her standing calmly with her suitcase. “Good!” Jake said beneath lowered brows.

  “What? Where are you going?” Kristen asked.

  “Gram’s. I can’t stay here.” Ell started down the stairs.

  Tears streamed down Kristen’s face but with resignation she quietly said, “OK, I’ll take you,” and picked up her purse.

  After she pulled out of the driveway, Kristen said, “Ell?” When there was no response she said, “Ell, I’m sure you feel I’ve let you down. I kinda feel the same way. I really don’t know what to do when the two people I love hate each other like you and Jake do.” She paused, hoping Ell might comment but the girl sat there, staring ahead with her arms crossed. “Ell, if you and Jake can’t live together… If you can’t live together, I think having you at Gram’s is the best way to keep this family from coming apart. I know he acts like a jerk sometimes and I’m going to talk to him about it. But you were pretty rude to him too.”

  “Only after he’d been rude to me for the thousandth time.”

  “Well I appreciate your apologizing to him. I’ll talk to him about apologizing to you and maybe you can move back home in a couple of days?”

  “He… he will never apologize. I, therefore, will never live in that house again.”

  Silence reigned the rest of the way to Gram Taylor’s house. When Gram saw Ell with a suitcase she clapped her hands to her face, eyes darting back and forth from Kristen to Ell, taking in their grim looks, “Oh! I was afraid this would happen one day.” She looked at Ell, “You and Jake get in a fight?”

  “Yes Gram. I’m sorry, but I’m hoping to live with you for a while?”

  “Of course, of course.” Ell’s grandmother shepherded Ell into the house and began bustling around, clearing drawers in her spare room and throwing their contents on the bed, “But I’m sure you guys can work it out after a bit.”

  “Not gonna happen Gram. If I can’t stay with you ‘til I go away to school next Fall, I’ll need to look into other arrangements?”

  “Sure, sure, stay as long as you like. Keep me from being lonely! Next Fall? You’re just a Junior. You mean Fall after this coming one?”

  “No Gram, I intend to apply for early admission and go after my Junior year.”

  Gram’s eyes went back and forth from Ell to Kristen and back again, “Really? Will you be able to get in?”

  Kristen said quietly, “She got the highest score in the country on her math SAT Mom.”

  Gram clapped her hands together in delight. “Oh! That’s great! We should have ice cream!” They all worked to bag the erstwhile contents of the drawers for placement in the storage closet and spent a few moments unpacking the meager contents of Ell’s suitcase into the drawers.

  Later, after a suitable dose of mint chocolate chip all around, Kristen went back to Jake’s house and Ell went to her new room to reorganize. Though it was late when she finished and laid down to sleep, sleep was long in coming. The fight
with Jake kept cycling through her mind. Normally, when Ell had trouble getting to sleep, she mentally worked on her favorite math problem, an attempt to describe how quantum entanglement could occur through another dimension. One of the great mysteries of physics is that particles which are “entangled” somehow seem to be connected to one another even when they are far apart. Ell was trying to create her own math to describe how such entangled particles, despite being separated in the dimensions we are aware of, are actually in direct contact with one another through her postulated other dimension. In that they could touch each other in it even though, in the dimensions we see they were far apart. The problem was mind boggling and the mental effort usually wore her down and put her off to sleep quickly. This night however, her mind kept derailing off her “dimensional math” and back onto Jake and what he’d done and how Ell should have responded. It was almost morning before she finally fell asleep.

  ***

  Phil Zabrisk encountered Ell for the first time on a brisk Fall Saturday at the service academy trials. It had been cool in the morning, but an Indian Summer sun brought a beautiful breezy afternoon that blew brightly colored leaves about. Phil’s dad was stationed at Seymore Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina and Phil happened to go to the Chapel Hill ROTC center for physmed testing on the same date as Ell. His family had a long history of military service and it was his intention to extend that proud history. Many of his ancestors had served in the higher ranks of the nation’s officer corps and it was the family’s belief that “breeding will show.” Tales of Phil’s forebears had inspired him and it was his intent to exceed their accomplishments. Most Cadets are appointed to the service academies by members of Congress. His Grandfather, Father and Uncle had easily pulled enough strings to ensure that Phil would get an appointment, assuming he passed the physmed testing and did even moderately well on the entrance exams. He had done well enough on the entrance exams that his admission was practically guaranteed once he cleared physmed. He excelled at wrestling; talk even circulated about his chances for All-American status in college, so he had little fear that he would be physically disqualified.