The Intuitives(8)

It’s all insignificant, she thought, but she loved her moments with her father too much to ruin them.

“We’re taking some new test today,” she said instead, between cherry pits.

“Oh? On what?”

“It’s not on anything. Well, I mean, obviously it’s on something. But it’s not for a class. It’s some new standardized battery they’re trying out.”

“Really? What kind of battery?”

“No idea,” she replied, shrugging. “They’re just using us to test it. It won’t count this year.”

“So let me get this straight. You’re going to school to take a test to test a test that isn’t testing you on anything?”

“Pretty much. Welcome to my world.”

Her father chuckled. “You want out of it? Sounds like a ditch day, to me.”

Sam grinned. Michael Prescott looked at education the same way he viewed everything else: as a means to an end. As long as Sam was keeping her grades up, he saw no reason to adhere to the school’s attendance policy any more strictly than the law required.

She was about to leap at his offer when a sudden feeling in her gut brought her up short—a profound sense of… importance—and she paused, taking it in, her hand halfway to her mouth with another cherry.

“Sam? You OK?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” She placed the cherry back in the bowl. “It’s just…” She hesitated, hardly believing what she was about to say.

“Thanks, Dad, but I think I have to go to school today!”

? ? ?

By the time Sam reached the school’s broad, white-washed sidewalk, she was already regretting her decision. The strange feeling that something momentous was about to happen had vanished as soon as she had arrived, and now the hulking red-brick building loomed over her, promising nothing but heartache and boredom in approximately equal measure.

There were thirty-seven wide, shallow steps in the walkway, and she climbed every one with an increasing sense of disappointment.

One, two, three, four…

Where had that strange sense of urgency gone? It had been such a beautiful feeling, to think that for once in her life, something she was about to do might actually matter.

Nine, ten, eleven, twelve…

Now she would be stuck in school all day, and for what? Why hadn’t she taken her father’s offer while she had the chance?

Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty…

How could she have been so stupid? She had been in a good mood for what? Maybe five minutes? So, of course, she just had to start believing her life was actually important, that anything she did might actually mean something. It couldn’t possibly be that she was just happy to have her father’s attention for half a second, or that she was still loopy on sleep deprivation at 5:28 a.m.

Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight…

Now, it felt as though nothing mattered again, like today was just another inconsequential day along the road to old age. Where was that sense of impending change? Where was that miraculous feeling she had had for just one fleeting moment, that her life was about to be full of adventure—that she was finally about to step into her destiny?

Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six…

Great, and, of course, as if she weren’t already miserable enough, Vinnie Esposito just had to be at the front door.

Thirty-seven.

“Mongol,” he said as she walked by.

“Peanut,” she replied, her foot crossing the threshold exactly as the first bell rang.

“Why the hell you call me ‘Peanut?’” Vinnie demanded, following her down the hallway. He hovered just inches behind her, as he always did, the very weight of his presence making her skin crawl.

Not that she was about to show it.

“I told you to Google it,” she snapped back.

Vinnie had called her ‘Mongol’ ever since the second grade, when a young and hopelessly misguided teacher had commented cheerfully—in front of the whole class, no less—that Sam had such an interesting look and was she, perhaps, Mongolian?

Sam had explained in tight-lipped embarrassment that her mother was Chinese and her father was, well, not—with Vinnie snickering maniacally in the back row throughout the entire affair. Sam had inherited her mother’s lush black hair, her father’s green eyes, and an exotic blend of facial features that was hard for the people of her New Jersey suburb to pin down. Vinnie had started calling her ‘Mongol’ after that, and unfortunately, the name had stuck.

In return, she called Vinnie ‘Peanut’ after the dog that had won the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest in 2014, a fact she had not let on to anyone, least of all Vinnie.

“How about I just beat it out of you?” he suggested.

He grabbed her shoulder, holding her back long enough to get in front of her and planting one heavy arm against the wall, leaning his body in threateningly, trapping her in the hallway just a few feet from their homeroom.

“Just hit me,” she said, staring straight into his eyes. “I’ll fall down and scream bloody murder, and when Miss Anderson comes out, I’ll get you expelled. I’ll miss your ugly face, of course, but I’ll do my best to get by. Come to think of it, I might report you for bullying anyway, whether you hit me or not.”