Chaoter One - Kay through 12

Kay Through 12. Chapter One.

I was doing just fine working on my trigonometry homework and minding my business. Jenny Miller was next to me and she was working out the probabilistic distribution of planetary masses in a randomly generated solar system. I had already decided not to take any science electives before meeting Jenny.

“Kaitlyn – Kaitlyn Angel. Can I see you, please?” The deep voice echoed across the tables.

He was tall and red bearded and clad in tweed. Dr. Xavier Sidon was the school shrink and he wanted to see me. After class. During detention. Nothing good was going to come from this.

Trouble called me Kaitlyn. Everyone else called me Kay.

In the pit of my stomach I knew that my plan of just blending in and going along in school was going to be a problem. Ms. Sutley’s English Composition class was just the beginning.

I gathered my textbook, papers, and my sketchbook and walked to the door. Every eye in the place burned into my back. My new notoriety needed limits.

Harold Edgerton High – the borough of Manhattan’s latest attempt to cater to the island’s special population – was named for the inventor of the strobe light. His career made possible ubiquitous high speed photography : bullets through apples, crown droplets from a splash in milk. It was meant to be a public school for exceptional students. That word – exceptional – had many connotations in New York.

The Edgerton images lined the dining hall. Not all the accomplishments Henry inspired were above board with this crowd of misfits. I’d already learned that the unofficial school mascot was inspired by the paparazzi strobe. “Fred the Flasher” was as rude an interpretation of technology as was possible. The administration hated his mention but there he was there all the same. No basketball game was complete without a sighting.

Mom told me about “streaking” on the college campus in Grandma’s day. I guessed Fred was the more vulgar stepchild of that motivation. HEH was a different place in other ways as well.

Most high schools had a cafeteria. HEH had an oak-paneled dining hall and it was my after-school home for two hours each of my last fifteen school days. Ms. Sutley called it “study focus seminar” on the disciplinary recommendation to the vice-principal. Her first assignment to me was an autobiographical essay. Her response to the creative satire of a realist was less than enthusiastic.

There was an upside to detention. Trouble was a powerful equalizer. As the “new girl” freshman starting term two weeks late, the instant acceptance from being on Ms. Sutley’s list of underachieving students was the best I could hope for. It was a gold pass of acceptability. The dining hall at lunch was welcoming after her intervention.

I read the horridly self-promoting fiction that was Ben Franklin’s _Autobiography_ as part of Ms. Sutley’s assignment. My essay in response was constructed as a literal geographic description of my daily trip uptown. The topic was assigned as “How I Came To Be Here.” I thought my approach and observations clever.

Ms. Sutley did not believe my descriptive narrative. It was her first term teaching at HEH and I don’t think the purpose behind the security clearance necessary for her job ever registered.

Maybe starting the location of the essay at the minus twenty-second floor of 34^th and 5^th avenue was the shock.. Most people knew the landmark above as the Empire State Building. To my family, home was the secure bunker facility euphemistically called “The Enclave” in the classified community newsletter.

Some families of students at HEH were pop-star famous or third-world dictator rich or diplomatically infamous. My family was scary smart. Well, except for me.

We moved to town so we could all be together and so my little brother could complete his doctorate in physics at Columbia where dad got his first. My little brother was twelve.

My mother had a medical degree, a doctorate in aerospace engineering, and a doctorate in neurology. She was properly a rocket brain surgeon.

Oh , and she was just naturally doorman-stunningly beautiful in a city of glamour. A cab driver ran into the back of a delivery truck the first week we were here. He was staring at mom in the rear-view mirror as I sat beside her in the back seat. A load of ice and a tuna carcass slid right onto the hood. The whole cab instantly smelled of fish. I wanted to be cold, headless, and gutted right then, too.

My father held another half-a-dozen degrees and worked for agency-without-a-name. He spent most of his time on bio-mechanical engineering and the pursuit of the perfect cup of coffee. Moving to New York was his idea. The apartment came with dual laboratories. That was tough to find in any real estate market.

My special ability in this family of chronic over-achievers lay in my super identity : Invisible Girl. I didn’t need a secret identity to hide behind. With a family like mine, I was pretty much Invisible Girl full time. Except for the holiday picture we sent friends, I barely existed.

I tried to make light of it. My mother seldom understood. When I asked for a postal uniform for my birthday to use as my super hero costume she just blinked at me across the dinner table as the robotic bowl of mashed potatoes marched about in circles.

She had no idea what it was to be normal in a family with the genius gene. I took piano for years to play Billy Joel songs. She played Rachmaninov at five.

The woman had a brain the size of a Volkswagen and woke up every morning in Oblivious Land. My father was king in the palace of self-absorption. My parents’ common unifying thread was their ability to concentrate on whatever peaked their scientific curiosity to the exclusion of everything else around them. My brother joyously shared that trait.

Luckily, Atlas - the dog - was mine. That saved the rugs. He was a former research subject of my father’s. I adopted him. “Dog that saved the world” I called him. At least in New York, no one noticed the clicking sound his titanium legs made on the sidewalk as we walked to the park. He looked and acted normal enough for a beagle. Outrunning rabbits wasn’t a problem. He could outrun Buicks.

How was Ms. Sutley going to believe the truth about my family ? Or my dog ? I loved my parents and my brother with the passion only approximated by pack of tail wagging Labradors. How was I supposed to put that on paper in my autobiography for Ms. Sutley when she wouldn’t believe where I lived ?

I invented a story that we were from Indiana and that my father worked in investment banking. The second attempt at the assignment got an “A.” I kept going to “study focus seminar” anyway because I liked it. It alone made me feel like I had a normal life.

Of course, that was before Dr. Sidon took an interest in me.