Chapter 56:


    Belle sat next to Kaiden at the marble ind. A team of three tutors — Columbia graduate students — stood nervously nearby.


    “Kaiden, focus!” Belle snapped. “What is 15 plus 27?”


    Kaiden kicked the table leg. “I don’t know! I want to y Minecraft!”


    “You can y when you solve this!” Belle mmed her hand on the table.


    Kaiden threw his pencil. “You said you’d buy me the new car if I just sat here! You lied!”


    Belle grabbed his shoulders. “Listen to me. You have to beat her. You have to beat the girl who pushed you. Do you want her tough at you?”


    Kaiden pouted and scribbled a random number on the page. It was wrong.


    Belle rubbed her temples and looked at the tutors. “Just… make him memorize the answers. I’ll get the test bank. Whatever it costs.”


    In Brooklyn, the scene was different.


    The apartment was quiet. The smell of boiling pasta filled the air.


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    Isolde ced a sheet of paper in front of Effie. It wasn’t simple addition — it was a logic sequence intended for middle schoolers.


    If A > B and B = C, what is the rtionship between A and C?


    Effie didn’t ask for help. She didn’t count on her fingers. She stared at the paper for three seconds.


    Then she wrote: A > C.


    Isolde blinked. She slid another paper across the table — aplex pattern recognition puzzle.


    Effie solved it in five seconds.


    “How are you doing that?” Isolde asked, her voice hushed.


    Effie tapped her temple. “The numbers dance, Mommy. They hold hands and get in line. I just write down who they’re holding hands with.”


    A fierce, familiar pride swelled in Isolde’s chest. It wasn’t simply intelligence. She had seen the signs before — in the perfectly proportioned rocket drawings, in the intuitive grasp of physics. But this was something more. This was the raw, untamed power of a prodigious mind, awakened and ready for battle. Effie saw the world in raw data, organizing chaos into perfect order.


    Isolde went to the bookshelf and pulled out an old college textbook. Introductory Algebra. She opened it to a random page and showed Effie an equation. Effie frowned, tilted her head, and whispered, “X is 4.”


    Isolde checked the answer key. X was 4.


    Tears pricked Isolde’s eyes — tears of vindication. Grayson had called her “slow” because she didn’t talk much. He had called her “weird” because she stared at walls.


    She wasn’t slow. She was running at a speed he couldn’t even begin toprehend.


    Isolde pulled Effie into herp and buried her face in her daughter’s hair.


    “Tomorrow,” Isolde whispered fiercely, “you don’t hold back. You let them dance. You let them dance all over them.”


    The auditorium smelled of floor wax and nervous parents.


    It was the “Warm-Up Round,” a casual quiz bowl designed to limate the children to the stage before the formal written exam the following day.


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