“Wow,” Faye says. “How far back can you remember?”
I smile. I get asked that a lot. “Most everything is a blur until I was a year old or so. I remember Mom’s face, my brother bawling, and a baby spoon with mushy goop.”
“That’s neat.”
“It’s as much a curse as a gift, trust me. You don’t want to remember every day of being thirteen.”
She shudders.
“So why are you here?” I ask. “What makes you an exceptional?” I roll my eyes at the word the camp emphasizes in their pamphlets and website pages.
She blushes and ducks her head. “I don’t know if it’s that special—”
“Of course it is, that’s why you were invited here,” I assure her.
“Well, I’m good with pictographs and symbols. I decipher cuneiform and do a lot of rune translation.”
“Wow. And you’re starting college next year? As a freshman?”
“Well, technically I’ll be starting as a second year at Gothenburg. I’ve done some early coursework. At least, for the classes that dad wrote the textbooks for.” She wrinkles her nose. “Usually toddlers have the alphabet on their daycare walls. I had hieroglyphics.”
I blink, remembering the name card taped to the door. Faye Jarvi. “Your father is Jonathan Jarvi. The archaeologist.”
“Yarvi,” she corrects my pronunciation. “How did you—”
“I saw his article in National Geographic, about the paintings they found in Afghanistan. You’re the little girl. In that one picture where they’re rebuilding the giant statues.” Her mouth is still the same, a little cupid’s bow with quirked up corners.
“The Bamiyan caves,” she says, returning to her objects. “I was four.” She drops several stones into a tiny mesh bag, and knots the string around the top.
I do some quick math in my head. She has to be seventeen, though she looks thirteen at most. I stare at the awful sweater on her chair, wondering if it had sentimental value. “I guess I’ll go take a shower and change for dinner. Don’t forget the meeting at eight.”
“You’re changing? The student advisor said dinner was casual.”
She looks panicked. She’s wearing some mess of a skirt and slouchy tights and a baggy tunic, too hot for early June weather, this far south. Her closet holds the same, wool and heavy knits.
I stand, rummaging in my own closet for my robe and my basket of toiletries. “Nothing in life is ever casual.”
“No, I suppose not.” She murmurs something under her breath, not English. She’s poking at piles of little plant parts, dried heads of flowers, and seed pods. I wonder if any of them are poisonous, but I keep my mouth closed.
3.
Expectations
The student lounge of the English department smells like cheese puffs and fermented cola, with a layer of hair product on top. It’s a huge step up from the sweat and piss stench of the rec room at the state facility, so I’m not complaining. I look in the corners for the closed circuit cameras, feeling vulnerable when I don’t see them.
There are girls everywhere. Short hair, long hair, short shorts, long skirts, glasses, no glasses, thick girls, thin girls, maybe two to every single guy. Most are joking with each other, quick eye contact and slight smiles when I edge past,
no fear. A few whispers, recognition of the fight this afternoon. I’m conscious of the bruise on my lip. The redheaded guy sits in the corner, cronies still at his side. I ignore him.
Zoe, our student advisor, stands in the middle of the room, surrounded by a circle of second-hand couches and chairs, telling us about herself and what to expect over the next month. She’s enthusiastic, a three year program student come back for more. She’s heavy, but in a nice curvy way, and has a little brown tribal tattoo behind her ear.
“Welcome to the Scholastic Honors Program! I can already tell that this is going to be a great group!” She smiles at a group of girls stuffed together on a couch.
They giggle in reply, as though they’ve shared some inside joke in the four hours that we’ve been here. Girls. They group up faster than neighborhood gangs in a cell block.
“New folks, this is your focus core, Creative Writing and Journalism. We break into project groups tomorrow. Is anyone where they shouldn’t be?”
Two guys in thick glasses, laptop bags over their shoulders, raise hands like puppets on strings.