Donna (Girls of Spindrift 2)

“Did Mrs. Pelham describe any failures?” Before they could answer, I added, “Not that Spindrift would admit to any.”

“Probably true,” my mother said. “There are no guarantees. Somewhere in the description, it implies that.”

I nodded. “What do you two want?” I asked them, staring at the brochure.

“We want you to be happy and productive,” my father said.

“We want you to be satisfied with yourself,” my mother added.

“A big headache shipped off,” I said.

“You know that’s not true, Donna,” my mother said.

I looked up. “You said you’d visit me periodically, but neither of you mentioned my coming home for anything.”

“Of course you would,” my mother said quickly. “All the holidays.”

“We know how you are about making a decision,” my father said. “So go to school and see Mrs. Pelham tomorrow, and—”

“I don’t need to,” I said. “But I want to do something else tomorrow.”

“Sure. What?” my father asked.

“I want to visit Greg at the hospital.”

They looked at each other. My father smiled and nodded.

“I’ll take you,” my mother said, “and wait for you in the lobby.”

“Okay.” I rose, holding the brochure. “I want to tell Mickey about this first.”

“Good idea,” my father said.

Although she did nothing to indicate that she would, I suspected that as soon as I left the room, my mother would start to cry. I wouldn’t have minded seeing her do it.

Maybe nothing she had done recently would make me feel so good. I would know she really cared as much for me as any mother could care for her daughter, Señorita Genius or not.

5

Mickey wasn’t surprised to see me come into his room, even though it was usually the other way around. He thought I was his private Wikipedia. Whenever I explained things to him, whether it was a math problem or a science theory, he often told me I did a better job than his teachers did. They never explained it so clearly. I suspected that his teachers, most teachers, were often frustrated because students didn’t pay attention the first or even the second time, and they felt they were teaching in an echo chamber.

My brother wasn’t one who didn’t pay attention. I knew his secret ambition was to be as smart as I was. Many of his friends who knew about me anticipated that one day he would blossom into another me. When he first told me that, I told him I wished it would never happen. I could see he thought I wished that because I didn’t want anyone else to be as important as I was or something. I did my best to assure him that wasn’t the reason.

“Be yourself,” I told him. “Don’t try to be anyone else, or you’ll never be happy, especially if you become me.”

“Aren’t you happy?” he had asked me only last year.

“I’m in the world between happy and unhappy,” I said, which only confused him.

“That’s only because you’re a wizard,” he said. “Wizards have no time to think about being happy. They have too much to do. Wizards control everything,” he continued, and then went on to explain some video game of his that he really seemed to believe was true. I didn’t discourage him. I envied him for his imagination, an imagination that didn’t rely on facts. His was pure make-believe.

People were happier when they could make believe, I thought. They could find ways to avoid ugliness and failure, even if it was only for a short while. At least, it served as an oasis in a world where so much disaster and tragedy reigned, especially now with climate change. If you couldn’t dip into make-believe, you could never really enjoy a good novel, play, or movie. Worst of all, you couldn’t have a close relationship with anyone, because you could not ignore his or her weaknesses. Maybe you could never fall in love, perhaps, as in my case, because you couldn’t prove it scientifically.

Now Mickey looked up from his math homework. I sat on his bed, and he turned around in his desk chair.

“I’m going to go to a different school.”

“Where?”