Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

Wednesday, April 6

The classes here are brutal. The loads of homework that Mr. Johnson and Mrs. Jones dump on me make the workload of the college level classes I was taking at my old high school feel like preschool worksheets in comparison. I can't say I hate it though. It's better than my old school in a lot of ways. The two of them are miles ahead of the best teachers I've ever had. The way they explain things, it's impossible not to understand them even when they're moving at a blistering pace. I've never felt like school was much of a challenge until now, but with them both working me over, I'm finally pushing the edges of what I'm capable of. I swear we've done like a year's worth of material in the week since I got here.

I definitely made the right call in throwing the computer science section in that first test that Mrs. Hastings gave me. It gives me one part of my day that I can breeze through, and enough extra time in the computer lab that I can almost keep up with everything else. Almost.

I get myself logged in and breeze through my programming assignment before any of my sibs get to the lab, then pull out my tablet to get started on Mr. Johnson's homework. He's decided I'm weak on biology and he's going to correct that if it kills me. So now I need to memorize all the functional areas of the brain by tomorrow morning on top of the chemistry, math, and physics that he's been force-feeding me.

"What's going on man?" Evan asks, walking in and taking the seat next to mine. "You look tired."

"Apparently my old AP Bio teacher didn't get the memo that I was supposed to arrive here with a doctorate in human anatomy," I tell him, flipping my tablet so he can see the diagram I'm committing to memory. "This rote memorization is trashing me, especially when it's for terms I've never heard until this week. I'd rather calculate a moon landing than have to remember where to find every lobe and sulci of the cerebral cortex. Is it sulci? Sulcus? Now I can't even remember the term, and my memory always used to be awesome. The brain groove things I learned about yesterday."

"Sulcus in the singular, sulci is the plural. And sorry, no moon landings for us," Evan says, "that's six years down."

"Wait, what?"

"Nevermind." He gives me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. "Just learn the brain stuff. I promise it'll be more useful than you'd think. If it's giving you that much grief, get Louise to help you. She lives and breathes biology, especially neuroscience."

"Good to know," I say, and go back to studying the colorful diagrams from the neuroanatomy text until Louise strides in a couple of minutes later.

"Hey, sister," I greet her. It's still weird to me to use words like that, but I'm working on getting used to it.

"Morning, boys," she says as she settles in on the other side of Evan.

"I hear you're really good at biology," I say, rolling my chair back from the table to see past my huge brother.

"Evan, did you tell him that just so he'd ask me for help and not you?" Evan just laughs so she gives him a shove. "I thought so. Yeah, I'm pretty good at the life sciences, but this slacker is too."

"Want to help me with my homework today?" I ask her with my very best smile. She gives me a reluctant look and slides her chair away.

"Come on," I beg. "I've seen Evan doing all the Marc-helping in here. Maybe share the load on carrying your slower brothers?"

She laughs and scoots forward to poke a slender finger into my chest. "I've seen how fast you knock out your work in here, Noah. You're anything but slow."

I guess a nice side effect of pretending that I didn't know anything about computers coming into this school is that my sibs think I'm some kind of crazy fast learner. Well, the ones that pay attention anyway. Chad still treats me like I'm an idiot.