Moving in with the Metzingers

Chapter 2

That was a little unfair of me, starting off with the funeral without introducing everyone properly. Before I tell you what happened next, I'll give you a little backstory.

My family (me, Lanie, Ara, and my parents) lives in Manchester by the Sea (not to be confused with Manchester), Massachusetts. We have a huge house right on the waterfront; the beach is a one-minute walk away. I attend Thomas Aquinas High School; it's a catholic high school and saint Thomas Aquinas is the patron saint of students and teachers and education so yeah. Lanie goes to MBS Middle (Manchester by the sea), the local public middle school. Ara (her full name is Philiara, my mom made that up using the Latin root philia meaning love and the European root ara meaning to glow. We just call her Ara) used to attend Hamilton Preschool and Elementary, the private little kid school that Lanie and I went to up until 6th grade, when we started at MBS. For some reason mom wanted us all to go to private elementary school, public middle school, and then whatever high school we chose. I applied to all of the catholic high schools in the district, and I got into all of them with academic scholarships, but I always prefered Thomas Aquinas High, so when I found out I got in, my mind was made up. My mom approvedof my decision, since I had always been so set on going to TAH, and it didn't hurt that I got in on full honors scholarship. Not that I needed it; my family is kind of rich, but I'm sure my parents prefer not spending thirty thousand dollars a year if they had the option not to.

Lanie has just finished sending in all of her high school applications; she applied to St. Francis Prep, Christ the King Academy (technically it's CKA, but everyone calls it ack), TAH, and if she doesn't get into any of them for some reason, she'll go to Jefferson, the public high school we are zoned for. There is no doubt in my mind that she'll get into all of the catholic high schools she applied to though; Lanie is undeniably a genius. She pretends not to really care about her grades, but she effortlessly maintains her 5.3 GPA. How does she have a 5.3? She takes all AP classes. She is also an incredibly talented writer-- give her an essay topic and she'll whip up a paper more intelligent-sounding than you ever could have imagined.

Mom told me the story about when I was six and Lanie was almost four (but she could already read and write of course) and we were playing school. I was playing the teacher and thought it sounded official to say, "Write a three-page essay about your favorite color." I even wrote it on the whiteboard we have in the playroom; I spelled it: Rite a 3page .S.A. about yor faverit coler." Lanie took my assignment seriously and actually wrote three pages explaining why blue was her favorite color. Not two sentences that took up three pages because she wrote huge in crayon; an actual essay on lined paper. My mom was so impressed with Lanie's poetic description of the color blue, she published it through some kid's writing website thing. It even won an award. They gave Lanie a pen set and a gift certificate to Barnes and Nobles.

Her writing-progidy-ness began there. I'm pretty smart for my age too-- I take all AP classes-- but not compared to Lanie. She has been asked to skip a grade several times throughout her school life; every teacher since preschool hasreccomended it. But Lanie did not want to be that genius freak who's a year younger than everyone else, so she turned them down every time. She finally gave in this time though; after hearing how much I complained about freshman year, she decided to skip it and go right to sophmore year. So next year she will be one grade below me rather than two.

I think Lanie and I took all of the smart genes, because Ara ended up with dyslexia. She goes to MSD, Manchester School for the Dyslexic. Yes, unfortunately, there are no dyslexic schools in Manchester-By-the-Sea, so my mom has to make the half hour to forty five minute drive over to Manchester every day. Inconvenient? Definitely. But worth it? Absolutely. Ara has improved so much since she started going there; she can read at a first grade level now.