The Prodigies [First Draft]

Fifteen

The table fell silent after they discovered Kenny was in group A. Color seemed to be preoccupied with her green arm, Fins found an interest in the wood that their table was made of, and Clay simply had too much food in his mouth to say much of anything. Finally, Kenny took out her schedule and one of her index cards in attempt to start the conversation back up.

Where is? was all that was written on the young girl's card. She pointed to the first class on her schedule which read Orchestra II.

"Well, it depends on what teacher you have." Color squinted at the paper before her, gasping when she finally figured out what orchestra professor Kenny had been assigned to. "You got Mr. Old as Time!"

Mr. Old as Time? Kenny looked at her new instructor's surname. It was a long German word that the young girl couldn't pronounce if she tried.

"Mr. Old as Time's last name is difficult to pronounce, so we just say 'Old as Time' really fast," Fins clarified. "He's the strictest teacher in the whole school; he's even worse than Mrs. Lin, one of the literature teachers. She once failed a whole class because none of the students had finished reading Heart of Darkness in a week. Oh, wait, you have Mrs. Lin, too...."

It felt like Kenny had just been injected with adrenaline. From what the two teens had told her, her first and fifth period teachers seemed like entelodon, beasts capable of ripping Kenny limb from limb. If it was possible, the young girl was even more nervous than she was before.

"Ha! I told you Hawking would get physics." Color pointed to Kenny's second period class. "But I've never seen this level of difficulty for a physics class before. Accelerated Gifted physics? They must want you to learn as much about the subject as you can in a short amount of time."

"Oh my goodness," Fins exhaled. "You're taking pre-calculus? For a semester? I'm not even taking pre-calc yet!"

"Well that's because you're not as smart as a six-year-old yet, Fins," Color joked.

The table erupted with laughter and Kenny's lips briefly twitched upward. Color and Fins continued to go down the list of Kenny's classes, giving helpful tidbits on how to cope with her teachers and telling her where each of her classrooms were. Clay also informed the young girl of Mr. Kingsworth, her seventh period social studies teacher.

"He teaches all us younger kids about old people," the small boy said. "We learned about presidents on Friday!"

Color smiled. "No matter how much of a genius you are, you can't be advanced very far when it comes to history and civics classes. The International World Affairs Bureau made a law against it, so you'll have Mr. Kingsworth with Clay."

In a way, that comforted Kenny. She liked knowing she wouldn't be surrounded by tall teenagers in every one of her classes. Mr. Kingsworth's course would allow her to be around children her own age.

"You don't seem to have a world language class here. I was almost certain you would get Spanish, like all the Neos do.... Wait, what's this?" Color asked Kenny as she pointed to something on the young girl's schedule. It was her sixth period class.

Kenny pulled the paper closer to herself. She read the course name once. Then she read it again. And again.

This must be a mistake, Kenny thought to herself, a sinking feeling growing in her stomach. This can't be my schedule.

However, the young girl knew the schedule belonged to her. She could recall what she had told Miss Kaylee the day before almost perfectly. Had she known what Miss Kaylee was going to do with that information, Kenny would have showed her a different card when the woman asked why she didn't talk: perhaps the one that said, I find it unnecessary to speak. However, Kenny had not known, and Miss Kaylee was told the young girl didn't like the way her voice sounded.