Shining Star: A Pavel Chekov Fanfiction

Five

Pasha is seven years old when he graduates from primary school.

Even when he was put into school early, the teacher recognized that he was gifted—there was that word again, gifted—and passed him off to another teacher in a higher grade. Who at least had the good grace to teach him the whole year before summer came and he was passed off to another teacher. Who taught him for half a year, made him take a test, and then passed him off to another teacher. Who couldn't pass him off to any more teachers because he had reached fourth grade, the highest grade in his primary school. There was nowhere left to go.

So he'd lived out the second half of his second year in school amongst a bunch of kids three years older than him. And now he is graduating with them all, getting ready to go to middle school. Basic general education.

He wants to be proud of himself—he's accomplished in two years what most people do in four!—but instead, it just feels weird. Especially at the graduation ceremony. The other students are laughing, talking, chatting. Some of them are even hugging. And him? He is just there, in the middle of it all, observing. On the outside looking in.

Of course none of the fourth-graders have ever wanted to hang out with him, he thinks. He's a baby. A baby who gets every answer right in class, which can't help matters. Plus, when he barely spends six months in each grade before being bumped up to a higher grade, it's a little hard to make friends.

He sometimes wonders what it would be like if he hadn't skipped so many grades. To the other people in that first grade class, he had come and gone in a heartbeat, as if he had never really been there at all. Like little Mikhail who stuffed Legos up people's noses.

"We're so proud of you, honey!" his mother says, engulfing him in a bear hug as his father hands him a bouquet of flowers.

But he doesn't feel proud of himself. He just feels wrong.