March 2007
"You finished the book," Alex said one morning, pointing out that I was carrying a different one.
"Yeah. Do you want me to lend it to you?"
She thought about it. She thought about it with that intensity she put into everything, as if every decision were an optimization problem.
"Does it have annotations?" she asked finally.
"Some in the margins."
"Good. Annotations add value," she said, extending her hand.
I gave it to her, and our fingers brushed for a second. She didn't pull her hand back immediately.
"Return it when you're done," I said.
"I'll finish it in three days," she replied, with the confidence of someone who had never missed a deadline.
And she left with my book under her arm.
Three days later, the book was in my locker with a note stuck to the cover. The handwriting was small, neat, almost typewritten:
*Your annotation on page 147 about the three-body paradox is incorrect. The problem is not orbital stability but predictability. C. Liu explains it in the following chapter. — A.D.*
I laughed. I genuinely laughed, in the middle of a hallway full of students, with the note in my hand.
April 2007
"I corrected my annotation," I said at the bus stop.
Alex, who was already there with another book (this time on organic chemistry, because at ten years old that was normal reading), looked up.
"I saw it. Your correction is... acceptable," she said, but the corner of her lips curved just a millimeter.
"Only acceptable?"
"The margin was small. You couldn't develop the full explanation, but the direction was correct."
"Is that a compliment?"
"It's an observation," she replied, but this time the smile was a little more evident.
The bus arrived; we sat together. She didn't take out her book. Instead, she pointed to mine.
"What are you reading now?"
"Quantum optics. Introductory level."
"Will you lend it to me when you're done?"
"In three days as well?"
"Four. This one is denser," she said, and this time she didn't hide her smile.
May 2007
The incident happened on a Tuesday.
I arrived at the bus stop, and Alex wasn't there. That was already strange: she was more punctual than an atomic clock. I waited five minutes. Ten. The bus was about to arrive when I saw her come around the corner, walking fast, her head down and her hands gripping the strap of her backpack as if it were a lifeline.
She wasn't carrying a book.
"Alex?" I said as she approached.
She didn't look at me. "I'm going to be late. My alarm clock broke."
Her voice was flat. Too flat. And as she passed by me, I saw the trace of a dried tear on her cheek, just below the edge of her glasses.
Someone had done something to her.
The system remained silent. There were no points to earn, no debt to pay off. It was just me, with the ability I had unlocked: Basic Emotional Intervention.
The bus arrived. Alex got on without looking back. I got on behind her. She sat in the front, by the window, her head resting against the glass.
I sat beside her. Not in the row behind, but beside her.
I didn't say anything. I just sat there, my closed book on my knees.
A minute passed. Two. Three.
"Are you going to ask?" she murmured, not looking at me.
"Not if you don't want to tell me."
Another pause. The bus turned a corner, and the sun came through the window, illuminating her profile.
"The girls on the science team," she said, her voice cold, surgical. "They said my project for the fair made them look bad, that I always got the best grades because the teacher favored me, and that it wasn't fair." She paused. "One of them pushed me against the lockers. My alarm clock fell; that's why I'm late."
Her voice didn't tremble, but her hands did.
"Did they hurt you?" I asked.
"No. It's nothing."
"It's nothing," I repeated, and she looked at me for the first time.
"They're the ones in the wrong," she said with a conviction that sounded rehearsed, as if she had repeated it to herself in the mirror that morning. "Their logic is flawed. My performance doesn't affect theirs. Favoritism doesn't exist in an evaluation based on objective data."
"You're right."
"I know," she said, but her voice broke just slightly on the last word.
"But it still hurts," I said.
Alex looked at me for a second, her prodigy child mask cracking. I saw the ten-year-old girl who had just been pushed against a locker. I saw the one who didn't understand why being good at something made her a target for others.
"Why does it hurt if I'm right?" she asked, and it was a genuine question, not rhetorical. She really didn't understand.
"Because being right doesn't protect you from cruelty," I said. "People don't always act logically."
She processed that. The bus stopped in front of the school.
"That's... irrational," she said finally.
"Yeah. But it happens."
We got off the bus. We walked toward the entrance. Before we split up to go to our different sides of the school, Alex stopped.
"Thank you," she said, not looking at me, her voice flat again. But this time, the flatness wasn't coldness. It was caution, as if the words were fragile.
"Don't mention it," I replied.
And she walked away with her back straight, toward her world of equations and books, where things made sense. But this time, her step was a little firmer.
June 2007
The last month of school brought a sticky heat that made the afternoons drag. Alex and I had established a routine: we met at the stop, exchanged books, discussed some scientific concept, and got on the bus together. She continued to sit beside me.
We weren't friends. Not exactly. We were... something in between. Two people who understood each other in a language no one else seemed to speak.
One afternoon, while waiting for the bus back home, Alex took something out of her backpack. It was a small spiral notebook, worn at the edges.
"What's that?" I asked.
"My notes," she said, opening it. The pages were filled with equations, diagrams, and her small, neat handwriting. "I've been working on a project about the energy efficiency of solar panels at different angles of incidence, but there's a variable I can't quite adjust."
She showed me a page with a hand-drawn graph. The curve had a peak that shouldn't be there.
"Have you considered atmospheric refraction?" I asked, pointing to the spot. "At certain angles, the atmosphere bends the light. Your measurements for the low angles might be overestimated."
Alex looked at me with an expression I had never seen on her before. It wasn't surprise, nor intellectual interest. It was something deeper, as if someone had said exactly what she needed to hear.
"That... makes sense," she said, and began scribbling frantically in the margin.