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The Prodigies
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I'm always a bit questioning of prologues in general because I think it's better to introduce the main characters right away. But of course, this part could still have a place in the story somewhere.
Thanks Brigid! I'm introducing the main characters in the first chapter, but it still needs some work. I'm not that good at introducing main characters:)
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Chapter 1.Chelsea decided that she would never, ever, ever let Levi help her build a birdhouse again. Why? Because he was too smart for his own good.
They were in the big shed in her backyard; Chelsea’s warehouse so she could build anything she wanted without getting wood shavings all over the furniture. She had asked her dad if she could build one in the backyard when she was almost fifteen and he approved. (Levi was out of town while she was building it so the process went a lot faster.)
“Chel,” he said, holding a ruler up to one of the wooden walls of the birdhouse. “That piece of wood is exactly two point four eight millimeters off.”
Trying to stay calm, Chelsea raked her splintered hands through her dark, unruly hair. He had been doing this for the past hour, and it was really slowing the process down. She just started to put the first wall up. “Thanks for the info, Levi. But I seriously don’t care.”
“But if it’s off by that much,” he pulled his phone from his pocket and opened up his calculator app. Chelsea sighed loudly as her friend continued. “Then one side of the roof would be exactly five hundredths of a degree off--give or take a few--and it would look thrown together.” He kept tapping on the phone’s screen. “And the other walls aren’t going to line up with that one by exactly--”
“Okay!” Chelsea held her hands up in the don’t-shoot gesture. “I get it! I’ll fix it.” She grabbed the piece of sandy colored wood and moved it a tad.
“Perfect,” Levi said, “keep it right there. Don’t move it.”
Rolling her eyes, Chelsea asked, “Any other problems I need to fix or the world will end?”
“Nope, we’re good. You can fix the width of the opening later, right? It needs to be one tenth of an inch wi--”
“Yep, Leev, I got it. Just let me concentrate for a minute.”
She grabbed her favorite drill and a small screw, and started to drill into the wood. “You might need a bigger screw,” Levi mumbled. “That one is exactly--”
Chelsea moaned and slammed the drill onto the worktable. “Shut up!”
“Sorry.” Levi looked at his feet and started to back away. “I’ll just be over there.”
“Thank you,” Chelsea sighed. “Give me my space for a minute. Please.”
“Got it.”
After an awkward silence, Chelsea started to work. She got five minutes tops without Levi annoying her, but he just had to speak up.
“That piece is two tenths of an inch crooked,” he said.
Chapter 2. I'm on a roll here, guys.Levi’s arm was still bruised from when Chelsea slapped him after he corrected her for the last time.
It’s not like he could help it. Math had consumed his thoughts, turning him into a walking calculator. Whenever something was wrong, he felt like the walls were closing in and they wouldn’t stop until he fixed it. And if he didn’t correct it, his stomach hurt, eliminating his appetite.
People thought he was weird. And not the normal weird like, He likes Tinker Bell?. No, it was a weird much worse. It was the weird that was either shunned or made into a big deal. He had learned not to care; one friend was enough for him, especially when that friend was Chelsea. And besides, it’s not like he had to go to school anymore; he had just graduated college three months ago with a master’s degree in calculus, and a bachelor's in algebra.
That’s what made Levi a freak to his peers. Because he was a genius.
His IQ was about as high as Einstein’s when he wasn’t even trying, but when he was trying, you’d be even more stunned. He had skipped second, fifth, eighth, and eleventh grade, and had always taken accelerated classes. He hosted a math club in ninth grade, and even won an international math competition in his senior year and won a trophy the size of small trash can.
In short, he was the biggest math nerd you could ever imagine.
He was born with numbers revolving around in his brain. In fact, he was already solving for x by the time he walked out the door for his first day of kindergarten. Science was another area he was strong in, along with computer technology.
But there was one thing he absolutely sucked in. Well, there were several things, but this one was the worst.
English.
Levi had dyslexia, so he was never that great at reading. His teachers and parents were reluctant to let him skip four grades because his reading skills (if you could even call them that) were so low. He also suffered from anxiety disorder. That made life harder.
Chelsea had always told him he was a diamond in the rough. His disorders and phobias was just some dirt that had stuck on him, but underneath all that, there was a very valuable gem. He smiled as he thought of it. She had a way of making him feel better about himself.
Shutting his laptop, Levi sighed loudly. His parents wanted him to get a job that would push him a little (they also wanted him out of the house), so he was looking for one. But all of the jobs seemed kind of easy. He guessed he could be a math teacher, but that meant he would have to go back to college to get a degree in teaching. And that was something he really didn’t want to do. College wasn’t the easiest thing he ever did, especially when he was the youngest one there.
Levi heard his mom’s voice calling down the stairs. “Hey Lee?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you go get the mail?” Levi’s mom appeared in the doorway, holding a basket of laundry against her hip while trying to dial in a number on the home phone. “My hands are full and the truck just drove by.”
“They’re this late again?” The mail truck had been late every day for almost a month now.
“What else is new?”
Levi grabbed his coat from off his bed and took the basket out of his mother’s hands before he left the room. “Where should I put this?”
“Oh, just in the laundry room is fine. Thanks honey.”
“No problem, mom. I’ll be back.”
“Okay.”
Levi put the basket on top of the washing machine and ran down the seventeen stairs. The house wasn’t that big, only about 1,300 square feet, Levi guessed, but it was enough to hold only three people: Levi, his mom, and his dad.
Pulling his shoes on, he wondered if he would see Chelsea, perhaps. They were next door neighbors, of course, so it was a possibility. It would be a welcome surprise. The thought made his hands sweaty.
Putting all thoughts aside, he walked outside, to the square mailbox and opened it up. He started to filter through the mail. Bills, bills, bills...wait. A math camp? Levi smiled as he looked down at the brochure. It was a math camp during the summer, and they were looking for counselors and teachers. Maybe he could be one. That could be his summer job.
His thoughts were interrupted by muffled screams coming from next door.
Chapter 3.Harper’s eyes fluttered open. She looked around the white room and tried to sit up, but she was strapped down to a bed by her ankles, waist, and wrists.
She couldn’t hear any music. That drove her crazy.
They had probably taken her in her sleep for another test. They always did.
A tear trickled down the side of her cheek. It left a line of warmth on her face. This was so not fair. It was cold in here. She was shivering. And she had wanted to practice her piccolo early this morning. Now she wouldn’t have time to.
Not that she needed to or anything. She hadn’t been in a marching band since the hunters had taken her two years ago. And besides, the piccolo was one of her strong suits. What she needed help on was the French horn, even though she was still very accomplished on it.
Doctor Brain came into the room, wheeling a cart of medical supplies out in front of him. His real name wasn’t Doctor Brain, of course, but that’s what everyone called him, since he was a neurologist. Harper preferred Doctor B. instead.
“Harper,” Doctor B. said, his voice as dry as crumbly rosin. Harper hated crumbly rosin. “How is everything?”
She didn’t answer. He already knew how everything was. Horrible, as usual. They kidnapped her, threw her in this prison, gave her no real piano--only an electronic keyboard--and expected her to be happy? The kidnapping wasn’t so bad, considering that she had lived in an orphanage before, and the prison wasn’t too bad either. She had a waterbed.
Harper’s mom had died from cancer two years after she had Harper, her only daughter. Harper never knew her dad. All she had ever heard about him was that he divorced Harper’s mother a couple months after she had become pregnant.
In short, Harper hated whoever her father was and cursed the day he was born. Not that she knew what day he was born, but she didn’t specify what day she wanted to curse, so she thought that was okay and it had worked. Then again, she just liked to keep her hopes up.
The doctor pulled up a chair next to the bed Harper was strapped to. “Do you know why you’re here?”
“In the Prodigy Facility? Of course. I’m here because the no-good prodigy hunters--”
“No, Harper. In this room. Do you know why you’re in this room?”
Harper didn’t want to answer, but she hated awkward silences (and any silence, for that matter), so she sighed and muttered, “Because I’m getting a test done, I suppose.”
Doctor B. grinned, but it was mostly out of relief. “Yes, Harper. I just need a DNA sample today, nothing big.”
“Why? You got my DNA sample last month.”
“Well, we...lost it.”
Harper raised an eyebrow. “You lost my DNA sample.”
She wasn’t trying to be rude, of course, but the last time they took some of her DNA they had to put the needle in her left arm, so it was painful for her to play her instruments, especially her violin and viola. And when someone got in the way of her music, she got agitated.
“To be more accurate, it ripped in half due to a new employee making an error.” His voice was tinged with annoyance. “But don’t worry, we punished her for it.” He said it as simply as, Hey, look, a donut.
Rolling her eyes, Harper lowered her voice so the doctor couldn’t hear her sarcasm. “Oh yeah. She totally deserved that.”
Harper wasn’t dumb. She knew what they did to the “employees” that made mistakes. The methods of punishment were very cruel and very illegal. Well, if they aren’t, she thought, they should be. She had seen scars from whippings on the employees wrists and arms before. They treated them like slaves.
The doctor pulled out the needle with the empty canister on the end. Great; he was doing a blood sample to get the DNA.
Harper looked away when he grabbed her left arm and started to sanitize the flesh where he was planning on inserting the needle into her skin.
Senator Gertrude Jackman adjusted the spectacles set on the tip of her nose and looked up from her state of the art computer. She had designed it herself, of course, for herself, so she could do her research.
She understood that what she was doing was illegal, but later, people would praise her and her name would be known throughout the world. She would be mentioned in every television station, every newspaper, every history book. She would be the new Christopher Columbus; the better George Washington.
All she needed were these children. These talented children. Gertrude needed to know what made them tick; what DNA structures they had and why they were able to do the things they could do. Of course, twenty five percent of the credit for the project would go to them, and they would be famous along with her, but she would get the most fame; she was doing all the work anyway. All the kids had to do was be a prodigy of any subject, even spelling or typing.
A knock on the door sent the senator out of her trance. She rolled her eyes and sighed. Her assistant was the most annoying human being to ever be in her presence. “Yes, Yarla?”
“It’s Darla!” the assistant squeaked, peeking her head in the room. Her dark hair was wild and frizzy; unacceptable. “I have good news, Senator Jackman!”
“And that is?”
Darla awkwardly walked into the room, staying a good ten feet away from Senator Jackman. “We found two children.”
Gertrude’s interest spiked to a maximum. She raised her eyebrows. “What are their gifts?”
“Mechanics and math.”
After thinking for a while, the senator asked, “How close are they to our headquarters?”
“Not very far. Only about a hundred fifty-four point five five five nine kilometers away.” Darla had learned early in her training to be very precise with numbers. She fingered the scar on her wrist that served as a reminder.
“Both of them?” the senator asked.
“They’re neighbors; a boy and a girl. Around seventeen years old each. Their names are--”
Senator Jackman cut Darla off. “Names are not important. Just bring them to me.”
“Should I alert the prodigy hunters?”
Gertrude looked away, lost in thought. A mathematician and a mechanic. They would go well together in the tests. And they would be easy to get to, as a bonus. They were most likely friends because they lived so close to each other, so they would probably work together well, and that was another perk. These two could boost the program miraculously.
“Yes,” the senator purred, pushing her glasses up to the bridge of her nose. “Go alert the hunters and have them set out immediately. I want to see these two children.”
“Um, yes, Senator Jackman.”
“Go now.”
With that, the assistant Darla turned and shut the door behind her, leaving the senator’s office in an eerie silence.