Page 30 of Clever Little Thing

“Is she not getting extra work?” I demanded. “I emailed you before the start of term. She’s extremely bright. She needs to be challenged. If she’s not challenged—”

McNaughton swept Stella’s work into a pile. “She seems to find the work challenging enough.” He pointed to the wall near the door, where he’d pinned a rectangle of card with colored paper pockets. He explained that each morning, the children took a lolly stick with their name on it and placed it in the pocket most closely corresponding to their mood: blue (sad/anxious), red (cross/grumpy), yellow (don’t know what to do with myself), or green (happy and ready to learn). “Stella’s always green,” he said, smiling at us like the ultimate dream of any parent was to have a child who was always green.

I looked down at Stella’s work, and suddenly I understood what was happening, understood the constipated handwriting and the roast beef, potatoes, peas, and cake. “Are you sure you’re talking about the right kid? Look.” I pulled up a photo of her on my phone: Stella, with her pale, thoughtful face, her blaze of hair.

“Hm,” McNaughton said. “Yes, that’s her.”

“Why did you hesitate?” I said sharply.

“Has she changed her hair?”

“She brushed it,” said Pete.

I was starting to feel very angry. “Well, if we’re talking about the same kid, you haven’t got to know Stella at all. She has a very high IQ. Off the charts.”

McNaughton smiled, but he was obviously downgrading us from average parents to pushy nightmares. “She’s had an IQ test?”

“No. We didn’t feel like we needed to. But she reads at a veryhigh level, you must have noticed that. Pete?” I tapped his knee. “She reads nonstop, doesn’t she? History. Science. She’s practically an expert on aerodynamics.”

“I’ve had to push her to read in the classroom,” McNaughton said.

“To be fair, we don’t know that she was actually reading all those books,” Pete said, scratching his head. “She could have been skimming. Maybe they were a security blanket, and now she’s fitting in better, she doesn’t need them.”

“Shewasreading them,” I said, astonished. “You were at work. I was there. She sat for hours holding the book, turning the pages. She talked about what she read.”

McNaughton wanted to wrap this up. “She’s really doing fine. Her reading is right where we’d expect it to be. You’ve got no reason to be worried. Her spelling, punctuation, vocabulary—all right on target.”

“I’m telling you, she knows more words than many adults,” I said. My voice shook. McNaughton no longer reminded me of a rotund and cuddly Beatrix Potter character. He reminded me of Mr. McGregor, the fat farmer who enjoyed killing rabbits.

“Honey,” said Pete. He patted my knee, then spoke to McNaughton. “It really sounds like she’s made a great start to the year.” While the two men shook hands, I stared at the mood board, wanting to tear the whole thing off the wall. Who the heck only felt one color at a time? To be only one color, all the time, was to be numb. This wasn’t Stella. She felt all the emotions, and she felt them all intensely. She was indigo, crimson, and gold. She was a whole sunset.

•••

On the way home, I fumed. “He was basically saying Stella is middle-of-the-road. Stella isn’t middle-of-the-road. He’s made no effort to get to know her.”

“It seems very important to you that Stella is gifted,” Pete said.

“Her giftedness isn’timportantto me. It’s a fact, like her red hair.”

“She’s a clever little thing, but maybe she isn’t quite as bright as we thought. That would be good in a way. I’ve done research. Child prodigies are more likely to be unhappy. They don’t even end up as high achievers. Wouldn’t you rather have her be a happy nongenius?”

“It is not normal for a kid to change this much in a few weeks. You really want her to fit in, maybe so much thatyou’renot seeing what’s going on with her.”

“That’s not fair,” said Pete. “I pay close attention to my daughter.”

In fact, Pete’s plan to keep Saturdays for the three of us had only lasted for one Saturday, because immediately after that, he got the promise of the Home Depot deal, which meant more work.

I assumed Pete would drop me off at home and then go back to work, but instead he hovered as I ate a piece of oily bread. “Do you eat anything at all apart from that bread?”

“It helps with my morning sickness,” I told him impatiently. “The question is, why is Stella eating so much?”

“The doctor said she was fine. Look, let me make you something proper to eat, something with protein—”

I waved his offer away. “She’s always writing in her diary. That could be hypergraphia, which can be a sign of—”

Pete shook his head. “It’s like anxiety is your natural mode.”

My phone pinged: a message from the doctor. “Stella’s blood test is normal,” I said. “No thyroid problem.”

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