Page 48 of Gifted & Talented

It was a class on rhetoric, a general education course in the philosophy department that Meredith considered a profligate waste of time, because Meredith was a biomancy prodigy. She had gone to Harvard because they had the biggest, most lavishly funded lab in the country. She was destined, as her father had been, to be named an industry genius, to earn a place in the magitech revolution, not to perform on command for the whims ofgeneral education. (Similarly, although Arthur technically had the greater proficiency for magic, Meredith was more devoted. Meredith focused harder. Meredith cared more.)

But then her philosophy professor told her point-blank that she wasn’t talented. The word he used was, literally, “talentless.”

As in, “For someone so essentially talentless you have an extremely unproductive attitude,” then bestowed upon teenage Meredith verbatim.

As in, “You act as if everything we do in this class is beneath you, Miss Wren, but nothing is beneath you. You are below everything. You are a worm, do you understand this? I don’t mean you exclusively, everyone your age is a worm—you are meant to be learning things, not deciding at first glance what does or does not matter.”

As in, “Okay, so you are very promising at something this university considers valuable, that’s wonderful. So you will go on to make this university lots of money, how wonderful for you. But I am trying to teach you how tomatter,which you will never do so long as you continue to believe that youaloneare the source of value, that you exist in any heightened significance; that intrinsically you are worth in some way more than anything else that lives on this earth.”

As in, “Either you will learn that lesson from me, Miss Wren, or I will give you the grade you deserve for failing to learn it, and perhaps you will hate me and nothing will change, which is fine by me. Because I already know that you do not matter, and I will forget you the moment you exit this room.”

Jamie was an English major with prelaw aspirations, and taking the class as a junior because he was just a few credits shy of a secondary concentration in philosophy. He was in the room when the professor said all of that to Meredith. It was obvious that Meredith was supposed to respond haughtily, or that the professor had assumed she would, or maybe the professor had only said it because it was a rhetoric class and Meredith was meant to respond, to argue. Instead, Meredith had blinked and then nodded, and then she caught Jamie’s eye just before she walked out of the classroom. As far as Jamie could tell, she’d had no reaction to what was an unquestionably vicious undressing of her entire existence and self. And then Meredith came back on Monday, seemingly unchanged.

Jamie saw Meredith at a party a few weeks later, holding a red cup in one hand and frowning distractedly as a boy rambled drunkenly in her ear. Jamie had a girlfriend at the time, although things were not going especially well between them because he was finding that his girlfriend enjoyed life in a way that seemed somehow insane. Like, she just sort of went about her day, and when good things happened to her she celebrated them and when bad things happened to her she was bummed but then she moved on. Jamiewanted more conflict in his life, presumably, or what else would have led him to Meredith Wren?

“Hi,” he said, walking right up to her. The boy who had been talking to Meredith gave Jamie a possessive look, which Jamie ignored. Jamie was focused on Meredith, who glanced at him with that same furrowed frown, as if he were no different to her than the other boy currently next to her, which was fair. “I’m in your philosophy class,” Jamie explained.

“Oh,” said Meredith.

“I don’t think it’s true,” Jamie added. “The thing that Professor [purposefully redacted from Meredith’s memory] said to you. I think he’s incredibly mean-spirited and probably a little misogynistic.”

Meredith took a sip from her cup and tilted her head at him. She glanced at the boy next to her, then back at Jamie. “Are you single?” she asked Jamie.

“Oh. Um, no,” said Jamie.

“Oh. Okay.” Meredith set her cup down on the bar behind her and left the room. The boy looked at Jamie with something like murder in his eyes, and would later report this incident to his friends as an unsportsmanlike cock block.

Jamie, however, followed Meredith out of the room in service to something that was most closely considered impulse. “Hey, wait—”

“Are you single now?” asked Meredith without turning to look at him.

“You mean between five seconds ago and now?”

“Yes.” She had her arms folded over her chest as she walked and Jamie wanted to give her a jacket, but he wasn’t wearing one. This was momentarily very upsetting to him.

“No,” said Jamie, “I’m still in a relationship.”

“Then stop following me,” Meredith advised.

“I’m not following you,” said Jamie, who then stopped, because he realized that yes, he was absolutely following her. “I mean, okay, sorry. I just wanted to talk to you, that’s all.”

“I can see that,” said Meredith. She walked a few steps, then stopped, turning to face Jamie. They were a few feet apart on the sidewalk, such that a very tall person or a small crime scene could lie between them. “But I don’t really want to talk to you if I can’t have sex with you.”

Jamie was very taken aback by this, probably because the era of sex positivity had not yet dawned. This sort of attitude would later be brandedsomething-something manic pixie when really, as Lou would have pointed out to Meredith, it was merely horny, which was natural, literally. It was fundamentally tied in with nature, and it is very important that you understand that for this moment alone, Meredith is not to be blamed. Parenthetically, everything else is fair game.

“What would happen if I were single?” Jamie said.

“What if, indeed?” said Meredith whimsically, although because it was Meredith, it did not read as whimsy. Then she turned and kept walking.

“Wait,” Jamie called after her. Poor, poor idiot Jamie. “Can I walk you home?”

“No,” said Meredith without turning around.

Eventually she disappeared from sight, and Jamie broke up with his girlfriend, and another week or so went by. They all went home for Thanksgiving and then they came back, and Jamie stopped Meredith outside of their philosophy class.

“Do you want to study for the final together?” he asked.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not very good at this class,” said Meredith with another of her slight frowns, which was actually just her face. “If you study with me, you’re probably not going to get anything out of it.”

---