Page 3 of Psycho
“Like me?” he queried, frowning.
“Yes. Children who are gifted. Children who have a certain psychological makeup.”
The boy nodded as if that made perfect sense. “Do you have any more books like the one by Mr. Hawking? I find his theories—” He paused as if looking for the correct word. “Thought provoking.”
Thought provoking… This child might be too smart for even Thomas. But he had resources. Far more resources than anybody else, thanks to an accident of birth that left him with more money than he could ever spend.
“If you come live with me, we can stop at the bookstore on the way home and you can choose as many books as you like.” At the boy’s apprehension, Thomas corrected himself. “Or you can tell me what books you’d like and I’ll have them delivered.”
The boy narrowed his eyes at him, as if he thought it might be a trick. “Any books?”
Thomas might regret this but he said, “Any.”
The boy nodded once. “Then yes.”
Now, to the other task at hand. “They tell me your name is Isaiah.”
His lip curled. “I hate that name. My mother was very religious but also quite superstitious.”
Thomas leaned in closer. “Well, my family has a somewhat silly tradition of giving siblings names that all start with the same letter. My brother was Teddy, and my sister was Thea. I’m Thomas. You have a brother at home, who I’ve called Atticus. Would you like to choose another name? One that starts with A?”
The boy closed his book, eyes glued to the cover. “August. Can I be August?”
Thomas grinned. “Absolutely. Would you like to come home with me, August?”
August gave a huge sigh. “Yes, I think I would.”
Vivaldi filled August Mulvaney’s ears as he stared down at his phone screen and the self-evaluation form he was tasked with filling out by the end of the day. This new bizarre corporate hoop-jumping was ridiculous to him. They weren’t a law firm, they were an ivy league university. Asking a tenured professor to describe themselves in three words or less was absurd. Most couldn’t describe what day of the week it was without an APA formatted dissertation and review board approval.
Three words to describe him? Which him did they want? The brilliant quirky weirdo or the deviant homicidal psychopath? Both were true enough, though one was most definitely more palatable than the other. Yet neither of them could go on a self-evaluation.
He sighed, gazing out over the quad. The sky overhead was as ominous as his mood. Dark gray storm clouds hung low, just waiting to unleash on the students who refused to yield their space until the last possible moment. It was uncharacteristically chilly for this time of year. He took a sip of his coffee, keeping himself tucked up against the building as he watched the rain move closer. It was slated to rain all day according to the forecast, but August put as much stock in forecasts as he did horoscopes.
Bianca Li, an assistant professor of astrophysics, tucked herself in beside him, tugging her sweater across her body and wrapping her arms around herself. Her black hair whipped across her face, and her black framed glasses sat perilously close to the end of her nose. She was easily older than August by at least ten years but could still pass for a grad student.
He pulled his earbuds from his ears. “How would you describe me in three words?” Before she could answer, he took a finger and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
“Weirdo without boundaries?” she asked, batting his hand away.
“Weirdo was the first thought that came to mind for me as well. I don’t think that would fly with the board.”
Bianca shrugged. “You’ve got tenure. What are they going to do about it?” She snapped her fingers. “I got it. Absent-minded professor.”
August rolled his eyes. “I’m not absent-minded. I have...selective hearing.”
“Children have selective hearing. You live in your own world,” she pointed out.
August waved her statement off. “You’re exaggerating.”
“You almost walked into the fountain…twice.”
She wasn’t wrong. The thing was, August was absent-minded by choice. When a person is burdened with an affliction that causes them to remember—verbatim—every word ever spoken to them, their brains become a chaotic mess, a tangle of conversations from yesterday and decades ago. A single word could trigger a cascade of memories that could trap him in his thoughts for days.
So, August remained selectively absent-minded. His observations were a thing he’d trained himself to turn on and off at will rather than lose his mind absorbing pieces of conversation with every step he took. By shutting out the things he considered static, he was able to focus on the things that mattered, like spintronics or light scattering and optical wave mixing techniques, semiconductor quantum dots, and, sometimes, even laser physics.
On campus, he rarely interacted with anybody but his immediate coworkers and, of course, his students. He made a point to view his surroundings without absorbing them, never letting his gaze focus on any one thing for too long unless it was life or death. Yet, the moment he caught sight of the man walking across the quad, he couldn’t look away.
The man walked with his hands in his pants pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind. From where August stood, he could see he was attractive, though somewhat haggard, dressed in jeans and a zip front olive green cardigan. His clothes said faculty, but his messy blond hair and the two days worth of growth on his perfectly square jaw screamed student. Maybe he was a teacher’s assistant.
