Brilliance by Marcus Sakey Page A

“Tell me—”
    “Something happened. At school. There was ‘an incident.’” She made the air quotes audible. “A week ago. A teacher witnessed Kate doing something and reported it to the DAR.”
    Gifts were amorphous in children, often indistinguishable from simply being bright, which is why the test wasn’t mandatory until age eight. But people in certain roles—teachers, preachers, full-time nannies—were supposed to report behavior they found particularly compelling evidence of a tier-one gift. One of many things Cooper hated about the way things were going; for his money, the world didn’t need more snitches. “What incident? What happened?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know. The gutless bureaucrat wouldn’t tell me.”
    “And so—”
    “And so he asked whether it would be more convenient to test my daughter next Thursday or Friday. I told him that she was only four, that you worked for the DAR. He just kept saying the same thing. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but this is policy.’ Like he was the phone company and I had a complaint about my fucking bill.”
    Natalie doesn’t swear.
The thought drifted pointlessly through his mind. “Have you talked to her about it?”
    “No,” she said. Then a pause. “I’ll—we’ll—have to. Nick, she’s gifted. We know she’s gifted. What if she’s tier one?” She turned away, eyes finally wet, the tears he had seen the moment he arrived now there for the world. “They’ll take her from us, send her to an academy.”
    “Stop.” Cooper reached out, took her chin in his hand, turned it back to face him. “That’s not going to happen.”
    “But—”
    “Listen to me. That is not going to happen. I’m not going to let that happen. Our daughter is not going to an academy.”
I miss my son, her sign had read.
“Period. I don’t care if she’s tier one. I don’t care if she’s the first tier zero in history and can manipulate space-time while shooting lasers from her belly button. She is
not
going to an academy. And she’s not getting tested next week.”
    “Dad!”
    Natalie and he exchanged a look. A look older by far than either of them, a look that had bounced between women and men as long as they’d been mothers and fathers. And then they broke apart to face the children sprinting toward them, Todd in the lead, Kate right behind letting the screen door bang behind her.
    He dropped to a squat and opened his arms. His children flew into them, warm and alive and oblivious. Cooper squeezed them both until they nearly popped and then made sure his face was innocent as he leaned back. “Uh-oh. Uh-oh!”
    Kate looked up, concerned; Todd smiled, knowing what was coming.
    “Uh-oh, I gotta go! I gotta go, who’s coming with me?”
    “Me!” Kate, all glee.
    “Me too.” Todd, caught between childish joy and the first hints of self-consciousness.
    “Okay then.” He stretched out his arms. “Take your seats. In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will drop from the ceiling. Please swing from them like monkeys. Ready?”
    Kate was on his left arm, body wrapped around it like, well, a monkey. Todd had his right locked, their fingers gripping one another’s forearms.
    “Okay. Prepare for liftoff. Three.” He rocked up, then back down. “Two.” Again. “One!” Cooper lunged from a squat, using the force of his legs to send them into a spin and then half hurling, half falling into it. Todd was really getting too heavy, but screw that, he just cranked harder and planted his heels and then they were going. The world was the faces of his children, Katie giggle-screaming and Todd smiling pure and wide, and beyond them a blur of green lawn and brown tree and gray car. He pushed harder, feet moving like a dancer’s, arms rising wide, the kids floating now, momentum doing the work for him. “Liftoff!”
    Later, he would remember the moment. Would take it out and examine it like the faded photograph of a war veteran, the last