that Lizzie still didn’t know who he actually was yet. But she said something else.
“Emmy.” She wrapped her arm around my shoulders and gave me the kind of squeeze only a mother could give. “You don’t have to do anything to deserve a man like that. He’s the one who doesn’t deserve you—and he knows it.”
11
Derek
Lizzie sat beside me at the dining table, opening her notebook and getting settled.
I could immediately segue into our lesson, but I thought about what my mother had said and knew I should try to cultivate a personal relationship with Lizzie, even though I could barely talk to people on my best days. “Do you play sports or anything?”
She grabbed her pencil sharpener and started to sharpen it. “Soccer and softball.”
I nodded even though she wasn’t looking at me. “Do you like one more than the other?”
She shrugged. “I guess softball. I’m a good hitter, so that’s my favorite part of the sport.”
“Cool.”
When her pencil was sharp, she pulled out the worksheet.
“Do you have friends on the team too?” I felt weird asking these questions. It was obvious in my voice that I’d never been more unsure of myself. I literally repeated the questions my mother had told me to ask.
“Some,” she said. “But most of my friends are people I met in class. Did you play sports?”
“Me?” I asked incredulously, unable to believe she asked me something.
“Yeah.” She smiled slightly, like she found my reactions amusing.
“No, I’m not a big sports guy.” Now I wished I had played one of her sports so we could talk about it. I didn’t even know the difference between baseball and softball. I wasn’t sure why there were different versions of the sport for men and women.
“Yeah, you seem more like an academics kind of guy.”
I definitely spent more time using my brain than my body. “You could say that.”
She showed me the worksheet. “I have to turn this in tomorrow. We have worksheets due at the end of every week.”
I thought it was a bit harsh that she was graded on these worksheets with a red pen as if it were an exam when it was just an assignment, especially when the teacher didn’t offer any feedback through his notes. How was a student supposed to learn if they were just told they were wrong and then they moved on? “Alright. Then let’s make sure there’s no red ink on this one.”
“Works for me,” she said with a grin.
“We’ll go over it together, but I want you to do this worksheet on your own. If you’re getting graded, then it should be your own work. But don’t worry, you’re gonna get every single one right.” I pulled her notebook toward me and started to write down my own problems for her to work on, so we could practice and get her ready before she moved on to the worksheet.
She watched me, her eyebrows raised. “You can just make up questions on the spot?”
“They’re based on the content.” I continued to write them out.
“I know, but still. You can just do that?”
I steadied my pencil and looked at her. “If you know how to solve a problem, why wouldn’t you know how to create a problem?”
She shrugged. “I’ve just never met anyone as smart as you. Even the smartest kids in my classes aren’t like you.”
“Well, they’re a lot younger than me.”
“You know what I mean. Like, gifted. Like, genius. I’ve never met a genius before.”
“That’s not how I label myself.”
“Then how do you label yourself?”
I set down the pencil altogether as I tried to think of an answer. “I’m not sure, actually.”
“You build spaceships. Doesn’t that make you a rocket scientist?”
“I suppose.”
“Then you’re a genius.”
“I don’t really like labels like that. It indicates that I have a higher than average intelligence, and that implies others have lower than average intelligence. If there’s a high number, there’s a low number, and I just don’t believe people are born smarter than others. I believe we’re all the same, but we need to tap into our intellect differently. I believe those kids who don’t do well in school and drop out aren’t less intelligent. They just weren’t given what they needed. I, on the other hand, was given more than enough to achieve anything I possibly wanted. That’s the difference between me and an average person. I was given the tools to be successful, had teachers that taught differently. And that’s the problem with our society, not all students are