The Choice
The day was hot and muggy, but Katherine didn’t really care. She wouldn’t bew outside anyway. No, The Mother was dragging her along to another interview; another pointless, boring, long, and most of all, silly interview. Katherine didn’t need these people, she’d rather be at home living in another world, or at least one away from this one. But no, he mother had to realize her daughter’s brilliance and subject her to these torturous interviews to determine who wanted and could provide the most for the great Katherine. The wonderfuly briliant Katherine. Need I go on? It wasn’t her fault though, people are born brilliant, and she just happened to be one of them. So don’t blame it on her, ‘cause she has enough problems.
* * * * * * * *
In her own world, Katherine the Great is queen of the Ruby Isle, thought to be scorceress and magician exrtodanaire. She lived on the Ruby Isle with her young page Alexander, her white mare Roxanne, her few posessions, and the rest of the commoners. Life there was fun and chalenging. She and Alexander would perform “Majic” in front of the people for money or more importantly, someplace to sleep and something to eat. She ruled her kingdom this way, ina relay of bishops, one in each town, from horseback. The people never guessed that she was the ruler, she had craftily put another in her place on the throne. She stayed with the people so as to better rule them, to have their needs granted as soon as they whispered their wish. Katherine’s regent went by the name of Poe, a sturdy man though slim and quick with a rapier as well as his mind.
* * * * * * * *
Back in the car, her mother was asking her something. “Ah well” she thought, for Katherine knew that if it was anything important she would hear about it again. The Mother liked to repeat herself. She turned back to the window and sighed. If only the world would realize that knowlege would get them nowhere without a pinch of imagination and a dab of either danger or excitement or both.
If you’ve ever tried to role play in your mind, or even tell a story to yourself that lasts more than a few minutes or that you keep comming back to, then I’m sure you know how hard this is to do and keep everything straight. Simply knowing that Katherine could keep all this in her head without worry might give you a taste of her genius. If not, then here is some more background. We all know tales of smart kids, we even know a few, so here’s another one.
Katherine hated school from the beginging, but loved her family and home. By refusing to learn first to read, and then other things as she did, Katherine found a way to spite the system. She wanted not to be left behind and she wanted her parents to be proud as all young childern do, so she learned on her own while masquerading as learning-impaired. About second grade however, her mother got increasingly angry with her workaholic father and the two seperated. Katherine was devastated and she got mad at the both of them and began to hate both. Also about this time, her mother had a baby boy who was named Alex. She was still hiding her genius by stealing older kids books and learning from them secretly. She loved to learn but at the same time learned to hate everything else. Except her little brother. He was the only one who she didn’t see as judgemental. It made Katherine sick to see how her teachers would just give up and yell at her but not take the time to overcome her “stupidity”. It seemed to everyone else that by third grade she was still struggling with subtraction, but the truth be told, she was halfway through pre-algebra and most of The Oddesy, as well as Little Women and Oliver Twist. It became her love, those books, as she wished to be all characters from Odysseus to Beth and then to the Artful Dodger. After the first year of 3rd grade, she took each grade twice, because the system didn’t know what to do with her.
When sixth grade rolled around, she was already thirteen and the brunt of all the jokes. Katherine frankly didn’t care though, she was too good for them and it gave her time to study. By the second year of sixth grade though, the new school was getting too much to her and so finally she let it slip one day. It had just gotten too maddening. A girl in her class couldn’t figure out what the change was from a $20 bill and a $9.99 item, no tax. Katherine finally got so mad that she stood up and let the girl have it:
“You idiot! You dolt! Ten dollars and one penny!” she gestured at the rest of the class, “All of you are so stupid! I’ve seen so much bigotry and so much hate between you all, nobody will help anyone else, and you all just exploit the smart ones and leech off them to get the answers! You even expect to succeed that way! I hate you all and if I could possibly get out of here, I would, but all of you are just so dumb and dull that you don’t see what’s going on. I’m just so f*cking tired of it all!”
With that said, she ran out of the room, down the hall, and to the bathroom. Nobody followed her. With a sigh, the teacher looked up as if to say, “What more can you expect out of a loser kid like that?” and turned to call the office to look out for a girl who was skipping. One student asked, “What is bigotry?” while another asked, “what does exploit mean?”. The teacher answered these with sighs, finally realizing how much truth was in what Katherine had said.
To be continued...
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