A Problematic Paradox Read online

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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  Copyright © 2018 by Eliot Sappingfield.

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  Ebook ISBN 9781524738464

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Sappingfield, Eliot, author.

  Title: A problematic paradox / Eliot Sappingfield.

  Description: New York, NY : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2018]

  Summary: Thirteen-year-old Nikola Kross’s world is turned upside down when her father is abducted by aliens and she is suddenly transported to a special boarding school for geniuses, but things get even stranger when she realizes she has certain abilities that put her entire school in grave danger.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017010099 | ISBN 9781524738457

  Subjects: | CYAC: Genius—Fiction. | Extraterrestrial beings—Fiction. | Boarding schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.S2643 Pr 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017010099

  Trans-species universal language and sensory vocabulary version may be viewed, touched, smelled, heard, and communed with at the Parahuman Mediocre Literature Repository, Bolivar, Missouri 65613.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. This includes the state of Iowa.

  Jacket art © 2018 by John Hendrix

  Jacket design by Eileen Savage

  Version_1

  For my wife, Stephanie, for deciding to tolerate many things over and over.

  “More than all the trees in the world . . . I forget the rest.”

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1 | MISS HICCUP AND THE BEEF MAILBOX

  2 | MR. HAPPYBEAR’S EMERGENCY BACKUP PLAN

  3 | GOING TO IOWA. ON PURPOSE.

  4 | CORNFIELDS AND ZOMBIES

  5 | THE SANDWICH INCIDENT

  6 | HYPATIA THEODOLPHUS

  7 | THE BOOKSTORE BOOKSTORE

  8 | PRACTICAL QUANTUM MECHANICS

  9 | DEATH METAL

  10 | THE CHAPERONE

  11 | BEE VIGILANT

  12 | HEARING VOICES

  13 | BRADLEY AND MONICA PAY A VISIT TO HER MAJESTY’S SUMMER COTTAGE

  14 | CODES AND CIPHERS

  15 | ALL IS FAIR IN MONKEYS AND WAR

  16 | UNDER THE WEATHER

  17 | KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF

  18 | THE ISLAND AND THE VOID

  Acknowledgments

  1

  MISS HICCUP AND THE BEEF MAILBOX

  As I sat beneath a cat poster in her tiny, sparse office, I wondered if Miss Hiccup’s real smile resembled the painted grimace she wore around students. No adult human can be that chipper all the time. Maybe it was the poster. She had one of those motivational posters, with a cat hanging from a branch and the caption HANG IN THERE! below it. I’ve always wondered if anyone was actually inspired by that kind of thing. Maybe Miss Hiccup was one of the fortunate few who gazed at that cat and thought, You know, if that cat can hang in there, so can I! It would explain a lot about why she and I didn’t exactly get along.

  Miss Hiccup was pretty, in an institutional kind of way. She was a thin woman who wore pencil skirts and had long golden hair that was only a little dry and frazzled. I could relate—my hair always looked like I dried it with a high-voltage power line. Her face was not unkind. I could even imagine that she had a sense of humor hidden behind her big, fashionably nerdy glasses. Despite that, there were moments when I could swear there was an absolute, searing hatred of the entire world in those eyes.

  It was my favorite thing about her.

  My second-favorite thing about Miss Hiccup was the hiccuping. That was where I’d gotten my personal name for her. She had an actual legal name, but “Miss Hiccup” was more fitting and more fun because she seemed to have a permanent case of the hiccups that got worse when she was stressed, which was all the time, in my observation.

  When Miss Hiccup cornered me on my way to the bus, she ruined the best part of my day. Instead of boarding the bus to freedom, I had to trudge back to the counseling office for a few minutes and then kill time till the late bus arrived to collect the stragglers, detention inmates, and band kids.

  Miss Hiccup spent some time just sitting there, smiling and making eye contact. It’s the oldest trick in the book when you want someone to open up. Most people hate uncomfortable silences, so they tend to talk in order to fill them. I’m not most people.

  A minute later, Miss Hiccup hiccuped, twitched, and said, “Is your backpack okay?”

  Of course she wanted to talk about backpack-in-the-toilet incident #74. It was a new thing as far as she was concerned. The only reason she knew about it this time was because whoever had stolen it had really stomped it in good, and I wasn’t able to get it out on my own. The counseling office is directly across from the bathrooms, so I figured they could help, since I was a taxpayer and all.

  I made a mental note to ask the gym teacher next time. He was good at overlooking that kind of thing.

  “My backpack is fine,” I said. “I switched to a waterproof one a while ago, so it doesn’t even smell. It’s antimicrobial.”

  “Smart thinking,” she said with a warm smile that was almost, but not quite, sympathetic. “I thought we could talk about fitting in . . .”

  “Why don’t I start?” I offered.

  “Do you have something you—hic!—you’d like to talk about, Nikola?” she said, sounding like she was in desperate need of a drink of water.

  “No,” I said. “But you said you wanted to talk about fitting in. I feel like I should address that. I do have trouble fitting in, but I’m in a good place with it at the moment. Not a lot of angst going on here. Nothing to concern yourself with.”

  This was mostly true. I’d been looking forward to attending West Blankford Middle School about as much as I was counting the days until my next trip to the dentist, and the fact that my classmates were as horrible as they had been the previous year wasn’t exactly a shock. I wasn’t having a blast, but I wasn’t disillusioned. Kids are usually mean to people who are different, and people don’t come any more different than me.

  My name is Nikola Kross, and I’m a weirdo. A freak, if you prefer. I’m a peanut butter and sardine sandwich in a vending machine full of candy. I’m a twitching platypus curled up in the corner of a cardboard box of puppies. I’m off track. You should probably get used to that. Let’s back up a bit.

  I’m a thirteen-year-old girl attending middle school in North Dakota. It’s not my
looks that make me odd. Well, that’s not the main thing. I’m no taller or shorter, bigger or smaller than the median range for those characteristics. I have a nose that is a bit above the normal width and length, but not to the point where it becomes remarkable. I have a few freckles here and there, and my eyes are brown. I wear glasses with shatterproof lenses and an embedded digital display that I designed myself and is currently broken. My hair is very curly, long, brown, and a bit mane-like. It’s always a mess, but I don’t care enough to spend the time to tame it when that time could be better used sleeping in. That’s what I look like. Do me a favor and remember it, because I hate describing myself.

  What makes me weird is that I’m a genius. Most people who say that are bragging and are about to pull out their Mensa card in an effort to impress you. I’m not bragging. I really am a certified genius, and it shouldn’t impress anyone. Talking about how smart you are is like boasting about how big the engine is in your car: you still have to obey the speed limit, and what really matters is where you drive to, not how much noise you can make on the way.

  High intelligence runs in my family like a genetically transmitted disease. My dad is an amateur scientist (he prefers the term research hobbyist). He spends his days running our home particle accelerator, experimenting with exotic metamaterials, or just trying to remember where he left his shoes. Mom was an experimental poet, but she disappeared when I was a toddler. Dad says she’s dead now, or might as well be dead, since we’ve certainly seen the last of her. Sensitive guy, my dad.

  In case I haven’t lost you completely, we’re also fabulously wealthy. Back in the midnineties, Dad patented some interesting semiconductor designs as well as those plastic hooks that stick to your wall without tearing up the paint. Those inventions, along with a few dozen more, fill the bank account monthly. If it helps, that doesn’t mean I ride in limousines drinking sparkling cider. As soon as the deposits clear, Dad blows all the money on home improvements. That might be nice, but our home is a big lab, so for us, a “home improvement” doesn’t mean a new hot tub; it means a new supercooled cloud chamber or a few upgrades on our personal supercomputer cluster.

  To a degree, I blame my parents for my outcast status, and not just on a genetic level. Dad is distant and terminally distracted. Instead of toys, I got circuit boards and soldering irons for Christmas so I could make my own. When I was little and asked for a bedtime story, he’d narrate the schematics for a microwave oven before giving me a firm yet loving bedtime handshake. When I had trouble sleeping, he’d describe how people die from sleep deprivation. I like to imagine my mom might have been a bit more . . . parental, but if she and my dad fell for each other at some point, then I have to assume that she was every bit as eccentric. Some people just stink at being parents. It happens.

  It’s not all their fault, though. I’ve made some bad decisions. If you want to make friends in school, it’s not a good idea to bring an untrained robotic panther to class without permission, or to program a drone helicopter to follow you around and shoot chocolate candy into your mouth, particularly if its aim stinks. You should also avoid testing experimental artificial food products on your classmates. Silicon polymer foam birthday cupcakes might be calorie-free and nontoxic, and taste wonderful, but if you give someone explosive diarrhea even one time, they tend to hold it against you.

  I don’t entirely regret my bad decisions, but things weren’t easy for me at school. If someone sat down next to me at lunch, I first had to find out whether they’d lost a bet, or if they were planning some prank at my expense. This sometimes backfired: one time, I yelled at a girl because I was sure she was up to no good, but it turned out that the other seats were all taken, and she had to eat standing up. Still, she was rude to me the next week, so I don’t think I missed out on anything.

  You need to know all that because that’s why Miss Hiccup was talking to me. I’m not fitting in. Big surprise.

  “You see, honey . . . ,” Miss Hiccup said, dragging the last word out like she was talking to an injured poodle, “I know you put on a brave face, but I’ve heard from—hic!—from a lot of your teachers that some of the other children have taken to . . . um . . .”

  “To being awful to me?” I suggested. “Salting my chocolate milk? Insulting my parentage? Addressing me with the most derivative and unimaginative—”

  “Well,” she interrupted, “as a matter—hic!—as a matter of fact, yes.” She de-tented her fingers, reconsidered the decision, and re-tented them. “I thought it might be helpful for you and I to discuss some st—hic!—some strategies to help you mesh a little better with your peers. I think with a little effort on your part . . .”

  She went on talking, but I knew where she was going, so there was no point in waiting through the hiccuping. “Why aren’t you talking to them?” I said. “They’re the ones being mean! Do you have any strategies you can discuss with my peers to help them stop behaving like the worst parts of Lord of the Flies?”

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s a book. I have a slightly waterlogged copy you could borrow, if you’re interested. It’s about some nice children who get stuck on an island and start behaving like American middle schoolers? I just mean that you might consider focusing your energies on the people who pick on kids who are different.”

  “Welllll,” Miss Hiccup said, in a very noncommittal, guidance counselor–y kind of way. “That’s just about everyone in the school, and—hic!—we’re going to have better luck working on how you interact, rather than changing the tone of the entire school. There’s a seminar going on at the community college this week for kids who—hic!—who just need a little help learning how to show people what a great, interesting, fun person they can be! I thought we could—”

  “That’s nice of you to say,” I said, “but I don’t understand: if everyone in the school is prejudiced against great, interesting, and fun people like me, and there’s nothing actually wrong with me, why is it easier if I do my best to be as wrong as the rest of them?”

  “Well—hic!—I wouldn’t put it th—hic!—that way.”

  I know I’m supposed to be respectful of adults, but I couldn’t help myself. “I would hope not. When you tell a person who is being bullied that it’s their own fault for being themselves, it’s important to say so in the nicest way possible. Right?”

  “How many times have—hic!—you been in my office this year? Ten? Fif—hic!—teen? There are some—hic!—some simple changes you can make that will—hic!—make a real difference.”

  I forced myself to smile pleasantly, as if she’d said something helpful. “If you don’t want me in here all the time, I suggest you stop dragging me in here all the time.”

  She made a sad face and looked like she was about to interrupt, but I sensed an opportunity to power through and get out of there. “I really appreciate your advice. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. I’m going to go outside and wait for the late bus now. You can say that you tried your best but just couldn’t reach me. Have a nice year!” I got up and got out before she could stop hiccuping and call me back.

  I wondered why she felt the need to talk to me about fitting in at all. I was actually starting to like a little salt and pepper in my chocolate milk. They’d been doing it my whole life. Did it bother me? Sure. But I wasn’t going to let it get me down, and I sure wasn’t going to turn myself into one of them. I like being me more than I dislike being an outcast.

  I made a mental note to speak with my dad that evening about possibly skipping middle and high school altogether and going straight to college. I wouldn’t even need to apply. The first time our class took standardized tests, we got letters from the state asking why I wasn’t on an accelerated track. But Dad had nixed the idea on a dozen occasions already—something about developing my social skills in an appropriate environment. As if no one can develop social skills in college. He even told the school to stop letting me take
the tests, I guess to keep me from getting any more bright ideas about it.

  The middle school had a swing set on the edge of the playground, which was the best place to wait for the bus. It had a view of where the bus arrived, and was far enough from the stop that I would not need to talk with anyone.

  But there was already a group of kids hanging around the swings when I arrived, with one big guy occupying my personal favorite seat. He was large, unusually so. Sometimes the guys from the football team hang around after practice with their pads still on. Maybe this one wanted a quick swing before putting on his street clothes.

  I turned to leave but ran right into one of the loitering kids. He was solid—but soft somehow, like the walls of a padded room. I mumbled “Sorry” and went to move around him, but the rest of the apes had crowded around me. It was then that I noticed the gang hogging my swing set was, in fact, girls.

  I use the term girls in the loosest sense of the word. Their leader, the one who had been sitting on the swing, had long, highlighter-yellow hair braided into pigtails and was wearing makeup like she’d broken into her mom’s stash for the first time. She looked at least as tall as my dad—about six feet—although it was hard to tell because she was close, and I was having problems understanding what was going on with her limbs. Her arms were much longer than they needed to be. They were so long I wondered if she could stop herself on the swings with her hands instead of her feet. Her legs were weirdly short, though. I don’t really remember what her face looked like. She was ugly—I remember that. Not ugly like the opposite of pretty, but ugly like . . . well, it’s hard to say. She was ugly in the same way that plane crashes and cancer are ugly, if that makes sense. I don’t remember any of their faces, actually. I just knew I’d never seen her or any of them at school before. Why had I even assumed they were students?

  I said “Excuse me,” but they didn’t react. The three before me were decked out in long flowery skirts, chunky costume jewelry, and brightly colored hoodies, which they kept pulled over their heads, kind of like monks with tragically bad fashion sense. Being encircled by them was like standing at the bottom of a very unfriendly well.