Girls, Gifted Read online

  Girls, Gifted

  E.K. Ballard

  Girls, Gifted © November 2018 by E.K. Ballard

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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

  Cover design © 2018 I’m No Angel Designs

  First Edition November 2018

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  About the Author

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to all the public school teachers who are asked every year to do more with less; keep your heads up and know you are making a difference. This journey wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for the passionate former teachers and media specialists I had in the Radnor Township School District, especially Virginia Pusey, Lew Bryan, and Leland Doll.

  Acknowledgments

  There are many people to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude for their time and feedback on this project. Lenny Gross, the first beta reader who slogged through a 105,000 word first draft; Connie Swikle, Chris and Hollie Braun, Blake and Lori Wiley, Amanda Armenio, Michael Shi, Karen Cangero, Pat Kinsey, Robin Ringo, Kristin Guay, Cathy Hollar, Maureen Borden, Trish Allen, and Shannon Thorpe.

  Much thanks to Tracy Roelle and Sonnet Fitzgerald for your editing and helping me through the process. Also, Bianca Sommerland for her patience while creating multiple drafts of the cover.

  My dear friends Lyna Jimenez-Ruiz, Mary Ann Lind, Heather Carpenter, and Mary McCarrick who read several versions of Girls, Gifted and who always knew when I needed to take a break.

  My Aunt Katrin, who not only read a rough earlier draft, but who made excellent suggestions that ended up shaping the novel.

  Camille Cline, who took the manuscript through its earliest, rawest drafts and made it into something readable. Thank you for all your time and knowledge.

  My mother, who was so excited to hear I had written a book…until she read the first draft. Since then her editing and insight has been invaluable.

  Lastly, my wonderful wife Marie who has been here since the first word was typed. Thank you for your patience and understanding, for coming home from work only wanting conversation and after seeing me pounding away furiously at the keyboard, seeking companionship from the dogs; for keeping my spirits up when rejection came at me time and time again, and for tolerating all my crankiness. I love you and couldn’t have done this without you.

  Chapter One

  “Set the table. Now!” snapped her mother.

  Kristin scowled at her mother as she went to the drawer where she thought the utensils had been unpacked.

  Cow Hampshire. How had her life been upended like this?

  Kristin’s phone was on the counter, and she saw she had a new text message. Before she could see who it was from, there was a crack on her backside and a searing pain shot through her.

  The sharp sting made her jump and turn to find its source. She found her mother standing behind her, brandishing a wooden spoon.

  “Jesus Christ! What the hell did you do that for?” Kristin demanded. Before she knew it, her mother had swung the spoon and hit her again in the same spot.

  Rebecca stood over her, holding the spoon threateningly. “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, and don’t you swear at me! I’ve been calling for you to come help for ten minutes. Not when you get around to it, and not when you’re done checking your phone!”

  “That really hurt!” Kristin felt tears welling in her eyes.

  “Good, maybe you’ll be more responsive next time. Besides, you’ve got plenty of padding down there these days. Maybe you should spend less time eating and more time helping unpack and you won’t need me to get your attention with a spoon.”

  A tear ran down Kristin’s face. Was it from the spoon or Rebecca’s offhand remarks about Kristin’s weight gain?

  Both, Kristin decided. The move had made her mother mean and nasty to everyone, but especially Kristin.

  Rob Olson came into the kitchen with her brother, Lucas, who sat down dejectedly in a chair at the table.

  “I just got off the phone with the cable company. Looks like they don’t provide service out here.”

  “So no cable or internet,” said Lucas glumly.

  “We could get satellite TV, but I’d rather have the internet.”

  “We don’t need either,” said Rebecca as she pulled a container of mashed potatoes from the microwave.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Rob asked Kristin as he noticed her cheeks were wet.

  Kristin nodded toward Rebecca. “Mom just hit me with a wooden spoon! Twice!”

  “Oh, come on, those were light taps to remind you to mind your manners,” Rebecca said airily.

  “That really hurt!”

  “Well, come down when you’re called,” Rebecca countered.

  “We might have some good news for you,” Rob said.

  Rebecca shook her head vehemently at her husband.

  “What?” Kristin asked.

  “We heard from the school and have appointments for you two to register for classes next week,” Rebecca said.

  Rob laughed. “I’ve got better news than that.”

  “No, you don’t! We have not decided anything.” Rebecca began to put food on the table.

  “What?” Kristin asked. “Is it something to do with me?”

  “Yup,” her father said with a smile in his eyes.

  “Rob, do not bring it up again, because I said no. Kristin, finish setting the table. Lucas, wash up and get ready to eat.”

  “No, not until you tell me what this news is.” Kristin stood defiantly with her arms crossed.

  Rebecca wheeled around to face Kristin. “Do as you are told!”

  “I got a call from Izzy’s father today,” Rob said.

  “Izzy? From Sarasota?” Kristin didn’t understand why her best friend’s father would be calling her dad.

  “Yes. They’re going to be up here for a funeral later this wee
k, and Izzy would like to come spend a little time here with you.”

  The pain from where her mother hit her left her mind.

  “Izzy is coming to visit?” she asked, the excitement beginning to build.

  “No!” said Rebecca.

  “Rebecca, I think—”

  “I don’t care what you think, I said no! We’ve barely been in this house a week and you want to invite people to visit?”

  “Mom! Come on, why not!” Kristin said.

  “You either finish setting the table and keep quiet or you can go up to your room without dinner. I don’t want to hear any more about this!”

  “Who died and made you boss?” Kristin yelled.

  “That’s it. Upstairs. And don’t come out unless you have permission.”

  Kristin held back her tears as she ran up to her room, where she slammed the door and threw herself face first on the bed, crying at how overwhelmingly unfair life was.

  * * *

  Although they tried to keep their voices low, Rebecca knew the kids could hear them arguing and she didn’t care. She had reached her boiling point.

  How dare he take Kristin’s side over hers!

  She looked at the house in its state of disrepair and couldn’t fathom how things had come to this. The furniture was ancient and tattered, with the sofa pitching forward on broken legs. The rugs were stained, the walls needed to be painted, and the plumbing worked sporadically. In Sarasota, the house would have been referred to as a “teardown”. It was a far cry from their four bedroom home in a gated golf course community.

  Rebecca had been careful to frame the move up to Stowe as a temporary measure to help Rob’s brother and his family raise their special needs daughter, Patty. If Izzy came to visit, she would go right back to Sarasota and report the dilapidated dump the Olson family lived in to her mother, a trust fund child from Siesta Key. The word of their financial demise would spread amongst her former friends within hours.

  The humility of the bankruptcy, the unknown of where they would live, how they would put food on the table, the fear of being homeless, the anxiety of having to move away from their affluent community and the uncertainty of the past six months came to a head.

  “I said no, and I meant it!” she snapped at him. “With all the work that needs to be done, we don’t have time for company!”

  “Why are you being so unreasonable?” Rob’s voice conveyed a tired exasperation that she was sick of hearing.

  She had counted on him, as the man of the family, to provide for them and prevent such disasters from occuring.

  “Don’t put this on me!”

  “Come on! This has hit her harder than any of us. Put yourself in her shoes for a minute. All her life, she has been a straight A student. President of her class, yearbook editor, and two weeks before her sophomore year ends, we tell her she has to leave her friends and her school where she has been since second grade and move to New Hampshire? How do you think she should be acting? Happy?”

  “How should any of us be?” she retorted. “Lucas isn’t moping. You’ve taken a job way beneath your dignity. You…” her voice trailed off as she saw the look on his face.

  “Go on, say it,” he said. “Say it. I’ve failed you and the kids.”

  That was exactly what she felt but she held back and redirected her ire at her daughter.

  “Kristin has been nothing but disrespectful and selfish,” Rebecca said.

  “Selfish? She’s a teenager! Nothing that has happened was her fault. We need to be supportive and understanding. Besides, it’s not like we have to buy a plane ticket.”

  “There’s so much to do. The house is a mess. It needs to be cleaned, we still need to unpack…”

  “Let’s make it a condition of Izzy coming that Kristin is in charge of the cleaning,” Rob suggested.

  “No. It’s a bad idea, right now.”

  “Well, I’m sorry you feel that way, because I already said yes.”

  “You said yes without discussing it with me first?” Rebecca was outraged. She thought about all the arguments they had over the move. His viewpoint always won out, but at least they made the decision together and presented a united front to the children.

  “Yes, Becca, I did, because honestly, I thought you’d be happy for Kristin. I never thought this would be a problem.”

  “Well, it is. Call them back and say we changed our minds.”

  “No, Rebecca. I am the man of this house and I say Izzy is coming to visit, and that’s that.”

  With that, Rebecca knew that he was finally asserting himself as the patriarchal figurehead. She had no control over anything that happened to her or her family. She was just along for the ride, with the car speeding up and heading for a steep curve with no brakes.

  Rob had failed in his duties as a husband; she would need to take more charge of her family and rely on a higher power if they were to get through this upheaval.

  * * *

  Kristin tried to crane herself around to see if she had a bruise but couldn’t twist far enough. There was no mirror in the room so she did the next best thing; she pulled out her phone and took a picture of her backside. She lay down on her stomach in her bed to look at the picture and gasped as she saw the angry purple welt the spoon had left on her.

  There was tapping on the door. “Kristin?” her dad said through the door.

  “Come in.”

  He came in and sat down next to her on the bed. The weight of his body shifted her on the bed, and she winced at the pain that emanated from where the spoon hit her.

  “Come on, it can’t be that bad,” he joked.

  “She really hit me hard. Look,” she said, handing him her phone.

  “Whoa, that’s more than a light tap!” he said. “What happened? What did you say that got her that angry?”

  “You know how she is now,” Kristin said.

  Rob leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. “I know how hard this has been on you. But it’s been hard on your mom, too. Imagine being her age and losing everything we’ve worked for. She’s just worried about us.”

  “It’s more than that. You know that. She’s just mean and miserable now. It’s like she’s so unhappy that no one else deserves to be happy unless she is, too.”

  “Please try and be patient. I hope this is temporary and the real estate market will rebound and we can go back to Sarasota. Until then, this is where we have to be.”

  “You think we can go back?” Kristin asked hopefully.

  “Maybe, but not this year.” Kristin buried her face in her pillow again. “Look, honey, if you didn’t hear, Izzy is coming to visit, so why don’t you give her a call?”

  “I heard. She texted me.”

  “I had to go to bat for you with your mother, so in return, I want you to try not to antagonize her. Do as she asks, be respectful, and you are in charge of housecleaning for Izzy’s visit.”

  “I know, I heard.”

  “I love you. I’m doing what I can to make it so we end up okay, but I need you to do your part, too, okay?”

  “I know.”

  “That includes doing well in school. You’re going to need scholarships if you want to go to an Ivy League school.”

  “How are we going to do our homework with no internet?” Kristin asked.

  “You’ll just have to make use of the school and town libraries,” Rob said. “If we need to make sure you have transportation there, we’ll do it. So, do we have a deal? You going to do your part?”

  “Yes. But she shouldn’t hit me.”

  “I know, I’ll talk to her about that. She just lost her temper. It won’t happen again, okay?”

  Chapter Two

  They picked Izzy up at the designated time and place, and Kristin was thrilled to see her best friend. She had gotten taller, and her blonde hair was nearly white from her being out in the sun. She enthusiastically greeted Kristin and Rob with hugs, and exuded positive energy.

  “It’s so good to see you! H
ow’s volleyball?”

  “Great. I’ve got a few schools interested in me playing for them. Lots of training and tournaments,” Izzy said. “So this is downtown Stowe?” Izzy asked as they drove down Main Street.

  “Sure is.”

  “It’s like a Norman Rockwell painting.”

  They drove past Stowe Grocery, through the downtown, past the lake, Stowe Regional Middle and High school, and headed north toward the farm.

  “Is that the school you are going to go to?” asked Izzy.

  Kristin scoffed. “Yeah, Hayseed High.”

  “Come on, Kristin,” said her father. “It isn’t that bad of a school. It’s where I went.”

  “Yeah, now look at us,” said Kristin.

  An uncomfortable silence fell over the car. Rob set his jaw. He looked angry and hurt at her rudeness in front of a guest.

  “New Hampshire is really beautiful.” Izzy broke the awkward pall as they drove down a rural country road toward the house.

  “And cold,” said Kristin. “It gets down in the fifties at night, and that’s in the summer!”

  “Oh my gosh, is this where you live? How cool! I love it, it’s like a farmhouse that you see in an old movie.”

  “The old homestead,” Rob said. “This is the house I grew up in.”