All That Glitters

“I’m confused,” my father said when I triumphantly showed him my ticked-off list. “Aren’t they also the symptoms of being a sixteen-year-old girl?”

“Or a baby,” my stepmother added, peering over at the list. “Your sister also appears to fit the list.”

Which just goes to show why so many of the intellectual elite are misunderstood. Even our own parents don’t recognise our brilliance.

Anyway, as the biggest sign of a high IQ is asking lots of questions and I got to the page by googling …

Am I a genius?

… I’m feeling pretty optimistic.

Which is good, because this morning is my first day back at school so I’m going to need all the extra brain-power I can get.

That’s right, I am now an official sixth former.

By my calculations I have spent exactly eleven years of my life at school so far: 2,145 taught days, or approximately 17,160 hours (not including homework or the free tests I downloaded to take on holiday).

In short, I have invested over a million minutes in education in preparation for this precise moment. The day when all my carefully collected knowledge will be valued and appreciated, instead of just irritating people.

Finally, school is getting serious.

Gone are the homework-haters and eye-rollers, and – thanks to an influx of new students from other schools – in their place are people who really want to learn. People desperate to know that gerbils can smell adrenaline and a caterpillar has twelve eyes, or that there’s enough carbon in your body to make 900 pencils.

People just like me.

And I couldn’t be more excited.

As of today, I have five A levels to study, two universities to introduce myself to early and a bright career in palaeontology to begin pursuing in earnest. I have statistics to analyse and frogs to dissect and thigh exercises to start so I don’t get cramp when I’m brushing soil away from dinosaur fossils in the not-so-distant future.

I have brand-new, like-minded friends to make.

It might be the same school with a lot of the same people, but things are about to change. After eleven years of scraping insults off my belongings and retrieving my shoes from the cisterns of toilets, this is my chance to start all over again. A new beginning.

A chance to shine.

This time, everything will be different.

Luckily, one of the really great things about being a genius is that it’s easy to multitask.

So this morning I decide to make the most of it.

I learn that there are forty different muscles in a bird wing while I’m getting out of bed.

I discover that a sea urchin can walk on its teeth while I’m combing my hair, and that parasites make up 0.01 per cent of our body weight while I’m brushing my teeth.

Clothes, socks and shoes are all picked out and donned as I fully absorb the fact that a snake smells with its tongue and hears with its jaw. I study the names of British kings and queens as I run down the stairs, and by the time I reach the kitchen I’m on to Secret Service code names (Prince Charles is “Unicorn”, which is a shame because I was hoping one day they’d use that one for me).

“Did you know,” I say as I lean down to kiss Tabitha on her little round cheek, “that the average person will eat 500 chickens and 13,000 eggs in a lifetime?”

My baby sister clearly didn’t, because she gurgles happily at this new and unprecedented information. Then I reach over her fluffy head to grab a hard-boiled version of the latter listed from the table.

“Harriet,” my stepmother says.

“And we’ll each eat thirty-six pigs,” I continue as I start peeling the egg with one hand. “And thirty-six sheep.”

“Harriet.”

“And eight cows.”

“Harriet.”

“And 10,000 chocolate bars.” I pause with the egg halfway to my mouth. “I think I may have eaten my rations for that already, though. Maybe I should become a vegetarian to balance it back out.”

A hand lands on my arm.

“Good morning, Annabel. How did you sleep? I’m fine, thank you. Isn’t it a beautiful day today? Thanks for making me breakfast, even though I am now leaving bits of shell all over the kitchen floor for you to clean up.”

I blink at my stepmother a few times, then at Dad. I’ve lived with Annabel since I was five, yet sometimes she is still a total mystery to me.

“Why is Annabel talking to herself?”

“She’s an alien unsuccessfully trying to fit in with the rest of the human race,” Dad says knowingly, dipping a bit of toast in egg yolk and then dripping it on the table. “Is there anything in your book to help us figure out what she wants with us poor earthlings before she sucks our brains out with her tentacles?”

I start flicking eagerly through the chunky tome in my hand. There are 729 pages and I’m only 13/20ths of the way through, so there’s almost definitely some kind of precedent.

Or at the very least something interesting about spaceships.

“Sadly, all signs suggest that your brain is already gone, Richard,” Annabel says grimly. “So I’m probably going to starve.”

Then she pulls a chair out and gestures at it.

“Put your fact book down, Harriet, and have some breakfast. I start back at work tomorrow morning and none of us have heard a sensible word out of you for the last twenty-four hours.”

I don’t know what my stepmother is talking about. Every single sentence I’ve said has been scientifically and historically accurate. There’s a bibliography proving it in the back.

I shove a piece of toast into my mouth.

“Can’t,” I say through a spray of buttered carbohydrates. “No time. Things to learn, places to go, kindred spirits to meet.”

Quickly, I stomp into the hallway and grab my satchel from the corner whilst simultaneously discovering that in 1830, King Louis XIX ruled France for just twenty minutes.

“Look how awesome she is,” Dad says proudly as I open the front door. “That’s my daughter, Annabel. My genetics, right there. Harriet Manners: model and style icon. Fashion legend. Sartorial maverick extraordinaire.”

I stick one ear of my headphones in.

“Harriet,” Annabel says. “Hang on a second. Where are you going?”

I’m not entirely sure how I’ll use the Louis XIX information, by the way. Not everything I read is potentially useful or relevant, even to me.