I Love You, Miss Genius novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Coach

I waited for Dash to shout.

He read Bettina's email twice with his bare shoulders in the gray light, and then he laughed, one short note.

"She volunteers," he said.

"Dash, she can't code that."

"I know."

"You know?"

"I've known Bettina for six years," he said, too lightly. "She's never once volunteered for anything she couldn't win."

He kissed the top of my head and went to find a shirt.

I sat on the couch with the blanket around me, watching him dress, and a small cold thought came and went.

He should have been panicking.

He was not, and I did not know why.

At ten, Bettina's assistant brought a note to my desk.

Come see me. Now. Close the door.

Her office was white and glass, with one orchid and no photographs.

She stood at the window with her back to me.

"Sit."

I stayed standing.

"Your friend with the cane wouldn't talk to me last night," she said.

"She was very careful. She told me nothing. It was beautiful."

She turned around with her phone in her hand.

"So I found it myself."

She held up the screen.

It was a video, grainy and shaking, from the back of a lecture hall.

A very thin girl in a borrowed blazer stood at a podium under a banner, with a clicker in her hand and her mouth open.

She did not speak.

The silence dragged on, agonizing, and the audience shifted and coughed, and someone near the camera whispered, "Is she okay?"

The title above it read CHILD GENIUS CRACKS.

I knew exactly what came next.

I did not need to watch the girl at the podium, because I could still feel her hands.

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