Chapter 1

Just before the school bell rang, MLK High School chemistry and biology teacher Carol Sellers, a woman who appeared to be in her late thirties or early forties, strode purposefully into her classroom on the first day of the new school year, set a well-used canvas tote bag on her desk and took out a textbook and a folder containing a class roster. The chatter among her twenty-six students quieted as they waited for her to begin.

Ms. Sellers had a reputation as a no-nonsense teacher, tough but fair. Appearance-wise, she was tall and willowy, sandy-haired with penetrating green eyes; actually rather attractive in a severe sort of way, if not quite in the stunning category. But while she may not have been Elle or Vogue material, she had a certain sex appeal and she always took pains to look her best. She dressed smartly, used only enough makeup to accent, never to cover, and her hair was never anything but perfectly coiffed. And complementing her physical appearance was the confident air of someone who could hold her own in any social situation. Elegant is probably a good general description.

Before she spoke a word, she took a minute to look over the gathering of students occupying the chairs and worktables in front of her, pointedly making eye contact with each individual. Then she cracked a little smile and began, "Good morning, students. Welcome to biology, the study of life. In this class, you're going to learn - at least I hope you're going to learn about the fundamentals of living organisms on our planet Earth. While many of you will be content to get through this course with a passing grade, a few of you will develop a lifelong fascination with the science of living things and pursue it far beyond what we'll study in this classroom.

"There is some likelihood that one of you may become a physician, one or two will get into some kind of 'green' industry, a couple of you may study nursing or become paramedics. Whatever profession or line of work you choose, science-oriented or not, you're going to benefit in some small way from what you will learn in this class."

She heard a disagreeable grunt escape from the back of the classroom, immediately spotted the perpetrator vainly attempting to look perfectly innocent, and continued, "Okay, I see and hear some dissension from the peanut gallery, but I'll let it pass this one time because some of you are still struggling to pull yourself into adulthood and don't know any better. We'll work on that."

Several students looked around the room trying to spot the guilty party.

Ms. Sellers resumed, "Eyes front, please. Now, it's not my job to push you into a career in the biological sciences, it's my job to present the fundamentals of life and encourage you to learn more in future courses as suits your needs. Inasmuch as most of you are juniors and seniors and have somehow managed to navigate your way through puberty to varying degrees, I don't doubt that some of you already feel you know as much biology as you need to know, right? If that's what you believe, well all I can say is good luck with that."

That earned a few nervous chuckles.

"For those of you who want to get as much out of this course as you can, I'm going to make you an offer. I'd like you to choose a partner and explore some specific area of biology for the entire year and outside the standard curriculum, to write up a paper on your chosen topic and present the final product to me at the end of the school year. If you accomplish what you and I agree upon, it's a guaranteed A for a final grade. If you don't quite meet your goal, but you put forth a decent, credible effort, it's at least a guaranteed B. And yes, you still have to attend class and do the lab work, although students who choose this track will have no assigned homework and they'll not be required to sit for weekly, mid-term or final exams. If you make a contract and fail to live up to the agreement, you must make up the mid-term and final exams to pass the course.

That created a little flurry of whispers and mutters around the classroom, as she expected it would. This was something new.

She nodded with satisfaction at the effect and continued, "Beware! Choosing this option doesn't mean less work, it means more work. It's just that your work will be for the most part unsupervised. For many of you it won't work. For a few of you, it's an opportunity to show what you're made of. If you choose this route and later find it doesn't suit you, that's fine too because you can go back to our standard classroom routine.

"In college they call this a contract grade. We've never done it before in this high school, and I can promise you it took some pretty fancy verbal gymnastics on my part to sell it to the principal. Whether or not it's repeated next year will depend on how this year goes. Of course it goes without saying that none of you are required to participate in this experiment. If you opt for the traditional classroom routine; study, homework, tests, that works fine for me.

"Okay, so here's the deal: If you think you'd like to take a stab at this, some time in the next week you should hook up with a partner, write up a proposal stating what you want to work on and what you hope to show for your efforts. We'll talk about it, and if I approve, we'll sign a contract agreeing to the deal. The rest is up to you. You can come to me for some guidance about resources, you can ask me questions about procedure, that kind of thing, but don't expect me to do the work for you. This program is for those of you who are disciplined enough to work independently.

"Okay, enough about that for now. Turn to chapter one in your textbook and let's get started.

The cell..."

One of Ms. Sellers' students, Jasper Van Buskirk, was indeed a high school senior, but he was still working his way through puberty, and it wasn't because he was a late bloomer. He was one of those fortunate (?) souls born with a very high IQ, and he'd been skipped a grade four times. He'd just turned fourteen and that's how old he would be when he entered college. He and his parents had already been approached by several major universities.

The contract grade proposition Ms. Sellers just offered caught his imagination and conjured up all sorts of interesting possibilities. There was nothing about school he hated more than the day-in and day-out drudgery of chapter-by-chapter homework assignments (he'd already memorized the biology textbook) and weekly examinations to insure he was paying attention and doing the assigned work. The whole process bored him to tears because it presented no challenge, and he only forced himself to wade through it because each class and each examination was a step closer to what he really wanted; independent study and a chance to communicate with great minds. This contract grade proposal was a chance to break loose and do something unique.

Jasper had (has) an eidetic memory that allows him to recall in nearly perfect detail just about any written or graphic material he lays his eyes on for a few seconds; hence, his memorization of the biology text. He could read a five hundred page novel in an hour. While this ability isn't necessarily associated with high intelligence, his being in possession of both of those qualities set him apart from his classmates in so many ways.

Socializing to any significant degree with his classmates rarely happened because he was just too odd, too different. It's like they resented him, once they learned what he was capable of. No, that probably isn't accurate. It's more like they were uncomfortable in his presence, like they didn't quite know what to make of him. He was a kid with a super brain, a bit alien to their way of thinking, and they shared little or nothing in common.

And that's the way it had been since he began reading Little Golden Books to himself before the age of two. By the age of three, he understood that he was in some way different from the other kids. While he wasn't openly snubbed by his classmates, early on he developed the sense that he didn't belong, that he was and would forever be an outsider. With only a few exceptions, his socialization was pretty much restricted to his immediate family (mom, dad, one relatively normal older brother) and his computer. Oh, and of course Elmer, the live-in caretaker who'd practically raised the boys.

Jasper really wanted to do this contract grade thing, but whom could he possibly talk into being his partner? He didn't have a clue about which student to approach since it seemed they went out of their way to avoid him, which in itself was illogical since having him as a partner was pretty much a fast track to a guaranteed A for the course.

It wasn't that he was geeky-looking or anything; he looked pretty much like any other fourteen year-old boy. As he began his senior year, he was five feet, six inches tall, one hundred and ten pounds with auburn hair and gray eyes; actually a pretty good looking kid. But his reputation preceded him and the other students usually found ways to avoid him in every class he attended. He was fourteen and his classmates were seventeen and eighteen; a meaningless gap in later years, but oh so important in the teens.

Jasper's parents, Alma and Peter Van Buskirk emigrated from the Netherlands four years before he was born, and they'd since done very well as brokers of fine art. But their business was so demanding that more often than not, they were on their way to somewhere in the world to negotiate a sale or a purchase for a client. Jasper and his brother, Peter junior (PJ), age seventeen, were almost entirely raised by their live-in caretaker. PJ shared none of his younger brother's special abilities.

There was plenty of money to send Jasper to the best private schools, but that's not how it worked out. Once his exceptional gifts were realized, his mother wanted to send him to a school for the gifted or even have him home-schooled by a private tutor, but his father wouldn't hear of it. He felt that public schools would better prepare his son to live in the real world, and there was probably some truth to that.

Elmer, the man they'd hired to look after PJ and the household was the compromise. At the time he was hired, he was a twenty-eight year old man with an advanced degree in microbiology. A few years after earning his doctorate at the age of twenty-one, he became disillusioned with his teaching position and society in general and dropped out to spent four years as a monk in a monastery. He followed the rigorous life, giving it his best shot, but ultimately decided it wasn't the life he wanted to live and left to pursue a more secular path. He was very well paid for his live-in position with the Van Buskirk family because, quite aside from his academic credentials, he happened to be an excellent cook and he didn't mind the drudgery of day-to-day housekeeping in the least.

Title wise, there really is no term for the male equivalent of a governess. In the old days, he would have been called a tutor and paid a much higher salary than a governess, but Elmer was much more than either of those positions. An appropriate title might have been House Master, but nobody called him anything but Elmer, and that seemed to suffice for all. He loved both boys like they were his own sons, although his preference for Jasper was impossible to disguise. That might have had something to do with the fact that they had so much in common, not the least of which was a prodigious intellect.

The bell rang and the students filed out the door to head to their next class. Jasper was a few steps down the hall thinking he'd approach Ms. Sellers after school to ask if he could work solo on the contract grade project, when someone came up behind him and tugged on his backpack. He turned to see Anna Belle Gardner, a girl from last year's advanced calculus course.

"Oh, hi, Anna Bell."

"Hi, Jasper. Gosh, you've grown some over the summer, haven't you? Look, I was wondering if you'd be interested in being my partner for the contract grade in biology. I'm sure you're first on everybody's list to ask, so I thought I'd get my request in early. I hope I'm not too late."

"Um no, nobody's asked me. In fact, I was just thinking about asking if I could work by myself. I didn't even see you in class or I would have asked you."

"I was two seats behind you. So you're interested? We can be partners?"

Jasper was actually thrilled that she'd asked because she was one of the few students who seemed to be totally comfortable in his presence. In their junior year, they often ate lunch together.