Notebook 1

(Author's note: I didn't write this, one of you folks, my readers, did. It is the transcription of part of a TV report when word starts leaking out of this amazing Sisterhood that has descended upon a university in Alabama. Don't get confused. This vignette is a bit into the future compared with the actual story line. You'll see some things that haven't happened yet.

It's also good to keep in mind that when you're tagged by the media for an interview or an article, they get a lot of stuff that doesn't make it onto the screen or into the article, so what you see here is by no means the whole story. Keeping that in mind, you just know we're going to have fun when some of these things take place in the story itself.)

[Teaser for 'news magazine' TV program]

[Clip of the sisterhood climbing the steps to Auburn's library overlaid with the program's logo]

Lesley Steele VO: We've reported on child prodigies before but Auburn's young sisterhood of engineers is something unique in our experience: one preteen and four teenagers taking a university by storm.

[Start of segment]

Lesley Steele: [Seated on tall stool in front of a still of the sisterhood on the steps] Christina and Terri Addison, Dominique

Granger, Cindy Richardson and Susan Ellerbee are a phenomenon unlike any other upon which we've reported. All of them are exceptional, running through advanced coursework fast enough to give outsiders whiplash, but in combination they're astonishing. We caught up with them in one of Auburn's electrical engineering labs.

[Cut to the interior of a room filled with electrical lab equipment.

One wall is covered with whiteboards with the girls sitting in a line of chairs in front of it.]

Lesley: You ladies have certainly attracted attention, both individually and as a group. To get us started, please introduce yourselves.

[The girls look at one another for a moment.]

Cindy: I guess I'll start. I'm Cindy Richards.

Tina: Christina, Tina, Addison.

Nikki: Dominique Granger. Nikki.

Susan: Susan Ellerbee.

Terri: Terri Addison - Tina's stepdaughter.

Lesley: You're rather young, even for this group.

Terri: I'll be nine. Among other things, I'm working on the requirements for high school. I'll be eleven when I graduate. [shrugs] Age is just a number in this respect - the only real criterion is if you can do the work. Cindy was fourteen and Nikki fifteen when they graduated. Tina and Susan were seventeen and eighteen; Susan's really the outlier 'cause she wasn't married when she graduated.

Lesley: Married in high school?

Cindy: Yes. I was fourteen when my Dan and I fell in love and got married.

Lesley: At fourteen?

Cindy: Yes. Mom signed over custody for me to the manager of the trailer park. We were prepared to wait until I was sixteen but we convinced a judge how much we loved one another and he did the paperwork and married us. My Dan saved me.

Nikki: My Dan literally saved me. There was a hurricane coming, my mom and her boyfriend were out of town and the neighbors I was supposed to evacuate with couldn't get to me. The apartment building blew down around me and I was trapped. Dan found me the next day and cut me out; I'd have died in there if he hadn't. [shakes her head] He didn't evacuate; his house is just the kind of thing an engineer would build - able to stand up to a hurricane, propane generator for power, hot water, air conditioning. I was fifteen.

Tina: Mom, her boyfriend and I were part of that evacuation and Alan kept me from being beaten up by the boyfriend. I was seventeen.

Cindy: One of the things we have in common is our husbands. They're all really bright guys who want us to do well in school. Nikki and I were just going along trying not to attract attention when our Dans explained a few things and gave us a push. It's almost as if they were teaching us how to ride bikes, running alongside keeping us from falling over. The most wonderful thing is how proud they are of us even though we're farther ahead in stuff like math than they are. [shakes her head] We, Nikki and I, seem to have a special talent for math that makes things other people find difficult easy for us. To extend the analogy it's as if we've taken off the training wheels and they're applauding and cheering us on.