Chapter 40: Cute Little Billy Jones

Jade poked me in the arm when he was gone.

"Ow." I rubbed my arm. "What?"

"You never said that you were tutoring a genius," she said.

"Yeah." Shasta nodded. "That kid is way cool, in a weird Bobby Brady kind of way."

Bernice eyed me. "And he wanted to come to high school?"

I fiddled with my napkin, not sure of the story Bill intended to give. This was something we hadn't prepared for—that there would be so many people interested in him.

"I don't think anyone wants to go to high school," I said. "I think he just wants to graduate early so that he can…go to medical school." I thought of Doogie Howser, M.D., a show that would air in a few years about a boy genius who graduates high school and then medical school and gets his PhD by the age of fourteen or fifteen.

Bernice blinked. "He wants to be a doctor. I'm going to college, too. I want to be a teacher."