I do, Eileen thought. Not all the time, but sometimes. Yes. That’s when the plates rattle or the doors shut by themselves.

She thought of Greer’s huge, gleaming machine, something big enough to fill three or even four buildings the size of warehouses, and working at doing what, exactly? No more than making paper cups or stamping out aluminum fast food trays. They owed him more, but did they owe him this?

“What about the University of Minnesota?” she asked. “Or Concordia, in St. Paul? If he went to one of those places, he could live at home.”

Greer sighed. “You might as well consider taking him out of the Brod and putting him in an ordinary high school. We’re talking about a boy for whom the IQ scale is useless. He knows where he wants to go. He knows what he needs.”

“I don’t know what we can do about it,” Eileen said. “He might be able to get scholarships to those places, but we work here. And we’re far from rich.”

“Well now, let’s talk about that,” Greer said.

2

When Herb and Eileen returned to the school that afternoon, Luke was jiving around in front of the pick-up lane with four other kids, two boys and two girls. They were laughing and talking animatedly. To Eileen they looked like kids anywhere, the girls in skirts and leggings, their bosoms just beginning to bloom, Luke and his friend Rolf in baggy cords—this year’s fashion statement for young men—and t-tops. Rolf’s read BEER IS FOR BEGINNERS. He had his cello in its quilted case and appeared to be pole-dancing around it as he held forth on something that might have been the spring dance or the Pythagorean theorem.

Luke saw his parents, paused long enough to dap Rolf, then grabbed his backpack and dove into the backseat of Eileen’s 4Runner. “Both Ps,” he said. “Excellent. To what do I owe this extraordinary honor?”

“Do you really want to go to school in Boston?” Herb asked.

Luke was not discomposed; he laughed and punched both fists in the air. “Yes! Can I?”

Like asking if he can spend Friday night at Rolf’s house, Eileen marveled. She thought of how Greer had expressed what their son had. He’d called it global, and that was the perfect word. Luke was a genius who had somehow not been distorted by his own outsized intellect; he had absolutely no compunctions about mounting his skateboard and riding his one-in-a-billion brain down a steep sidewalk, hellbent for election.

“Let’s get some early supper and talk about it,” she said.

“Rocket Pizza!” Luke exclaimed. “How about it? Assuming you took your Prilosec, Dad. Did you?”

“Oh, believe me, after today’s meeting, I’m totally current on that.”

3

They got a large pepperoni and Luke demolished half all by himself, along with three glasses of Coke from the jumbo pitcher, leaving his parents to marvel at the kid’s digestive tract and bladder as well as his mind. Luke explained that he had talked to Mr. Greer first because “I didn’t want to freak you guys out. It was your basic exploratory conversation.”

“Putting it out to see if the cat would take it,” Herb said.

“Right. Running it up the flagpole to see who’d salute it. Sticking it on the five-fifteen to see if it gets off at Edina. Throwing it against the wall to see how much—”

“Enough. He explained how we might be able to come with you.”

“You have to,” Luke said earnestly. “I’m too young to be without my exalted and revered mater and pater. Also . . .” He looked at them from across the ruins of the pizza. “I couldn’t work. I’d miss you guys too much.”

Eileen instructed her eyes not to fill, but of course they did. Herb handed her a napkin. She said, “Mr. Greer . . . um . . . laid out a scenario, I guess you might say . . . where we could possibly . . . well . . .”

“Relo,” Luke said. “Who wants this last piece?”

“All yours,” Herb said. “May you not die before you get a chance to do this crazy matriculation thing.”

“Ménage à college,” Luke said, and laughed. “He talked to you about rich alumni, didn’t he?”

Eileen put down the napkin. “Jesus, Lukey, you discussed your parents’ financial options with your guidance counselor? Who are the grownups in this conversation? I’m starting to feel confused about that.”

“Calm down, mamacita, it just stands to reason. Although my first thought was the endowment fund. The Brod has a huge one, they could pay for you to relocate out of that and never feel the pinch, but the trustees would never okay it, even though it makes logical sense.”

“It does?” Herb asked.

“Oh yeah.” Luke chewed enthusiastically, swallowed, and slurped Coke. “I’m an investment. A stock with good growth potential. Invest the nickels and reap the dollars, right? It’s how America works. The trustees could see that far, no prob, but they can’t break out of the cognitive box they’re in.”

“Cognitive box,” his father said.

“Yeah, you know. A box built as a result of the ancestral dialectic. It might even be tribal, although it’s kind of hilarious to think of a tribe of trustees. They go, ‘If we do this for him, we might have to do it for another kid.’ That’s the box. It’s, like, handed down.”

“Received wisdom,” Eileen said.

“You nailed it, Mom. The trustees’ll kick it to the wealthy alumni, the ones who made mucho megabucks thinking outside the box but still love the ol’ Broderick blue and white. Mr. Greer will be the point man. At least I hope he will. The deal is, they help me now and I help the school later on, when I’m rich and famous. I don’t actually care about being either of those things, I’m middle-class to the bone, but I might get rich anyway, as a side effect. Always assuming I don’t contract some gross disease or get killed in a terrorist attack or something.”

“Don’t say things that invite sorrow,” Eileen said, and made the sign of the cross over the littered table.

“Superstition, Mom,” Luke said indulgently.

“Humor me. And wipe your mouth. Pizza sauce. Looks like your gums are bleeding.”

Luke wiped his mouth.

Herb said, “According to Mr. Greer, certain interested parties might indeed fund a relocation move, and fund us for as long as sixteen months.”

“Did he tell you that the same people who’d front you might be able to help find you a new job?” Luke’s eyes were sparkling. “A better one? Because one of the school’s alumni is Douglas Finkel. He happens to own American Paper Products, and that’s close to your sweet spot. Your hot zone. Where the rubber meets the r—”

“Finkel’s name actually came up,” Herb said. “Just in a speculative way.”

“Also . . .” Luke turned to his mother, eyes bright. “Boston is a buyer’s market right now when it comes to teachers. Average starting salary for someone with your experience goes sixty-five thou.”

“Son, how do you know these things?” Herb asked.

Luke shrugged. “Wikipedia, to start with. Then I trace down the major sources cited in the Wikipedia articles. It’s basically a question of keeping current with the environment. My environment is the Broderick School. I knew all of the trustees; the big money alumni I had to look up.”

Eileen reached across the table, took what remained of the last pizza slice out of her son’s hand, and put it back on the tin tray with the bits of leftover crust. “Lukey, even if this could happen, wouldn’t you miss your friends?”

His eyes clouded. “Yeah. Especially Rolf. Maya, too. Although we can’t officially ask girls to the spring dance, unofficially she’s my date. So yeah. But.”

They waited. Their son, always verbal and often verbose, now seemed to struggle. He started, stopped, started again, and stopped again. “I don’t know how to say it. I don’t know if I can say it.”

“Try,” Herb said. “We’ll have plenty of important discussions in the future, but this one is the most important to date. So try.”

At the front of the restaurant, Richie Rocket put in his hourly appearance and began dancing to “Mambo Number 5.” Eileen watched as the silver space-suited figure beckoned to the nearby tables with his gloved hands. Several little kids joined him, boogying to the music and laughing while their parents looked on, snapped pictures, and applauded. Not so long ago—five short years—Lukey had been one of those kids. Now they were talking about impossible changes. She didn’t know how such a child as Luke had come from a couple like them, ordinary people with ordinary aspirations and expectations, and sometimes she wished for different. Sometimes she actively hated the role into which they had been cast, but she had never hated Lukey, and never would. He was her baby, her one and only.

“Luke?” Herb said. Speaking very quietly. “Son?”

“It’s just what comes next,” Luke said. He raised his head and looked directly at them, his eyes lighted with a brilliance his parents rarely saw. He hid that brilliance from them because he knew it frightened them in a way a few rattling plates never could. “Don’t you see? It’s what comes next. I want to go there . . . and learn . . . and then move on. Those schools are like the Brod. Not the goal, only stepping stones to the goal.”