Above The Thunder by Renee Manfredi

Author:Renee Manfredi [Manfredi, Renée]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59692-980-7
Publisher: M P Publishing Limited
Published: 2003-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

NINE

HEAVENLY BODIES

Anna awoke early on Thanksgiving morning to the first snowfall of the season. Flynn, in bed beside her, had had a nightmare that kept the two of them up for hours. Marvin had slept through the 3:00 A.M. chaos, of course. Flynn never asked for him anyway when she woke up screaming and terrified. Anna felt partly responsible for Flynn’s haunted nights, which had intensified since Anna, a month ago, insisted that her granddaughter attend school.

Marvin and Poppy had home-schooled their daughter in Alaska, but it was apparent that neither one of them paid much attention to whether or not the child was actually learning anything. When Anna discovered Flynn’s bizarre sense of distance and geography—she knew Mars was a planet, for instance, but thought it was part of Minneapolis—she was furious at Marvin for his negligence.

When Anna had asked Flynn to name the nine planets, Flynn said, “Earth. India. Asia. Indiana, Mars, Venus. California, the moon, and the space shuttle.” Anna had taken Flynn to the elementary school the next day for a meeting with the principal and to talk about grade placement. At ten, Flynn should have been in the fifth grade, but given Flynn’s lack of formal schooling, Anna hoped for a remedial fourth-grade placement. To Anna’s astonishment, the test results that came back from the Educational Testing Services ten days later showed that Flynn was indeed lacking in basic knowledge, but she read at the ninth-grade level, and had an advanced grasp of mathematics, “consistent with what a bright high-schooler would know.”

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” the young female principal had said going over Flynn’s results with Anna. “Total population of the United States, according to Flynn, is two thousand.” She chuckled. “But she’s in the ninety-ninth percentile for math and reading comprehension, and she appears to be gifted musically.”

“Oh,” Anna had said. “Really?”

The principal nodded. “On a hunch, I had the music teacher talk to her and test her musical aptitude. What instrument does Flynn play?”

Anna shook her head. “I don’t think she plays anything.”

“Well, she should. She has perfect pitch.”

All this had baffled Anna. Neither Poppy nor Marvin had ever given her music lessons.

“How do you know all this, Flynn?” Anna asked, when they went out for Belgian waffles after Anna’s meeting. “Who taught you to read?”

“What do you mean?” Flynn heaped her waffle with berries and chocolate and signaled the waiter who was standing at the ready with the can of whipped cream.

Anna was tickled by this. Flynn took her food seriously, in ways that Poppy—and Anna herself—never had. “How do you know the things you know? How do you know about music?”

“I was born with it. I just remembered from other times. Other places I’ve been before I was here.”

Anna dismissed Flynn’s chatter. She was delighted that Flynn tested into her age-appropriate grade, with weekly, remedial classes in geography and American history. Inexplicably, her knowledge of world history was at a very high level.

Yet, she didn’t like school, she told Anna right from the start.

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