I should be living in a completely unremarkable family. I look completely average. I have a completely average intelligence. I am completely average at sports. My emotions are what I'm expected to feel.
My parents. My parents are scientists. My mom's an entomologist and my dad's an anthropologist. They always expected to have a genius for a child. They even did a gene match test to see if I was really their kid. I am. What a disappointment I am to them.
My sisters. We found Minerva and Artemis in a basket on our doorstep. My parents weren't very interested in them. They'd given up on intelligent children after me. They were interested again when Minerva and Artemis wrote an amazing equation which I couldn't make heads or tails of.("Of course," my parents said, "why would you? You don't understand any kind of math."). But they were interested. The twins were supergeniuses. They took an IQ test at age two and were accepted to Harvard for Artemis and Stanford for Minerva. My parents were so proud of their little geniuses. They said I was I even worse. But Minerva and Artemis looked up to me.
My brother. My parents adopted my brother Phoenix when he was two months old. Minerva and Artemis had renewed their hope. Phoenix never talked though. He just stared at things and sketched them. It was unnerving. My parents had him take an IQ test and it turns out his math skills were off the charts. He was always thinking about math. Vast equations were always running through his head. He had Asperger's, so he related everything to math. He thought of people as numbers. He only spoke once and to me.
"You're one, Cassie. No one else is one. But Mom and Dad are both seventeen."
"Why am I one, Phoenix?"
"Because one makes everything. You make everything happen, Cassie."
And he hugged me. He never talked again, but I was touched. He said that I make everything happen. It was sweet.
My life. My life sucked. Seriously, my teachers expected me to be as smart as Minerva and Artemis even after I explained to them that we weren't actually related. They are so blind.
However, my parents are rich. Like billionaires. Apparently my mom discovered some new bug in the nineties and Dad discovered an ancient civilization in eighty-nine. So we're famous and rich. Which basically means my parents are constantly sending me off to expensive boarding schools so they don't have to look at me. Which is where the story starts.
