The Report Card

Nora is a genius, but she has never told a single person. She remembers everything she’s ever seen or heard, all the way back to when Mom bottle-fed her. She didn’t realize that she was different until shortly after she began walking. Her sister, Ann, “was six years older, so it was like we lived on different planets. Whenever we got anywhere near each other, Ann’s planet usually crushed my planet” (7). Little Nora approaches as Ann begins a jigsaw puzzle. Ann tries to shoo her off, but she quickly realizes that Nora finds the perfect piece for each slot on the first try. When she runs to show Mom, Nora realizes that she doesn’t like their attention, so she refuses to perform her trick. Later, during her naptime, she escapes her crib, completes the puzzle to her satisfaction, and then disassembles it back to its original state. Since then, Nora has hidden all her important milestones—such as learning to read only a few months after the puzzle episode—leading everyone to believe she is a normal kid with average intelligence.

Nora remembers an odd start to kindergarten. She read a National Geographic article about cats, and she wanted to experience being one, so she spends class underneath a table—meowing, hissing, and drinking milk from a bowl with her tongue. She reasons, “I knew that if I started doing schoolwork in kindergarten, it would be too easy. […] Being too good would have made me seem too different. It was so much easier to be different by being a cat” (16). However, Nora miscalculates: Her teacher involves the principal, the guidance counselor, and her parents, who are particularly concerned about their children’s academic performance. Nora doesn’t want to seem especially smart or unintelligent, so she devises a new plan.

She decides to “become a living average of all the other children in [her] kindergarten” (18), copying a different student each day. Stephen Curtis is her first candidate. Not only does she copy his activities, but she also imitates his ability level. She cycles through her classmates, and far from scorning her relatively less intelligent peers, she admires how hard they work. When she returns to observing Stephen, she is happy to see his progress. She wants to continue monitoring his growth, so instead of imitating the next student, she begins an in-depth study of Stephen. Nora appreciates his perseverance, fairness, and kindness, and before long, they’re best friends.

In fourth grade, Nora’s class starts Connecticut Mastery Testing (CMT), and she notices Stephen worrying about grades for the first time. Stephen interprets his low test scores to mean that he is unintelligent, which other students only exacerbate by competitively comparing their scores. Beyond Stephen’s distress, Nora hates the way grades stereotype all her classmates and cause them undue stress. Having two older siblings, Nora knows that grades become even more emphasized in fifth grade, so she hatches a plan to help Stephen.