Remarkable by Elizabeth Foley Page B

installation instructions when you were organizing your notes on the kitchen counter, and now those are lost, too.”
    Jane’s mother gave Jane’s father a wild look.
    “What! Tell me you didn’t!” she shrieked. “I need those instructions! The bells arrived an hour ago!”
    Jane’s father gave the pizza delivery driver a wild look.
    “I lost my notes? But I can’t have lost them! I finally figured out how to incorporate the symbolism of the dog!”
    “We have to retrace your steps,” Jane’s mother cried as she ran out the front door. “Your mother is going to have a fit when I tell her about this.”
    “You don’t have to tell her, do you, dear?” Jane’s father wailed as he ran out the door after her.
    Her parents had been gone for a while now, which made Jane think that the hunt for the notes and the instructions wasn’t going well. She couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for them as she walked back into the dining room where her brother and sister were eating pizza.
    “Who was at the door?” Penelope Hope asked.
    “It was Lucinda Wilhelmina Hinojosa,” Jane said.
    “Lucinda?” Anderson Brigby Bright said. His face took on the pale, loopy look of a boy in love. “What did she want?”
    “She brought us this,” Jane said, setting the milk carton down in front of him.
    “Is it for me? Is it a present. Did she send me some token of love?”
    “Um…actually I think it’s a…”
    Anderson Brigby Bright grabbed the carton and looked at it.
    “It’s milk,” he said. “Why did she bring me milk?”
    “It’s not about the milk,” Jane tried to explain. “It’s about the picture on the back.”
    Anderson Brigby Bright turned the carton around. “But this picture is ghastly!” he complained. “Who would choose to use an inferior photograph when they could use a photorealistic painting instead?”
    “Most people,” Penelope Hope told him. “At least most people who don’t spend their days in front of an easel.”
    “Anderson Brigby Bright, are you sure you want to take her to the dance?” Jane asked. She was starting to worry that Lucinda didn’t care very much about her brother, certainly not as much as she cared about being the regional copresident of S.Y.N!C. “I’m not sure that you have much in common with her.”
    “We are both brilliant!” Anderson Brigby Bright said indignantly. “Isn’t that enough?”
    Penelope Hope raised an eyebrow at him. “What are you planning to talk to her about? Her perfect pitch?”
    “I assume we’ll talk about the photorealistic portrait I painted of her. She must have been thrilled to get it.”
    “I doubt she was thrilled,” Penelope Hope said. “I wouldn’t want a portrait. I couldn’t care less about photorealistic paintings.”
    “What?” Anderson Brigby Bright stammered.
    “If some boy wanted to impress me, he’d have to do something important, like calculate the square root of thirteen in his head. I wouldn’t ask him to a dance just because he’d drawn some silly painting.”
    “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!” Anderson Brigby Bright snapped.
    “Square roots are never ridiculous.”
    “Square roots are the most ridiculous thing in the world!”
    Jane looked back and forth between her brother and sister as they scowled across the table at each other. Like most geniuses, they always assumed thateveryone in the world was just as interested in what they were a genius at as they were. She didn’t think either one of them had ever noticed that photorealism and math were not the only things in the world that people cared about.
    “Um, Anderson Brigby Bright,” Jane said. “I think maybe Penelope Hope has a point. I think maybe if you want to impress Lucinda, you should do something she cares about.”
    Anderson Brigby Bright did not look convinced. “What would she care about more than a beautifully realistic painting of herself?”
    “She seems to like music an awful lot,” Jane