Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks Read Free Book Online Page B

was assigned a counselor, who spent two hours with Cadel and the Piggotts, filling in forms that covered Cadel's goals, strengths, and faults, as well as his state of health and family history. Together, they also worked out his course program and timetable of lessons.
    "We have some other escalated-learning students," the counselor informed Cadel. "They're not much older than you, and they're in eighth grade now. I'm sure you'll have a lot in common."
    Cadel smiled and nodded. He had decided that if he was going to understand the way social systems worked, he would have to do more than study sociological and anthropological texts. He would have to make friends, and listen, and watch, and feign interest in the boring obsessions of normal teenagers. By doing so, he would also improve his chances of "fading into the background." A boy fascinated by DSL access multiplexers was bound to stand out. A boy who collected sports cards wouldn't.
    So Cadel began to smile a lot. He studied the slang of his classmates, then copied it. He laughed at their jokes and admired their possessions. Mostly, however, he listened. He listened to complaints, gossip, and detailed descriptions of everything from holiday trips to new bikes. He listened to girls as well as boys. His placid smile and calculated distribution of sweets meant that he was tolerated, if not hugely popular; some of the boys still thought him a little weird—especially the more sensitive, intelligent boys. They didn't like the way he would sit in corners, his blank, blue gaze fixed on particular people for minutes at a time. Some of the girls thought he was cute, but kept this belief to themselves. Being at least two years younger than most of the kids in his year, Cadel was widely regarded as a baby. To have openly admired his long, dark eyelashes, or his dewy complexion, would have invited general scorn.
    Cadel was treated like a baby by the teaching staff as well. He was still carefully watched whenever he went anywhere near a computer, with the result that he didn't often sit down in front of a computer screen. Instead, he concentrated on social networks. He noted down arrivals and departures. He observed the procedures for fire drills, cafeteria deliveries, and bus lines. Most importantly, he paid very close attention to his classmates. He learned that Paul hated Isaiah, that Chloe loved Brandon, that Sarah was jealous of Odette, that Jocelyn and Fabbio were inseparable. He watched—almost wistfully—as Erin and Rachael shared a chocolate-chip cookie, or as Jason kindly showed Fergal how to pitch a baseball. No one ever shared chocolate-chip cookies with Cadel. He was an outsider in grade seven, mostly because of his age. And few of the kids had parents as rich as Cadel's, so they expected him to be a source of chocolate-chip cookies.
    There was one crew of rough boys who didn't like Cadel at all. They would jostle him in corridors and knock his peanut-butter sandwiches out of his hand. Cadel studied them with particular intensity. He picked out the lead bully, the comedian, the thinker, and the enforcer.
    One of these boys was soon expelled; rumor had it that he'd been caught smoking marijuana. Another was laid up for two months with a broken leg, which had befallen him in the boys' bathroom—no one quite knew how. The third was made to repeat grade seven, and the fourth became a laughingstock for appearing at a baseball game in a T-shirt with the words GIRL POWER emblazoned on it. By the time he realized that he wasn't wearing his usual T-shirt, which was identical in size and color, the damage had been done.
    Cadel watched this boy scurry back to the locker room, while all around him people fell down laughing. It was a gratifying moment that filled Cadel with a dizzy sense of achievement, and it soon led to more ambitious attempts.
    Three months before Cadel's eleventh birthday, his French teacher left the classroom, briefly, to answer an urgent phone call. When she