School Days

River knew some things about the universe. For as long as she could remember, she knew things. She could remember her first birthday; not the people or the presents, but, the cake and candles, and the colorful balloons. She reflected on how vivid those objects from her memories were. Even then, she knew that the balloons floated because there was something different about the air inside them.

Somewhere between her second and third birthdays, her family had attended a wedding. She could remember the bride’s pretty white gown, all the lace and silk. She could remember the handsome groom’s smiling face, and the not-right smiles of his groomsmen. She remembered the elaborate feast, the music and dancing at the reception afterward. She remembered the way the bride had not looked at the best man, and the thin sheen of perspiration in the fine hairs above her lip, the way the bride cast her eyes down when the guests offered their congratulations. She remembered the shocked looks as she told the bride and groom that their marriage wouldn’t last the year. Even today, at this temporal remove, she wished she had been able to stay at the party; instead, she was whisked away by her scandalized parents and sent to bed without supper. The unhappy couple had split before her third birthday.

Thinking on it now, she could understand how this behavior might scare some people. She saw things differently than other people; but in her early life, she hadn’t seen different things than other people saw. They could have known those things, too, if they’d known how to see them like she did. Objects, with properties, behaviors and ranges of values. If you knew the environment, then the universe clicked along, as predictably as the vibration of an electrified crystal. Even chaos was patterned at a large enough scale.

When she was a child, River had known lots of things at first glance. Not just rules, but physical things, too. In her first dance class, her instructor had demonst