The Overnight Prodigy

Chapter 10: On the Fridge

By the time report cards actually came out three weeks later, Ethan's parents had already seen enough loose evidence the ninety-eight stuck to the fridge, a ninety-four on an English essay, a math test that had made his dad do a genuine double take at the kitchen table that the actual report card felt almost anticlimactic by comparison, though it didn't stop his mom from reading every line of it twice.

"A's," Linda Chen said, holding the paper like it might be a forgery. "Ethan, these are all A's."

"One A-minus," Ethan said. "In gym, somehow, which feels backwards given everything else going on."

"You'll live." She looked up at him, and something in her expression had shifted since the first fridge magnet a few weeks back less pure surprise now, more like she was trying to work out a puzzle she didn't have all the pieces to. "What happened? Really. You can tell me."

For one long moment, Ethan considered it. His mom, more than his dad, more than Jason, more than Sophie even, had always been the person he trusted with things that didn't have neat explanations she'd sat through plenty of his half-formed theories as a kid without ever making him feel stupid for having them. But the dream, the light, the specific unbelievable mechanics of it all even in his head it still sounded like something out of one of the ridiculous webnovels Jason liked to read on his phone during lunch, and Ethan couldn't quite make himself say it out loud, not yet, not before he understood it better himself.

"I don't totally know," he said, which was at least honestly half-true. "I think something just clicked."

"Something clicked," she repeated, clearly unsatisfied with the answer but apparently deciding not to push it, the same instinct Sophie seemed to share, the two of them somehow both willing to let him arrive at his own explanations in his own time. "Well. Whatever clicked, I hope it stays clicked. Your father's going to lose his mind when he sees this."

He did, in fact, lose his mind, in the specific quiet way Robert Chen lost his mind about things no shouting, no big display, just a long look at the report card, a longer look at Ethan, and something that might have actually been the beginning of a proud smile before he caught himself and turned it into a more measured nod.

"This is good work," his dad said. "Really good work. I mean that."

"Thanks."

"I know I've been hard on you about grades." His dad set the report card down carefully, like it deserved better handling than the kitchen table usually got. "I just wanted you to have options. You understand that, right? I wasn't trying to make you feel like Kevin."

"You kind of were."

"...Maybe a little." His dad actually laughed at that, a rare enough sound that Ethan filed it away as one of the better parts of the whole strange month. "I'm proud of you, Ethan. I should've said that more, regardless of the grades."

It landed somewhere Ethan hadn't expected it to land, warm and slightly uncomfortable the way real, unguarded compliments from your dad always seemed to be, and he mumbled something about needing to start his homework so he wouldn't have to figure out how to respond properly.

Upstairs, alone, he sat on his bed and looked at the ceiling for a long time, the same ceiling he'd been staring at the morning after the dream, trying to hold onto whatever the light had left behind before it faded.

It hadn't faded. If anything it had only gotten louder, more present the throw at the convenience store, the pop quiz he'd finished in four minutes flat, the diagram in Isabella Cruz's book that had unpacked itself behind his eyes without permission. Something had genuinely changed in him, some structural thing underneath the surface, and the report card sitting downstairs on the kitchen table was really just the most visible piece of evidence of a change that had already gone a lot further than grades.

Tryouts, Coach Nguyen had said. You should think about it.

Ethan thought about Marcus Cole, the martial arts team's captain, a name he only knew from around school undefeated at some regional level, apparently, the kind of reputation that traveled through hallway gossip whether you were paying attention or not. He thought about the diagram of the throw. He thought about Derek Lang's face when the shove hadn't landed the way it was supposed to.

He didn't know yet what he wanted to do with any of it the grades, the reflexes, the strange warm feeling of his dad finally saying something he'd apparently needed to hear for years. But something in him, some new and unfamiliar thing that hadn't existed a month ago, wanted to find out.

He fell asleep that night without his phone in his hand for the first time in longer than he could remember, and if he dreamed again, he didn't remember it in the morning — no gray room, no light that wasn't a voice, nothing but ordinary sleep.

The System, it seemed, had said what it needed to say. The rest was apparently up to him.