Next Life, I’ll Find a Family That’s a Little Less Smart Chapter 07

Next Life, I’ll Find a Family That’s a Little Less Smart Chapter 07

Before Silas and Beatrice were transferred, the family was allowed one final visit.

A sheet of glass between them. Everything felt reversed.

Silas finally panicked.

That perfect composure of his finally cracked.

“Dad, get me a lawyer! The best one you can find!”

He was pounding on the glass.

“My theoretical model is this close to a breakthrough!”

“You can’t lock me up. The world needs what I’m working on!”

Dad looked at him. There was nothing left in his eyes.

“You’re not my son.”

Every word drove in like a nail.

“I hope they lock you away forever. I hope you rot in there.”

Beatrice tried a different approach.

“Mom, you’re in an acute stress response right now. Your cognition is distorted.”

“Once you stabilize, you’ll see that what Silas and I are worth is infinitely more than one statistically insignificant life.”

But Mom and Dad weren’t looking at her. Their eyes were hollow. They were somewhere else entirely.

For the first time in her life, Beatrice felt what it was like to be discarded. Her clinical mask shattered, and she started to wail like the child she actually was.

After the visit, the police handed my parents a box of my belongings.

A beaten-up cardboard box. Everything I’d kept hidden was inside.

Mom’s hands shook as she opened a yellowed diary.

“I came in last again today. But I really did try.”

“I did this one problem ten times and it’s still wrong.”

Mom read the entry aloud. Her voice kept breaking.

“But it doesn’t matter. I made Beatrice a scarf. Maybe if I’m nice enough, she’ll like me even though I’m dumb.”

At the bottom of the box were three red scarves, clumsily knitted.

One still had a dark stain on it, blood I’d coughed up during an attack.

Mom looked at the stained scarf and laughed. A terrible, breaking sound.

She grabbed it and wound it around her neck.

Tighter. Tighter. Until it was cutting off her air.

“Baby, I’m wearing it…”

Her face went red, then purple. She was laughing and crying at the same time.

“It’s so warm… my baby’s scarf is so warm…”

Dad lunged for her and clawed the scarf loose. Then they collapsed into each other, sobbing so hard neither could breathe.

They were finally released pending investigation and went home. Back to the house I’d died in.

The front door swung open onto silence. The house that had once hummed with brilliance felt like a mausoleum.

Dad drifted into the kitchen. A faded sticky note was still on the fridge.

My handwriting. Crooked and careful.

[Your stomach’s been acting up. Don’t forget to warm up your milk before you drink it.]

He went to the living room. Silas’s olympiad trophies were still on the shelf, gleaming.

He started pulling them down and hurling them at the floor.

Glass and metal exploded across the empty room.

Late that night, Dad heard something in the hallway. Wheezing, ragged, desperate, like the sound I used to make during an attack.

He ran out of the bedroom and dropped to his knees in the empty hall.

His arms closed around nothing.

He stayed on his knees, crying so hard no sound came out.

“Hazel, I was wrong. I don’t want geniuses anymore. I just want you back.”

Silas and Beatrice were sentenced and sent to a maximum-security facility.

No labs. No microscopes. No parents marveling at their brilliance.

Just concrete, steel, and the absolute law of the jungle.