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toys in here?”
    I shook my three-year-old head and rubbed my own knees.
    “Get up, you little . . . little . . . pest.” He spit out that part with pure disgust. “Get out of here. This is my office, Victor!”
    I got up and walked to my room without saying a word. I knew when to keep my mouth shut. It’s amazing how smart young kids are and how fast they learn.
    I never did tell my dad about his error, but I heard him complaining to my mother the next night at dinner. I actually remember my three-year-old chest silently puffing with pride that night at dinner. I was right, my math was right, and he was wrong. My dad had made a mistake, and I knew it before he did.
    That’s when I knew I was good at math. Like, mind-blowingly good. And after my project, I knew I was good like Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss, the Prince of Mathematics. I used to call myself that in the quiet of my own head. It felt really comforting to imagine that I was the prince of something. It made me feel like I mattered, that I was important, that I was special.
    I was a prince.
    At first I thought being good at math would make my parents love me. At least they could brag about me, I thought. You would think people with such a superior attitude would’ve put their son in a fancy private school so they could brag aboutthat, too. No luck there. My mother has this deep-seated belief that their hard-earned money should be spent on things involving them, and that public school is just fine for me. Besides, private or public school, all my math talent did was add more pressure. My parents love raising the bar for me, making my current achievements only good , never good enough.
    Like today, after school, both of my parents are home early in anticipation of my SAT scores. Actually they were waiting for me when I walked in. The full 800 points I receive on the math section of the SAT isn’t good enough. Out of the almost 1.5 million kids who took the test with me, only 0.7 percent scored a perfect 800 on the math. I am one of the 0.7 percent. The prince. But because I earned a 650 on the Critical Reading and 610 on the Writing, I am told that I have embarrassed my parents.
    My mother makes an early dinner. It was supposed to be a celebratory dinner.
    “Victor, I wish you would’ve prepared us for your low scores on the Critical Reading and Writing portions of your test,” my mother says. She sits with her hands on her lap, back straight. She’s hardly touched her food. Oh, she is so concerned.
    I tell her, “I got a perfect score on the math.”
    She doesn’t care. “Victor, how could you let those other scores happen . . . to us? It’s embarrassing.”
    I have no answer for her. I stare at my broiled filet and wild mushroom risotto.
    My father tries a stab at answering for me. “I think someone at this table has not put forth the necessary effort he needs to in reading and writing. I think someone at this table is lazy.”
    Thanks, Dad.
    “I don’t think he should come to Europe with us, Tomas. I really don’t feel he deserves to go. Victor needs to stay here and get his priorities straight. I think he needs to be punished,” my mom says.
    “I agree, Aubrey. Well, then, that settles it.”
    “Good. I’m too upset to finish dinner. I think I’ll take a drive, run an errand. I’m sick to my stomach over this.”
    She’s hilarious. She’s sick to her stomach. Pathetic.
    My mother’s the type of woman who just can’t deal with anyone’s feelings. Oh, she knows when and how to turn it on for the people she thinks matter (otherwise known as those with money), and she can yuck it up, squeeze forearms, and dab her eyes with the best of them. But it’s all fake. Because she barely knows what to do with her own feelings. It’s like she’s a seed that got stuck while opening—like the rain stopped falling and the sun stopped shining and she’s only open a crack.
    My dad gets up from his end of the formal dining room table and walks down to