Chapter 12: The Mischievous Kid
The Next Morning
Ding-dong.
Mary Cooper was in the middle of housework when the doorbell rang. She opened the front door and found a teenage boy and girl standing on the porch, which she hadn't been expecting at all.
"Good morning, Mrs. Cooper. I'm Adam Duncan, and this is Juno MacGuff."
Adam smiled warmly.
Juno gave a small, easy smile beside him.
"Hello." Mary returned a polite but uncertain smile. "Can I help you with something?"
"Yes ma'am," Adam said. "Next semester Sheldon's going to be at the same high school as us. Everyone around here knows how brilliant he is. We just started a study group and we'd love to have him join — we're all trying to push ourselves, maybe even aim for an Ivy League school down the road. Is Sheldon home?"
Mary's whole face changed.
The word "Sheldon" alone did it, but "study group" and "Ivy League" on top of that — she stepped back immediately and waved them inside, already calling down the hallway.
"Sheldon! Sheldon, come out here!"
She turned back to her guests. "Please sit down, make yourselves comfortable. Can I get you something? Tea? Soda?"
"Tea would be great, thank you," Adam said.
Juno nudged him quietly and tilted her head toward the kitchen. Adam looked over and saw Mary standing with her back to them, hands clasped, eyes closed, lips moving silently.
Adam caught Juno's eye and mouthed: Here we go.
"Who are you?"
Young Sheldon appeared from the hallway, looking at the two of them with the detached curiosity of someone examining an unfamiliar species.
"Adam Duncan." Adam stood and extended his hand out of habit.
Sheldon looked at the hand. Made no move toward it. Shook his head. "No thank you."
"Shelly!" Mary reappeared from the kitchen with two glasses of iced tea, giving her son a look that was half scolding, half apologetic. "I'm so sorry — he has a thing about germs. Please don't take it personally."
"Not at all," Adam said, pulling his hand back with a fixed smile.
He'd watched Sheldon Cooper on television for years and found the whole thing genuinely funny. Standing in the same room as the actual nine-year-old version of him, Adam was realizing that funny and enjoyable were two very different things.
Mary explained quickly who Adam and Juno were and why they'd come. She looked at Sheldon with barely concealed hope in her eyes. Just last night she'd been lying awake worrying about him sitting alone in the high school cafeteria. And now, the very next morning, two older students had shown up at her door specifically asking for him.
Thank you, Lord.
"A study group!" Sheldon brightened immediately. "I love studying." He launched into something that Adam could only describe as a verbal rocket launch — equations, theoretical frameworks, references to academic papers that hadn't been assigned in any high school class in the history of the American education system.
Adam sat very still and understood approximately none of it.
He wasn't surprised, not really. Sheldon was nine years old and had already burned through the entire high school curriculum. He'd been sitting in on college lectures for fun. He was the kid who would soon be correcting his own teachers in front of the class, driving them absolutely crazy, while simultaneously helping university professors shore up research papers that would define their careers. Years from now, calculations Sheldon had done as a teenager would end up in the hands of engineers trying to land rockets — and they'd work.
Adam knew all of this. It still didn't make the experience of sitting across from him any less overwhelming.
He glanced over at Juno. She looked equally lost, which made him feel slightly better. Juno's particular genius ran more toward the humanities — literature, philosophy, the messy business of understanding people. Pure theoretical physics wasn't her terrain either.
Sheldon wound down and looked at them both.
"You don't understand any of that, do you." It wasn't really a question.
He shook his head with the specific disappointment of someone who had expected little and still been let down.
Juno shot Adam a look that very clearly communicated: This was a mistake. Let's leave.
Adam gave a small shake of his head.
Annoying or not, this was exactly what he'd come for. He didn't need to spend every waking hour with Sheldon the way Leonard eventually would. A Howard-and-Raj level of occasional proximity would be more than enough. He could manage that.
Don't react. It's fine. He's nine.
"Shelly." Mary stepped in with a warning in her voice. "These are your future classmates. This study group sounds wonderful. You should join."
"They can't help me study," Sheldon said plainly. "And I have no interest in tutoring them. They remind me of George and Missy."
"Sheldon Cooper—"
Mary's expression went dark.
"Fine." Sheldon registered his mother's face and recalibrated slightly. "I apologize. I shouldn't have implied you were stupid. You're probably just average."
Nobody said anything for a moment.
"Ha." Adam pushed down everything he was feeling and smiled. "Sheldon is refreshingly honest. But our group isn't only about academics — it's about extracurricular activities too. Teamwork, collaboration, that kind of thing. Even for an Ivy League application, being part of something bigger than yourself matters. A person can't do everything alone, even a genius."
Mary was nodding before he'd finished the sentence.
Grades and college admissions she never worried about with Sheldon. What kept her up at night was the image of her boy eating lunch by himself every single day, in a cafeteria full of kids who didn't know what to do with him. Sheldon might have been perfectly content in his own universe — but Mary Cooper was not content with that. Not even close.
"Extracurricular activities," she repeated, her voice going slightly unsteady. "Team activities." She looked up at the ceiling for a moment, composing herself. "Shelly, you need to join. This is exactly what you need."
Sheldon looked at his mother's face. Processed her expression carefully.
"Alright," he said, and looked at Adam. "I'll join."
Ding!
Wisdom +5
End of Chapter 12
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