SWNOVELS Chapter A Girl Named Daisy
Daisy Cullen was a beautiful child, dark-haired with large lavender-blue eyes. Her family was overjoyed to add such a perfect-looking baby to their perfect-looking family. She crawled earlier than expected. She was fascinated with shapes and stacking blocks in impossible towers, then she learned to talk and walk and even read exceedingly early. At first, her parents, Cameron and Melissa were proud.
Cameron thought it was funny to have his adorable and articulate four-year-old sitting on his office bean bag chair reading the encyclopedias which decorated her father’s office and sharing what she read with anyone who thought she was just looking at the pictures. He often lied and said he did the same. His investment banking clients were impressed, and his consulting and portfolio business flourished. Her older brothers used her to help them with their homework because anything she read, she retained. It was a novelty to Melissa’s mom group for her to have such a brilliant child even if Daisy did have odd little quirks like putting things back in their places and arranging knickknacks into organized lines.
However, when Daisy was six, it became clear she was not what her mother considered normal. Her mother Melissa was called to the school every week because Daisy insisted on correcting her first-grade teacher. Things like:
“Platypus lay eggs.”
“Dolphins are mammals, not fish!”
“Sharks don’t have bones.”
“The sun is too a star and not a very impressive one.”
“There is no princess living on the moon, it doesn’t have an atmosphere.”
And today, a comment about a book in the teacher’s bag, “Women aren’t from Venus. Living on Venus would kill you because the surface is hot enough to cremate your body. Men don’t live on Mars, there is no liquid water, and the temperature fluctuations are too dramatic for people to survive.”
Sitting in the office, Daisy talked to Mrs. Long about her orchid which was recovering nicely after Daisy read about them and discerned it needed to be fed a special plant food which contained equal amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
Finally, her teacher came out of the office and glared at her as she insisted, “Daisy is a liar and a disruptive influence. I don’t want her in my class anymore.”
“Why do you do it, Daisy? Why do you insist on contradicting Mrs. Becil?” Principle Mock asked tiredly.
“I’m not contradicting her, I’m correcting her. I don’t want everybody to learn the wrong things because she doesn’t know the facts.” Then Daisy stubbornly demanded, “I want to go to the school library. I can prove everything I said is true.”
“Oh right, and the sky isn’t blue,” Mrs. Becil snapped.
“It isn’t, it’s translucent,” Daisy said quickly.
Mrs. Long almost laughed remembering the day Daisy came to the office after that particular statement the first time. “Actually, Principal Mock. I asked my son, the meteorologist, and he said Daisy was correct. Sorry, Imogene.”
“How could she know any of those things?” Mrs. Becil demanded hotly.
Daisy blinked and stated, “It’s all in the encyclopedia. Haven’t you read the encyclopedia?”
“Daisy!”
The tiny girl cringed in her chair as her mother came in.
“We talked about this. You don’t sass adults.”
“Sorry, Mommy.” Daisy hung her head as fat tears leaked from her eyes.
At Melissa’s enraged look, the girl knew she was in trouble again.
“Mrs. Cullen, perhaps we can do what we discussed and put your daughter in an advanced class?” The principal asked hopefully.
“No! I don’t want her to end up a socially awkward, weird nerdy girl. She will be in a normal class with her peers and if Mrs. Becil can’t properly educate her, then it is her fault.” Caustically accusing the teacher, Melissa pointed a manicured fingernail at the teacher.
“Your daughter is a disruptive influence…” As the two women argued, going into the principal’s office, Mr. Mock scowled after them, then smiled tiredly at Daisy, “Sweetie, have you finished your papers for the week?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Mock. I do them from 8:15 to 9:15 on Monday morning as we discussed,” Daisy answered like a much older child. “I also helped Andrew and Jack with their letters and reading on Tuesday morning.”
“And this morning?”
“I helped Miss Adrien grade the turned-in vocabulary sheets and made next week’s flashcards.”
“Thank you, Daisy. You are our best student.” He nodded his head then went toward his office as the voices grew louder.
“I’ll see to Daisy, Mr. Mock. Go referee Imogene and Melissa,” Mrs. Long volunteered. After the door closed, Mrs. Long tutted then pulled out a folder. “Daisy, would you like to do some algebra sheets while you wait or some Sudoku puzzles?”
“Yes, both please.” Her face brightened and Mrs. Long chuckled at her, gently dabbing the tears from her cheeks. “There, there, can’t get the numbers wet.”
Daisy was on her fourth page of algebraic equations when her mother came out. “Come, Daisy.”
Mrs. Long tucked the Sudoku worksheets in her homework folder and into her backpack. “I retrieved her homework for the next two days, Mrs. Cullen.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Long,” Daisy said sweetly, and the old secretary gave her a fond smile.
They went out to the car and after she snapped herself in her booster seat, her mother slapped her. “Why can’t you just be normal for a single day?!”
Daisy clutched her cheek and whimpered, “I’m sorry, Mommy.”
When they got home, her mother and father had a huge fight which was still going on when Todd and Kirk came home.
“What did you do now, weirdo?” Todd demanded as he laid his homework on the table.
“Mrs. Becil is reading a book based on misinformation,” Daisy muttered as she began scribbling the answers to his math problems.
“Show your work, Daisy. My teacher wants to see all the steps.” Todd admonished her while Kirk made sandwiches for both of them. He set a plate of cheese cubes and buttery crackers by Daisy.
“Will I get to meet your teacher someday? Did you tell her thank you for the math pages?” Daisy never looked up as she frowned in concentration.
“Sure, yeah, someday… Eat your snack,” Todd ordered.
Her brothers went to play video games while she enjoyed the food and numbers.
“Daisy! What are you doing?” Cameron demanded.
She blinked her lavender eyes at her father. “Todd and Kirk’s teachers send me math pages. But I can’t write on them, so I do it in my notebook, Daddy.”
He picked up the notebook and scowled at it. “Boys!” He took the papers.
“But Daddy, I’m not finished.” Daisy panicked.
“You are.” Glaring at his sons, he gave the papers to them. “Do not have your sister do your homework.”
“But I’m not finished,” Daisy repeated. “I need to finish.”
“Stop it, Daisy!” Her mother snapped, “Act normal!”
Starting to cry, Daisy began screaming in a fit, chanting, “Let me finish... Let me finish!”
Melissa slapped her again and Cameron, shocked by his wife’s violence, got between them, ordering their sons, “Take your sister to her room and go upstairs to do your own homework.”
Kirk picked her up and Todd took the schoolwork. They left Daisy in her room on her bed alone. She cried herself to sleep surrounded by pretty pink things. When she woke up, she snuck down the hall to Todd and Kirk’s room and corrected the trigonometry homework.
Kirk woke up and saw her sitting at their double desk. “Mom and Dad said you can’t do our homework anymore, Daisy.”
“I’m sorry. I… I… It wasn’t finished. It should be finished,” Daisy whimpered.
Watching her tiredly, Kirk let her finish then took her back to bed after getting her a snack. As he tucked her in, he explained, “Sis, you can’t do our math work anymore, or we will all get in trouble. Understand?”
“No...”
Kirk kissed her on the forehead. “Just... just try not to act so smart. Try to act like you like dolls and stuff, for Mom.”
That was the day her mother began slapping her and yelling at her to just act normal. It only got worse as time passed. Daisy couldn’t act normal, there was too much to learn. Todd ignored her, but Kirk would still buy her Sudoku books or give her copies of his mathematics pages. He spent time with her until he went to college three years, eight months, and twelve days later.
When she was nine years, three-hundred-sixty-one days old, her fifth-grade class toured a university on a field trip. Daisy lingered in the library as her classmates went on to the drama department to watch a play. Upstairs was a section labeled Mathematics and Physics. Daisy took a book off the shelf and began reading it. Fiction books never interested her, but these called to her. Soon she had a pile of books, and she was reading as fast as she could. It was so amazing, and her mind absorbed the information like a sponge.
The main lights in the library turned off but outside the window was a streetlight. She wasn’t afraid of being in the old building alone, but she was hungry. She reached up into the vending machine as Todd made her do to other machines and took out a few granola bars to eat, then sat back down and began to read again. Time passed unawares. No one came up the stairs to the fourth floor to her little book fort. She would fall asleep and wake, only to start reading again. She figured out how to open the vending machine to have more snacks.
“Hello, little girl.” A gentle, elderly voice interrupted her. “What are you reading?”
Daisy blinked her tired lavender eyes at the man. “Math. Did you know it is so amazing?”
He chuckled, “Yes, I did. I’m a physicist. My name is Dr. Allister Weizmann. What’s yours?”
“Daisy… Daisy Cullen.” She held out a granola bar and he noticed the machine in the corner was open. “Would you like one?”
“No, sweetie, thank you. Are those all you have eaten?” Allister realized she was the missing girl from three days earlier.
Daisy shrugged and looked back down at the book. “I like the peanut butter ones.” She did not notice him leave or return. Then she pointed at a page. “I don’t understand this.” She pointed at the symbol μ.
“That is Mu, a physical constant used often in electromagnetism. It is defined to have the exact value of 4π times 10 to the power of negative 7, newtons per ampere squared.”
Daisy blinked at him with her eyes oddly unfocused for a few moments then they focused back on him. “Okay, thank you. I can see it now.”
“See it now?” He asked curiously.
“The numbers… I can see the numbers.”
“How delightful… How old are you, Daisy?”
She seemed perplexed.
“It’s the fourteenth, dear.”
“Oh… I’m nine years, three-hundred, sixty-four days old. Tomorrow should be my birthday, but it is one day later this year because of leap day, then I’m ten. Did you know leap day is too much time to catch up?”
“Yes, I did. What do you think about them skipping the next leap day?”
“Skipping a leap year day every five hundred years or even every one-hundred-twenty-eight years would be more mathematically accurate than skipping them on the zero-zero years.”
“Really? Can you tell me why?” He listened to her talking about the math of timekeeping as they discussed true-time versus calendar time. He was fascinated that one so young could have such an astute grasp on mathematics. Dr. Allister Weizmann had never met a child with such potential. Time was funny stuff, a lot funnier than Einstein ever figured out, but Daisy certainly was close.
Daisy sat in the back of her father’s Audi crying quietly as he drove her away from the University. When they got home, he sent her to her room without dinner. So, she completed her newest thousand-piece puzzle while she listened to her parents fighting all night. Her heart broke when she heard her mother say they never should have adopted her. She knew what adopted meant, a classmate of hers was adopted. Her parents weren’t her parents, and her brothers weren’t her brothers. Her mother didn’t want her anymore. She fell asleep, hugging the flower pillow Kirk won for her.
The next day her parents took her to a large brick building and left her. The doctors there poked and prodded her; they gave her drugs and shock therapy. The only person who was kind to her was an elderly custodian. Hilda taught Daisy to sing. Singing helped her overcome the pain of her treatments and the grief of being abandoned by her adoptive parents. The custodian also snuck books to Daisy. It was thirteen months, twenty-one days later when Dr. Allister Weizmann finally found her again.
“Daisy, your grandfather is here.” The orderly ushered her down the hall. “If you act out, we’ll sedate you again and you won’t get to do any puzzles for a month.”
Looking up through the haze of medication, Daisy saw Dr. Allister Weizmann sitting in a chair. “Hello, little math scholar. Do you remember me? I’ve been looking for you for so long.”
Hugging him, Daisy cried as he held her and talked about how hard he looked for her. His friend stood stoically observing everything. Her doctor came in and stared at them oddly as they talked in math.
“Dr. Weizmann, are you aware your granddaughter has obsessive-compulsive disorder and possibly schizophrenia?” Dr. Plath revealed.
“Daisy is no more schizophrenic than you or I. She is a mathematics savant. I want to take her out of here and I want her taken off all those drugs you’ve been giving her,” Allister snarled protectively. “I will be back in a week with the custody paperwork.”
“This is highly irregular,” Dr. Plath resisted.
Allister’s companion finally spoke, “I am General Tim Taylor, Dr. Plath, and the only irregular thing I see here is your facility drugging and torturing a child who is obviously extremely intelligent. Unless you want this entire facility shut down and your license to practice medicine revoked, I suggest you cooperate.”
Cameron and Melissa Cullen willingly gave up custody of Daisy, especially after Allister and Tim discovered Daisy’s adoption and those of her siblings was illegal. Rather than go to jail, the Cullens signed the legal documents making Daisy Allister’s ward and gave him all the things stored from her bedroom. Before the next week was out, Allister returned to get Daisy, and she started a new life. General Tim Taylor forced the mental hospital to surrender all of her medical records.
“I am so happy your grandfather found you, Daisy… I brought you a book of prayers and songs.” Hilda helped her pack and gave her a missal and a hymnal to take with her.
Daisy’s chin trembled, “I will miss you, Miss Hilda.”
“Ma’am, Daisy said you were good to her. I need a nursemaid for Daisy, would you be interested? The pay will be much more than you make here.” Allister offered to hire Hilda because she obviously cared for Daisy.
The kindly custodian refused, saying, “The other patients still need a kind heart around.” She put the new coat on Daisy and kissed her forehead. “Be a good lass for your grandfather, say your prayers, and have faith the Lord will show you His plan for your special mind.”
“Goodbye, Miss Hilda.” Daisy hugged her tightly.
As they drove away, Daisy noticed the books in the back of the car and picked up one by Stephen Hawking.
“Why did you pick that one, Daisy?” Allister asked.
“Miss Hilda has been bringing me a chapter at a time to read,” Daisy murmured around her straw as she sucked a chocolate milkshake Tim’s driver got for her while they waited for her discharge to be processed.
“Of course, dear, but what about the others?”
“I’ve read them all,” she sounded almost bored.
By the time, they arrived at the base where Allister lived and worked, Daisy finished the book and was talking to the physicist. After they got out at the scientist’s house, Tim looked at his driver.
“What do you think, Ty? Does she have the potential for the program?”
His son rubbed the back of his neck. “I think you’re too old for this.”
Tim just chuckled and waved at his son to drive them back to the base offices.
Looking around the pink bedroom, Daisy looked at the toys from her room at the Cullens’ home and started to cry. “They didn’t want me... Mommy didn’t love me... I hate pink!” Shouting, Daisy began to take them down and stomp on them, “I hate them... I hate her.” She collapsed and started crying as she hugged a golden yellow fluffy pillow with purple morning glories on it to her chest. “Kirk was the only one who loved me. He won this for me at the fair after I told him how to shoot the targets with the bent air gun... I miss him.”
Bending on one knee, Allister hugged her. “Daisy, I am so sorry, but she wasn’t your real Mommy, and they aren’t your brothers. Melissa said she won’t let you see your stepbrothers or stepfather... I will see if Kirk will come to visit. No one knows who your real parents are, but Tim and I will do everything we can to help you find them. If you don’t want these things, I can buy you others.”
“Really?”
Allister smiled. “I’ll have Tim send us a driver and we’ll go shopping. I missed your birthday last month.”
“It wasn’t my real birthday,” Daisy muttered sadly.
“Then why don’t we make today your second birthday?”
“That’s foolish.” Daisy scowled at him, but Allister laughed, insisting, “Grandfathers often act foolishly.”
He took her shopping, and she redecorated her room in shades of lavender and yellow, then they invited Tim to come over for her birthday party. The older general happily helped the physicist paint her room a creamy palest yellow like the color of sunlight over the next weekend.
Together, they rescued her from the hospital. Daisy found not one, but two fatherly parental figures who loved and cherished her and gave her many new puzzles to solve. General Taylor included her in a specialized training program, pushing her unique mind to its limits, but he never found her stress breakpoint. Even when she went into combat with his son’s spec-ops as an analyst and the whole mission went bad, Daisy stayed calm and thought of a way to save them all while still achieving their objective.
Over the next several years, Daisy thrived, despite her quirks, and earned her first doctorate in mathematics just before she turned eighteen. She was special, and everyone around her knew it.