I shook my head, glaring at the back of the seat in front of me.

“What’s your real name?” she asked.

Ah, the uphill battle with my real name. First days of school were always a nightmare. Every roll call went the same way: Suh . . . Suh-keet? SAY-kit? “It’s Scott,” I’d say, staring at the podium to avoid eye contact. They’d cross out my Iranian name and scribble down my “American” one. Kids used to tease me about it in elementary school, calling me every variation of “Suck It” imaginable. (Philadelphia might be the City of Brotherly Love, but second-grade classrooms are all the same.) High school was better because I got into Tesla, our local magnet school, and my classmates morphed from mostly white to mostly Asian and Indian. I was surrounded by other kids who shared my name woes. Like Kevin—that’s his real name, but his last name is Ho. Sophomore year I won a bet and now he has to name his firstborn after me. Saaket Ho. That poor kid will never hear the end of it.

“Saaket Ferdowsi,” I told Fiora.

“I like it. Saaket Ferdowsi,” she said perfectly, like she was the first person ever to utter my name. “Well, it’s been super chatting, Saaket.”

Before I could react, Fiora turned her head to rest. Her eyes slipped effortlessly back into the hospitality of their spheres. Then she turned again to face me directly.

What a tease.

I stared out the bus window as we passed hazy fields and concrete walls, the highway blurring in a streak of gray. I relished this extra-fictional turn of events. People weren’t supposed to meet like this in real life. But, then again, people weren’t supposed to ditch their summer jobs to run away and confront world-class professors. I couldn’t resist imagining my life as one of those coming-of-age movies—and Fiora as the quirky, two-dimensional female character, written in solely to help me discover my full potential. The idea was nice. It smoothed over a good fifteen minutes of bumpy road time.

But that wasn’t Fiora’s job. I was counting on a real genius to help me out. For the rest of the bus ride, I told myself over and over that I would not let Fiora or anyone else distract me. I had to stay gritty. Otherwise, I’d never make it to Professor Mallard’s.

grew up outside Washington, DC. He graduated from Columbia University and has worked in the tech industry. When he’s not reading or writing books, he can be found watching late-night talk show interviews and editing Wikipedia pages. He is also the author of Down and Across and Girl Gone Viral.

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