“Kate, your teachers mean well,” the principal said. “But they have reached their limit. They just don’t know what to do with you. We’ll have to call your mother in to have a little chat.”

This was blackmail, Kate knew. And she was too powerless to counter it. “No, no, please don’t.” She scrunched up her face like she’d seen other children do before their tears arrived. “I don’t want my mother to worry. Please, give me a chance. I’ll change.”

She kept her promise. To prevent herself from being shunted around like some Dickensian urchin—she’d been reading Oliver Twist, which was way more engaging than those vapid Ramona books—she deliberately and unhappily botched an IQ test. That was just the start. She laid down speed bumps in her brain; instead of reading the thesaurus during lunch, she steered her thoughts toward scratch ’n’ sniff stickers and Strawberry Shortcake playsets. She started stating half thoughts instead of waiting for full ones to form, aping the unfocused speech patterns of her peers. Slowness was painful at first. Then it brought new pleasures. She made friends trading stickers and sharing poetry dedicated to Han Solo. She diligently avoided Paul and his magnetic chess set. “He’s a mouth breather,” her new friends had hissed.

Her mother worried anew. One day Kate was reading Moby Dick and the next she was tuning in to Who’s the Boss and asking for candy bracelets. She’d wanted Kate to reap the full benefits of American freedom and become a true individual. Instead, quite overnight, Kate had turned into liberty’s lazy spawn, the conformist. The girl had been such a delight to raise—a pal, really—but after puberty, it was as if she’d been replaced by a stranger in pink blush and bubblegum lip gloss. Everything was either “Ew!” or “Gross!” Mary-Sue didn’t know how to articulate her disappointment to Kate without sounding cruel—and they used to be able to discuss everything, everything.

Finally, Mary-Sue blackmailed her into joining the chess club (“or no Walkman for you!”). That move turned out to be a winner. Because of chess, Kate again spent more time hanging out with Paul, who Mary-Sue deemed a positive influence.