SAVANT

Milo Banks flew down the street toward his house.

A dog chased after him, but his bike—a beat-up Pegasus 4x his dad had bought him when he was ten—was too fast for any earthly creature. He moved like a ray of light. Nothing could keep up with him, especially not one of his neighbor’s mangy mutts. After only a few seconds, the dog gave up.

Yet, something else chased after him as well, quick enough to nip at his heels. Milo worked the pedals even faster, as if it were possible to outrun his anxiety at starting school in a few weeks.

It wasn’t that he feared getting an education. He was always eager to learn about the way the world worked, all the incredible things that had happened throughout history, the awesomeness of subjects like math and science and the cosmos. He even read books about history and quantum physics for fun.

That, in fact, was the problem. Thanks to his oversized brain, in a little over two weeks, he would officially become the youngest student at Dearborn High School.

Ever.

“He really doesn’t need the eighth grade,” his guidance counselor, Mrs. Suarez, had told his parents back in April. “His IQ test puts him at around 130, which means his intellectual capabilities aren’t just above average. They’re superior. Plus, he taught himself calculus in his spare time. Honestly, Mr. and Mrs. Banks, I think he could hold his own in college at this point.”

Mrs. Suarez called it “academic promotion.” But Milo knew the truth. His seventh-grade teachers had been at a complete loss as to what to do with him. He’d spent most of his time during class either staring out the window or covertly reading novels inside his desk. Yet every single grade that year had been an A plus. Well, except for the B plus he’d gotten in shop class, after his birdhouse came out looking more like a stack of wooden crates someone had kicked over.

Academic promotion was bullcrap. Milo had already been one of the smallest kids in his class. Now, he would probably be the smallest in his entire high school. As he rode his bike, he imagined what the other kids at Dearborn High would say about him behind his back.

There’s that freshman, Milo Banks. Did you hear he skipped the eighth grade?

What a nerd.

Look. Even the girls are taller than him.

Ha! Everyone else has a driver’s license. He’s still riding his bike!

What a colossal dork. No wonder he sits alone at lunch…

When his house came into view, Milo relaxed his legs and let the bike glide toward the driveway. If there was one redeeming thing about today, it was his birthday present. His parents and his sister had pooled their money to buy him a basketball hoop, one of those tall, metal ones with a sand-filled, weighted base that went on the side of a driveway. They had purchased it after an offhand remark Milo had made about taking up a sport, maybe basketball, so he wouldn’t be a complete loser at school.

He stopped at the mailbox, which—no surprise—was overflowing with mail. His parents were two of the most forgetful people on Earth when it came to practical matters. He got off his bike, pulled out a stack of envelopes thicker than his leg, and walked his bike the rest of the way.

His house was a small, cookie-cutter box with a one-car garage, identical to about five thousand other houses in Dearborn, New Jersey. When he was halfway up the driveway, something inside the garage began to rumble like a two-ton robot banging its fists against the door. Milo’s heart pounded. The envelopes fell, along with his bike, which landed on the pavement with a loud clatter.

The garage door opener. Of course.

He breathed a sigh of relief. The thing was twenty years old and needed to be replaced, but his parents couldn’t afford it right now. It had only recently started making that noise.

He watched the door rise like a giant tooth retracting. His father stood inside, dressed in a pair of brand-new mesh shorts, an oversized Knicks jersey, and sneakers so white they seemed to glow. He held Milo’s basketball tucked under one of his arms, and he was frowning in displeasure.

“Milo, my boy.” He walked out of the garage and into the humid afternoon sunlight. “Leave that bike and those envelopes and go up to your room at once.”

“My room?” Milo said, surprised. “What did I do?”

His father winked at him, and his frown melted into a grin. “It’s not what you did. It’s how good you’re going to look when you come back down.”

It took a moment for Milo to process what was happening. Then, remembering it was his birthday, he raced into the house and up the stairs to his bedroom. When he saw the cardboard box with the Nike logo on it and the plastic bag stuffed with clothing, he whooped in delight. He quickly changed into a brand-new set of athletic clothes. Everything was just his size.

His father was taking practice shots when Milo returned.

“You’re going to have to earn your dinner tonight,” he said, tossing Milo the ball. Milo caught it and whipped it back. His father fumbled the catch and ended up lobbing it into one of the neatly trimmed bushes lining the driveway.

“I guess someone needs practice,” his father said.

Milo snickered at that. Maxwell Banks—known to everyone simply as “Max”—was one of the clumsiest men alive. Milo didn’t get it; whenever his father went to reach for, or grab, something, he almost always knocked it over or broke it.

He was also the tallest man Milo had ever seen in person. He was a full six feet, five inches—the height of a professional basketball player. And he was jacked. Many a neighborhood mother had swooned at the sight of Max trimming the bushes in a white undershirt, his bulging arms gleaming with sweat. At least, that was how Milo’s mother, Alexandra, had jokingly described it one night at dinner.

Physically, Milo and his father were nothing alike. Milo was short and plain, with his mother’s auburn hair and brown eyes instead of his dad’s blond hair and blue eyes. Emma had inherited those. But at least he, Milo, wasn’t as clumsy as a baby deer.

“All right,” Max said. “First things first. Dribbling.”

He hunched over and dribbled the ball from one hand to the other. Milo didn’t know how he was supposed to react. He lifted his hands, bent his knees, and waited to hear what he should do next. He caught the ball when his father tossed it to him.

Okay. So far, so good.

“Well? What are you waiting for?”

“Oh, right,” Milo said, slapping the ball against the pavement a few times.

His first attempts at walking while dribbling were pathetic. If he wasn’t slapping the ball against his own toes, he was flinging it around like a hot potato. His father tried to reassure him.

“It’s okay. It’s all about skill, and that takes time to develop. Just focus on one thing at a time.”

“I’m trying, Dad.”

He passed the ball. Max managed to catch it this time, but his attention had been diverted.

“Holly!” he shouted, waving one arm as if he were trying to flag down a plane. “Hey, Holly!”

Holly Gerald, one of the neighborhood girls, who had a reputation for sleepwalking and had once been caught in a neighbor’s kitchen dreamily scooping peanut butter out of a jar with her fingers, was strolling down Alcott Street by herself. She wore a set of white earbuds connected to a cell phone in her left hand, perfectly oblivious to her surroundings. In her right hand was a cheerleader’s baton, which she kept tossing into the air and catching.

Every few seconds, she would weave toward the middle of the road.

“That girl’s going to get herself killed,” Max said.

“At least she’s awake,” Milo said.

Finally, Holly saw Max waving at her and waved back. When she realized he was motioning for her to get off the road, she gave him a thumbs-up and stepped onto the sidewalk. Max nodded to show he was satisfied, and Milo took the opportunity to slap the ball out of his hands and dribble it across the driveway toward the hoop.

He tossed it up—and watched in disappointment as it slammed into the backboard, bounced off, and hit the garage door.

“We should practice layups,” his father said.

“Yeah, no kidding.”

They practiced for another twenty minutes as Holly Gerald went up and down the road, tossing her baton, probably practicing for cheerleader tryouts. Eventually, Milo’s stomach began to grumble.

“We should go in,” Milo said. “It’s almost dinnertime, isn’t it?”

His father clutched the ball against his chest. “You’re not giving up, are you? Come on. If I win, I get to eat your dessert.”

Milo winced up at his father, whose face looked as hard as granite in the golden, late-afternoon sunlight. “Dad, I would whip out my amazing basketball skills—which, up to now, I’ve been hiding, apparently—and beat you like David dropping Goliath, but if I’m late to dinner again, Mom’s going to make me wash dishes.”

His father snickered at that. “And a pro-athlete like yourself could never be caught washing dishes.”

“Exactly.”

Max ruffled Milo’s hair, smiling at him.

They were both startled by a roar. This time, it wasn’t the garage door opener, but a large engine that made Milo spin around. He and his father looked in the direction of Gosling Road, which ran perpendicular to their street, Alcott.

The noise was coming from a huge, accelerating Ford truck. Sunlight flashed off its broad windshield as it turned onto Alcott. The driver was a thick-shouldered man with a cell phone pressed to one ear. He kept lifting his other hand and waving it around as he shouted into his phone. The windows were wide open, and a rock song by Metallica blasted out of the cab.

Then Milo saw only the back of the truck as it went barreling past his house.

By now, Holly Gerald had turned in the other direction and was heading up Alcott toward her house. There was no way she’d be able to see the truck. With the earbuds stuffed into her ears, there was no way she would hear its engine or the rock music, either.

The baton slipped out of her hand and went tumbling into the middle of the street. Of course, she went for it.

Milo heard his father’s voice—“Holly!”—and felt a gust of air as something large shot past him, powerful enough to send him staggering.

It was his father. Stunned, Milo watched him dash with superhuman speed across the driveway and the front yard, toward the spot where Holly was calmly gathering her baton from the pavement—the spot where she was about to be crushed by the truck. It had stopped accelerating, but it was now swerving, which meant the driver was fully absorbed in his phone conversation.

Regardless, the truck was going fast.

Max was faster.

Milo was certain that all three of them—the truck, his father, and Holly Gerald—were about to collide in a terrible, bloody crash. He was certain his father would die in the process, all to save a clueless girl who’d been too dumb to realize the danger she’d put herself in.

“Dad, no!” he screamed.

He started to run toward him, but then stopped.

What happened next was impossible. Milo had to be hallucinating.

His tipped his head back and watched his father rise through the air, holding Holly in his arms. He hadn’t just jumped. He had grabbed Holly and launched himself, and was now sailing through the air in a wide arc.

When Max reached the peak of his terrific jump—well above the trees and houses in their neighborhood, probably as high as the tip of a radio tower—he executed a forward flip, dove through the air, flipped again, and landed on his feet in Mr. and Mrs. Thompson’s yard, about five houses down.

Milo even heard the thump of his father’s feet hitting the grass.

A sharp whine pierced the air as the driver hit his brakes. He must have seen what had happened. Milo broke into a sprint, more excited now than afraid.

He was out of breath when he arrived. His father, looking refreshed and calm, wore a kindly smile as he gazed down at Holly. As if he considered saving her life no more than a neighborly gesture.

Holly Gerald, on the other hand, released a girlish squeal. Her hands flew to her mouth, and she stood like that, gaping up at Max as if he were a Hollywood movie star.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Did that just happen?”

Max blinked a few times, apparently coming to his senses. He glanced at his surroundings as if he wasn’t sure where he had ended up. “Been a long time since I’ve done that,” he said in a solemn voice.

“Dad?” Milo said. “Dad, what—Dad, you just—Dad…Dad…”

It seemed to be the only word his brain could form. Like a robot with a short circuit, he wanted to say Dad, Dad, Dad, until his father shook him or maybe slapped his face to restore his wits.

Instead, his father flashed him a grave look. “Relax, Milo.”

A car door slammed shut. The driver of the truck came running across the yard. It was Billy Leroux from down the street, still holding his cell phone in his right hand, his stained black T-shirt emblazed with the words Halo Master above a futuristic space helmet. His eyes were red rimmed, and Milo thought he saw bits of Cheetos sprinkled across the man’s unshaved chin.

“What the hell were you two doing in the middle of the road? And—and just what the hell was that move you did with that girl?”

Milo studied his father’s face to see how he would respond. But the only change in Max’s good-natured expression was a slight narrowing of his eyes.

“I know you,” Max said. “You’re Bill, Greg Leroux’s son.”

“Yeah, Greg’s my dad,” Billy said, sounding suspicious. “What of it?”

“Well, Bill, you almost just killed a teenage girl. And judging by the redness in your eyes and the smell coming from your pores, I’d say you’ve been up all night drinking beer with your friends.”

Holly glanced up at Max, and then stared at Billy, her eyes widening a little in disbelief. Apparently, the thought of a man drinking and driving was more shocking to her than the seventy-foot jump to which the man was referring.

Even more puzzling, in Milo’s mind, was how his father had managed to smell metabolizing alcohol from a man standing at least twenty feet away.

“You’re that guy with the pretty wife,” Billy Leroux said, not meaning it as a compliment. He wore a sleazy expression as he accusingly added, “If I was you, I’d go home to a woman like that and mind my own business, not everyone else’s.”

“You’re right,” Max said, placing a hand on Holly’s shoulder. “She’s very pretty, like this girl right here.” Holly beamed. “And you almost took her life because you thought it would be a good idea to drink twenty or so cans of beer, and then drive home without sleeping it off.”

“Twenty…” Billy said, wonderstruck. “How did you…”

Max approached him, a light bounce in each step. He was almost a foot taller than Billy. But Billy didn’t look intimidated; instead, he squared his shoulders as Max came to a stop directly in front of him. Milo tensed, heart racing.

“You best get out of my face right now,” Billy said.

“I’m not in your face,” Max said. “And I’m not going to threaten you, Bill. But I will tell you this.”

“Oh? And what’s that, chief?”

Billy stared up at Max’s eyes like he wanted to carve them out of their sockets. He was even baring his teeth, which were the yellow of old socks.

“In about three seconds,” Max said, “I’m going to rip that cell phone out of your hand, call the police, and tell them what just happened, so they can come here and breathalyze you. That’s not a threat; it’s a promise.”

Billy went stiff at the thought. His voice shook a little. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, I would. If that’s what it takes to keep this neighborhood safe. Or you can walk away. Don’t even get in your truck. Go home, sleep it off, and pick up your wheels later.”

Billy chuckled as if this were all just a joke between friends. Milo thought he would back down and leave.

Instead, he threw a punch at Max’s face.

At first, Milo thought his father had been hit, so quickly did Max drop his left shoulder and twist. But Billy’s punch never landed. Max had caught it midair, and now held it in a firm grip.

Stunned, Billy remained frozen in place as Max used his other hand to pry away the cell phone. They all watched in stunned silence as Max crumpled it into several pieces, using only his fingers.

Billy’s mouth fell open. “L-let me go,” he stammered, wincing at the powerful grip around his knuckles.

“Walk away,” Max said, his voice frighteningly soft and steady. “Go home and take a nap. Don’t bother coming back for your truck, because it will have been towed by then. Get a ride to the tow yard, pay the fine, get your truck back, and never make this mistake again. Do you understand me?”

“O-okay,” Billy said, nodding vigorously. “You got it.”

Max released him. Rubbing one hand with the other, looking like a dog that had just been kicked, Billy dug out his keys, pressed a button to lock the truck’s doors, and made his way across the street toward his house. He glanced back only once at Max, Milo, and Holly, a vengeful gleam in his eyes.

“Never drink and drive, kids,” Max said. “It’s just not worth it.”

Milo happened to glance down at the ground. He noticed inch-deep depressions in the grass, shaped like the bottoms of his father’s sneakers.

“No way,” he said.

Holly Gerald followed his gaze. They were standing side by side now. She leaned over and whispered in Milo’s ear. “Your dad’s a superhero.”

Milo had no idea how to respond.

Holly gave Max a wide smile before skipping toward her house. This time, she made sure to look both ways before crossing the street. As soon as she was out of earshot, Max looked down at his son.

He was frowning, and his next words were chilling. “Forget this ever happened, Milo. And let’s not tell Mom or Emma.”

Milo could only stare at him in bafflement. “But you just saved her life. And that jump, I mean, Billy was right. What the hell was that?”

His father looked away, eyes distant. “There are things in this world that can’t be explained. Mothers who can sometimes lift a car to save a child pinned beneath the wheels. Victims of shipwrecks swim entire oceans just to get back home. This was one of those things.”

“But no person can possibly jump—”

“Milo, you’re a smart boy,” his father said, cutting him off. “I’ve seen all those science books you read. I’m sure you’ll come up with your own theories, but just promise me you won’t mention it to anyone else. It’ll scare Mom and Emma. And kids at school will think you’re weird.”

His father was right about that—the school thing, anyway. No one would ever believe him. The other kids would just think he was bragging to overcompensate for being smaller and younger than everyone else.

“Okay, fine,” Milo said. “I promise I won’t bring it up.”

“Thattaboy. Now, let’s go home and get some dinner.”

He put a hand on Milo’s shoulder. Together, they made their way back in silence, Milo feeling the entire time like his secret was a ticking time bomb.