Los Angeles | 2009
Bradley's POV
After yesterday's match, I was now confident in the team's ability to continue on and build our winning streak. The victory was a clean, satisfying data point. But today was about a different kind of test. It was a Saturday that I had been anticipating for quite some time now. Dad had contacted a Psychologist who conducts IQ testing in order to finally ascertain my IQ.
We had discussed this after the Florida trip. The plan was to see if I needed more stimulation academically and intellectually in order for me to continue to grow. I was acutely aware of the problem of young geniuses fizzling out in their early years due to not getting the proper stimulation. I had read the stories in my past life.
More than that, I was determined not to step on that landmine, which was becoming clear as I was exhibiting exactly the character traits of those kids: not paying attention in class, not studying, and just passing through with my course material. The truth was a part of me felt like I was cheating. Was I actually smart, or was I just running on the fumes of my past life knowledge? I needed to know for sure if my intelligence stat was the cumulative of my past life knowledge or if it was more than just that. This IQ test would help me prove that.
After a morning of practice with the guys, I took a bath and changed myself into a fresh attire. I found Mom waiting for me downstairs, her car keys already in her hand, a reassuring smile on her face.
"Shall we head out?" she asked me.
"Yeah let's go" it would seem Mom was in a driving mood today which means she is happy.
The car sailed through the Saturday morning traffic as Mom played her playlist humming along. I stared through the window at the blur of palm trees, my own reflection a tense, distant stranger.
Mom must have sensed it. "There is no pressure on you to get a high score in this test, you know," she said, her voice a gentle interruption to my thoughts. "It is just a test that we want you to take so that we can help you further. It does not have any strings attached."
I let out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding. "I'm feeling some anxiety over it," I confessed, turning from the window to look at her. "But I want to give the test regardless. I need to know."
She gave me a warm, understanding smile and put her hand on my shoulder for a moment, a simple, reassuring gesture. "I know you do, honey."
The car fell silent again, but the tension was gone. I decided to change the subject, to move to a topic where she wasn't my comforting mother, but the brilliant professional I so admired. "So, Mom," I began, "on the topic of investing..."
She perked up immediately. The shift was visible; her posture straightened, a sharp, curious light entering her eyes. This was her domain.
"With the markets having crashed last year," I continued, "what's the general consensus on recovery? Is the smart money in long-term, stable index funds, or are there undervalued tech sectors that are poised for a rebound?"
Her smile turned into a full-fledged, enthusiastic grin. "Now that," she said, her voice full of the passion she had for her job, "is an excellent question. Most analysts are being too cautious, focusing on blue-chip stocks. But if you look at the fundamentals of emerging software companies..."
And just like that, we were deep in a conversation about market trends and economic theory. I needed to talk about this with mom sooner or later and today seemed to be the perfect day.
"Mom you handle the investments for all of us right?" I asked innocently enough.
"Yeah, honey, I do," she replied, her curiosity piqued. "We have deposits in your name, Erin's, and your Dad's. Why the sudden interest in family finances?"
"Well, you see, I gave you that money I got from the tournament, right?" I said. "At that point, I didn't know what I wanted to do with it, but now I might have some ideas, and I was thinking that you could help me out."
"Of course, Bradley," she said, her smile warm and encouraging. "I like that you're taking an interest in finances at such a young age. It will make you financially mature. Tell me, what plans did you have?"
This was my opening. "I want to use all my money, and I might need to borrow some from you," I began. "I'm still trying to figure things out with the stock market, but I want to start with a really easy, patient strategy. My plan is to start by looking at Berkshire Hathaway's quarterly SEC filings and watch the companies they invest in. When their price drops by fifteen percent, I want to buy. If it drops fifteen percent more, I want to buy more. Then, I just hold for a long, long time."
I watched as my mother's expression shifted from warm, maternal interest to sharp, professional focus. She didn't look at me like her son anymore; she looked at me like a colleague. She was amazed by this analysis.
"Bradley," she said, letting out a low whistle. "For a beginner, that is an incredibly sound and patient strategy. You're not trying to gamble; you're using the value-investing behavior of the very Oracle of Omaha." She chuckled, a look of pure, impressed disbelief on her face.
She turned the car into the psychologist's office park, her expression all business but her eyes shining with pride. "Okay. Here's the deal. I will set up a custodial account for you and let you have access to it to track the market and run your analysis. But any buying and selling will only be done under my purview, with my final sign-off. We'll treat it like a real portfolio. Deal?"
"Deal," I readily agreed, a surge of excitement cutting through my earlier anxiety.
The psychologist's office wasn't the sterile, intimidating space I had imagined. The waiting room was decorated in soft blues and greys, with comfortable-looking armchairs and abstract art on the walls. It was designed to be calming, but it did little to soothe the knot of anxiety in my stomach.
My mom approached the front desk. "We have an appointment for Bradley Naird," she said to the receptionist.
The receptionist checked the computer, her fingers flying across the keyboard. "Yes, of course. The doctor will see you both after the assessment results are in. This takes around 2 days. The test itself serves as an EQ observation, and he prefers to analyze the results before your consultation." She then looked at me with a kind smile. "Bradley, if you'll come with me?"
She ushered me into a vacant room down a quiet hall. It was simple, with a single desk, a comfortable chair, and a large, frosted window that let in a soft, diffused light. On the desk was a neatly stacked series of booklets and a set of sharpened pencils.
"This is the Wechsler IQ test, the WISC-V, designed for children older than seven and a half years," she explained, her voice gentle. "The test administration will take approximately one hour and fifteen minutes. Just work through the questions at your own pace. I'll be back when the time is up."
She closed the door, leaving me alone in the quiet. I sat down, my heart hammering against my ribs. This was it. I took a deep breath, picked up the first pencil, and began.
The first section was verbal comprehension—vocabulary, similarities, abstract social questions. This part was almost laughably easy. My seventeen-year-old mind from a future decade had a vocabulary that dwarfed what was expected of a twelve-year-old in 2009. I moved through it quickly, a small part of me feeling like a cheat.
But then came the real test: the non-verbal sections. Visual puzzles. Block designs. Figure weights and matrix reasoning. This had nothing to do with memory or past knowledge. This was pure fluid intelligence, the ability to see patterns, to rotate complex shapes in my mind's eye, to understand logic in its most abstract form. I felt my brain kick into a higher gear, the same intense focus I felt on the basketball court taking over. I wasn't recalling information; I was analyzing questions and answering them, solving puzzles I had never seen before.
The working memory and processing speed sections were a blur of numbers, symbols, and racing against the clock. It was a different kind of pressure, a pure test of my mind's horsepower.
I filled in the last bubble, my hand aching slightly. I looked up at the digital clock on the wall. There were still ten minutes left. I went back and checked my answers, not out of uncertainty, but out of a deep-seated need for perfection. It was all correct as far I thought it was.
When the receptionist came back to collect the papers, I walked out feeling confident that I did good. It wasn't an arrogant feeling. It was a settled certainty.
I pushed the door open and walked back into the quiet waiting room. My mind felt like a finely tuned engine that had just been run at maximum RPM for over an hour—exhausted, but humming with a clean, powerful energy.
Mom was on her feet the moment she saw me, her anxious expression softening into a hopeful question. "How did it go, honey?"
I gave her a tired but confident smile. "It was a good test," I said. It was an affirmative response, and I saw the relief wash over her face, her shoulders visibly relaxing. Her happiness was palpable.
We walked to the front desk, and the receptionist smiled at us. "The office will give you a call to schedule your follow-up appointment with the doctor once he's reviewed the results. We will also be mailing you a full written report."
"Thank you," Mom said, and we headed out the door into the bright California sun.
As we walked toward the car, Mom put an arm around my shoulders. "Do you want to go eat out before heading home? My treat."
My mind immediately went back to a conversation from a few days ago. "How about that new burger place you were talking about the other day?" I asked. "The one you said had that amazing turkey burger."
Her face lit up with a brilliant smile. "I was hoping you'd say that" Mom agreed. "Their turkey sandwich and burger are really great. I think you'll love it."
…
The burger place was bright and noisy, the air thick with the smell of grilled onions and sizzling beef. We slid into a comfortable booth, the red leather cool against my skin. After we'd given our orders to the waitress, a comfortable silence settled between us, and I knew the real conversation was about to begin.
"So," Mom started, her eyes warm and a little mischievous. "How are things really going between you and Alex?"
I felt a blush creep up my neck. "They're good, Mom. Really good."
She just smiled, a knowing, maternal look on her face. "Bradley, honey, I'm your mother. There is no need for you to hide things from me." She let out a small, playful sigh. "God knows your Dad already does that enough. He's a vault. I don't want you to feel like you have to keep any part of your life separate from me."
Her words, so full of gentle understanding, made some my reservations crumble. I relented and began telling her the whole story, a full rundown of things that have happened between me and Alex since the tournament.
I told her about the difficult conversation after the final, and how Alex had been the one to comfort me when my victory felt tainted. I told her about the sweet, awkward exchange of cheek kisses on her porch, a moment that had felt bigger than the tournament win itself. I even told her about the mortifying "towel incident" with Erin and how, even after that, Alex had stayed, and we had just watched WALL-E together, a quiet, perfect afternoon.
Mom was amazed and even excited by how good things have been between us, listening with a wide, happy smile. When I finished, she just shook her head, a look of fond exasperation on her face.
"You know," she began, leaning forward as our food arrived, "it's funny. You're so much more emotionally aware than your father was at your age. Or even at his age now, sometimes." She took a bite of her turkey sandwich. "After I met Mark, I was the one who had to pursue him initially. He was a brilliant pilot, a tactical genius, but when it came to his own feelings, he was a complete dolt. He just refused to be honest about them."
She chuckled at the memory. "He was a wall. A handsome, disciplined, brilliant wall. But I knew there was something more in there. So I kept chipping away at it, and eventually, I broke that wall down."
"Really what did he do that made you like him?" I asked perking up.
"So there was this one Pentagon meeting we were having and one of the senior staffers continued to shut me down anytime I started to speak, Mark was also there" she began when I interrupted her.
"Lemme guess Dad stepped in and shut the rude guy down" I said, and Mom's face grew smirk.
"No and that is exactly why I started to like him. What he did was lean over to me and tell me that if I let the staffer talk to me like that nobody would take me seriously after this. So, he devised a plan and told me to stand up to him and I did with my own improvisations of course. I told the guy that you have no true leadership skills, and this project will go down the drain if this is the example you're setting about taking in other perspectives." She paused grimness in her eyes.
"The meeting was ended there and then, I felt like I had ended any prospects of me working on that project. When I walked out of the conference room Mark was standing there waiting for me. He looked at me and said 'I told you to burn him not go nuclear on him' he then smiled and continued 'If this is how passionate you are for your work you might become the head of the Pentagon before I become a General' I chuckled at that" Mom said chuckling again in remembrance and so did I.
"You see it wasn't anything overtly funny but it was the nature of his support coupled with how hard he tried to show that he liked me without showcasing emotion that drew me to him. After that him and I were situated on the same project and we began to grow closer. The rest as they say is history"
I looked at my mom, a new level of admiration in my eyes. I felt a profound connection, not just to her, but to the father I was just beginning to truly understand.
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Some mental health and other related stuff to be discussed from this chapter onwards and uh this is my first time writing stuff like this. I want you guys to remember that I am not trying to hurt anyone's feelings or trying to change or direct certain views towards mental health. I personally have some diagnosis to my own health issues and have gone through things in life that are not tasteful per se. I would appreciate your understanding and if you wish to criticise you are always open to, just try to be polite.