Chapter 107: The Threat from the Little Girl
The dinner conversation found its way to the Math Olympiad team naturally — the family asking questions, Mike giving the condensed version, Kevin's personality producing the most reactions.
Sheldon listened with the focused attention of someone gathering intelligence.
After dinner, while plates were being cleared and the kitchen was doing its winding-down thing, Sheldon appeared at Mike's elbow with the specific, casual energy of someone who had been waiting for a private moment.
"The competition prep workbook," Sheldon said. "Ms. Crawford gave you one at the first session."
"She did," Mike said.
"I'd like to borrow it."
Mike looked at him.
"Sheldon," he said, "you haven't covered competition-level problem types yet. The workbook assumes—"
"I've been self-studying twelfth-grade calculus for two weeks," Sheldon said. "I solved both problems on the entry assessment that you completed. I'm not asking for help. I'm asking to borrow a book."
Mike looked at him.
This was, he understood, still about the B+ on the diagnostic assessment. Sheldon had been running the same competitive engine since that day, just redirecting it with each new development. The locomotive set hadn't resolved it. The calculus hadn't resolved it. Nothing was going to resolve it except being genuinely challenged and meeting the challenge, which was its own specific kind of respect between them.
"I'll lend it to you in the mornings," Mike said. "You can work through it while I'm in class. I need it for afternoon practice."
"That's acceptable," Sheldon said. "I propose we also compare progress at the end of each week to determine who's covered more ground."
"Sure," Mike said.
Sheldon nodded once with the specific composure of someone who had successfully opened a second front and was satisfied with the development.
He went to his room.
A week passed.
The workbook made its rotation — Mike in the afternoons, Sheldon in the mornings, both of them moving through the competition problem sets with the focused, independent energy of two people who had agreed to race and were taking it seriously.
By the end of the week, they were roughly even, which was the specific outcome Mike had anticipated and Sheldon had not fully accounted for in his projections.
Their comparison session on Friday — conducted at the kitchen table after dinner with two notebooks and the workbook and the particular charged quiet of people doing something that mattered to both of them — produced no clear winner.
Sheldon looked at the tied score with the expression of someone revising a hypothesis.
"The material is genuinely challenging," he said.
"It is," Mike agreed.
"I expected to be ahead by this point."
"I know," Mike said.
Sheldon looked at his notebook.
"Interesting," he said, in the tone of someone filing a significant update.
He closed the notebook and went to bed.
The following Thursday, George had made his signature roast beef — the real recipe, Connie's actual recipe, executed with the specific focused attention of someone treating their first attempt as a proof of concept — and the meal had the warm, satisfied quality of food that had been made correctly.
After dinner, as Sheldon was heading for the hallway, Mary said: "Stay a minute, everyone."
Sheldon paused.
Mary had the specific expression she wore when she had organized something in her head and was ready to present it.
"Has anyone noticed anything unusual about Sheldon lately?" she said.
George Sr. looked up from the end of the table. "He's always unusual."
"George," Mary said.
"I'm just—"
"I'm being serious," Mary said. She looked around the table. "This morning, when I helped him get ready, I found foam padding tucked inside his jacket. Under his arms." She paused. "He'd put it there himself. Like padding."
The table absorbed this.
Mike thought about it.
He had noticed Sheldon's posture on the walk to school this week — slightly stiff, a little more careful than usual, the specific quality of someone navigating around something. He'd filed it without a category.
"You think someone's bothering him," Mike said.
"I think someone's bothering him," Mary said. "And I think it's happening on the walk to school, because it's the one part of his day he's not directly supervised."
She looked at Georgie.
Then at Mike.
"I'd like someone to follow him tomorrow morning," she said. "Not obviously. Just — pay attention to what happens."
George had been somewhat preoccupied with the job situation since the resignation — reaching out to contacts, making calls, the specific focused energy of someone who had made a decision and was executing the next steps. But when Mary said "someone's bothering Sheldon," something older than the job situation activated.
Georgie, for all his complicated feelings about his brother, had the specific response that the Cooper children had to anything threatening each other, which was immediate and uncomplicated.
"I'll go," Georgie said.
"Mike," Mary said.
Mike nodded.
"Don't make it obvious," Mary said. "I don't want Sheldon to know we're watching. He'll be mortified."
"We'll be discreet," Georgie said, with the full confidence of someone who had never successfully kept a secret from anyone in his family.
Mike looked at him.
"We'll stay a reasonable distance back," Mike said.
The next morning, they left the house about ninety seconds after Sheldon did.
Sheldon was easy to track — the bow tie, the upright posture, the specific purposeful pace of a child who had somewhere to be and intended to be there at exactly the right time. He had his backpack on both straps and was moving along the sidewalk with the careful, slightly furtive quality that Mike had noticed all week and was now watching with more attention.
"He's definitely watching for something," Georgie said, from about twenty feet back.
They were walking at normal pace, which was the correct surveillance approach. Georgie had additionally positioned himself slightly behind a telephone pole when they first came out, which was not the correct surveillance approach.
"The telephone pole," Mike said.
"I was just—"
"It didn't cover you," Mike said.
"I know that," Georgie said. "I realized it immediately."
They kept walking.
Half a block ahead, Sheldon had slowed. His head was moving in the specific, scanning way of a small animal that had learned to read its environment for specific threats.
Then he went rigid.
A front door three houses up opened and Herschel Sparks came out — seventeen, George's general size, moving with the unhurried ease of someone who lived on this street and knew everyone on it.
Sheldon tracked him for two seconds and then visibly relaxed.
"Not Herschel," Mike said.
"Why not?" Georgie said.
"Watch Sheldon's face," Mike said.
Georgie watched.
Sheldon observed Herschel with no anxiety at all — the calm attention of someone monitoring for something specific and confirming it wasn't this. He went back to walking.
"Okay," Georgie said. "Not Herschel."
Behind Herschel, Billy Sparks emerged — nine years old, Missy's age, the Cooper family's occasional egg supplier and someone with a documented history of finding Sheldon's specific kind of earnestness genuinely funny.
Sheldon looked at Billy.
Still calm.
"Not Billy either," Mike said.
"Then who—" Georgie started.
Sheldon, ahead of them, stopped walking.
His entire posture changed — the specific, full-body alertness of someone who had been monitoring for a particular stimulus and had just detected it. He looked at something to his left, made a sound that was audible from twenty feet back, and departed from the sidewalk at a pace that could only be described as flight, heading toward the far side of the street with his backpack bouncing.
Mike and Georgie looked at the source.
Cecily Patterson — six years old, blond pigtails, the youngest child of the family two houses down from the Coopers — was standing at the edge of her front yard holding something behind her back. She had the specific, delighted expression of someone whose plan had worked exactly as intended.
She saw that Sheldon had fled.
She produced what she'd been holding from behind her back: a plastic frog, the large toy kind, bright green.
She laughed.
Georgie stared.
"A six-year-old," he said.
"A six-year-old," Mike confirmed.
Cecily's father appeared at the front door, saw her standing at the yard's edge with the frog, read the situation accurately enough, and called her inside with the patient firmness of a parent who had been managing his youngest child's specific sense of humor for six years.
Cecily went inside, still laughing.
Down the street, Sheldon had slowed from flight to fast walk and was checking behind him with the specific, compressed vigilance of someone who had survived an ambush and was not confident the threat had been neutralized.
Georgie watched him go.
"He's been wearing foam padding," Georgie said. "Because of a plastic frog."
"The foam padding was probably for the water pistol," Mike said. "Last week she had a water pistol."
Georgie looked at him. "How do you know that?"
"I've been watching him walk to school for two months," Mike said. "I just didn't know what he was watching for until now."
Georgie was quiet for a moment.
"We have to tell Mom it's Cecily," he said.
"Yes," Mike said.
"She's going to have to go have a conversation with the Patterson family," Georgie said.
"Yes," Mike said.
"About how their six-year-old has been terrorizing her nine-year-old," Georgie said.
"That's going to be a specific kind of conversation," Mike agreed.
Georgie looked at the Patterson house. Looked at the street where Sheldon had been. Looked at the foam-padded silhouette of his brother disappearing around the corner.
He started laughing.
He tried not to. He genuinely tried. He pressed his lips together and looked at the sky and the laugh came out anyway — the full, involuntary kind, the specific laugh of someone who had been holding something for two minutes and couldn't hold it anymore.
Mike waited for it to finish.
It took a while.
"We don't laugh about this in front of Sheldon," Mike said, when Georgie had recovered.
"Obviously," Georgie said, in the tone of someone who had absolutely not finished laughing internally. "Obviously."
They walked to school.
(End of Chapter 107)
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