“Oh?” Ammu raised his eyebrows, but there was no shadow of concern or prejudgment in his eyes, just the same intelligence, curiosity, and faith with which he had approached every new challenge they had faced together. It was something Rush and all of the Intuitives had come to count on, and what Rush loved about him most of all.
“Well, when I took the Intuition Assessment Battery, I kind of… didn’t really take it, you know, the right way.”
“How so?” Ammu asked, clearly puzzled.
“After the first few questions,” Rush admitted, “I just sort of filled in all the blanks randomly.”
“Oh my God,” Sam exclaimed, rolling her eyes in disgust. “All the rest of us get here through our genuine brainiac test scores, and of course Rush just waltzes in by sheer, dumb luck. Wouldn’t you know it?”
But Ammu was only smiling at him.
“What?” Rush demanded, clearly wishing he had waited to unveil his secret more privately.
“Surely you realize by now that I give very little credence to the idea of coincidence, especially when it comes to an occurrence of ‘luck’ as statistically unlikely as you are proposing.”
“Well, what was it then?” Rush asked.
“My dear Rush,” Ammu said, his eyes twinkling, “your unconscious mind understands patterns of thought—it is your most profound affinity, just as Daniel understands emotion, or as Kaitlyn understands the flow of energy.”
“So?” he said, still not seeing the connection.
“Ammu,” Sam scoffed, “you can’t be serious.”
“So,” Ammu continued, “I would argue that you did not need to take the test ‘the right way,’ as you say. Thanks to your particular pathway, you predicted the thought pattern of the test makers by recognizing the answers they would select. In its own way, the IAB did test your intuitive talent. You just did not know it!”
As Rush listened to Ammu’s explanation, a smile gradually dawned across his face. He had known he had a role to play at the ICIC, no matter what he had done on the day of the test, but it was nice to know that his place in the program was just as valid as anyone else’s.
“If that’s true,” he said, his eyes gleaming wickedly as he turned to look at Sam, “then in a way I’m kind of the most intuitive one here, wouldn’t you say, Ammu?”
“Oh, please,” Sam said, rolling her eyes.
“Face it,” Rush said, continuing to taunt her. “It does take two of you to kill me when we play together. So doesn’t that make me twice as intuitive as either one of you alone? I mean, just speaking mathematically, of course.”
Mackenzie snagged a pillow from the arm of the couch and tossed it at Rush’s head, but he caught it deftly while Sketch looked on, laughing.
“OK, man,” he said to Sketch. “You about done there? Better get moving if you want to come with me instead of sitting in the audience with everyone else. I have a tournament to win.”
“Yeah, just a sec—almost.” Sketch looked at the drawing on his lap, gave it a few final touches and then picked up the pad, carrying it with him and handing it to Rush. “I made it for you,” he said. “For good luck.”
“Oh yeah?” Rush said. “Thanks, buddy, that’s—”
As he spoke, he looked down at the page, and suddenly his words fell away. It was a drawing of the Intuitives, all six of them: Rush, in the middle of the page, standing in the back row as though they had been posing for a group photograph, wearing a suit of anime armor worthy of any MMORPG on the market; Grid, on his left, with a huge golden bear towering over her head; Tick-Tock, on his right, a classic smirk on her face, as what looked like a stylized array of electrons whirled around her; Daniel and Kaitlyn, each on one knee in front of the others, he with a rainbow aura of light cascading around him, and she with a spray of tiny bubbles that traced glimmering tracks on her skin before flying up into the air; and Sketch, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of Rush, looking exactly like himself, smiling broadly.
Ammu was there, too, standing to Grid’s left and slightly behind her, with the seal of Alexander the Great glowing bravely over his heart. And Christina stood on the other side, slightly behind Tick-Tock, wearing her signature business suit, paired incongruously with a pair of tall, golden boots and a matching superhero’s cape. Finally, rounding out the portrait, Sketch had included the gryphon cub, sitting on the floor to Sketch’s left, puffing its chest out proudly and wearing its battle armor, which perfectly matched Rush’s own.
Rush’s eyes pored over every inch of the image, taking them all in—the best friends he had ever had, captured forever as they were today, right now, in this perfect summer—and he had to clear his throat before he could finish his sentence.
“That’s really special, Sketch,” he said finally. “Thanks. I mean it. Thank you.”
Sketch grinned up at him, clearly pleased that he liked it.
“Take care of this for me, Ammu, OK?” Rush asked. “While we’re down on the gaming floor?”
“Always,” Ammu replied, his smile conveying a deeper meaning behind his pledge, and he took the pad carefully as Rush handed it to him for safe-keeping.
Turning to go, Rush looked around to make sure he had everything he needed. Sketch was with him, he had his backpack, and Miller looked ready to go…
“Hey!” Rush called out. “Where are you? We’re going to be late!”
At the sound of his call, the head of the gryphon cub appeared over the back of the couch, flopping over the edge to stare at him upside-down, the cub having spent the entire morning sleeping on the sofa next to Sketch.
“Let’s go, you lazy cat-bird. But you’re flying this time. I’m tired of taking the blame when people trip over your invisible butt.”
With a mild chirp of protest, the gryphon flew up into the air and hovered obediently above and just behind Rush’s head.
“Do you think you could teach me to see him someday?” Miller asked, looking up into the empty air that Rush appeared to be petting affectionately.
“Sure!” Sketch promised, and with that, the three humans and the invisible gryphon headed out of the suite together.
“That is why we are here, Staff Sergeant Miller,” Ammu said quietly, after they had shut the door behind them. “That is why we are here.”
Our Acknowledgments
There are so many people we need to thank that we will most certainly forget someone critically important and end up tearing our hair out over it later. Whoever you are, we beg you in advance: please forgive us.
Taylor and Triston Brown—for inspiring us every day to follow our dreams, just as we hope you will always follow your own.
Ruth and Jack Cook; Cleo Marie and David Brunck; Jonathan Cook; Thomas, Christy, and Christian Brown—for a lifetime of love and support.
Dawn Brown—for everything you do.
Miles Morton II—for your unflagging support and enthusiasm. Every Intuitive in the world should have a friend like you.