They sat in a small auditorium, occupied by no more than thirty kids with their parents or guardians. Most of the kids looked like nerds, which is not a judgment, merely an observation.

Sonya read from a booklet about The Cincinnati Academy of Science and Technology while Lizzie fidgeted in her seat, her eyes drifting over and over again to the phrase, The Power of Possibility engraved in the stone archway above the double wooden doors.

Scooter and his mom sat six rows in front of them to Lizzie's right. Occasionally, he glanced over his shoulder and smiled at her. It was a small measure of comfort, which she sorely needed in the unfamiliar room, surrounded by strange people.

She couldn't help but overhear the conversation from the seats behind her between a rambunctious boy named Franklin and his father. Franklin's anxiety overflowed, spilling into Lizzie's row. She leaned forward in her seat, elbows on her knees, with her head in her hands but she couldn't avoid getting splashed. She had no firsthand experience with kid-calming meds but from what she'd read, if anyone needed a giant Ritalin pill ASAP, it was Franklin.

The inability to compartmentalize her raging anxiety was the prime reason, Lizzie determined, that she was just not very good at navigating life. But when she caught another over-the-shoulder smile from Scooter, Lizzie was reassured. Maybe she wasn't giving herself enough credit.

"I don't like this," Franklin said. "Let's go."

"Give it a chance," his father whispered loudly. "Let's hear what they have to say."

"I don't care what they have to say. I wanna go."

Her toes cramped from the strain of rapid tapping. She wished they'd sat four seats to the right in front of the stone-faced girl with crippling shyness instead of Franklin the temper-tantrum brat.

"You're being stubborn and unreasonable," whispered Franklin's mousy father. Lizzie suspected it was because of people like this guy that bossy, self-centered kids such as Franklin existed, adults who'd spout embarrassing phrases such as, 'He has a big personality' as an excuse for their deficient parenting skills.

"Dad, let's go," Franklin whined and stomped his feet.

Lizzie shot the boy a disapproving look. "Oh, geez," she groaned. "Oh, my freakin' geez."

Sonya looked up from her book. "Lizzie!"

Catching Lizzie's glare, Franklin's dad admonished his son. "Franklin, stop making a scene."

"I wanna go!" The boy insisted. "Now!"

A familiar young woman walking up the aisle drew Lizzie's attention. She wore a blue blazer, khaki slacks, and a warm smile. She waved at Lizzie and then leaned in next to Sonya and said in a congenial, quiet voice, "You must be Sonya Finch."

Sonya nodded.

"I'm Vinka Iverson. I'm pleased to meet you. Won't you both come with me?"

Lizzie felt Franklin's glare when she rose from her seat. Words rushed up her throat, and she wasn't even sure what they were, so she gulped them down hard. A hissing sound escaped through her teeth directed at the petulant boy.

Sonya grabbed her wrist and shepherded Lizzie out into the aisle. As they followed Vinka toward the door, Sonya said, "Did you just make cat noises at that boy?"

"Yes, that was probably me."

Vinka Iverson escorted them to her office, a small cluttered room on the second floor. Lizzie and Sonya sat in mismatched chairs before a desk barely large enough to accommodate a computer and two monitors. Post-It notes obscured a large portion of Vinka's desktop.

"Thanks for coming in," Vinka said. "I head the Research Department here at the academy."

Sonya smiled. "It's nice to meet you."

"If she's still interested, we think your niece, Lizzie, would make an ideal candidate for our program."

Lizzie was perplexed. She didn't have any special skills. At least it never occurred to her as a possibility. She couldn't play an instrument, she couldn't do card tricks, she was bad at telling jokes (although she was making some modest headway), she couldn't repair appliances, and she couldn't run faster than a dog. Aunt Sonya said she'd never seen anyone build jigsaw puzzles as quickly as Lizzie but that had nothing to do with science and technology.

"Lizzie's been talking about the electrome," said Sonya. "I have no clue what that is."

"Oh, geez." Lizzie sighed. "I tried to explain it. The electrome is Bioelectricity, the electricity your body runs on. You never felt yours?"

Lizzie was no older than four (back when she was Maribeth Finch) when she first mentioned feeling her electricity. As she recalled, Indigo was busy stringing a beaded necklace. "Did you say something, baby?" she said.

"I just felt my electricity."

"You didn't touch those outlets, did you, Maribeth?"

"No, Momma, I mean my own electricity."

A small smile formed and then Indigo said dreamily, "There was a time before you were born when your father and me were lying on a big, grassy hill under the sun with beautiful wildflowers all around us. And I closed my eyes and I could hear and feel the whole planet buzzing all around me."

Maribeth wasn't sure what Indigo's story had to do with what she was talking about so she didn't press the issue but she remembered holding her feet and hands together to close the circuit. She didn't want to lose any of her electricity.

One afternoon in her first-grade classroom, during a fierce thunderstorm, the lights flickered and then went out for a minute or two before coming back on. While her classmates chattered about the mysterious occurrence, their tearful eyes on the dark clouds riding the horizon, Maribeth remembered an interesting fact. She couldn't recall where she first heard it but it stuck in her memory.

"We could all shine our own lightbulbs if we wanted to," she said.

The teacher, Ms. O'Brien said, "What did you say, Maribeth?"

"My brain has enough electricity to light a lightbulb. Oh, geez. Not just my brain. Everybody's brain. Our brains send signals to every part of the body. Electrical signals. It's true."

Thunder rumbled followed by a bright flash behind a thick bank of clouds. The kids became more frightened, lips quivered. Tears spilled.

Doing her best to maintain a calm, Ms. O'Brien said with a reassuring, almost cheerful tone, "That's right. But it's not the same kind of electricity as lightning."

"Well, sorta. There's enough electricity in your head to light up a lightbulb! Wouldn't that be cool if we all had lightbulbs on her heads?"

Only Evan Dietrich smiled and nodded excitedly at the thought. The other students fell silent or sobbed.

"This is all very new to me," said Sonya.

"Most people are unfamiliar with the term," Vinka said. "The kind of electricity that runs your computer and your lights and your air conditioner is made out of electrons, negatively charged particles flowing in a current. Like Lizzie said, the electrome is different. Instead of electrons, these currents are created by the movements of positively charged ions, like potassium, sodium, and calcium in our bodies. The electrome promises to be the next great frontier for biomedical technology."

"So you're going to study Lizzie's bioelectricity?"

"No, no. With all the research being conducted around the globe, enormous volumes of data are being collected, sifted, sorted, and shared. Lizzie has an incredibly high level of pattern recognition. You probably already know that. During our assessments, she was given large data sets to study. She recognized patterns that even our software missed. With each assessment, the data sets given were larger and larger, and Lizzie's rate of recognition remained consistent. Her level of focus is absolutely remarkable."

Lizzie was uncomfortable with people looking at her and now she had two women staring at her with adulation as though she'd jumped out of an airplane to successfully perform open heart surgery (in mid-air) on another skydiver who'd suffered a near-fatal heart attack.

Every single aspect of the event was too horrifying for Lizzie even to imagine. The only satisfaction she'd derive would be during the TV interview with Heather Rogers (from WCPO News) when Lizzie would say casually, "Oh, geez, it's no big deal. I did what anybody would do in that situation."