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Radiating excitement, Eli sat at the ready, nearly bouncing with anticipation for his first Academic Bowl practice of the year. Because they had only eight buzzers, most students shared with a partner. Eli got his own buzzer because he used it the most.

About halfway through the practice, the first geography question came up. The teacher began, “The Galapag—”

Eli buzzed in. “Ecuador!” he shouted. He couldn’t contain his wide, childlike grin.

The teacher declared, game-show-host style, “Yes!” He then turned to the rest of the room. “Pay attention to what happens here with the geography questions.” For every one, Eli buzzed two or three words into the question and answered correctly. The rest of the team marveled at his speed. “How do you even know this stuff?!” they asked. To their astonishment, Eli nailed five answers in a row.

At Academic Bowl practices, Eli was in his element. (He liked competitions, too, but he became so nervous that he would get the shakes.) When he watched game shows like Jeopardy and Cash Cab at home, he answered most questions accurately, but no one saw him do it. Showcasing his talent in front of people validated that the seemingly obscure trivia he picked up was a way to “actually make myself useful,” he said. At practice, he was an object of wonder, not derision.

For the first time in recent memory, Eli’s school was an Academic Bowl contender. Strattville won a fall match against four other schools, one of which was a perennially dominant team. Eli’s team advanced to the tournament’s final round, which would take place in April.

In classes, Eli tried to avoid appearing like a know-it-all, but sometimes his teachers made it difficult for him to do so. With a few exceptions, either they seemed to look down on him because he was so clearly unpopular, or they treated him as if he were superior because he was a straight-A student.

Sometimes classmates came to their own conclusions. Recently, Eli had decided to read a Spanish novel for fun. Several students—and two teachers—wondered aloud why he was reading in Spanish when he didn’t have to. He was poring over it in physics one day when an Academic Bowl teammate said, “Wait, is that book in Spanish?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have to read it or something?”

“No, it’s just for fun.”

“Nerd!”

In Chinese, the teacher passed out grade reports. Immediately, students asked Eli how he did. “I’m not going to tell you,” he said, shoving the paper into his binder without looking at it. A few students tried to pry the paper out, but Eli stuffed the binder into his backpack.

“Come on, what’d you get?” someone prodded.

“I bet it was a ninety-nine,” someone else chimed in.

Eli didn’t respond.

“A hundred?”

Eli busied himself with math homework. On the one hand, he was mildly amused that he had this power over his classmates; he had something they wanted. That didn’t happen very often. On the other hand, he wished they would leave him alone. Except with close friends, Eli mostly preferred “brief, impersonal conversation.”

“Come on, just tell us.”

“C,” Eli said.

“You’re lying.”

“D,” Eli answered. “F.”

“Come on!”

“B-, B, B+, A-, A.”

“Okay, now I believe you.”

“A+, C+, D+, E.”

“Why don’t you just tell us?”

“It’s not relevant,” Eli said.

He was sure nothing good could come out of answering truthfully. Increasingly, students were also bugging Eli about where he planned to apply to college. He wasn’t offended that they asked, but he was wary about sharing that information. If he named some of his choices, he knew people would ask him why he wasn’t applying to, say, Harvard. If he named the more prestigious schools on his list, he was afraid they would think he was a snob. Usually, Eli answered honestly: “I want to go as far away from here as possible.”

Students looked at him strangely when he said that. “Why?!” they asked.

“Because I hate it here,” Eli would answer, and left it at that. He never told anyone the schools on his list besides Westcoast University—Berkeley,