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I vividly remember letting go of my dad’s hand, something I’d never normally do in a huge, scary store, and walking forward, entranced. For once, I wasn’t intimidated by all the other kids. I just sat down at one of the little tables and picked up two Lego bricks. I tried pushing one into the other. There was a satisfying click and a light went on in my brain.
I’d always felt lost when I was trying to communicate. I hadn’t inherited my mom and dad’s people skills and that made me feel nervous and clam up, and that meant I didn’t get much practice talking to people and that meant I got even shyer, a vicious circle. But for the first time in my life, I realized that there was something I was confident in. It had to do with the way the wheels turned on the toy cars in daycare, the way the walls of the dollhouse supported the floor, and the way sand in the sandpit collapsed if you put too much weight on it. My brain understood those things but it hadn’t had a way to use that knowledge. Until now.
I put one block on top of another, going diagonally to make a triangular base because triangles are strong. No one had taught me that, it just made sense. I clicked in another block. And another. I could feel my brain spinning up to full speed, unleashed at last. Later, as an adult, I’d come to have problems getting it to slow down and stop. But that first time was glorious, like running for the first time.
Some adult was speaking to my dad. Normally, just the presence of another person would be enough to make me freeze but I didn’t even look up. I was busy. “Oh!” the guy said. “She looks a little young to be, uh…we have bigger, chunkier blocks, with faces and stuff on, for younger kids…”
“Let her play with these,” my dad told him firmly.
The tower was up to my chest, now, and growing. I built it narrower as it went higher, because otherwise, it would tip over. I couldn’t explain how I knew. I just knew.
“The bigger ones are really more suitable for her age,” said the toy store clerk. “They have googly eyes and—”
“Let her play with these,” my dad told him, his voice choking with emotion. I had to lean sideways to smile at him, because the tower was up past my head, now.
That’s when my dad realized that, for better or worse, his skills had been split between his two children. Miles had gotten all of his charisma and social skills. And I’d gotten all of his engineer’s instincts. Finally, he could understand me.
He nurtured me, gradually introducing me to the math I’d need to turn the ideas in my head into reality. I excelled in science while Miles excelled in English and drama. When we were teenagers, he was likable and confident, with an army of friends and female admirers. My body blossomed and I was suddenly all boobs and ass. Without a mom to talk to about it, I just felt huge and awkward, and hid myself away. That meant I didn’t make friends, and that just made the shyness worse.
Miles wanted to follow in my dad’s footsteps just as much as I did and we complemented each other perfectly. By the time we went to college, our paths were clear: Miles would one day take over running the company while I quietly designed the buildings.
Thirty years on and Miles had become my dad’s right-hand man, handling bigger and bigger deals every day and ready to take over in another ten years or so, if my dad could ever be persuaded to retire.
And me? I’d designed apartment blocks, a retail complex, a hospital, and the new airport terminal down in Mexico. Then there was this marina: we’d redeveloped the whole site, creating an entertainment complex and arts center right by the water. And just behind it, Hudson Tower was under construction. Sixty floors of housing wrapped in snow-white stone and shimmering green glass, a sort of sequel to the skyscraper my dad designed and built twenty years before, the McBride Building, where we all now lived. I was one of the company’s top architects…but I still wasn’t much better with people.
I turned as Cody approached. Over the last few years, most of his friends had shot upward but his growth spurt hadn’t kicked in yet and he was the smallest in his class. He wasn’t letting it hold him back, though: he was the star of the school’s swim team, tearing through the water for length after punishing length. He’d definitely inherited my weird brain: he was a natural at math and physics—but thankfully, in him, it had been balanced by a good dose of social skills. And he was a good kid: last week, he’d spent his Sunday visiting a classmate who was in the hospital with heart problems, taking him a care package of candy, books, and games and spending the whole afternoon with him.
