"I'm listening." Nathaniel said simply.
"Alright. Even if your LSAT was impressive and it gives you a nice amount of notoriety, we still have huge reservations about you. You are obviously extremely gifted in law but it's your general knowledge that worried us. Hell, your last class was 7th grade! You missed a total of 5 grades and you didn't even graduate from high school. In the history of this university, we have never encountered that situation before."
"I understand sir." Nathaniel answered. He knew that it was going to be a problem at some point.
"That's why we have arranged a series of tests for you. It regroups basically all of what you learn normally in each grade and each domain. You will have ten hours to complete all of these tests starting when your feets leave my office. I urge you to take those tests seriously as I would ask that at the end of semester you can complete them all with a good score. If not you will be expelled."
"Mister Curtis, can you…" Start Karine before being interrupted.
"Reconsider? I'm sorry but no. This is Colombia here, we have a reputation to uphold. I can't have a genius in law who didn't even know when the french revolution happened!" He exclaimed inflexibly.
"But…"
"No mom, it's ok. He is right, even if I perform okay on LSAT, he can't have someone wandering around with no high school knowledge." He smiled lightly, his eyes twinkling.
Karine knew her son very well and she recognized the expression that he used when he was about to pull a prank on someone. Hiding her smile the best that she could, she turned her head to the side.
"I will take the test right now, sir. I presume Joshua would be in charge of monitoring me?"
"Indeed I am. Since I was the one who advocated to accept you, this is my responsibility."
"Thanks Joshua, I hope I will convince you that you made the right choice. Sir, can I advocate for an amendment?" Nathaniel asks.
"An amendment? Speak sophomore." Richard said curiously.
"Can the chrono start when I have the first test on my hands? It seems more fair that way."
"Hummm… I will allow it. Joshua, I trust you to take good care of your charge." The dean said dismissively.
"Of course, let's go Nathaniel."
Once the two had left the room, the dean focused on the mother of Nathaniel.
"I'm sorry about that but I need to be inflexible on that matter. He is obviously smart and even if he doesn't succeed this time, he would succeed the next. If not, I trust that you or he have the means to hire a private tutor to bring him up to speed." Although he was apologizing, he did show no sign that he was really sorry and Karine did not expect him to be.
"You know when Nathaniel was twelve, a week prior to the accident, we made a bet together. If he could learn french in two weeks, I would pay him violin class as he wanted. He succeeded in one week. He learned one of the hardest languages on the planet in one week and his accent is almost flawless." Karine explained softly.
"This is indeed impressive. I did four years of French in college but I can't barely speak it today. Wait, he is fluent in french? That was not in his application."
"Yes, almost no one know about it besides his family, he doesn't like to boast. What I wanted to say is that he likes to be challenged. And you just did. Mark my word, he's going to ace those tests." Karine said proudly.
"Of course you would say that, he's your son so it's normal for you to expect great things from him but I think he will fail this time and it will motivate him to work harder on the future."
"Want to bet?" Karine asks with a catshire smile, fishing two bills from her purse. "I would hate to take too much money from you, how about two hundred dollars?"
"You are on." He said smiling. They both put the bills on the desk, not touching them again.
"How did your son become so knowledgeable about law?"
"Since he was eight he was looking through my case file. He always loved books and could be immersed in them for days. You learn about the Droski case?" She asked.
"Yes I read about it in the newspaper. Nicely done by the way." Even if he was in corporate law and her in criminal law, he knew that what she had done was not easy.
"I was talking about my assistant tempering with case files." She said bluntly.
"Yes I heard." He said in a cold voice.
Words go out really fast between lawyers in cases like that and it comes to no surprise to someone as well connected as he was aware of it. Even Richard knew that what he had done was grave hence his cold tone.
"It was Nathaniel who found out about it. He was coming back from LA after an interview and dropped by the office to see me. When he saw the state I was in, he proposed to help me.and I accepted. He found out the proof I needed in two hours in the files that I was inspecting for a week."
"Still impressive but this is not the law part of his knowledge that worries me but the rest." Richard said. This was not the first time that he listened to parents who glorified their children so he did not put to heart what she was saying.
"That was not my point. I'm 80% sure that if Nathaniel took the Bar today, he would get it and at the end of this semester, I'm sure at 100% that he will get it. He is a genius but he has a problem. He has almost no friend and none of his age. When he was younger, he was being bullied constantly because he had two lesbians mothers. He always hid it from us but we knew. A mother always knows that kind of thing so he becomes a loner. Today he can pass his day alone and be completely fine with it but we are worried."
"You hoped that with young people as smart as him, he would find it easier to make friends?" Richard picked up quickly. He ignored the most part of her crazy talk about Nathaniel passing the Bar already and focused on the principal matter.
"Yes, it is our hope." She answered truthfully.
"I can affirm that we have an amazing atmosphere here so don't worry. If your son is as amazing as you say he is, he will make friends easily." Richard reassured her.
"Thanks." She said softly, still not entirely convinced.
*****
Three hours later, Nathaniel entered the dean office again and was surprised to find them still talking. Their topic of conversation seemed to be environmental law which made him smile. It was a passionate topic albeit a sad one.
"I finished! Joshua is grading my last test, This is for you." He said, dropping an enormous stack of paper on his desk.
Seeing that, Richard lifts an eyebrow. He could not help sneering inwardly, If he finished in three hours, he must have failed at least half of those tests. Taking the first test, the letter A in red was plainly visible. Thinking this was luck, he passed to the second page, then the third, the fourth…
"What the hell?" He exclaimed.
He could not help but to pinch himself in the hope that he was dreaming. He had looked at twenty tests already and they were all A! It was unbelievable. The mind of Richard was in turmoil as he was looking through all of these tests.
Seeing the four hundred dollars on the desk, Nathaniel turned to his mother.
"Mom you bet on me again?" He asked bitterly.
"Yes, the dean thought that I was exaggerating so I was forced to make a bet." She said almost apologetically.
"I confiscated it! We would give them to charity." He said, taking the money on the desk.
Seeing him take the money, the dean could not help to voice his disagreement.
"Hey not so fast! I'm not finished yet."
"They are all A sir, I assure you." Nathaniel said to the dean who just grumbled and continued going through every test on his desk. Soon enough, he was finished and he realized it was in fact all straight A.
"There is still a test missing." Richard grumble, talking about the one Joshua was finishing grading.
"It is an A as well." He said in an absentminded voice. "Let's go mom, I'm famished."
"Okay sweetie, it was a pleasure Mister Curtis."
"Goodbye sir." Nathaniel said before leaving.
They had not exited the room for more than five seconds when Joshua entered the room with the last test in hand. Looking through his face, Richard could see that Joshua was shocked still.
"It is another A is it?"
"Yes Richard, it is." He confirmed. "That was unbelievable. He managed to get a hundred percent of good answers on all the tests except this last one."
"He made a mistake? On what question?" He asks, feeling better.
"You are not going to like it. The question was when the french revolution happened and he just crossed off the proposed answer and wrote something in french on the side. 'C'est une perfection de n'aspirer point à être parfait' No idea what it means though." Joshua said. he did not study french in college but german.
"Give me that." He ordered, taking the test and reading the phrase in question. "I recognize that phrase. It's a quote from a french priest who lived a few years after the revolution. It means 'It's a perfection not to aspire to be perfect'. He's trolling me." Richard said bitter. He was the dean of one of the best law schools in the country and he was being taunted by a sixteen years old. He could not help but to feel wrong.
"Well at least he failed to have the perfect score test." Joshua said to cheer up his best friend.
"Look at the bottom right of the page." Richard said, giving the test back.
"1789." He read out loud and then laughed.
"I'm going to hate that kid." Richard said, crossly.
"I'm going to love that kid.�� Joshua exclaimed, laughing out loud.