The four brains is what they call them,George, Toye, Lucas and Desmond.
All four have represented their school for competitions since when anyone could remember, thier positions have never been taken from them. Not once!.
They had a special hall they sat to study and attend special classes whenever competitions were coming up. Debates, Spelling B's, Sports, name it, they could do anything. They had dark secrets though, dark secrets they kept locked away that made them too focused, too detached from the real world of an average teenager.
George's father was a gambler who gambled away the little income he made at the Labis casino in town, whenever he lost, beating his only son and wife was the only way he could expresss his frustrations and anger. George's only way or escaping his father was to gain a scholarship to a far away institution where he could be free from his father. Toye's father, a once brilliant marketer and manager at once of Labis biggest company was fired for sleeping with his secretary at work. To save face, he lives off his wife's salary who works as a surgeon in a big hospital, but his wife terrible ill and needs to get treated. But she has to hide it from her colllegues and boss at work so they will not ask her to leave due to the severity of her illness. Her husband on the other hand does not want her to stop working either because she was the breadwinner of the family, if she stopped working it meant they would be short of money and being short of money meant people would get to know about him loosing his job. He insists toye gets good grades so she could get into a university on scholarship to save money, toye's only dream is to get the scholarship to save the face of her family. Lucas' father is a senator who wants to keep up appearances of a perfect family in public, he ensures lucas gets the best grades so as to be able to keep the appearance of a wonderful father and son relationship in public when in fact he's a monster at home. He physically abuses his wife and children and monitors their grades, he donates money to his children's schools to gain the acceptance of the school management and people. He donates money and equipment to public places to make people love him so as to earn their votes. Desmond's mother is a school principal who excepts only the best from her son, she makes decisions for him and makes him do, wear, eat and go wherever she approved of. Desmond gaining a scholarship is one of her greatest concerns and she monitored and groomed him into becoming a studious child.
All four with their mindsets struggled to become better and better until they finally detached themselves from everything real, except the competitions they prepared for.