Mr. Pryor's smile tightened. "Maybe you'd like to come up here and run the demonstration yourself?" He said it the way people say things when they're sure you won't take them up on it.
Zariah walked up to the table. She sat down in front of the laptop. The simulator was a consumer-grade program; she'd used better ones, but she knew the interface. She set up a scenario in about 30 seconds: cruising altitude, standard conditions, a descent request incoming from ATC.
And she talked through it as she executed it: power reduction first, trim adjustment, pitch controlled, rate of descent steady, airspeed stable within limits. She narrated each step plainly, without showing off, like someone explaining how to tie a shoe.
When she finished, the plane on the screen leveled off at exactly the target altitude. She stood up and stepped back from the table.
The room was quiet again, but differently this time. Mr. Pryor cleared his throat. "Where did you learn that?"
"My dad," Zariah said.
And then she walked back to where she'd been standing. Nobody laughed that time.
The Monday after the STEM Expo, Zariah sat in the chair outside Principal Graves' office at Lakeview Middle School. The chair had a small crack in the vinyl along the right armrest; she'd sat in it enough times to have noticed.
Principal Graves was a round-faced woman with reading glasses she wore on a beaded chain around her neck. She leaned forward across her desk with an expression that was genuinely trying to be sympathetic, but wasn't quite making it.
"Zariah," she said, "your teachers have real concerns. It's not about your intelligence. Everyone agrees you're bright. It's about engagement—about how you interact with the classroom."
Zariah didn't say anything.
"Mrs. Allison says you corrected her in front of the class again last Tuesday."
"She said the Wright brothers flew for 30 seconds at Kitty Hawk. It was 12 seconds on the first flight."
"That may be accurate, but it's—"
"A fact class. The fact was wrong."