Within a week, Reed was moved to sixth grade. Within a month, he was taking some classes with eighth-graders. But each move only made his social isolation worse. The older students resented his presence, seeing him as a show-off trying to make them look stupid. The teachers didn't know how to challenge him appropriately, so they either ignored him or gave him busy work that insulted his intelligence.
Reed's struggles weren't limited to his academic abilities. His mild autism spectrum traits, which had been manageable in his familiar environment at home with understanding parents, became much more pronounced under the stress of constant social navigation. He had difficulty reading social cues, often missing sarcasm or implied meanings in conversations. He struggled with the unwritten rules of classroom behavior, not understanding why some questions were welcome while others made teachers uncomfortable.
During lunch, Reed sat alone at a corner table, reading while eating the sandwiches Mary had packed for him. The cafeteria was a cacophony of noise and social interaction that overwhelmed his senses, making him retreat further into his books. He could hear other students whispering about him, their comments ranging from curious to cruel.
"Why doesn't he ever talk to anyone?" one girl wondered aloud.
"Because he thinks he's better than us," another student replied with obvious resentment.
"Look at the way he sits. All hunched over like some kind of weirdo," a boy added, prompting laughter from his table.
Reed tried to make himself smaller, hunching further over his book and hoping they would lose interest. But the comments continued, each one reinforcing his sense of being fundamentally different and unwelcome.
The teachers, meanwhile, began to see Reed as a problem child despite his academic abilities. His tendency to answer questions immediately, without waiting to be called on, was interpreted as showing off rather than genuine enthusiasm for learning. His corrections of factual errors in textbooks or lectures were seen as disrespectful challenges to authority rather than helpful contributions to accuracy.
"Reed, please put that book away and pay attention," Mr. Thompson, his science teacher, said during a lesson on basic chemistry. "We're discussing the periodic table."
Reed looked up from his advanced chemistry textbook, genuinely confused. "I'm sorry, sir," he replied politely, "but I've already memorized the periodic table and understand electron shell configurations. I was reading about quantum tunneling effects in semiconductor junctions."
The other students snickered at what they perceived as Reed showing off, while Mr. Thompson's face reddened with embarrassment and anger. Reed hadn't meant to undermine the teacher's authority; he had simply been trying to use his time productively. But he could see that his explanation had somehow made the situation worse.
"Young man, I don't care how smart you think you are," Mr. Thompson said sharply, his voice carrying across the entire classroom. "In my classroom, you'll follow the same curriculum as everyone else. No exceptions."
Reed closed his book and tried to pay attention to lessons that covered material he had mastered years earlier. But his mind inevitably wandered to more complex problems, and teachers interpreted his distraction as disrespect or arrogance. The constant mismatch between his intellectual needs and the available curriculum created a cycle of frustration for everyone involved.
Mrs. Patterson, the school principal, called Mary to discuss Reed's unusual situation. Reed sat outside her office during the conference, listening through the partially open door as his fate was decided by adults who didn't understand his needs.
"I've never seen anything like it," Mrs. Patterson told Mary, her voice filled with professional concern. "The boy is reading at college level and solving mathematical problems that challenge our high school students. We simply don't have adequate resources to challenge him appropriately."
Reed heard Mary's worried response. "What do you recommend? His uncle wants him to have as normal an experience as possible."
"Honestly? Reed should be in a specialized program for gifted children, or perhaps homeschooled with university-level curricula," Mrs. Patterson replied. "Keeping him in a traditional elementary school setting is like asking Einstein to color inside the lines. He's bored, he's isolated, and he's starting to act out in ways that concern his teachers."
Reed's heart leaped at the mention of specialized programs. Maybe there was hope for finding a place where his abilities would be appreciated rather than seen as a burden. Maybe there were other children like him, who struggled with the same social challenges and academic mismatches.
But when Mary relayed this conversation to Gary that evening, his reaction was predictably negative.
"I don't want the kid thinking he's special," Gary said firmly, his voice carrying through the house to where Reed was supposedly doing homework in the basement. "Regular school, regular kids, regular experiences. All this 'gifted' nonsense just makes children think they're better than everyone else."
Reed felt his hopes crashing down around him like the debris from his father's destroyed time machine. Gary was determined to suppress his intellectual development, to force him into a mold that would never fit, no matter how much it hurt Reed or hindered his potential.
Physical education class became Reed's greatest nightmare, the one area where his intellectual gifts provided no advantage and his physical limitations were cruelly exposed. His small frame and lack of athletic experience made him a target for ridicule during team sports, while his coordination difficulties made even simple activities embarrassing ordeals.
"Come on, Richards!" Coach Miller would yell during dodgeball games. "Stop thinking so much and just throw the ball!"
But Reed's problem wasn't overthinking—it was underdeveloped motor skills and a nervous system that became overwhelmed by the chaos of competitive sports. When multiple balls were flying through the air and students were shouting and running in all directions, Reed's mind simply couldn't process all the sensory input quickly enough to respond appropriately.
During one particularly humiliating basketball session, Reed was chosen last for teams, as had become the routine. His teammates groaned audibly when the teacher assigned him to their side, making their disappointment clear.
"Just stay out of the way," the team captain told Reed bluntly. "Don't touch the ball unless you absolutely have to."
Reed spent the entire game standing at the edge of the court, watching his classmates play while trying to remain invisible. When the ball accidentally came his way, his attempt to dribble resulted in immediately losing control, causing his teammates to express their frustration loudly.
"Why did you even try?" one boy asked in exasperation. "You're supposed to be smart. Can't you figure out that you're terrible at this?"
The comment stung because it highlighted the fundamental disconnect between Reed's intellectual abilities and his physical limitations. He could understand the physics of basketball perfectly—the optimal angles for shooting, the mathematics of trajectory and force—but his body couldn't execute what his mind comprehended.
Reed's cousins tried their best to help him navigate the social minefield of school life, but their well-meaning advice often missed the mark. They couldn't understand that Reed's struggles weren't simply a matter of choosing to be different, but rather fundamental differences in how his brain processed social and sensory information.
"Why don't you just try talking to people?" Danny suggested one evening as they walked home from school together. "You're really smart. I bet lots of kids would like to be your friend if you just made an effort."
Reed wanted to explain that making conversation with strangers felt like trying to navigate a foreign language where he only understood half the words. The unspoken rules of social interaction that came naturally to other children felt like an impossibly complex code that he couldn't crack.
"I don't know what to say to them," Reed admitted quietly. "When I try to talk about things that interest me, they look at me like I'm speaking a different language. And when they talk about things they like, I don't understand why they find them interesting."
Enid, who was beginning to show her own intellectual gifts, had slightly more insight into Reed's struggles. "Maybe you could try asking them questions about their interests instead of talking about yours?" she suggested gently.
Reed tried to follow this advice, but even his attempts at showing interest in others' hobbies often backfired. When he asked detailed questions about baseball statistics or tried to analyze the physics of skateboard tricks, his classmates interpreted his analytical approach as condescending rather than genuinely curious.
"Why can't you just pretend to be normal?" Enid asked him one evening as they walked home from school together. She had been watching Reed struggle with social isolation and felt protective of her older cousin.
"I don't know how to pretend to be less than I am," Reed replied honestly, his voice thick with frustration and sadness. "When I hear wrong information being taught, I want to correct it. When I see inefficient approaches to problems, I want to suggest better solutions. I don't know how to turn off my mind."
"Maybe you could try not correcting the teachers so much?" Enid suggested gently. "They don't like being shown up by a ten-year-old."
"But if they're teaching incorrect information, shouldn't someone point out the errors?" Reed asked, genuinely confused by the social dynamics at play. "How can learning happen if mistakes aren't corrected?"
Enid sighed, recognizing the impossible position Reed found himself in. "Sometimes being right isn't as important as being liked."
Reed pondered this concept but couldn't make sense of it. In his parents' house, truth and accuracy had been the highest values. The idea of deliberately allowing misinformation to stand unchallenged felt like a betrayal of everything his father had taught him about the importance of scientific integrity.
But the isolation was wearing on him in ways that went beyond simple loneliness. Reed began to develop stress-related symptoms that manifested as difficulty sleeping, loss of appetite, and periods of overwhelming anxiety that left him feeling paralyzed. The constant sensory overload of school environments, combined with the social pressure to conform to expectations he couldn't meet, was taking a severe toll on his mental health.
—
One particularly difficult day, after a teacher had publicly humiliated him for asking questions that were "above grade level," Reed found himself hiding in a bathroom stall during lunch, fighting back tears of frustration and despair. He could hear other students in the hallway outside, their laughter and easy conversation highlighting his own isolation.
"Why can't I just be normal?" he whispered to himself, echoing Enid's question but turning it inward as self-criticism. "Why can't I just fit in like everyone else?"
The question haunted him as he returned to classes that seemed designed to waste his time while simultaneously making him feel like a social pariah. Reed began to wonder if Gary was right—maybe his intelligence really was more of a curse than a gift. Maybe he would be happier if he could somehow make himself less aware, less curious, less fundamentally different from his peers.
As weeks turned into months, Reed felt increasingly trapped between two worlds—neither fully belonging to either. At home, Gary's hostility grew more pronounced as he realized that Reed's intellectual gifts couldn't be easily suppressed. At school, Reed was seen as a freak whose presence made everyone else uncomfortable.
The other students had given up trying to include him in their games and conversations. When teachers assigned group projects, Reed was often left without partners until the teacher forced someone to work with him. His teammates would sit in sullen silence while Reed did most of the work, then resent him for making them look incompetent.
"He makes everything look so easy," one girl complained to her friends after a science project where Reed had solved a complex problem in minutes. "It's not fair. How are we supposed to compete with that?"
Reed overheard the comment and felt a crushing weight of guilt. He hadn't been trying to show off or make others feel bad—he had simply been excited about the scientific principles involved in the project. But once again, his enthusiasm had been misinterpreted as arrogance or deliberate attempts to humiliate his classmates.
The stress of constant social navigation began to affect Reed's academic performance in subtle ways. While he could still complete assignments with ease, his participation in class discussions decreased as he learned that his contributions were more likely to cause problems than to enhance learning. He became quieter, more withdrawn, trying to make himself invisible to avoid the negative attention that seemed to follow his every attempt at normal interaction.
Reed found himself spending more and more time in the basement at home, working on secret projects and corresponding with his father's former colleagues who were the only people who seemed to appreciate his intellectual gifts. These exchanges became his lifeline, reminding him that somewhere in the world, there were people who valued knowledge and curiosity rather than seeing them as threats to social harmony.
But even these connections couldn't fully compensate for the daily struggle of feeling fundamentally alien in his own environment. Reed began to understand that his differences went beyond simply being academically advanced—there was something in the way his brain worked that made social interaction genuinely difficult rather than merely challenging.
The weight of this realization settled over him like a heavy blanket, adding another layer to his growing sense of isolation. Not only was he intellectually mismatched with his peers, but he was also neurologically wired in ways that made easy social connection nearly impossible. It was as if he were trying to speak a language he could never fully master, no matter how hard he studied the rules.
As Reed picked up the first component of the transmission Gary had challenged him to rebuild, his hands shaking slightly from exhaustion and stress, he wondered if his father had been wrong about the universe always having more secrets to reveal. Maybe some secrets were too painful to be worth discovering. Maybe some mysteries were better left unsolved.
But even as despair threatened to overwhelm him, Reed's innate curiosity began to engage with the mechanical challenge before him. Despite Gary's cruelty, despite his isolation at school, despite the growing weight of grief and loneliness, Reed Richards refused to stop learning.
Reed's salvation came through his relationship with his cousins, particularly Enid, who was beginning to show her own intellectual curiosity. She would sneak down to the basement after homework to ask Reed questions about science and mathematics, fascinated by his explanations of complex concepts.
"How do airplanes stay up?" Enid asked one evening, sitting cross-legged on Reed's basement floor while he worked on a physics problem.
Reed looked up from his textbook, pleased to have an audience for once. "It's actually quite fascinating. Most people think it's just Bernoulli's principle—air moving faster over the curved upper surface of the wing creates lower pressure. But that's only part of the story."
He grabbed a piece of paper and began sketching. "The wing's angle of attack deflects air downward. Newton's third law tells us that if the wing pushes air down, the air pushes the wing up. It's really about redirecting momentum."
Enid studied the diagram with intense concentration. "So it's like the wing is swimming through the air?"
"That's actually a very good analogy," Reed said, impressed by her insight. "The wing does interact with air molecules in a way that's similar to how a swimmer's hand pushes through water."
These basement conversations became the highlight of Reed's days. Enid absorbed scientific concepts with genuine enthusiasm, and teaching her helped Reed remember why he loved learning in the first place. More importantly, she never made him feel strange for his excitement about discovery.
Danny also took an interest in Reed's knowledge, though his questions were more practically oriented. "If you know so much about engines," Danny asked one afternoon, "could you help me make my bike go faster?"
Reed studied Danny's bicycle with the same analytical approach he brought to everything else. "We could improve aerodynamic efficiency by adjusting your riding position and modifying the frame geometry slightly. And if we're careful about gear ratios and wheel bearings, we could reduce mechanical losses."
Working together in Gary's garage, Reed and Danny modified the bike with improvements that made it noticeably faster and smoother. Danny was thrilled with the results, and even Gary grudgingly admitted that Reed had done good work.
"Not bad, kid," Gary said, examining the modified bicycle. "Still think you overcomplicate things, but at least you got results."
Hope, the youngest, simply enjoyed having an older cousin who could fix her toys and answer her endless questions about the world. When her music box broke, Reed carefully disassembled it and repaired the mechanism, even improving the sound quality in the process.
"You're like magic," Hope told him, watching the music box play a clearer, more beautiful melody than it ever had before.
"Not magic," Reed replied gently. "Just understanding how things work."
But it was Christmas morning of Reed's twelfth year that brought the most significant change to his life. Reed had come to dread holidays in the Richards household, as they highlighted his outsider status and Gary's resentment. This particular Christmas morning started like all the others, with the family gathered around their modest tree exchanging gifts.
Reed had received the usual practical presents—warm clothes from Mary, a tool set from Gary that came with obvious expectations of future labor, and small handmade gifts from his cousins. He was genuinely touched by their thoughtfulness, even if the gifts reminded him of his isolation from the wider world.
"There's one more thing," Mary said mysteriously, glancing at Gary with an expression Reed couldn't quite read. "It's outside on the back porch."
The family trooped out to the enclosed porch, where Reed heard a soft whimpering sound coming from a large cardboard box. When he lifted the flaps, he found himself staring into the bright brown eyes of a small golden retriever puppy, no more than eight weeks old.
"His name is Herbie," Hope announced with barely contained excitement. "We picked him out at the shelter. He's supposed to be yours."
Reed looked up at Gary in shock, certain there had been some mistake. Gary had never shown any interest in pets, and Reed couldn't believe his uncle would willingly add another expense to the household.
"Don't look at me like that," Gary said gruffly, but his voice lacked its usual harshness. "Mary wore me down about it. Said you needed something that was yours."
Reed gently lifted the puppy from the box, feeling the warm weight of the small body against his chest. Herbie immediately began licking Reed's face with enthusiastic puppy kisses, his tail wagging with such force that his entire body wiggled.
"Are you really mine?" Reed whispered to the puppy, and Herbie responded by settling contentedly into Reed's arms as if he belonged there.
From that moment, Reed and Herbie became inseparable. The puppy seemed to understand instinctively that Reed needed companionship in ways the rest of the family couldn't provide. Herbie slept on a cushion beside Reed's bed in the basement, followed him everywhere he was allowed to go, and provided the kind of unconditional acceptance that Reed had been craving.
"He's not just a dog," Reed explained to Enid one evening as they watched Herbie perform a complex trick Reed had taught him. "He's my best friend. He doesn't care that I'm different. He just cares that I'm here."
Herbie proved to be remarkably intelligent, learning not just basic commands but complex behaviors that amazed the entire family. Reed approached training the puppy with the same systematic methodology he brought to everything else, but with a gentleness and patience that surprised even Mary.
"You're so good with him," Mary observed one afternoon as she watched Reed teaching Herbie to differentiate between different tools in Gary's garage. "You have a real gift for understanding what he needs."
"Animals are honest," Reed replied, scratching behind Herbie's ears. "They don't pretend to feel things they don't feel, and they don't judge you for being different. Herbie likes me exactly as I am."
The dog became Reed's constant companion, accompanying him on walks to school and waiting patiently outside the building for Reed's return. Other students began to notice Reed differently when they saw him with Herbie, the puppy's friendly nature serving as a social bridge that Reed had never been able to build on his own.
"That's a really cool dog," one of his classmates said one afternoon as Reed was walking Herbie home from school. "What kind of tricks can he do?"
Reed demonstrated a few of Herbie's more impressive behaviors, including the dog's ability to fetch specific tools by name and his talent for opening doors with special handles Reed had designed. A small group of students gathered to watch, their usual wariness of Reed temporarily forgotten in their fascination with Herbie's abilities.
"You trained him to do all that?" asked Sarah, a girl from his science class who had never spoken to him before.
"We learned together," Reed explained, his usual social anxiety somewhat eased by having Herbie there as a buffer. "He's really smart. Sometimes I think he understands more than most people give him credit for."
The students took turns petting Herbie, who basked in the attention with tail-wagging enthusiasm. For a few precious minutes, Reed felt like he was part of a normal group of kids, connected by their shared amazement at his dog's intelligence.
"He really likes you," Sarah observed, watching how Herbie stayed close to Reed even while enjoying the other students' attention. "Dogs are good judges of character."
For the first time in years, Reed felt like he was having normal conversations with peers. Herbie's presence created comfortable topics of discussion that didn't highlight Reed's differences or make him feel like he was performing for someone else's amusement.
At home, Herbie's presence began to soften even Gary's hardest edges. The puppy had a way of diffusing tension with his playful antics, and Reed noticed that Gary was less likely to explode into one of his cruel lectures when Herbie was around.
"Even Dad likes him," Danny observed one evening after Gary had spent twenty minutes playing tug-of-war with Herbie in the backyard. "I've never seen Dad relax like that."
Reed began to understand that Herbie wasn't just his companion—the dog was helping the entire family connect in ways they hadn't before. During dinner, Herbie would position himself strategically between Reed and Gary, as if sensing the tension and trying to create a buffer zone.
The dog also seemed to have an uncanny ability to sense Reed's emotional state. When Reed was struggling with particularly difficult homework or feeling overwhelmed by social stress, Herbie would quietly appear at his side, offering comfort without demanding attention.
"He knows when you're sad," Hope observed one evening after watching Herbie curl up next to Reed during a challenging math session. "It's like he can read your feelings."
"Dogs are very perceptive about human emotions," Reed explained, grateful for Herbie's warm presence against his leg. "They've evolved to read our facial expressions and body language. Herbie has learned my specific patterns."
But Reed knew it was more than just evolutionary psychology. Herbie seemed to understand him in ways that even his loving cousins couldn't. When Reed felt overwhelmed by sensory input or social anxiety, Herbie would guide him to quieter spaces. When Reed was excited about a discovery or achievement, Herbie would share in his enthusiasm with tail wags and playful behavior.
While Reed found acceptance and even affection from his cousins, Aunt Mary, and now Herbie, his relationship with Gary remained tense and often hostile. Gary seemed determined to strip away Reed's intellectual confidence, constantly criticizing his academic interests and forcing him into activities designed to humble him.
"Real men don't hide behind books," Gary would say whenever he found Reed reading. "They get out in the world and do things with their hands."
The forced manual labor intensified as Reed grew older. Every weekend brought new projects that tested the limits of his physical capabilities. Reed learned to install plumbing, wire electrical circuits, rebuild transmissions, and handle construction tools that were barely manageable for his developing frame.
"Your dad thought he was too good to get his hands dirty," Gary would say while watching Reed struggle with heavy equipment. "Look where all that book learning got him—dead in some fool science experiment. At least when you screw up fixing a sink, nobody dies."
These comments cut deep, not just because they belittled Reed's father but because they contained a grain of truth that terrified Reed. His father had died pursuing scientific knowledge. What if Gary was right? What if intellectual pursuits were dangerous fantasies that led only to destruction?
But Reed couldn't abandon his love of learning, even under Gary's constant pressure. Science was his connection to his parents, his link to their memory and their dreams for his future. In quiet moments in the basement, reading his mother's research journals or working through complex physics problems, Reed felt close to them again.
Herbie seemed to understand these moments of connection and would settle quietly beside Reed during his study sessions, providing companionship without disruption. The dog's presence made even Gary's workshop sessions more bearable, as Herbie would follow Reed around the garage, offering silent moral support during the most difficult tasks.
Mary tried to mediate between her husband and nephew, but her efforts were necessarily subtle. She couldn't openly defy Gary's authority without creating worse problems for everyone. Instead, she offered quiet support and encouragement when Gary wasn't around.
"Your father was always so proud of how smart you are," she whispered to Reed one evening while bandaging scraped knuckles from Gary's latest "character building" exercise. "Don't let anyone make you ashamed of your gifts."
Herbie had positioned himself at Reed's feet during this conversation, as if sensing the emotional weight of the moment. Mary reached down to pet the dog, smiling at his obvious devotion to Reed.
"Herbie knows you're special too," she added. "Dogs are good judges of character."
Gary's obsession with making Reed "normal" led to forced participation in every sport imaginable. Reed was enrolled in Little League baseball despite being terrible at it, signed up for Pop Warner football where he was too small and too scared to be effective, and dragged to basketball tryouts where his lack of coordination was painfully obvious.
It was during his first Pop Warner football practice that Reed encountered Ben Grimm for the first time. Reed stood on the sidelines in ill-fitting equipment, clearly terrified of the bigger, older boys who seemed to know exactly what they were doing. Coach Patterson was barking instructions that Reed couldn't follow, and other players were growing impatient with his obvious inexperience.
"Hey, you okay?" a voice said behind him. Reed turned to see a stocky kid about a year older than him, with sandy brown hair and kind eyes that contrasted with his intimidating physical presence.
"I'm Reed," Reed said quietly, his voice barely audible over the noise of practice.
"Ben Grimm," the other boy replied, extending a hand for a shake. "First time playing football?"
Reed nodded miserably. "My uncle signed me up. I don't really know what I'm doing."
Ben looked around at the chaos of practice, then back at Reed's obviously terrified expression. "Tell you what," Ben said. "Stick close to me during drills. I'll help you figure out where you're supposed to be."
For the next hour, Ben quietly guided Reed through the basic formations and plays, explaining things in simple terms and making sure Reed didn't get completely overwhelmed. When bigger players tried to take advantage of Reed's inexperience, Ben would casually step in and redirect their attention.
"Why are you helping me?" Reed asked during a water break, genuinely puzzled by Ben's kindness to a stranger.
Ben shrugged. "My dad always says you gotta look out for the little guy. Besides, we're all just trying to figure things out, right?"
That simple act of kindness meant the world to Reed. In a sport where he felt completely out of place, Ben's casual acceptance and protection gave him a small measure of confidence. They didn't become close friends their worlds were too different for that but Ben's continued friendliness whenever their paths crossed became a bright spot in Reed's otherwise difficult athletic experiences.
Reed developed coping mechanisms for surviving these athletic ordeals, treating sports like physics problems to be analyzed and understood. He began keeping detailed notebooks analyzing defensive patterns in football, calculating optimal batting stances in baseball, studying the geometry of basketball shots. His analytical approach didn't make him a better athlete, but it helped him endure the experience.
Gary, frustrated by Reed's continued failure at sports, only pushed harder. "Your cousins are gonna think their older cousin is a complete weakling," he threatened. This criticism hit Reed where it hurt most—he genuinely loved Enid, Danny, and Hope and desperately wanted their respect and affection.
But Reed's cousins had already made their feelings clear. They admired his intelligence, appreciated his help with their projects, and loved him for who he was rather than demanding he be someone else.
"We don't care if you're not good at sports," Enid told him one evening after Gary had been particularly harsh about Reed's baseball performance. "You're good at things that matter more."
Despite Gary's restrictions, Reed couldn't resist conducting his own scientific experiments in the basement. Using materials salvaged from Gary's garage and components ordered through mail-order catalogs (paid for with small amounts from his trust fund), Reed built increasingly sophisticated devices.
He constructed a working radio telescope from spare TV antennas and electronic components, using it to map radio sources in the night sky. He built a small laboratory setup for conducting chemistry experiments, carefully ventilated to avoid detection. He even began work on a scaled-down version of some of his father's electromagnetic field research, though he lacked the resources for anything truly advanced.
Herbie became an unofficial laboratory assistant, learning to fetch specific tools and components by name. The dog seemed to understand the importance of these secret projects, remaining quiet during experiments and alert for any sounds that might indicate Gary's approach.
These secret projects became Reed's lifeline, his way of maintaining connection to his true interests while surviving Gary's attempts to remake him. He worked late into the night, long after the household was asleep, pursuing the scientific curiosity that Gary tried so hard to suppress.
Enid sometimes helped with these projects, sworn to secrecy about their existence. She proved to have genuine aptitude for experimental work, and Reed enjoyed having a human collaborator who shared his enthusiasm for discovery.
"What would happen if we increased the frequency modulation?" Enid asked one night as they worked on improving the radio telescope's sensitivity.
"Theoretically, higher frequencies should provide better resolution for mapping smaller radio sources," Reed explained. "But we're limited by the antenna array size and the sensitivity of our detection equipment."
Together, they made modifications that improved the telescope's performance beyond what should have been possible with their limited resources. Reed felt proud not just of their technical success, but of Enid's growing scientific confidence.
Herbie watched these collaborations with obvious interest, as if he understood that something important was happening. The dog had learned to distinguish between Reed's regular homework and his special projects, responding with different levels of attention and assistance.
As Reed entered his teenage years, his relationship with learning began to evolve from desperate escape to confident exploration. The foundation of acceptance provided by his cousins, Mary, and especially Herbie gave him the emotional security to take intellectual risks and pursue his interests more boldly.
Reed's academic achievements were becoming too prominent to ignore—newspapers wrote articles about the young prodigy, colleges began sending recruitment materials, and educational experts started using Reed as an example of gifted education challenges.
"Local Genius Boy Maps Radio Galaxy" read the headline of one Springfield newspaper article, complete with a photo of Reed standing next to his homemade radio telescope. Herbie was visible in the corner of the photo, sitting attentively beside his young master.
Gary's response to this attention was predictably negative. "I don't want any more reporters calling the house," Gary declared after the newspaper article appeared. "And no more of these college people talking about special programs. The boy's gonna finish high school like a normal kid."
But Reed was far beyond normal high school curricula. At fourteen, he was corresponding with university professors about advanced research topics, solving mathematical problems that challenged graduate students, and developing scientific theories that showed genuine originality.
The trust fund administrators, monitoring Reed's progress as required by Nathaniel's will, began expressing concern about whether Reed's educational needs were being adequately met. They suggested summer programs for gifted students, mentorship opportunities with professional scientists, and early college admission possibilities.
Gary rejected all of these suggestions, viewing them as threats to his authority and validation of everything he disliked about intellectual achievement. "The boy stays here until he's eighteen," Gary declared. "Then he can make his own decisions about college if he wants. But while he's in my house, he follows my rules."
But Reed's growing confidence, bolstered by Herbie's unwavering support and his cousins' love, allowed him to start advocating for himself in small ways. He began speaking up during family discussions about his education, presenting logical arguments for why certain opportunities would benefit his development.
"The summer physics program at MIT would let me work with actual research equipment," Reed explained during one particularly tense family meeting. "I could learn techniques that I can't teach myself from books."
"Absolutely not," Gary replied firmly. "You're not going to some fancy college to get ideas above your station."
But Mary and the cousins were listening, and Reed could see that his arguments were making sense to them. For the first time, he felt like he had allies in his own educational future.