The Washingtons. You know?
Imagine finding out that your kid is extraordinarily gifted, and having no idea what to do with that. Wanting him to be challenged and learn and have all the opportunities that maybe you yourself didn't have.
You're elated that your child has found something he loves and excels at, and a little unsure of how to raise him. After all, you've never seen this kind of genius before, how are you supposed to support it? None of the other families you know, not your parents, or coworkers, or neighbors from down the street have ever seen anything like this. They're all astounded.
And when you ask other people what they think or what you should do, seeking advice the way any parent would, you receive jealousy. Thinly veiled in people who praise your still very young son with cruel, covetous words, and open in those who accuse you of harboring some secret, asking why he is so gifted when their own children are not.
You're scared, and you're utterly alone in trying to raise this boy who meant more to you than life itself, even before he spoke a single word. You're scrambling to find anyone, any resource, that can advise you, and in all the chaos, you make a fatal mistake.
It's not intentional, and it's certainly not malicious. But in the whirlwind of confusion and panic and the ever-present suffocating notion of "You're his parents, you need to raise him right, anything you do now could have devastating consequences in the future", you fall back on the long-held and entirely false belief that a smart child is capable enough to raise themselves.
Just because your boy can recite the entire periodic table forwards and backwards at age six doesn't mean he has the ability to look out for himself. Just because he can orate like a professor when he's eight doesn't mean he knows how to be a miniature adult.
Before you know it, the idea comes into your head to enter him in a competition. It's not a big deal, but the pressure from all those people you told in your initial befuddled excitement, not to mention the idea of winning money and prizes that would otherwise be quite hard to attain, is more than enough to turn your head.
Of course, he wins. And, of course, you're elated. You've finally found something that challenges him, and each competition is an investment in his future. Suddenly, colleges and internships and whole career fields that would never have been available to someone coming from such an average family are at his fingertips. It seems you've hit on a perfect solution.
But, the pressure keeps growing. The jealousy and envy and resentment from those around you, even parents of other quiz competitors, who you hoped might finally understand what it was like to be responsible for such a gifted child, has reached exponential rates. And your son hasn't missed a beat.
He keeps winning and winning and winning and your mind is so dazzled by possibilities that you don't even consider the creeping anxiety that has already made a home in your mind.
He stumbles, once, and recovers, answering the question correctly, as always, but in that moment you realised. Something is wrong. The world is going wrong, the government is failing, the banks might be next. Once your son had won so much money that you were certain to be financially stable for at least the better part of a year, you took a break from work to support him.
But was that the right decision?
There's something coming on the horizon, and the slightest mistake now could lead to destitution in the future. He can't risk a mistake. You can't risk that.
So you keep pushing him. You're more than confident he has the knowledge and skills to win and keep winning, but he doesn't have any confidence. Maybe if he keeps practicing, he'll realise how good he is. Your career has been put on hold to become what is essentially a campaign manager and PR liaison, and still the kid is growing.
He's barely challenged by the informational portion of the quizzes anymore, and that scares you. This is the only solution you could find, and now too quick it has become obsolete. You desperately want what is best for him, but you also know that when catastrophe strikes you need to be prepared, so you keep pushing him.
You don't want to explain potential financial worries to a child, especially when he's so anxious about everything anyways, but the anger comes out regardless. You begin to see that you really don't know him anymore.
When he was younger, if you had been angry or he had been scared, you knew what to do. Making cookies together, doing a puzzle, reading a book, any of these activities were common enough apologies for a lost temper.
But now. You hardly recognise this boy who stands on stage before you.
And then, just as you barely start to see it, he's gone.
You almost don't notice for a day, and that's what terrifies you. You'd become so used to him studying and hiding away and even skipping meals on occasion to read and practice and be better, that it takes hours for you to realise he isn't in the house.
You can't find him. No one's seen him, and it is with dawning horror that you suddenly see that you don't know your own son well enough to guess where he might have run to.
The police are no help, and you can't stop yourself from bitter thoughts about how he's probably smarter than all of them put together (Or thoughts that are quickly smothered out about how he probably isn't going to be found unless he wants to be)
And then, the first donation comes.
It's thrilling. It's exhilarating for a moment to have that peace of mind that being rich gives you, even if it's short lived. Now you can search for him without worrying about losing what you already have. Things will be more or less the same when he comes back, with the big house and all the books and the fancy stuff filling each room.
It's such a nice feeling that for a second, you don't catch what you are doing. You don't see how this is the same feeling you chased in the quizzes. The horrible ouroboros of seeking riches only to be forced to spend them in the quest to amass more. The irrational way your mind has been slowly poisoned against what truly matters to you.
And then you are ashamed.
In the blink of an eye, you see all that you have done to your child. Everything you took away from him (And every moment that you yourself lost), all this time he should have spent growing up and learning to be who he wanted to be, and you had forced him into a mold.
Setting him up in a hypercritical and excessively competitive environment in the false hope that being around like-minded children would finally bring him a friend who understood him, when in reality it only isolated him further.
You see that you have become exactly like all those jealous people who looked at your son with a greedy covetousness instead of seeing him for who he was: a child.
This is when you decide that he's probably better off away from the awful mistakes you've made. You can't bring yourself to look for him anymore, not when he might finally be happy, away from you. You sit in your big, empty house, with rooms filled to the brim with things that you don't even remember owning. There are no signs a child lived here. No art on the walls, no homework on the fridge, no toys or clumsily made crafts. You realise that you've been living without him for quite some time.
It takes a little while, but then comes the day when all of that grief and despair and fear for this boy who you once loved so desperately (And still do, you just forgot how to show it) is too much. And you start searching.
Wildly. Recklessly. Against all advice from everyone who knows you, from everyone warning of the impending doom looming over everything, you search. You waste no time draining your bank account, selling your big, empty house, and taking out loans. Most of the prizes from past quiz shows have done nothing but sit around and collect dust, yet you are hesitant to pawn them. Some part of your mind wonders if they might have been important to him, and you were just too blind to see.
In the end, every possible possession of yours that can be exchanged to pay for more private investigators and detectives is gone.
And this brings you to a rambling old house, in a small seaside city.
It takes a while to drive there, but you do, keeping on all through the night and only stopping to sleep a few hours on the side of the road when exhaustion threatens to overtake you.
Right about the time you reach this "Stonetown", you feel something in your mind clear. You aren't quite sure what it is, as sick with worry as you currently are, but there is definitely a difference.
You disregard it as you hurry to the house of this enigmatic "Mr. Benedict", hoping against hope that he might have some clue, some scrap of a sign that your son is safe. You've long ago made peace with the fact that he might never want to see you again, but you couldn't rest until you were sure that, wherever he was, he was safe.
Standing outside the gate, you look up at the house, you can't help but think this would make a good home for your son. You hope he's happy here (If he is here)
You think about all that has happened in the past few years. You think that, were you to do it over again, you would do without the big house and the cash prizes. The fame and the fast car. It didn't do you any good anyway. A small house, next to a good library full of all the books your son could read. That would be enough. If only you had known what heartache your mistakes would cause.
