Gifted

Gifted – Chapter 1

Don’t do anything to your hair that you can’t afford to keep up. If someone is discussing your roots it had better be about your great-great grandmother.

Christian Weaver walked through the double front doors of Brighton Elementary School with more trepidation than a grown man should have.
Though he’d attended Brighton as a kid, this was no longer the same school. In the intervening years, the school had been moved, redesigned, and rebuilt. The only thing that remained was the name.
Instead of the sprawling one-story schoolhouse of his childhood, it was now a three-story cube with a lobby showing off trophies in a glass case. Signs with arrows indicated the direction to the principal’s office and though he didn’t want to go—who did?—Christian sucked in a deep breath and forced himself to head that way.
The empty halls had his thoughts reverberating through his head. Why had he let himself get roped into this? He couldn’t remember what specifically he’d done to deserve this hell. Maybe he hadn’t been happy enough at Sunday dinners, and this was his mother’s solution. Maybe he didn’t seem busy enough, or his mother thought there weren’t enough elementary aged kids in his life. Whatever his mother’s reason, it was too late for him now; he was already at Brighton.
Christian liked statistics. He liked numbers. He liked code. He was not overly fond of children. Volunteering in an elementary classroom might even show up in his definition of hell.
After trading his ID for a visitor badge, the woman at the desk told him to clip it to his shirt. She said this as though he was doing it wrong by holding it. Showing her as he clipped it on, he thanked her and headed out to find room 32.
While he climbed the stairs, he consoled himself with some numbers. He was a relatively tall man and a swimmer. Therefore, he probably outweighed at least three children together. Possibly four of them if they were small. If things turned, he believed he had a chance to fend off a few of them.
He’d also had karate classes as a kid and he could probably win in a fight, though, that wasn’t the kind of thinking that was likely welcome in an elementary. His arms had to be longer than theirs, and he had to be taller, too, so he could probably put a hand on a small head to hold a wily child at bay.
But his next number failed him. Two. He only had two arms and there were certainly more than two children in the classroom. In his vivid imagination, he saw himself getting pulled under as a rogue flock of kids attacked him like piranhas. He hoped this teacher, Riley Zayat, would do a good job of keeping her students in line.
Maybe he didn’t dislike children so much as he just didn’t know what to do with them. He certainly didn’t know what to do with children in groups and he wondered again why he’d let his mother talk him into this.
Sooner than he would have liked, Christian was standing in front of the door to classroom number 32. A bold sign on the door—clearly colored by children using a rainbow of crayons—said “Miss Zayat’s Room.”
Underneath that, the next line said only, GIFTED.
Taking a deep breath and wondering what fresh hell awaited him, Christian Weaver pushed open the door.

What were your first impressions of Christian? How did his brilliance and social awkwardness shape your connection to him?

How does Riley’s role as a teacher of gifted children inform her personality and decisions throughout the novel?

In what ways does the small-town setting of Breathless, Georgia, influence the story’s pace and overall tone?

What aspect of Christian’s “modern-day Mr. Darcy” vibe most resonated with you?

How do Christian’s struggles with understanding people impact his relationship with Riley?

Which scene most effectively illustrates the chemistry or tension between Christian and Riley?

How do Christian’s volunteer work and interactions with the gifted children reflect his character growth?

In what moment did you feel the characters truly began to understand or trust each other?

What role do the secondary characters and community members play in shaping these two leads’ journey?