After 5 days, Dr. Halpern called both Judith and Alan to her office, with Jake in the waiting room.
She had a conference table separate from her desk and used it for the results meeting, spreading her materials out in a neat row.
Printed report, score sheets, and a yellow legal pad with her handwritten notes.
She waited until they were both settled before she began.
"I want to start by explaining what I did and why," she said.
"Because the testing I conducted is different from what Dr. Reeves used, and I think the context matters."
She explained the Stanford-Binet Form L-M first. Why it existed, what problem it solved — that standard IQ tests were designed for the general population and became statistically unreliable at the extreme high end of the range.
That the Stanford-Binet's extended norms were specifically designed to measure where other instruments stopped.
"Jake hit the ceiling of the Stanford-Binet," she said.
"At what point in the test," Judith asked.
"The upper third. The questions in that range are designed for the top one tenth of one percent of the population." She paused. "He answered them all correctly."
She moved to the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices next.
She explained that it was a pure pattern recognition instrument with no language component, designed to measure abstract reasoning independently of verbal ability.
She explained that she had administered the adult version rather than the children's version because the children's version would have been inadequate.
"He completed it and hit the ceiling again," she said.
"At that point," Dr. Halpern continued, "I moved to out of level testing. This is a technique used specifically with profoundly gifted children where we administer tests designed for older populations to get a clearer picture of ability."
She turned to the next page of her report.
"I gave Jake part of the SAT. The college entrance examination. Math and verbal sections.He finished the math section in eleven minutes. A typical test taker has twenty-five. His score was in the 99th percentile for college bound high school seniors."
She let that sit for a moment.
"The verbal score was comparable."
The room was quiet for a moment.
"So what does that mean," Alan said. "Do we take him to college?" He joked with a smile, but no one seemed to pay attention to him
"I said -"
"We heard you fine, Alan." Judith cut him before he repeated the joke
"Oh, ok," said alan before slumping on his chair
Dr. Halpern put her pen down and looked at them both.
"It means that Jake has exhausted every standardized assessment instrument I have available to me. I can not give you a precise IQ score because no existing test can produce one with confidence at this level, If i had to take a guess, his iq should be between 180 and 190." She paused. " I can also tell you that in twenty years of specializing specifically in profoundly gifted children, I have not encountered this profile before. Not once."
Alan took his glasses off.
Judith looked at her notebook for a moment. Then she looked up.
"What does he need," she said.
Dr. Halpern had clearly been waiting for that question.
"He needs to be in an environment that can actually challenge him," she said. "Not a gifted program within his current school nor a grade skip to fourth or fifth." She folded her hands on the table. "In my professional opinion, and for what we talked before with Jake, he should be in high school,"
Alan opened his mouth and then closed it again.
He looked at his wife to see the same bewildered look.
"But he is just 9" said Judith with a worrying tone.
"I understand your worries, but based on jake's intellectual, social, and emotional stage development, it's the best recommendation i can give."
Dr. halpern stood on her words and didn't flinch at Judith's worry.
"Alrigth, well, what do we do now?" Alan asked after being silent for most part of the meeting.
"You should contact the district, they would know how to deal with it." Answered Dr halpern before ending the conversation.
The waiting room was empty when they came out.
The receptionist was on the phone and didn't look up.
Outside the window Ventura Boulevard was doing its usual Sunday afternoon thing, cars, a bus, someone walking a dog past the travel agency next door.
Judith stopped at the reception desk to collect Jake and sign something.
Alan stood by the door with his copy of the report in his hand and looked at it without really reading it.
Jake came out from the hallway and they walked out into the parking lot.
Alan unlocked the car and they got in and he sat there for a moment without starting the engine.
"180," he said.
"180 At minimum," Judith said.
"180 At minimum." He looked at the report on his knee. "Our kid."
"Yes."
He sat with that for another moment.
Outside a delivery truck was trying to back into the loading area behind the dental practice next door, making slow repeated attempts at an angle that wasn't going to work.
"I don't really know what to do with that information," Alan said.
"You don't have to do anything with it," Judith said. "I'll handle the district."
"I know you will." He wasn't saying it pointedly.
"I just mean—" He stopped.
"180. Do you understand what that means? She said fewer than a hundred people in recorded history."
"I heard her."
"That's — Judith that's our kid. That's Jake."
Judith was looking at her notebook but not writing anything.
"I know who it is Alan," she said quietly.
He looked at her for a moment.
Then he looked in the rearview mirror at Jake, who was sitting in the back seat looking out the window at the delivery truck making its increasingly doomed attempts at the loading bay.
"Hey buddy," Alan said.
Jake looked up at the mirror.
"You hungry?"
A pause.
"A little," Jake said.
It seems they were convinced i should go to high-school. Good, that saves me some trouble, jake thought to himself.
Alan started the car.
"There's a diner on Ventura," he said, to nobody in particular. "I could eat."
Judith closed her notebook and said nothing, which was as close to yes as she generally got on short notice.
Alan pulled out of the parking lot and joined the Sunday afternoon traffic heading west and nobody said anything for a while and that was fine.