The birthday dinner at the Magic Castle went relatively smoothly for what Jake was used to, completely ignoring the fact that Evelyn was at least three martinis past her reasonable limit.
Since Alan's PT Cruiser was far too small to comfortably fit the six of them, Alan had been forced to drive his secondary car, the Volvo.
To a stranger, owning two cars might make it seem like Alan was a man of high means. Sadly, he was not.
While he had recently managed to pay off his immediate debts, he was still hemorrhaging half of his chiropractic income to Judith.
Jake was fully aware of his father's grim financial reality, but he had actively decided not to intervene.
If Alan suddenly had a surplus of disposable income, there was a real chance he would try to rent his own apartment.
Given Alan's famously cheap nature, it would likely be a depressing, asbestos-filled shoebox over a bowling alley.
Jake wasn't about to risk losing his comfortable setup at the Malibu beach house, and he had also developed quite the fondness for his uncle Charlie.
So, for the greater good, Alan remained "broke."
"Alan, now that we've seen the dove disappear up that greasy little man's sleeve, how about we stop for a little drinkie-poo?" Evelyn slurred from the back seat, loudly interrupting the quiet hum of the engine.
"Mom, it's still Jake's birthday. We are going straight home for cake," Alan said firmly, staring at the road, entirely unimpressed by his mother's alcoholic detours.
"Okay, fine, but first... a drinkie-poo," Evelyn repeated in a cheerful, sing-song tone, completely ignoring him.
Jake turned around in his seat, locking eyes with his grandmother. "Grandma, why don't you just take a little nap until we get home? I'll wake you up when we get there."
"Okey-dokey," Evelyn hummed, immediately collapsing in the backseat and passing out cold.
A long, silent, and incredibly awkward moment settled over the car, filled only by the sound of Evelyn's soft, rhythmic snoring.
"So... Jake, why don't you do one of those new magic tricks?" Alan suggested, desperately trying to disperse the heavy atmosphere.
"Sure," Jake said smoothly, pulling a deck of cards.
He shuffled them with surprising dexterity for an eleven-year-old. He fanned them out toward the driver's seat. "Pick one. Memorize it, and put it back."
Alan quickly glanced at a card, slid it back into the deck, and kept his eyes on the road. Jake squared the deck and casually tapped the top of it.
"Now, Uncle Charlie," Jake said, turning toward the back seat. "Would you mind checking your breast pocket?"
Charlie blinked, looking down at his bowling shirt, completely confused. "I don't have a breast pock—wait, I do have a breast pocket!" Charlie said, genuinely shocked by his own shirt. He reached inside and pulled out a playing card.
He flipped it over. "It's the Seven of Hearts."
"That's my card!" Alan gasped, nearly swerving the Volvo into the next lane. He looked at Jake beside him with absolute disbelief. "How on earth did you do that?"
"A magician never reveals his secrets, Dad," Jake said mysteriously.
"Do another one," Charlie demanded, now wide awake and highly entertained.
Jake didn't miss a beat. "Alright. Uncle Charlie, reach into your left pants pocket. Pull out the change."
Charlie dug into his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. "Okay. Got it."
"Don't count it," Jake instructed, closing his eyes and pressing two fingers to his temple in a dramatic display of fake mentalism.
"You have exactly one dollar and forty-three cents. Three quarters, four dimes, five pennies, and one nickel."
Charlie stared at the coins in his palm, pushing them around with his thumb. His jaw dropped. "He's right. One forty-three."
"One more," Jake said casually. "Dad, turn on the radio. FM 98.7."
Alan reached over and pushed the dial. Static hissed for a second before smoothing out.
"In exactly three seconds," Jake announced, "the DJ is going to say, 'That was the Foo Fighters, coming up next, we've got a classic from Nirvana,'."
Three seconds later, the radio crackled. "That was the Foo Fighters. Coming up next, we've got a classic from Nirvana.
The entire car went dead silent. Jake simply smirked and put his deck of cards away. Using Argus's 2004 radio broadcast schedules was proving to be a highly entertaining party trick.
Jake's rapid-fire "magic" made the rest of the drive home feel like a blur, and before they knew it, they were pulling into the driveway of the beach house.
The rest of the spring vanished in the blink of an eye, and suddenly, it was May.
High school was rapidly coming to an end, and Jake, despite being only eleven years old, found himself sitting in the principal's office, staring at an official piece of paper.
"Well, congratulations, Jake," Principal Skinner said. He was a bald, tired-looking man in his early fifties.
"You are officially this year's Valedictorian."
"...Oh. Yeah. Well, thank you for the opportunity," Jake said politely, blinking as he was pulled out of his own deep thoughts.
"Oh, please, Jake," Skinner said, shaking his head with a touch of profound amazement. "You didn't just earn it. This is the highest GPA I've ever seen in my thirty years of education."
While a standard "perfect" grade point average was a 4.0, Jake's weighted GPA was an impossible 5.0.
Because Jake had simply maxed out the system. He had taken every single Advanced Placement (AP) course the district offered, successfully petitioned to take independent college-level Honors courses, and dual-enrolled in university math and science programs.
Since those advanced classes could be graded on a 5.0 scale, and Jake had scored a perfect 100% on literally every assignment and exam he had touched in the last two years, his average had hit the absolute mathematical ceiling.
As he walked out of the principal's office, Jake looked down at the official school guidelines for the Valedictorian speech.
Almost two years... that fast, huh? Jake thought to himself, stepping out into the sunny California courtyard.
He had been so entirely occupied with investments and co-authoring high-level academic research papers that he had completely forgotten about the inevitable reality of graduating.
He hadn't even considered the possibility of having to stand at a podium in front of a thousand teenagers to give a speech.
He sighed, folding the paper and shoving it into his pocket.
He now had exactly two weeks to come up with a speech.