Setting up a Gmail account is not like installing a text editor. It's more like falling off a log. Actual normal six-year-olds can probably do it. A possum has probably done it once by accident. She emails Barb confirming she got the address she wanted and has some time left over to set up a recurring calendar reminder for her bedtime and then Google the girl scout camp before the reminder goes off.

Jeremy is impressed by her speed and kind of assuming she's done this before but he's not going to tattle, Gmail is super tame.

The Sierra Nevada Girl Scout website is brightly colored and has lots of pictures of happy smiling kids, mostly a bit older than Miranda. It advertises a couple of Reno-based day camps ($10/day) that include a picture of some kids in armbands in a sunny outdoor swimming pool and a tiny girl on a climbing wall, and day trips to national parks, and a weeklong road trip to Oregon in July though that one costs $400 per child. If there are age limits they're at least not marked. 

Ooh, climbing wall. And the national park trips look awesome. ($400 is probably too much money and also a week under the authority of a bunch of random adults with a bunch of random kids sounds like a bit of an unpleasant crapshoot. Something to sleep on and generally contemplate the pros and cons of.)

She does not have time to go down the rabbit hole of local academic summer programs before bedtime; she leaves an open tab with "academic summer programs Reno" typed in as a reminder. (She needs a day planner. This whole no-phone-having thing is ass.)

Evelyn praises Miranda on her proactiveness (and not Googling anything inappropriate, though she doesn't say that) and suggests they have a look together in the morning. She nudges her upstairs to get ready for bed. 

(It's too bad that $400 would in fact be a financial strain; it's not that she literally can't afford it, but she can't afford that kind of expense for every child and it's not fair to start treating kids differently like that. Maybe she can convince Social Services to cough up some extra funding if she can find a program that counts as educational enrichment, which that specific one probably doesn't but there must be options.) 

(Miranda would feel utterly dishonorable if she noticed Evelyn spending more on her than on other children unless it was specifically related to giving her the opportunity to do something totally badass and possibly even then.)

She goes upstairs and brushes her teeth and goes to bed and lies awake for two hours again. Sleeps a bit better now that she's not expecting to have to execute her shower like a heist.

The next few days fall into a comfortable rhythm of autodidacticism and embroidery. She looks at academic summer camps and finds most of them a mix of expensive and unbearably childlike in a way hiking camps are orthogonal to, and longs for an internship in a lab or a job bagging groceries or something else bright and clean and honest. She reads a solid chunk of Göedel, Escher, Bach and sings its praises to Evelyn and asks if she can make a Wikipedia account to add some of the information from one of her history books to the relevant pages ("it'd be good writing practice") and embroiders a patch for her backpack (abstract Tron circuitry in blue and green on back). She gets a notebook for keeping track of todos and appointments (mostly stuff like Jeremy's study group nights and her slate of medical checkups).

Evelyn writes up detailed log notes and emails them to Barb, who never replies but Evelyn knows from experience that she reads everything and has a memory for it like a steel trap. She recruits Miranda's help in cooking and learns some more vegan recipes, including an absolutely delicious bean salad. It's still just the two of them at home during the day, and since school won't be out for a couple of weeks and summer camps mostly begin on July 1st, she tries to coax Miranda out on some nature hikes. 

She asks Jeremy if editing Wikipedia is, in his opinion, safe and appropriate for a child Miranda's age. Jeremy tells her that he can't see the issue with it if she's staying off pages about sex and stuff, which Jeremy is sure she's responsible enough to do, who even wants to read about sex when they're six. Evelyn hadn't realized that Wikipedia had pages about "sex and stuff" - and Safe Search won't even block most of them - although in hindsight it's pretty obvious it would. Jeremy promises that edit logs are viewable and he can keep an eye on Miranda's Wikipedia activity for her. 

After some careful thought, Evelyn agrees to Miranda setting up a Wikipedia account, on the condition that they sit down first and have a Conversation about how not everything on Wikipedia is appropriate for kids, and Miranda should tell her right away if she accidentally runs into anything that makes her uncomfortable. 

They have a pleasant weekend and Jeremy spends more time at home than usual, and even joins them on errands and a trip to the swimming pool, which Evelyn is delighted about. On the Monday night, Jeremy says he's having study group. (Miranda's doctor's appointment is on Tuesday and her dentist check-up is on Thursday.) 

Miranda will cheerfully go on nature hikes and promise sincerely not to intentionally go on child-inappropriate Wikipedia pages (i.e. sex and especially-bad historical atrocities). She gets the good kind of physically exhausted swimming laps in the pool and then eats a ton of bean salad about it. And she shows up to Jeremy's study group, with a book on ancient Egypt in case everyone is just going to put their heads down and study and the minimal concession to appearances of wearing her most soberly-colored shirt (it has a wolf on it).

Jeremy arrives home from school with Paul, apparently his "best bud" since elementary school. He's shorter than Jeremy but clearly works out, and has dark hair, a much worse case of teenage acne, a straggly not-quite-moustache, and a tatty Green Day T-shirt. The two of them slam down their backpacks in the corner by the table until Evelyn mutters that there are hooks RIGHT THERE, and then makes them smoothies. 

Paul tilts his chair back and squints curiously at Miranda. "Jer says you're some sorta prodigy and you can program. That's sick. Also I dunno if you're into math too but we're doing calculus tonight." 

"Calculus sounds great! And so does Green Day, good taste." Ah crap that's probably inappropriate for children. Boulevard of Broken Dreams doesn't have anything too fucked up in it right?

If Evelyn thinks this is notably inappropriate for children, she doesn't show it or make any comment. (Once you've seen enough cases where birth parents thought it was normal and fine to watch adult videos while their toddler played in the floor in their studio apartment, parents playing rock music that occasionally uses swearwords or mentions the existence of sex in a way that would go over a six-year-old's head barely registers.) 

She carries over smoothies. 

The two other study buddies, Ethan and Tyler, arrive together five minutes later in Ethan's mother's car. Ethan is tall and skinny with longish red hair and glasses. Tyler is overweight, though more in the range of 'chubby' than 'obese', and quite good-looking, with thick curly dark hair, soulful nut-brown eyes, and olive skin unmarred by teen acne. He's dressed in what is somehow very obviously a theatre kid's outfit, and wearing eyeliner. 

Ethan seems more introverted, and doesn't make eye contact either with Miranda or with Evelyn, but Tyler practically swaggers into the room. "This is the kid? Nice shirt." 

"Thanks! It's good to meet you." Paul Ethan Tyler Paul Ethan Tyler she's going to forget which is which in two days maximum but she has a chance at remembering for the rest of tonight if she works at it.

They can get down to some studying! Mostly they're doing practice problems on integrals for polynomial functions. They're all clearly familiar with the theory, but slow at using it in practice. They're also not spectacularly focused; Jeremy and Paul in particular keep accidentally ending up talking about non-math things, mostly sports and plans for the summer. Tyler is trying so hard not to make any sex jokes about curves. 

Miranda has very faded memories of polynomial integrals but she remembers the chain rule and if anyone has a textbook she can refamiliarize herself with the product rule. Then she gets distracted working through a proof of the product rule in the hope that this time around she'll be able to retain it indefinitely.

Ethan is the one who spots what she's doing, since he's faster at solving the problems than the others (it helps that he doesn't seem incredibly interested in sports and apparently isn't making plans for a summer job, so he's less drawn into the conversation.) 

"Wow! Are you just - rederiving the proof? The teacher walked us through it in class but that's not even going to be on the exam, I don't think." 

"I checked what the end state is supposed to be and now I'm trying to get there looking at the book as little as possible, yeah. I don't have to be ready for the exam so I can take as long as I want to make sure it sticks in my head." She's pretty sure she's gone down a complete wrong track so she starts trying something else branching off from four steps earlier.

"Wow. Yeah. That makes sense. It's neat you have the free time to do that - I guess you probably have a lot of free time, you must be bored stiff in school." 

"I haven't started school yet. I'll probably start in the fall and then I don't know how busy I'll be. Hopefully not too busy to--do things at a speed I like; apparently there are schools that let you pick what order to learn things in and they're going to see about letting me go to one." 

"- Oh, right, Jer said you were homeschooled before." Ethan looks if anything even more impressed. "Were your parents super-geniuses too?" 

She suspects she looked up to her parents. She's almost sure she loved them.

"That's a very reasonable question I'm going to refuse to answer for no apparent reason, sorry. --Would you like to tell me about your parents instead?"

"- Maybe when we take a study break, I should actually be doing these problems." (And Tyler wants Miranda's advice on unsticking himself from a problem, he's confused about which one of the rules to use.) 

They take a break at 6:30 and Jeremy puts a frozen pizza in the oven. "Mom, you're getting a night off cooking. - I guess Miranda can't eat pizza even if I put in a plain cheese one. Do you want me to make you something, Miranda? ...I can't do fancy like Mom." 

"Jeremy, love, you're entirely capable of following a recipe." 

"You have actual obligations and stuff, I can eat crackers and a fake yogurt cup from the fridge or something."

"Yeah, but I feel bad. Mom, buy vegan pizza next time you go shopping. I'll make it up to you on a night I don't have study group, 'kay, Miranda?" 

Does Miranda still want to hear about Ethan's family while they take a break and eat?