The Wiz

"Has she shown you her re- sume?" she asks. "It'll make you embarrassed about your own."

Of all the forces shaping Elizabeth's life, her mother, arguably, has been the strongest. She is a person of high energy and strong opinions who, since Elizabeth was a baby, has been trying to indoctrinate her against the various subliminal ways of the world. Once, in first grade, Elizabeth brought home a work sheet that had a drawing of a woman and another drawing of a man, and other drawings of various things that Elizabeth was supposed to match to the appropriate person. "There was a scrub brush, a needle and thread, a broom," Carolyn remembers. Also "a hammer, a saw, a screwdriver . . ." She remembers being offended by the assignment, phoning the teacher and saying, "You must have gotten a lot of calls on this," and the teacher saying, "Well, no, actually, you're the only one." She also remembers explaining to Elizabeth what she was upset about, that in their house, for instance, Mother fixes the broken things and Father does the dishes, and lastly she remembers Elizabeth, pointing to the drawing, saying, "But Mother, this is reality."

So the lessons continued, and, in fact, continue still: Here's what's wrong with this advertisement, here's what's wrong with this picture, here's what's wrong with this song. Once, last year, when the two of them were in the car, the song on the radio was one Elizabeth really liked, with the refrain "You're every woman in the world to me," and Carolyn began explaining that the lyrics suggested women were generic, interchangeable, even irrelevant. Elizabeth didn't say too much back, not then, but later she wrote an essay about it. "It was a great song," she wrote, "the kind you can play over and over with a tape but wait for it to come on the radio because it just makes your day to hear a great song completely unexpectedly -- it means the Radio is on your side. But near the end of the song, my mom piped up as usual and pointed out a different interpretation, one which made the entire song sound demeaning to women. And that always leaves you wondering, and you can never love the song as much because you always have to wonder. I hated her in that moment, hated her for forcing me to interpret things this way, because once you see you can't forget and it begins to poison everything you find." Not only did Elizabeth write that, she entered it in an essay contest. And, of course, won. And Carolyn, being a good mother, told her how proud she was, and a year after the fact continues to brag about its thoughtfulness, even though, when Elizabeth is out of earshot, she explains, "What she's furious about is I'm right. It's a displaced anger. What she's really angry about is it's a sexist world, and she personalizes it by being angry at me."

All of this is said pleasantly. Carolyn is a steady, supportive presence to her daughter, as is Jim, as is every other part of Elizabeth's home life, including the home itself. It is a comfortable place through and through, not at all dressed up. There's a fat, likable dog at the front door, a Statue of Liberty lamp with a red fringe shade in the living room, a world map in the dining room, some red sneakers under the kitchen table that Carolyn reminds Elizabeth have been there for a week, a front yard that needs weeding, a back yard that needs mowing, books everywhere, a TV that's rarely used and a stereo playing classical music. Up the stairs, past the wall of old family photographs, is Elizabeth's room. Nothing in it offers a recipe for how to raise a brilliant child; it is simply a room, a little cluttered, books here, magazines there, a few pieces of art on the walls and half a dozen stuffed animals on the trundle bed. The view out the window is of a park across the street, while just beyond the tree line, a little too far away to see, is the other great force in Elizabeth's life so far: old, sagging Montgomery Blair.

Even without the magnet program, it would have been her high school. Blair is in the lower eastern part of Montgomery County, the most multicultural part, which is one of the main reasons Elizabeth's family decided to move to the neighborhood. Eight years ago, however, as the school's minority population was nearing the 70 percent mark, a consensus formed that things were a little out of whack. That's when the magnet program was installed at Blair, put there as a way to even things out by attracting white students from other parts of the county.

It has done that, but slowly. Mike Haney, the first coordinator of the magnet, remembers how unnerved parents from the more affluent parts of the county were by the thought of sending their children to Blair. "A real tough sell," is how he describes the first couple of years. "And the problem was greater with girls because parents seem to be especially protective of their daughters." The first year's magnet class of 72 students was about 26 percent female; the second year's class wasn't much better. Just as troubling, a disproportionate number of girls who did enroll began dropping out and returning to their neighborhood schools.

The reason for that, Haney came to believe, wasn't Blair, but the magnet program itself. It had been structured to mirror a boy's emotional development, he realized, which in many ways was at odds with a girl's. For instance, an early emphasis on physics, rather than life sciences, was something many of the girls said they didn't like. They also didn't like the strong emphasis on using computers. "Why?" Haney remembers asking a girl one day as they looked at some boys in the computer lab who were busy typing away. "They like it," he said. "They'll sit there all day." "Yeah," the girl said, "but look at the social skills of those boys."

So the program was recast to seem a little friendlier toward girls -- competition was de-emphasized, group work was stressed -- and by the time Elizabeth arrived four years ago, things were humming nicely along. The number of girls still hadn't come close to 50 percent (and hasn't so far), but at least the migration had stopped.

Not that everything was perfect, or is perfect yet. These are students, after all, who operate at levels different from the rest of the students at Blair, or most any other high school for that matter. Out of this year's magnet class of 94 graduating seniors, 21 applied to Harvard. "Twenty-one applications to Harvard is ridiculous," says Leah Cutler, the guidance counselor. But that's the magnet. Whether or not the program consciously tries to avoid competition, these are students who are highly motivated to achieve, and, as a component of that, are sensitive to any break, any advantage, any hint of favoritism or extra attention that might not go their way.

All of which is to say that Elizabeth, The Girl, "The Darling," the joy of almost every teacher who has taught her, has had her share of difficult moments.

"Elizabeth has always borne the burden of teachers being absolutely charmed by her," says Cutler. "They are in awe of her. They have set her up as a paragon in their minds, and, I think, in the mind of her peers, which has made her road that much harder."

"She's in a very difficult position," agrees Mike Haney. "I think she is held in such high esteem by teachers that other students, no matter how gifted they are, feel they're always being compared to -- Elizabeth."