CHAPTER THREE: What’s In A Number?

Growing up, Bette Porter wasn’t like your average kid. And no, it wasn’t just because she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth – or because she had round-the-clock nannies supervising her care and bodyguards watching her every move. And it surely wasn’t because of the tiny detail that when she popped out of her mother’s womb, she was already a hundred times richer than half of the world’s population combined.

Bette Porter was different for other things too, and among those vast differences was her fascination with numbers. You see, most children grow up with a strong dislike for numbers – mathematics specifically. It was like icky broccoli for their reluctant brains – too much to take in, too difficult to digest. But little Bette wasn’t your typical child. She loved math. She adored numbers. When she was merely three years old and an innocent newly-hired nanny tried to teach her how to count to ten, she blew out her chubby cheeks in vexation and proceeded to count to a hundred. The nanny was impressed – scared, even – but that was just normal behavior for Melvin and Maxine’s temperamental little Einstein. At the tender of age of seven, she could already multiply and divide small numbers while her peers were still scratching their heads and going cross-eyed with simple addition and subtraction problems. A product of two brilliant minds, Bette was lucky that she didn’t inherit her parents’ recessive genes. Her teachers were in awe of her, and her father? He was gloating at the sidelines – attributing her sharp calculator-like brain to his own genius DNA.

Maybe it was because she grew up in an environment that thrived in dealing with figures and amounts, or maybe even because her father encouraged it by supplementing her learning with tricky text books and educational videos; but whatever it was that spurred her passion for numbers at such a young age, there was no denying her overwhelming love for it. Huge figures captivated her, complicated equations excited her. It challenged her brain, and you know how much that girl loves a challenge. A consistent Best in Math awardee since first grade, she did not only do well in the subject, she lorded over it too. Quiz bee’s were her forte – and the class nerds? They bowed down to her greatness and acknowledge her reign in the subject matter.