In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

A QUICK FLIGHT HOME
Business class. Plenty of leg room. Quiet with the
complimentary earplugs. She looked out the window at the blanket of
clouds below and drank free champagne, lots of free champagne. Then
she sank into the cushy seat and fell into a heavy dreamless sleep and
had to be shaken awake by the flight attendant when they were already
parked at JFK.
Penny had a week before her grilling, so she figured she'd go
visit the folks, check up on her dad and find out how K.C. fared out on
the ice pack. Better than feeling sorry for herself in her basement.
The Missoula airport was nearly empty, just mountains of
plowed snow. Everything was still and white except the sky, orange
from the wood smoke that collected in the valley from all the stoves
and fireplaces. No one to meet her. Her dad said he was busy with
some project until school started up again and couldn't drive down to
pick her up. As an aging Asperger's syndrome parent and rote
misogynist, George Bell considered his daughter more a nuisance than
a blessing and was all too glad to ship her off to that special school.
So she took a taxi, a taxi to her own house in the Darby back
country and that cost her half her cash. Luckily, Sandro had stuck a
platinum Visa in with her return ticket. No note.
Dad was at the kitchen table, and piled on either side of him
were books, empty coffee cups, his shortwave radio, rulers, a compass,
chewed yellow pencils of different lengths, red pens, a messy stack of
three ring binders and a stack of loose papers weighted down by a
ceramic capacitor disc. He wasn't grading papers, though.
"Hi Dad, whatcha workin' on?" Penny came in and dumped her
knapsack on an empty chair.
"Stu Grolsch and I, one smart kid, I'll introduce you, we've
been working on this problem for the saucer. Podkletnov was right! As
long as the speed of light corresponds to the geometric average of the
sum of the tachyon speeds, we've got it! Pi in the sky! Neat-o! What do
you think your buddy Euclid would think of that?"
"It's Pythagoras, Dad."
"Of course, of course. There's coffee in the percolator, but you
can make a fresh pot, be a good girl. Got your postcards, sounds like
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