This is a tale of a 17-year-old, 5-feet 3-inches, lightnin’-quick basketball player; and it’s a story of an accomplished cellist. Same person.

Her name is Tayja Sallie.

Tayja has very little contact with her biological parents. She lives in Framingham with her aunt, Robin Sallie, 57, and Robin’s wife, Roxana Saad, who is in her early 60’s. The two women have been domestic partners since 1996.

“We renewed our vows in Massachusetts in 2017,” said Robin, who has had legal and physical custody of Tayja since 2010. “I’ve taken care of her since she was 18 months old.”

"It’s like I’ve got two mothers," Tayja says. "Roxana is the nice one, Robin’s the strict one.”

Roxana and Robin agree on this.

“I’m the spoiler,” says Saad. “If Tayja wants French toast for breakfast, I’m on it.” Robin demands more from Tayja in the classroom and in sports.

“We’re good cop, bad cop,” says Saad, “but everybody knows the story.”

Well, not everybody.

Tayja’s birth mother, Tinaya, lives in Pennsylvania. She has nine children, according to one of her daughters, Taryn, 19.

“Life was hard for her, but it was hard for all of us,” says Taryn. “I wish we could’ve all grown up together.”

From this cloudy backdrop, Tayja Sallie has emerged as somewhat of a wunderkind.

She was home-schooled for the most part before enrolling as an eighth-grader at the private Rivers School in Weston. She’s a sophomore now. Tayja’s interests are far-reaching and eclectic. She plays the cello with precision and stars on the basketball court. She’s a whiz at Latin and composes music. Her report cards have always been aflame with A’s.

“We did a lot of Latin with her in home-schooling,” says Robin. “She sang songs in Latin. She took two years of Italian. Tayja loves languages.”

“I’m a Latin nerd,” Tayja agreed. “It is close to Italian, especially the verbs.”

You don’t hear teenagers talk like that much.

"Tayja’s always been somewhat mysterious,” says Saad. “There’s always something below the surface, but it’s not a dark side. She’s non-judgmental, forgiving, helpful. Tayja makes everyone around her better. She may feel lucky she’s with Robin and me, but I feel we’re the lucky ones. She’s a gift.”

Saad, who is divorced, has two biological children, Ryan, 37, who works for the federal Department of Labor and Statistics in San Francisco, and Amanda, an environmental micro-biologist in Gent, Belgium.

Tayja began playing the cello when she was 7.

“I want to be a composer, mostly classical music,” she says. At 10, she attended Boston’s Project STEP, known for its music education.

“Tayja’s an incredibly talented musician,” says Gabriella Sanna, the former executive director of Project STEP and now director of the Rivers School Conservatory. “She’s also a composer. She’s very creative. If she wants to be a professional musician, she has what it takes.”

Tayja played the cello, either solo or in a quintet or orchestra, at Jordan Hall, Boston's Symphony Hall and Museum of Fine Arts and the Mayor’s Breakfast, among other performance venues.

She attended the Wayland School of Music when she was 8 and met Russian-trained cellist Zarina Irkaeva, who saw something in Tayja she rarely witnessed: a student so young with such a thirst to learn, to be exceptional.

“Robin told me ‘I can’t take the cello out of her hands,’” says Irkaeva.

Whatever Irkaeva threw at Tayja, the child wanted more. “I was thinking ‘I’m killing this child.’

But she has so much drive. She kept saying ‘I want to do this, I want to do that.’ She had such good concentration for someone who was still a child.”

Irkaeva, a Wheaton College professor, talked Robin into letting Tayja audition for the Great Woods Symphony Orchestra. She got in, at age 9, and played with the college’s orchestra for the next five years.

“She could be a renowned cellist, she’s already well-known,” said Bob Pipe, Sallie’s basketball coach at The Rivers School.

It’s fair to wonder, when does it become too much for a girl at a tender age? She wants it all. To her teachers, it’s just Tayja being Tayja.

“You are authentically true to yourself, and that is perhaps your greatest gift,” wrote Laura Brewer on Tayja’s 8th grade report summary.

“You finished the year with an explanation point – 98 percent - on the comprehensive final exam. Well done,” noted her 9th grade honors geometry teacher, Kristen Harder.

So where does the road, the dreams, take Tayja? Everything in her life seems rolled up like a spool of yarn ready to be untangled. She’s navigating the possibilities, and grasps the notion that settling on a singular walk of life may be difficult.

Mention basketball and she says “I’d love to play professionally.”

“Tayja’s interested in so many things,” says Sanna. “She has to make choices”.

Robin, a retired photo-journalist who worked for the Akron (Ohio) Beacon, coached youth basketball for years. When she and her wife moved to Framingham in 2010, Tayja was in fourth grade. Robin would continue to home-school Tayja. “But Framingham doesn’t allow home-schooled kids to play sports,” says Robin. And Tayja needed basketball as much as she craved the cello.

An email from Rochelle Santos, Media and Communications Manager of Framingham’s public schools, stated “only those students who are enrolled and in regular attendance will be eligible to participate in the interscholastic (sports) program.”

Pipe, a star athlete at Natick High and a Franklin resident, had heard about this small but ever-so-quick kid who was playing youth basketball and being coached by Robin.

“He came to some of our games,” says Tayja. “Rivers kinda found me.” With her grades, musicality and athleticism (she also plays lacrosse and volleyball) Tayja had other top schools to choose from, but Robin had a job in security at Rivers, so the decision-making was less stressful. They drive to school together.

The Rivers game program lists Tayja at 5-foot-4. She’s not buying it. “Maybe 5-3 and three-quarters, on a good day,” she grins. But there is no doubt about her flashiness on the court. From baseline to baseline she’s like a splash of lightning, which fits Pipe’s up tempo style. As small as she is, opponents often double and triple team Tayja in the backcourt trying to prevent her from initiating a fast break. Somehow, she manages to extricate herself from the crowd.

“They don’t want me to get the ball,” says Tayja. Once it’s in her hands, the race up court is on, the smallest player dictating what happens next. “I have the option of taking it all the way for layups if no one’s in front of me.”

Otherwise set plays are in order, orchestrated by Tayja.

Shooting has been a problem for Tayja. In fact, whether she should shoot with her left or right hand is an ongoing discussion. “Seriously, she’s the only player I’ve ever seen that when she catches the ball she has no idea what hand to shoot with,” says Pipe.

The only solution was to spend more time in the gym just shooting. Everything else about her game is stunningly instinctive, all built on otherworldly quickness. It’s as if she’s chasing moonbeams up and down the floor.

“I’m not too concerned about my shooting,” she says. “I give scoring opportunities to the players who are open.”

“Tayja is phenomenal on many levels,” says Riny Garner, who has had Tayja in the classroom at Rivers and has been her class advisor. “There’s not enough time in the day for all the things she wants to do. It’s not just her grades, it’s the level of questioning she brings to the classroom. We appreciate her level of conversation. There’s always something a little deeper she’s working on.”

Robin’s campus job allowed her to get Tayja in the Rivers gym early on school days.

“She would take hundreds of shots every day,” says Pipe, who only put Tayja on the varsity as an eighth-grader because some of his players were injured. “We needed some extra players for a Christmas tournament. She played in two games against top teams. She didn’t do a lot of scoring but was a complete menace on defense.”

Pipe kept her on the varsity team.

Tayja was born in Pittsburgh and previously lived in Ohio and Minnesota. As a result, friendships were difficult to maintain. “More acquaintances than friends,” she says. “Until we got to Framingham.”

She’d practice with Framingham’s middle school team even though the home-school rule meant she couldn’t be on the roster. Instead, she played for Framingham’s travel team, coached by Robin. Then CYO, with home games at Framingham’s St. Stephen’s gym. Wherever Tayja played, Robin was a presence.

The first time Tayja ambled over to Framingham High to watch the girls’ varsity team play, girls who might have been her teammates, she wondered what her emotions would be. “I was fine.” They were still her friends.

Now Tayja’s carving out a legacy a few miles away, at Rivers, which plays in the competitive Independent School League.

When Tayja reflects on her basketball journey, she clicks back to the first organized game she played in. “I was holding the ball at half court, just standing there, and somebody took the ball away from me.” That’s no small feat for opposing players now.

Tayja stopped growing early. She was determined that size would not hold her back. She always clung to Robin’s advice. “She’d tell me ‘Never give up, no quitting.’” When Tayja was signed up for a sport or extracurricular activity she didn’t particularly like and wanted to quit, “Robin would say to me ‘you’ve got to finish the season. I’ve already paid for the course!’”

When she was 4 or 5, Tayja was often the only girl on boys’ teams with older players. It made her tougher. One regret: “Wish I was stronger.”

Her Rivers teammates marvel at Tayja’s virtuosity on several levels.

“She’s tenacious on defense and a great passer,” says senior center Maren Durant. “Off the court she’s just as talented playing the cello. In school she’s always studying. “Tayja’s charismatic.”

“She never gets tired,” says Fiona Finn, a senior forward. “Tayja’s very quick and can get by anyone she wants too. After the game she’ll sometimes play the cello for us. She’s amazing at it.”

As for Tayja’s familial past, “she doesn’t speak much about it,” says Finn.

Although she’s of age, Tayja doesn’t have a driver’s license. “I’m lazy. I don’t like to drive. I have my own chauffeur.” Robin.

Many of the outfits Tayja wears to school she designed and knitted. She started when she was 5, after watching a DVD on the subject. At the Rivers Holiday basketball tournament, she sat in the stands during a preliminary game knitting, her attention drawn to her hands and nimble fingers in her lap. The packed gym was a torrent of yells and screams. Tayja rarely looked up. Like everything else she focuses on, knitting has her unbroken attention.

Who knows what Tayja Sallie winds up doing as she checks off these passages in her young life. A noted cellist, a basketball player, a Latin scholar?

“Tayja doesn’t follow the crowd,” says Garner, the class adviser. “She follows her inner-muse.”

All the while, hanging on a stream of dreams.

Reach Lenny Megliola at lennymegs41@gmail.com