Ungifted (11 page)

“I'm not—” I protested.

But she had a point. I
had
been avoiding the Daniels, who were being totally unreasonable about “sharing
our
Valentine Dance with a dweeb army.” Sanderson's words, not mine.

“Poor you,” I'd told him at the time. “If you're so offended by smart people, don't go.”

“Deirdre's going to be there,” he'd shot back. “And Heather. She's into you, man.”

At that point Nussbaum had punched him in the gut. “Heather's into
me
!”

“Nobody's going to be into anyone when the Academy dorks suck all the coolness out of the air,” Sanderson had complained.

That conversation really bugged me. I mean, nobody knew better than me that the gifted kids weren't exactly über-happening. But this was a school dance, not some A-list Hollywood red-carpet event. Like there weren't any uncool people at Hardcastle!

I faced Katie. “They're not crazy—most of them. Don't knock them. These days, they're your biggest fans.”

She cast a sour look at Beatrice. “They're not exactly facing stiff competition in that department.”

“Show some respect for the almost dead.”

“That's not funny,” she snarled through gritted teeth. “Did it ever occur to you that my marriage could be on the line over that dog? No, because it's all the same to you so long as your weird classmates get to paw the Incredible Expanding Stomach!”

I sighed. “If they're smart enough to predict supernovas on the opposite side of the galaxy, credit them with the brains to appreciate how you came to their rescue.”

Her eyes narrowed. “There's something fishy about this whole gifted thing. It doesn't add up. I'm not saying you're stupid, but you're hardly the type to sniff around for extra work.”

“I
didn't
sniff around. The Academy found me, remember?”

“I do remember,” she conceded. “That's the fishy part. Anyway, we should get going. My appointment with Dr. Manolo is at nine-thirty.”

I was attending Katie's next obstetric checkup—not as her brother, but as a member of Human Growth and Development 101. Mr. Osborne had gotten permission for a field trip, so our whole class was going. I hoped Dr. Manolo had invested in a spacious office.

Driving with Katie was an adventure these days. Her stomach was so huge that she had to set the seat all the way back. Her arms were barely long enough to reach the wheel, and she hunched forward, looking like Jeff Gordon wedged behind a giant beach ball.

We were just waddling in from the parking lot when the minibus arrived. You could tell they didn't get a lot of school buses at the clinic. In obstetrics, the only kids involved were the ones being born. And not too many pregnant women arrived with an entourage of brainiacs.

The doctor was running late, so we had to wait forty minutes, which wasn't exactly pleasant. Noah speed-read through two years' worth of
Mother-to-Be Magazine
, peppering Katie with questions like “Have you eaten any unpasteurized cheeses lately?”

“No,” she grumbled. “Have you?”

“What's your opinion of giving the baby solid food before four months?”

“You're bringing back my morning sickness,” she warned.

“Really? According to the June 2011 issue, that happens in the first trimester.”

She glared at him. “It came back when they saw my stomach on YouTube—in Afghanistan.”

Oz quickly stepped between them. “Let's give Katie a little space, Noah. This is
her
doctor's appointment, after all. We're just privileged to be here.”

When we finally got called, the nurse said, “I'm sorry. Only immediate family in the examining room.”

“They
are
family,” Katie informed her with a sigh. “You know how you can't pick your relatives?”

The woman was adamant. “I'm afraid it's a privacy issue.”

“I have no privacy,” Katie replied wearily. “My stomach is on YouTube.”

Oz was ready to back everybody off, but Dr. Manolo was kind of psyched to have an audience. He used to work at a teaching hospital, he explained. He missed having students around.

We kept our distance for the exam, of course, but we watched the sonogram, and we were all invited to put on the stethoscope and listen to the baby's heartbeat.

“Sounds kind of freaky,” commented Latrell. “You know, listening to another person who's trapped in there.”

Katie made a face. “I can't tell you how thrilled I am that my family planning is contributing to your horror-movie fantasy.”

“It's a miracle,” Chloe breathed.

Even Abigail's serious expression softened when she had the stethoscope on.

Oz assumed a far-off, dreamy expression. “I remember these appointments from when my wife and I were expecting our own kids. There's nothing quite like it.”

The doctor kept Katie a few minutes extra. When she stepped out into the waiting room, the students of Human Growth and Development 101 leaped to their feet and gave her a rousing standing ovation. Their enthusiasm was so infectious that everybody in the reception room joined in—all the other expectant moms and dads and family members.

Katie was so taken aback that she actually did a little curtsy, blushing deep mauve. “I didn't do anything,” she insisted. But the smile on her face was 100 percent genuine.

Katie headed home alone, and I got on the minibus with everybody else for the ride to the Academy.

“How was the field trip?” asked the driver. “Fun?”

Chloe nodded enthusiastically. “We were at a pelvic exam!”

“And we listened to a fetus,” added Noah.

The driver seemed bewildered.

“We're gifted,” I explained.

W
ell, my “no screwups” rule was pretty much out the window. My life had become one big screwup after another.

Three weeks had now passed, and not a single repair had been made to the Hardcastle gym. Frankly, no one was doing anything about anything. The insurance company was digging in its corporate heels, and we had no option but to dig in ours. The instrument of destruction, Atlas's detached “globe,” was collecting dust in the basement of the administration building, next to old filing cabinets and a lawn tractor that was missing one wheel. What was left of the statue looked incomplete and idiotic. Most maddening of all, I could not for the life of me find the piece of paper on which I'd written the name of the horrible boy responsible for all this.

I'd scoured every millimeter of my office. I'd even gone personally and ransacked Cynthia's desk, in case she'd carried it off by accident. I'd hired a cleaning company to go over the entire administration building with a fine-tooth comb. Nothing. He was out there somewhere, laughing at me, getting off scot-free.

My wife said I was becoming obsessed with this phantom boy. Maybe so. Lately, I'd been finding excuses to visit Hardcastle Middle School in the hope that I would recognize his cocky sneering face somewhere. But I never saw him. It was as if the culprit didn't go to school there anymore. If only I had the name …

Irrationally, I began shuffling papers on my desk. It had been right here!

Cynthia tottered in on her high heels. “Dr. Schultz, I have the first progress report on the new Human Growth and Development project at the Academy. The special expert is named Katie Patterson, and she's the sister of one of the students, a boy named Don—”

“Just put it on my desk,” I interrupted, still peering into drawers. Wasn't that the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result?

I had to get a grip on my nerves. I had duties to perform, and bringing this boy to justice was only one of them. Case in point: The relocated Hardcastle Middle School Valentine Dance was tonight. This would be the first time it had ever taken place off campus,
and
the first time that outside students were being included. We were infinitely proud of our high achievers at the Academy for Scholastic Distinction, but many of them weren't the most socially adept young people. I wanted to be on hand to make sure everything ran smoothly.

And I mustn't forget to make contact with this Mrs. Patterson so I could express the gratitude of the entire school district. What a wonderful family they must be—the husband serving our country in the military, and she, selflessly helping that one class in its time of need. If only more people were like that.

<<
Hypothesis: I have the perfect wardrobe—
for milking a cow
.>>

N
o, that was more than a hypothesis. It was cold, hard fact, backed up by the pathetic reality of the contents of my closet. Also feeding chickens, pulling weeds, driving a combine harvester, and other farm chores. What I didn't have was anything to wear to the Valentine Dance.

It wasn't exactly a shocker. Sad to say, I'd never been to anything like this before. Almost fourteen years old, and the only real party I'd attended was the kind where your parents are there and you have to waltz with your cousin, the bowlegged one with the giant Adam's apple.

Don't get me wrong. I was psyched. I was
beyond
psyched. To me, this was far more than another school's shindig we'd been invited to crash. This was a chance for us to prove an important hypothesis in front of the staff and students of the biggest middle school in town:

<<
Hypothesis: Being gifted doesn't automatically make people social outcasts
.>>

True, some of us
were
social outcasts—Noah Youkilis came to mind. But regular schools had those too. We were no different from the rest of humanity. And we were going to show that we were every bit as capable of having a good time.

All thanks to Donovan Curtis.

Obviously, I understood that Donovan hadn't made any of this happen directly. He couldn't possibly have destroyed the Hardcastle gym, forcing them to move the dance to ours. Nobody was capable of shaping human events like that.

Yet the minute he'd walked into Oz's homeroom that day, I knew things were about to change. I could feel it in the air; smell it in the wind—of course, that might have been the sulfur fumes from the chemistry lab down the hall. It was almost as if the gods of Normal had sent us their messenger as a sign that our geekdom was coming to an end.

Donovan was almost too normal. I'd heard the rumors around school about an unqualified kid at the Academy. It wasn't hard to identify this newbie who didn't have what it took. It might have been just gossip. Some of us were so hypercompetitive that it killed us to admit anybody else could be the real deal.

From what I'd seen of Donovan, though, there might have been an element of truth to the gossip. It pained me to say it. I liked him a lot, and he'd made a huge contribution to our robotics team, in spite of very limited knowledge of the subject. Best of all, he'd found a way for us to fulfill our Human Growth and Development requirement—something that helped him not at all. He was doing it purely for us.