Ungifted (13 page)

Luckily, the Daniels saw the chaperones watching and retreated before Abigail could get back to them. Or maybe it was unlucky—it left me dancing with her. I was stuck too. I couldn't very well chase away two guys, and then blow her off the minute they were gone. It was pretty ridiculous, when you think about it. I didn't even like these school parties, and here I'd gone to great lengths to saddle myself doing my unfavorite thing with my unfavorite person. At least the Daniels had retreated. I saw them over by the drink table, now schmoozing some other girl—one who was a lot more their type. She was tall with long legs and a really cute face. A little overdressed, but she made it work. A cut above your standard eighth-grade girl who got caught downwind of the makeup factory explosion.

I did a double take.

That was no hottie; that was
Chloe!
Plaid-flannel Chloe! I barely recognized her! Man, she looked different! And not just different-different! Different-
awesome!

It made sense. This party was a huge deal to her. Of course she'd go all out.

And now the Daniels were going to lob a grenade into her night.

I snagged Noah by the sparkle vest, and yanked him over to Abigail. “No problem, Noah. Of course you can cut in. Have a good time, you two.”

And I was off like a shot, plowing through the tightly packed attendees. By the time I'd reached Chloe, she was in her glory, basking in the attention of two “normal” guys. Sarcasm intended.

I grabbed each Daniel by the back of the collar and pulled them away from her.

Chloe was horrified. “Donovan, what are you doing?”

I decided to be more honest with Chloe than I'd been with Abigail. “I know these clowns.”

“I know them too, remember? From the mall?”

“Beat it, Donovan,” Nussbaum urged. “You know when they say ‘party pooper?' That's you right now.”

I'd never be able to explain it to her—that they were only building her up so they could drop her over a cliff and walk away laughing. So I just kept hold of them by the scruffs of their necks, and marched them through the exit.

Chloe was following us. “What's the matter with you, Donovan? You can't treat people like that!” Her anger was a microclimate. I could feel the heat all around me. Another satisfied customer.

I dragged the Daniels where she couldn't follow us—into the boys' bathroom. The door gonged shut behind us, leaving her in midsentence.

Nussbaum surveyed the plumbing fixtures. “Look at that toilet! That's got to be the smartest toilet I've ever seen. You could come in here an idiot, and leave a genius!”

“And you would have done your business too,” added Sanderson helpfully. “You know—if you had to go. It's a win-win situation.”

“All right, guys,” I sighed. “I get it. You don't like the gifted school very much. Neither do I. But for reasons you know very well, I'm stuck here.”

“I pity you,” Nussbaum commiserated. “These people! Did you catch that guy with the vest and the boots? What is he—a Christmas tree ornament?”

“That guy,” I told him, “is smarter than everybody else at the Academy put together, with the rest of us thrown in for good measure. He could probably devise a way to kill you without looking away from his YouTube videos.”

“Him?” Nussbaum hooted. “Don't make me laugh!”

“They're just people,” I pleaded. “So what if they're a little nerdier than the rest of us? I know you came here to make trouble. Please don't.”

“You're no fun anymore,” Sanderson complained. “The old Donovan would be with us a hundred percent. You'd pants the vest guy, and take the kneeless chick on
Dancing with the Stars
. And the good-looking one—”

“She wasn't
that
good,” Nussbaum put in critically.

“You could whack her with a branch so that she rolls down and smashes something. It wouldn't be the first time.”

I sighed. “Go home. This isn't the place for you.”

“Now I'm insulted,” Nussbaum drawled. “We come all the way across town to visit your smarty-pants school, and you try to kick us out? Where's your hospitality? You didn't show us your locker. You didn't show us your homeroom. You didn't even show us your famous robot. We deserve better than that.”

I looked at him skeptically. “You're interested in the robot?”

“Interested? Man, I'm a robot enthusiast! I saw
The Terminator
, like, twenty times!”

I hesitated. “If I show you Tin Man, do you promise to leave the Academy kids alone?”

Sanderson snapped the two-finger salute. “Scout's honor.”

“You were never a scout!” sneered Nussbaum. “They threw you out! They threw us all out when Donovan burned down the tent.”

I couldn't suppress a smile. “It said ‘fireproof' on the box.”

“Maybe that meant the
box
was fireproof,” Nussbaum conceded.

We all laughed. At the time, it hadn't been funny, but it was pretty funny now.

“I'll show you the robot.”

Homeroom 107 wasn't far from the gym—just two turns down dim hallways past the custodial offices and a couple of science labs. The door was closed but unlocked. I opened it, and turned on the lights to reveal the organized chaos that was the robotics program.

“Whoa!” breathed Sanderson. “Paging Dr. Frankenstein!”

Funny, I was used to the place. But to the Daniels, it might as well have had bubbling test tubes and jagged forks of electricity dancing up Jacob's ladders. Equipment was piled on every surface, components and spare parts lay strewn like candy wrappers, and odd instruments and tools hung from the walls. There were even “cobwebs” of multicolored wires suspended from the ceiling and stretched all over.

“So where's the robot?” asked Nussbaum.

I pointed to Tin Man at the center of it all. “Star of our show.”

“What? That?” Sanderson exclaimed in disbelief. “That's just a metal box with a picture of some old guy eating a banana!”

“That's Einstein, Einstein!” Nussbaum exploded.

“He's old, isn't he?”

“No, he's dead! Sheesh! How stupid can you get?”

Sanderson gestured at the jungle of wires and technology that surrounded us. “Donovan, you understand all this … stuff?”

“I don't understand
any
of it,” I replied honestly. “Even Mr. Osborne doesn't get much more than half. That's why it takes a team. We've got mechanical people, electronics people, computer people, hydraulics people, and pneumatics people.”

“Which are you?” Nussbaum prodded.

“I downloaded the pictures,” I admitted ruefully. “And I'm good with the controller—years of practice with video games.”

They seemed dissatisfied with this explanation, like I was holding something back. “Guys, you of all people know why I'm at this school. Do you think I got into the Academy for my brain, and then busted up the gym on purpose so I'd have a cover story as an excuse to come here every day? I'm hiding! I know it's not going to last forever, but I have to keep it going at least until the heat dies down. My family doesn't have the kind of money it would take to fix that gym. Or to pay for lawyers if we get sued! So please don't make it any harder than it already is.”

They took pity on me. It must have been the lab that did the trick. Maybe it finally sunk in how unfun it was to be the only mental turkey in a school of soaring eagles.

By the time we got back to the gym, the dance was completely off the chain. The floor almost moved with the force of hundreds of pounding feet. Bodies were packed in like sardines, the heat and humidity pushing past the tolerance level. The chaperones were trying in vain to thin out the crowd, which had to be far past what the fire marshal would have found acceptable. Whatever food and drink was left had been mashed into a paste and spread as a thin film across the hardwood. The music was so loud that the beat rattled your brain inside the casing of your skull.

Did I mention the smell? Pizza, sweat, and AXE body spray.

Sanderson grabbed Nussbaum. “Let's find Heather and Deirdre!”

“I'll catch up with you guys later,” I promised. It was a lie. The only person I intended to catch up with was Mr. Osborne. Once my extra credit was in the bag, I was out of here.

You couldn't push through this crowd any more. You had to be swallowed, the way an amoeba ingests its food. Movement was worth your life. At least twice, the ebb and flow took me out onto the dance floor. At one point, I passed very close to Chloe, who glared at me, still miffed. When I finally spotted Oz, he looked like he now regretted making attendance mandatory for his students. It served him right.

I waved my arm in an attempt to catch his attention, and that was when I recognized the other adult standing beside him, the man who had to be even hotter than the rest of us in his three-piece suit.

Dr. Schultz.

I ducked out of the superintendent's line of sight. He'd never spot me at the crowd's butt level. Being trampled was a small price to pay to remain hidden. Extra credit meant nothing now. All that mattered was escape.

I got down on all fours and crawled, not the most dignified way to leave a party, and definitely not the cleanest. Let me tell you, whether it's the coolest Hardcastle jock, or the dweebiest squint in the Academy, it hurts the same when they're stomping on your fingers. But it was the most efficient way to travel. Pretty soon, I was at the door, home free.

Before I made my break, I gave the madness one last scan. What I saw nearly stopped my heart.

At the very center of the dance floor, the nucleus of the amoeba, a huge tight circle had formed around a small group of dancers. Three of them, to be exact. Daniel Sanderson, Daniel Nussbaum, and Tin Man Metallica Squarepants.

Rage almost blinded me. My “friends” had doubled back to the lab and wheeled the robot right into the riotous pounding heart of the Valentine Dance.

The dilemma was excruciating, and instantly clear. If I went back in there to rescue Tin Man, and Schultz spotted me, my whole world would come crashing down around my ears. What did I care if Tin Man got trashed? It wasn't my robot. It wasn't even my school. The sum total of my contribution to the project was a name and Einstein eating a banana!

No. Not true. I'd made another contribution—the Daniels. If it wasn't for me, those two bottom feeders would never have known that Tin Man even existed. Anything that happened to that poor robot tonight was my fault.

That's when it hit me. I
did
care. Not so much about the robotics team—and definitely not about some bucket of bolts on Mecanum wheels. How many chances did I get to limit the damage of my impulses? Once Atlas's globe is rolling, there's nothing anyone can do to save the gym at the bottom of the hill.

But this was different. Tin Man wasn't wrecked yet. There was still time to make things right.

I pushed back into the gym, jamming my way through dancing torsos. I could see that my trajectory was taking me on a collision course with Oz and—yikes!—Dr. Schultz. The adults had spotted Tin Man and were rushing to the robot. I grabbed a baseball cap off the nearest head, and jammed it low over my face. Why make it easy for the guy to bust me?

Some of my classmates had noticed too. Kevin, Jacey, and Latrell were stuck at various places in the crowd, struggling to reach Tin Man. Abigail was red-faced and screaming, although her cries were inaudible in the general din. Chloe got behind me, riding my wake toward the scene of the crime. We were making progress, but would we get there in time?

At the center of it all, Sanderson was draped over Tin Man's back, rolling the robot to and fro as if slow-dancing with it. Nussbaum had hold of the two forklift arms, and was jitterbugging to his own rhythms. I tackled him to the gym floor, and when he went down, he took one of the arms with him. Triumphantly, he held it over his head, and an enormous cheer rose in the gym.

To my classmates, it meant only one thing: Tin Man was being dismantled.

Kevin and Latrell faced down Sanderson.

“
Get away from Tin Man!
” Kevin bawled.

Problem was, those guys had never been in a fight in their lives, so their body language was completely unfightlike. Latrell couldn't even make a fist properly—he had his thumb pressed
inside
his fingers.

Sanderson took one look at that and laughed in their faces. He stopped laughing, though, when Abigail booted him in the shins.

“Get out of my school, you”—she struggled for just the right put-down—“you
average person!
”

That's when it got ugly. A shoving match broke out. After a few seconds, it was no longer just the Daniels
vs
. the robotics team. The conflict had widened. It was now Hardcastle
vs
. the Academy.

All the resentment, the jealousy, and the bullying attitude toward the gifted program boiled over at that very spot, turning the dance into a free-for-all, with Tin Man caught in the crossfire.