Ungifted (16 page)

Noah drifted by the desk. “Good picture,” he commented. “Interesting idea to use a pregnant dog.”

The earth lurched. “Pregnant?” I rasped. “Beatrice?”

“Of course.” The young genius pointed out the features that had gotten by me and my entire family. “Note the distended belly, the prominent nipples, and the languid posture. Weren't you paying attention in Human Growth and Development when we compared human pregnancies to those of other mammals?”

I couldn't even respond, so rocked was I by this news. Wait till Katie got a load of this one. Her tank commander husband was expecting not one blessed event, but two! Brad's sainted mother must have let Beatrice run wild—and look what had happened! Later, when the dog started acting funny, Fanny had dumped her on us so she wouldn't have to take the blame.

My project—the one that was going to prove I belonged at the Academy—didn't mention a single word about pregnancy. So it was all stupid.

I snatched up my folder. “I just need to make a few last-minute adjustments—”

At that moment, the PA system crackled to life. “Mr. Osborne, would you bring Donovan Curtis to the library....”

“Ten minutes!” I pleaded.

I don't know if the voice heard me, but the announcement continued, “Immediately, please.”

That's where it was going to happen—the library. They would sit me down in front of a computer, and feed me questions I didn't have the answers to. In the end, it wouldn't matter that my chow chow project was a disaster. I wouldn't be in the gifted program much longer.

I squared my shoulders to my classmates. “Later, guys.” But what I meant was,
Good-bye
.

They looked devastated. Even Abigail seemed a lot less happy than I'd expected her to be. Either that, or she was holding off on the celebration until I was officially out.

The walk to the far side of the building had never seemed shorter.

“The test will be coming over the internet from the state department of education,” Oz explained as I took my seat. “Don't be nervous. It's not meant to trick you; it's meant to let you show what you know.”

That was not at all comforting.

The state department of education made me cool my heels. I sat in stiff-necked misery, sweating. The bell rang. Homeroom was over. I heard the sounds of moving feet in the hall. Life was going on for everyone but me.

Oz gripped my shoulder. “We're all rooting for you, Donovan.”

“Thanks,” I said in somebody else's voice as he abandoned me to my fate.

The first question appeared on the screen. I read it over—once, twice, three times. No idea. None. Zero. Zilch.
Nada
. Of course, I had known this was coming. But somehow you always hold out hope. Nobody was perfect. Maybe they'd give me the wrong test—like for second grade remedial. It was possible.

But, no. This was the real thing. And as I looked into those words and numbers and symbols that meant absolutely nothing to me, I could almost see Dr. Schultz waiting at the front door of Hardcastle Middle School. It wouldn't take long for him to find me there.

I felt the icy water that had surrounded James Donovan in 1912, and the suction of the sinking
Titanic
pulling him under. James had resisted, but I didn't have the strength. I was going down.

There was one final chance. The test was multiple choice. I had a one-in-five shot at being right. It wasn't much, but at least it was something.

I took hold of the mouse to make my first fatal selection. And then something strange happened. As I moved the pointer toward box B, the small arrow changed direction and traveled on its own to check box C.

I stared, thunderstruck. Was there a problem with the computer? Just my luck! On top of all the things that were stacked up against me, I was taking the test at a broken workstation. Although, come to think of it, I was just as capable of getting the wrong answers on my own, without any help from a malfunction. I considered changing C to B. But C was just as likely to be correct. So I left it, and clicked
Next
.

Question 2 seemed to have something to do with chemistry. But again, way out of my league. This time I settled on A, because—well, did there have to be a reason? I clicked it, and then it happened again. I lost control of the pointer. It deselected my choice, and immediately checked box E.

Then, without any action from me, it hit
Next
, and question 3 appeared.

Maybe I wasn't gifted, but I had the brains to know that this was no electronic glitch. There could be only one possible explanation for it. My computer had been hacked! Somebody was taking the test for me!

My first reaction was an emotional one. Another human being cared enough to want to keep me at the Academy! Most of my classmates were so wrapped up in their own skills and talents that they barely noticed anybody else existed. Yet someone had noticed me, and this person was going to great lengths, and risking big trouble, to bail me out.

For a second there, my eyes actually filled with tears, and I almost missed my remote angel answering question 3. I would have bet money that I had no friends in this place. But somewhere in this building—or even outside of it—hunched over a laptop, was the greatest friend I never knew I had. Would the Daniels do something like this for me? Okay, the Daniels couldn't pass this test if an alien microcomputer crash-landed inside their skulls. But even if they could, would they go out on a limb for me? I sincerely doubted it.

Who was doing it? They were all smart enough, but it took more than smarts. It took guts, and that was in short supply at the Academy. It could even be a teacher—Oz or Bevelaqua, trying to prove that the gifted program didn't make mistakes.

I noticed the librarian looking at me curiously, so I took hold of the mouse, and pretended to be busy at work. By that time, “I” was on question 11, and cruising. My bewilderment was beginning to morph into relief. My date with Dr. Schultz, and the consequences of the Atlas incident, had been put on hold. I was dogpaddling again. This time it took a little help—okay, a lot of help. But I was still afloat, just like James Donovan.

The librarian shot me an encouraging smile. What she saw was a student who had all the answers.

And I did. Except one.

Who was doing this for me?

I
t makes perfect sense that a class with a teacher named Oz would call their robot Tin Man. The parallel to
The Wizard of Oz
doesn't stop there. In the famous story, the Tin Man lacks a brain; what he gets instead is a diploma.

I'm beginning to suspect that's what happened with Donovan Curtis.

He passed the test with flying colors. It was wonderful. We were all really happy for him. Except that it meant exactly as much as the words printed on the Tin Man's parchment. He was still failing my class quite spectacularly. In science, his average was below 50 percent and below 40 in the chemistry and physics portions. He was passing English, but just barely. His C-minus in social studies was the jewel in his crown, except for robotics. He was running a B average there, but only because he was handy with a joystick—a mark of someone who has taken on a life of solemn worship at the altar of Xbox or PlayStation.

Does this sound like Academy material to you?

“He passed the test, Maria,” Brian Del Rio, our principal, reminded me. “What more can we ask of him?”

“A decent grade would be nice,” I retorted. “Or some faint trace that might indicate mastery of a subject.”

“We cut Noah Youkilis a lot of slack,” Brian challenged her. “Why shouldn't Donovan deserve the same consideration?”

I sighed. “You're comparing apples and oranges. Come to think of it, pumpkins and raisins.” A more appropriate contrast might be Betelgeuse and the nucleus of a carbon atom. “Noah is the kind of mind that comes along once in a teaching career, if you're lucky.”

“But the test—” the principal insisted.

“If I buy a dog, but when I open the carrier I find a hamster inside, is it a dog because that's what it says on the bill of sale? My powers of observation and reasoning trump words on a piece of paper. I don't know how he passed the test. I only know that he couldn't have.”

Brian was adamant. He ran this place by the book. Donovan had passed and he was in. Everybody was covered—especially the principal. If there was blame to be assigned somewhere down the line, none of it was going to fall on him.

And it had to be in Brian's mind that Donovan had solved the Human Growth and Development problem by providing his pregnant sister as a lab rat. Now, there was an oversight that would have resounded with the parents. I couldn't fault him for being grateful for a solution. Parents can get ugly; parents of the gifted can be positively militant. What I
did
fault him for was allowing that gratitude to blind him to the truth about Donovan. Perhaps he thought it was harmless to harbor a mediocre student in the Academy. But that student was diluting the standards of the gifted program for everybody. Not to mention that Donovan was learning absolutely nothing here. He was entitled to a real education at his own level.

My colleagues seemed to be taking their lead from Brian. If the principal wasn't worried, what concern was it of theirs? Of course they knew that Donovan wasn't exactly acing their classes. But, hey, he'd passed the test. The test! It was as if they believed the test was an infallible superbeing that had descended to earth on a great space ark surrounded by thunderbolts of perfection.

Oz was the last bastion of sanity left in the building. He'd known from the beginning that something wasn't right about Donovan. He was the one who'd asked for the retest. Surely he wasn't complacent enough to put aside his teacher's instinct just because of a test score.

When I barged into the robotics lab, at first I thought it was deserted because the lights were out, and I couldn't see any people.

Then I looked down. There they all were—including Oz—lying flat on the floor with Katie Patterson, their pregnant lab rat. Loud, gasping, wheezing breaths issued from every throat.

“What's going on here?” I exclaimed, shocked, scanning the room for a chemical leak.

“We're breathing,” Oz panted.

“I can hear that. Why can't you do it standing up with the lights on?”

“It's a new variation on Lamaze,” Chloe explained. “Noah developed it. It's much better than the original.”

And would you believe that my colleague made me wait until the end of the class before he managed to find time for me? I stood in the hall, fuming, listening to the scuba-respiration sounds coming from inside the lab. It took a while to resuscitate Noah, who had passed out from his own breathing technique. They were all red-faced and panting as they filed past me, but they looked vaguely pleased with themselves, as if they were accomplishing something. Maybe they were. Very little was beyond Noah's capabilities when he wasn't mounting a concerted effort to flunk.

I noted that they were grateful to their lab rat—but most of that gratitude was heaped on Donovan himself. And it wasn't only gratitude. It was genuine affection. Noah regarded him with nothing less than worship. Chloe cast him soulful glances that might have indicated a crush. Even Abigail seemed to have softened her attitude toward him.

Oz was practically glowing with triumph, mopping at his face with a paper towel. “I have to admit I had my doubts about this project,” he said after his students had moved on. “But we've taken a course that was ninety percent giggling at the names of body parts and made it meaningful, and beautiful, and rooted in the real world! I'm going to write an article for
American Teacher
.”

That would be a must-read—all about how every class should adopt its own pregnant woman. “We need to talk about Donovan.”

He nodded. “Where would we be without him?”

“I'm not talking about Baby 101, Oz. I'm talking about Donovan as an Academy student. Have you noticed any improvement in his performance?”

“Oh, sure, he …” His voice trailed off.