Ungifted (15 page)

“What about his science project?” Latrell suggested. “He's burning the midnight oil on that.”

“Right,” Abigail agreed sarcastically. “Googling dog facts and taking pictures of the family pet.”

Kevin had a suggestion. “We could ask Oz to delay the test. At least until after Human Growth and Development. And by then the robotics meet will be done too.”

Chloe was annoyed. “A little selfish, don't you think?”

“Besides,” Latrell told him, “big-time colleges bench superstars who are household names because their grade point averages drop below 2.0. He's toast.”

“
We're
toast,” groaned Kevin. “If we go to the meet without Donovan, Cold Spring Harbor is going to run all over us again.”

“Not necessarily,” Abigail said defiantly. Even she didn't sound convinced.

Jacey seemed to be bursting with something to say, but when we turned to her, she just mumbled, “Nothing. I was thinking about those subatomic particles that travel faster than light. I guess it doesn't help Donovan to know Einstein was probably wrong.”

“He could study,” Chloe suggested. And when snorts of laughter greeted this, she added, “We could help him study.”

“Or,” I put in thoughtfully, “one of us could take the test for him, and make sure he passes.”

“Oh, right,” scoffed Kevin. “Like no one's going to notice it's the wrong person.”

“The test is on a computer, remember? All we'd have to do is gain remote control of his mouse and change just enough of his answers to put him over the top.”

Abigail was horrified. “That's cheating! Do you know how much trouble you could get in for that?”

I was intrigued. “How much?” In my case, they'd probably just take the opportunity to give me extra credit. The whole system was against me.

“If you get caught doing something like that,” Abigail warned, voice rising, “it would go on your permanent record! You'd never get into Stanford or MIT with a black mark like that!”

“Really?” I asked.

Abigail rolled her eyes. “For you, they'd just add twenty grand to your scholarship.”

Chloe shook her head sadly. “I feel bad for Donovan. He's a really good person. I got mad at him at the dance, but now I know he was only trying to protect me. I wish we could help him. You know, legally.”

I realized something about Donovan then. We were two sides of the same coin. He was struggling to stay in the gifted program, and I was struggling to get out.

N
oah Youkilis gave Daniel Sanderson a black eye at the dance on Friday night. It happened when Noah did that Wrestlemania dive from the deejay's speaker tower. Somehow, he must have kicked Sanderson in the face with his mother's red leather boots. I'm sure it was an accident. Noah wouldn't hurt a fly.

Technically, it was all my fault. I'm the one who turned Noah on to YouTube, and that's where he discovered professional wrestling. I didn't feel bad, though, because Sanderson totally had it coming. My only regret was that Noah couldn't have gotten Nussbaum with the other foot.

Trust me, I didn't hear any of this from the Daniels themselves. I told my parents and Katie that, if those guys called or came by, I was officially not at home.

“But why, Donnie? They're your best friends.”

“I thought they were my friends when I showed them the robot,” I replied. “But then they went behind my back and wheeled it into the gym, so a thousand idiots could use it as a punching clown!”

“What do you care about their robot?” Katie challenged.

“I'm the driver,” I argued. “We're like the Lone Ranger and his horse.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Any idiot can work a joystick. What else did you do on the project? Did you help build it?”

“Part of it.”

She was unconvinced. “What part?”

“The exterior,” I said stubbornly.

“You can't even make Kraft dinner,” Katie accused. “Where would you learn how to build a sophisticated piece of technology?”

“It's not about the robot; it's about the Daniels,” I insisted. “Those guys think they can treat the gifted kids like they don't measure up as humans. You can't push people around in front of a dozen chaperones, so they took it out on Tin Man. I'm not talking to them.”

Mom respected my wishes but, on Wednesday, Nussbaum took a picture of Sanderson's face on his cell phone, and texted it to Katie. She'd always had a soft spot for the Daniels, if you can imagine Katie having a soft spot for anybody. Anyway, when she showed me the picture, I did a double take. Sanderson looked like he'd been hit by a train, not a half-pint YouTube-obsessed genius. What a shiner! His eye wasn't just black. It was purple and yellow and green, and a few shades I didn't know the names of.

“
Noah
did that?” my sister exclaimed in amazement.

“He comes across like a dork, but he's got killer moves.” And his mom had killer footwear.

In the end, my conscience won out, and I headed over to Sanderson's. If the Daniels were texting my sister, they were really angling for a visit. Which meant they probably wanted to apologize. I guess I had to go over there and let them.

Sanderson might have been suffering, but it hadn't stopped him from milking this injury for all it was worth. He had Deirdre and Heather over there, holding his hand and refreezing ice packs for his poor eye.

Nussbaum was on the scene too, limping a little just in case there was any sympathy spillover from the girls. If I thought I was going to get an apology, I was mistaken. Instead, everyone started talking about the night of the dance, and “that bully.” I swear, I had absolutely no idea who they were talking about. The only bullies in that gym had been the Daniels themselves.

“What bully?” I asked finally.

“You know,” said Sanderson. “The one who hit me. That bodybuilder in the wrestling outfit.”

I was blown away. “With the red boots?”

Sanderson gave me a beseeching look. He was determined to prove in front of the girls that he'd been brutalized by a huge monster, and he expected me to back him up.

He picked the wrong person on the wrong day. “Noah Youkilis could lose a fight to a spiderweb. He's six inches shorter than you, and he weighs about as much as your cat.”

“He's a black belt in tae kwon do!”

Deirdre spoke up. “You guys in the Academy may think you're special just because you're smart. But you can't go around punching people. This Noah delinquent could be kicked out of school for what he did!”

I laughed. “Noah? He couldn't get kicked out of school for murder!”

The Daniels stuck to their guns though. Every time they mentioned Noah, he got bigger and meaner, and trained by a more secret paramilitary organization. As soon as the girls were gone, though, they offered a little remorse for kidnapping the robot—in a Daniels sort of way.

“Yeah, I guess it was kind of uncool,” Nussbaum murmured. “But you should have seen the look on your face!”

“
Totally
worth it,” agreed Sanderson. “At least till that little ninja cold-cocked me. And by the way, thanks for nothing for having my back with Heather and Deirdre a minute ago.”

I laughed mirthlessly. “You'd better pray they never get a look at Noah close up.”

“
He'd
better pray he never gets a look at
me
!” Sanderson promised darkly.

“That's quite a crowd you hang with over at the genius school,” Nussbaum observed. “You never told us plaid shirt was the normal one.”

For some reason, that really got to me. “You know, a few of those kids are so smart that we're not even smart enough to understand how smart they are. So leave them alone. And definitely leave their robot alone.”

“We were just fooling around,” Nussbaum mumbled. “We used to know a kid who did stuff like that all the time—a kid named Donovan Curtis.”

I almost forgave them, because they definitely had a point. What were a few bumps and scrapes on Tin Man compared to the wreckage I'd visited on the Hardcastle gym? They were the same old Daniels. I was the one who was different.

Besides, with my big retest coming up, you had to figure I'd be back at Hardcastle Middle School before too long. I was going to need some friends there.

I approached the upcoming testing the way a death row inmate approaches the date of his execution. Reluctantly, and with feet dragging.

It was kind of touching how many of my robotics classmates offered to help me study, coach me. With the exception of Abigail, who was planning to relish my failure, everyone seemed to be pulling for me. A lot of it might have been because of Katie, or because I was the best person to drive Tin Man at the robotics meet. But I like to think some of it was because they'd accepted me as one of them—even though I was so far below them intellectually that I needed a telescope to see the soles of their shoes.

Chloe offered to work with me at least twenty times. She was kind of offended that I kept blowing her off. I couldn't make her understand that it was nothing personal. I probably should have just come out and told her, point-blank, that I had even less chance of comprehending what she knew than I had of passing the test. When I finally caved, and let her help me with the math portion, she talked so far over my head that all I could hear was airy whispers. And every time she tried to dumb it down, it became a little bit harder to understand.

When we were done, she looked at me in genuine alarm. “Oh, wow, Donovan. What are you going to do?”

Translation:
Stick a fork in me. I'm done
.

I shrugged. “I'll put in some time tonight. Maybe it'll all click.”

She wasn't buying it. “You need more than a click. You need a
miracle
. Maybe we should get Noah to tutor you. He'd do it. Any one of us would!”

I laughed bravely. “If I can't understand you, a study session with Noah would make my head explode.”

Funny—even though Chloe was back to her plaid shirts and baggy jeans, I kept seeing her as she'd looked all dressed up at the party. The idea of her finding out exactly how smart I wasn't had become kind of sad to me. I even had a plan for cleaning out my locker after school hours so there would be less chance of her witnessing my disgrace. One day I'd be there, the next I'd be gone. After a few weeks, maybe somebody would say, “Remember that guy who used to go here for a while? What was his name again?” No one would have the answer except Noah, and he would pretend he didn't. Eventually, all that would remain of my time at the Academy would be the faded pictures peeling off of Tin Man. And by then, no one would be able to recall who had put them there.

On the big day, things were quieter than usual in the robotics lab. Nobody would meet my eyes, not even Oz. As my homeroom teacher and faculty advisor, it had to have been him who recommended me for retesting. He probably felt like an axe murderer this morning. Even Tin Man seemed a little slumped over and depressed, although that might have been the extra weight of the floor-polisher motor.

I had one last card to play. I marched up to Oz and placed a thick folder on the teacher's desk. He regarded me questioningly, and I pointed to the title: “Chow Chows: A Special Breed.” Below it was a large photograph of Beatrice, flaked out on her side, looking about 90 percent comatose. To my long list of regrets, I should add the fact that I had waited to take the picture until she was too far gone to be alert and alive.

“My science project,” I announced.

“Shouldn't this go to Mr. Holman?” he asked.

“I thought maybe you could hand it in for me,” I explained lamely, “since I might miss science today while I'm taking the test.”

My pathetically desperate Technicolor hope was that he'd see this fabulous project, realize that I was working my butt off, and cancel the retest. But he didn't even open it. “Sure,” he said very absently, and glanced at his watch.