Ungifted (7 page)

Brian's brow furrowed. “What are you saying?”

“What if,” Maria went on, “our much-vaunted selection system broke down and sent us your average knuckle-dragger?”

“Impossible.” Our principal was adamant. “All our kids have strengths and weaknesses. We seem to have a good sense of Donovan's weaknesses. It's a start. Now we have to find his strengths. He wouldn't be here if they didn't exist.”

As the meeting broke up, he pulled me aside. “There's one more thing.” He hesitated. “You're not going to like it.”

I sighed. “Let me guess—Donovan again?”

“This time it isn't Donovan. As you may know, all students graduating from middle school are required to complete one quarter of Human Growth and Development.”

“Human Growth and Development?” I echoed. “You mean sex education?”

He made a face. “We haven't called it that in decades.”

“But what does that have to do with me?” I asked. “They teach that in seventh grade, don't they?”

“Usually …” The principal took a deep breath. “Your kids don't have it.”

I was horrified. “None of them?”

“None of the big names—Youkilis, Halloran, Garfinkle, Lee. A few transfers took the equivalent at their old schools. And Donovan's okay—he got the instruction at Hardcastle.”

“How could we miss that?”

Brian shrugged unhappily. “Robotics has always attracted our best and brightest. Anything new and innovative and exciting is thrown at your group. They're always busy. And the last thing anyone thought they needed was to spend hours drawing diagrams of the human body and watching videos on how babies are made.”

“So what happens now?” I asked wearily. “I have to drop what I'm doing, and spend the rest of the year on … sex ed?”

He shook his head. “You need a state certification to teach Human Growth and Development. You're not qualified.”

“So who is?”

“Nobody,” Brian told me. “Beth Vogel has been coming over from Salem to work with our seventh grade, but she's teaching a full schedule this quarter. The whole district is running on austerity. Staffing is cut to the bone. Believe me, Oz, I've been over this every which way with Dr. Schultz. If there were a way out, we would have found it. The state allows us absolutely zero flexibility. Forty hours under a credentialed teacher, with triple time credited for real hands-on experience.”

“They're kids, Brian! Where are they going to get hands-on experience of
that
? Would we even want them to?”

“We're still working on a few possibilities,” he admitted. “They could take the course after school. Or over the summer.”

“Think of the students you're talking about,” I pleaded. “They take music lessons, learn languages, intern at research labs, work with private tutors. They're scheduled down to the nanosecond. You're going to make them give up all that for
sex ed
?”

“Human Growth and Development,” he amended.

“We ought to be ashamed of ourselves!”

He nodded grimly. “We are.”

I was heartsick. “What am I going to tell the kids?”

“Don't tell them anything yet. Not till we've explored every option.”

Privately, I was hoping that one of my colleagues might bail me out on the Mission Impossible of Donovan and his hidden talents. Every time another teacher approached me, I expected the eureka moment—“I've got it! He's a brilliant …” I didn't care what came next—writer, physicist, harpsichord player, linguist, chess master, infrared astronomer; he has total recall, perfect pitch, a knack for languages, great potential for spelunking. Anything!

It was a cop-out. The answer wasn't going to drop from the sky and land at my feet. I'd watched him in my own classroom. Why would he be different anywhere else?

Actually, he did
less
for me than he did for the other teachers. At least in his core subjects, he tried and failed. In robotics, all he did was search the internet for graphics to stick on Tin Man. Seriously, to justify the time he spent on Google Images, we would have needed a robot the size of a twenty-story building.

A convulsive high-pitched cackling filled the lab. When I went to investigate, I found Donovan at the keyboard and Noah peering over his shoulder—holding on to it, in fact—hysterical with laughter.

Noah
never
laughed. He had a stratospheric IQ with few commonsense skills, and zero sense of humor. His thinking was lightning fast and flawlessly accurate, but also 100 percent literal. I barely recognized him, convulsed with mirth, breathing hard, his face bright pink.

“What is it?”

“Look—” He pointed at the screen, bereft of speech.

On the screen, a brief video clip showed a barefoot man walking along the edge of a pool. He stubbed his toe on a rubber dog bone and tumbled, arms flailing, into the water. Noah pounded on the desk, choking.

Chloe appeared at my elbow. “It's called YouTube, Noah.”

“It's the latest thing,” Donovan added. “Ten years ago.”

“
That's
YouTube?” Noah was incredulous. “I've heard of it, obviously, but I never—who's the actor? He's brilliant! I really
believed
that he fell in the pool by accident.”

I sighed. Of course a kid like Noah had never explored YouTube before. When he got on a computer, most of us couldn't imagine what he was capable of. What he
wasn't
capable of were the ordinary things.

“He's not an actor,” I explained patiently, “he's a regular person. Anyone can post a home video on YouTube.”

He was wide-eyed. “Anyone?”

“And anyone can watch it,” Donovan confirmed.

Noah may have started the day a YouTube novice, but by the end of the period, he could have written a doctoral dissertation on it. Such was the power of his intellect. He took Donovan's seat at the computer, and disappeared into the site, reappearing only occasionally to explain the math behind his estimate of the total number of videos—over eight hundred million—or the amount of time it would take to watch them all—more than six hundred years.

“Assuming an average duration of twenty to twenty-five seconds each,” he concluded. “I'll be more precise when I've had a few weeks to study it.”

“Way to go,” Abigail told Donovan savagely. “Noah should be curing diseases and changing the world, not watching some dimwit falling in his pool.”

“Give the guy a break from his brain,” Donovan argued. “When's the last time anybody saw him so psyched about something?”

I had to give Donovan that. For all Noah's incredible abilities, the boy would fail out of school if his teachers were to let him. Donovan alone had managed to engage him. Could that be a kind of giftedness in and of itself?

Regardless, Donovan had succeeded in running through yet another class without yielding the slightest hint as to why he was at the Academy.

Of all the kids in my homeroom, Chloe was the one most taken with Donovan. It was a crush, not so much on Donovan himself as what he represented—normal middle school life. She peppered him with questions about parties and school spirit and big games and pep rallies.

“I wasn't really into that stuff,” Donovan told her.

He was reluctant to talk about his experiences at Hardcastle Middle. Something must have gone on there that I couldn't quite put my finger on. He seemed anxious to put the past behind him—anxious enough to ignore the obvious signs that he wasn't fitting in here. Had he been bullied? A lot of our students had suffered that at their old schools. But Donovan didn't seem like the type.

Chloe would not be put off. “Well, there must have been parties,” she reasoned. “You know, dances—that kind of thing.”

“I think it's a pathetic waste of time,” Abigail chimed in. “Can you imagine having nothing better to do than bounce around a school gym to bad music under cheap streamers and a cheesy rented disco ball? Don't we all have better things to do?”

“No argument from me,” said Donovan.

Nothing pleased Abigail less than being agreed with by Donovan.

“Hey, you guys—do something funny,” Noah waved at us from behind a flip video camera. “This is for YouTube.”

The kids ignored him, but I felt it was important to support Noah's new interest. For all his brilliance, Noah spent his life in a kind of cocoon. Pointing a flip cam at people was as close as he got to social interaction.

“What about Tin Man?” I suggested. “He looks like a YouTube star to me.”

Abigail was horrified. “That's a terrible idea! We'd be showing the other teams exactly what we're working on for the robotics meet!”

I chuckled. “It's supposed to be a friendly competition, Abigail, not a life-and-death struggle.”

Never try to tell Abigail to take it easy.

“The results of that meet go on your permanent record,” she insisted. “There could be college admissions on the line, maybe even scholarships. If that's not a life-and-death struggle, I don't know what is! This could be the year we finally defeat Cold Spring Harbor and win it all! Do you want to risk that?”

Eventually, we shouted her down. If Cold Spring Harbor found our little clip among six hundred years of video on YouTube, they
deserved
to beat us again. And anyway, some of the kids were already rolling Tin Man Metallica Squarepants out into the middle of the room.

I had to admit, our latest creation was taking shape. No credit to me—everything had come from the kids. Abigail and Chloe provided the design, and Noah did all the programming. The boy had never watched YouTube, but he could think in computer code. Kevin was our welding and soldering expert. Jacey and Latrell built the body. And there, large as life on Tin Man's “chest,” was Albert Einstein eating a banana, courtesy of Donovan. There were other graphics too—a cat with a Mohawk, the fiery eye of Sauron from the
Lord of the Rings
movies, the flag of Mozambique, and a bumper sticker that read
OFFICE OF NEW YORK CITY RATCATCHER
.

Noah brandished the flip cam, and Abigail worked the joystick, sending our work in progress on its first trial run. The robot was capable of moving on its own, following a route marked by colored lines on the floor. But the most important rounds of the competition required a human driver.

I watched carefully, taking special note of the wheels, which were a new type for us. Last year, Cold Spring Harbor had used Mecanum wheels, which gave them extra maneuverability. But on Tin Man, I couldn't see much difference.

“Hold it.” I got down on all fours and examined the bearings to make sure the Mecanums had a full range of motion.

“The problem's not the wheels,” put in Donovan. “It's the driver.”

Abigail glared at him. “What do you know about robotics?”

“Nothing,” he replied honestly. “But I can use a joystick. Don't you guys play video games?”

“I'd like to see
you
do better!”

And with a casual shrug, he held out his hands for the controller. Eyes shooting sparks, Abigail relinquished it, and Donovan put Tin Man through his paces. I watched in amazement. The robot fairly danced around the lab, the lift mechanism moving easily. The Mecanums worked like magic, changing direction instantly with a flick of Donovan's wrist.

The kids broke into cheers. They mobbed Donovan, begging him to be our operator at the meet—all except Abigail. She stood rooted to the floor, fuming.

“Got it!” Noah lowered the camera and ran for the computer to upload his very first YouTube video.

And me? Well, I was thrilled for the team and tantalized at the prospect of finally giving Cold Spring Harbor a run for their money. But I also realized that my chief problem was no closer to a solution. Being good with a joystick because of hundreds of hours playing video games was not the kind of talent that got a student into the Academy for Academic Distinction.

What was Donovan Curtis doing in the gifted program?