Ungifted Read online

  Then Donnie made his return—at least he started to. His head poked in through the doorway. His eyes widened in horror at the sight of Dr. Schultz—like I was standing with Count Dracula, not the superintendent of schools. Donnie backed up and was gone in a heartbeat. No one else noticed him. For sure Schultz didn’t.

  I don’t claim to be an expert, but I knew my brother. He was scared to death of the guy. Something was up.

  The class went on to show Dr. Schultz some of the work we’d been doing. He seemed impressed by the echocardiogram and the sonogram footage, but he didn’t have much patience for Noah’s new breathing technique. The superintendent had begun glancing impatiently at his watch.

  Noah wasn’t offended. “That’s okay. You can watch it on my personal YouTube channel, Youkilicious.”

  “Let us introduce you to Tin Man at least,” Oz offered. He looked around for his designated driver. “Where’s Donovan? Not on another one of his extended bathroom breaks?”

  “Some other time,” Dr. Schultz said briskly. He turned to me. “Thank you once again, Mrs. Patterson. You’re a credit to the Hardcastle community.” And he and the principal slipped out of the lab.

  I waited a few minutes and then took a bathroom break of my own. Once in the hall, I headed straight for the boys’ room, figuring my brother would be holed up there.

  I threw open the door and broadcast a warning. “Big stomach waddling in.”

  “There’s nobody here but us toilet paper” was the timid reply.

  “You can come out now, Donnie. The guy’s gone.”

  He emerged from a stall, wearing a guilty look that I’d seen a million times before.

  I folded my arms, resting them on the shelf that my stomach now formed. “All right, out with it.”

  He looked haunted. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Of course I don’t want to know. But I think I have to.”

  Not even growing up in the same house with Donnie could have prepared me for the story I heard next. Donnie—the Atlas statue—the Hardcastle gym. As reality checks go, this one had me pinching myself to see if I was hallucinating. It wasn’t impossible, you know. On rare occasions, the chemical changes of pregnancy have been known to bring on psychotic episodes. I got that from Noah himself.

  I heaved a sigh. “And you had the nerve to blackmail me over something as insignificant as a sick dog who wasn’t even sick. That’s low.”

  He shrugged miserably. “I’m sorry, but I’m trying to make myself a part of this class. They need you, so they’re stuck with me, regardless of how ungifted I am.”

  “Your teachers are going to notice that you don’t measure up,” I pointed out gently.

  “They already noticed. They had me retested. I passed.”

  “No way!”

  He reddened. “Well, it wasn’t really me. Somebody hacked into the computer I was using and did the test for me. Honest, I had nothing to do with it! I don’t even know who it was.”

  I groaned. “That’s worse. You’ve taken one of those brilliant students and corrupted him. Or her.” I thought of Chloe, who seemed to be my brother’s biggest fan.

  “Well, what choice did I have?” he demanded, practically whining. “Bevelaqua already raked me over the coals, trying to get me to confess!”

  “Did you ever consider going to Dr. Schultz and owning up?”

  He was outraged. “Oh, sure! And Mom and Dad will collect soda bottles to get the money to fix the gym!”

  I was astounded. “Who said we’d have to pay?”

  “Come on, Katie. I may not be gifted, but I read the papers. The district is getting stiffed by the insurance company. Somebody has to pick up the tab—why not the guy who did it? I can’t lay all that on Mom and Dad—not with money so tight, and Brad out of the picture, and you moping around, big as a whale. Even the dog went and made more problems. This is the worst possible time for me to add to all that.”

  I was thunderstruck, staring at my idiot brother with a new respect. This was the first indication I’d ever had that Donnie was aware of anybody besides himself. It jarred me down to my swollen ankles.

  “Give me some time to mull this over,” I told him. “I’d like to get Brad’s opinion. Maybe he’ll have an idea how we can explain all this to Dr. Schultz.”

  “Tell him to come quick,” Donnie advised. “And bring his tank.”

  And right there, in the bathroom where I didn’t belong, in the Academy where he didn’t belong, the two of us shared a brother–sister hug.

  Reality check—Dad kept a picture on his desk of the last time that happened—Disney World, 2002. I was sixteen. Donnie was three.

  UNMASKED

  DR. SCHULTZ

  IQ: 127

  I was in my car heading back to the office, but something didn’t sit well with me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Expressing my appreciation to Mrs. Patterson had been the right thing to do. We all had dodged a bullet, thanks to her. She had saved the district an enormous amount of aggravation. Irate parents; frantic phone calls; summer plans changed; complaints to the school board and maybe even the state. It would have been the biggest screwup of the year—well, second biggest.

  Perhaps it was the Academy itself that had unnerved me. That place always made me uneasy. Don’t get me wrong—gifted programs are an essential resource for a school district. The trouble with them is they attract so many know-it-alls!

  I stopped at a light, frowning. Something Kyle Osborne had said was still rattling around my head: “Where’s”—I couldn’t recall the name; Dominic? Donnelly?—followed by: “Not on another one of his extended bathroom breaks?”

  Extended bathroom breaks …

  That was the answer. It was common enough for an unmotivated student to kill time in the bathroom, hoping to make the days speed by. But not at the Academy. There were no mediocre students there. And if one of our best and brightest had decided to squander his placement, he should step aside in favor of someone who wouldn’t waste the opportunity.

  As soon as I was back at my desk, I called Brian Del Rio. Maybe he could identify this missing kid.

  He was out of the office. “Page him, please,” I said, and sat back to wait.

  As my eyes passed over the screen saver on my computer, it occurred to me that Brian might not be my only source of information about that class. There was also Noah’s YouTube channel—I winced—Youkilicious.

  Not the easiest name to spell, but I found it soon enough and stared in amazement: 114 featured videos? Noah had the highest IQ in the history of the district, but from the looks of this, all the boy did was run around with a flip camera!

  My attention was instantly drawn to “Tin Man Metallica Squarepants Exposes Teacher’s Underwear.” God bless America, it had already been viewed more than six thousand times! That wasn’t good. What could be a bigger screwup than a lawsuit over the misconduct of a robot?

  I clicked on the link and the clip began to play. It showed Maria Bevelaqua laying papers on a semicircle of desks. As she moved, Tin Man rolled into the picture, falling in behind her, matching her pace almost perfectly. The forklift mechanism began to rise, catching the hem of her full peasant skirt. Up it went, until there was more of Ms. Bevelaqua on the screen than I cared to see. Judging by the giggles in the background of the video, the last person to notice this was Maria herself. When she finally did, the screech prompted my computer to warn me that my speakers were in danger. And right before the clip ended, the camera swung around and focused on the student who was operating the robot’s joystick controller.

  My blood turned to ice in my veins.

  It was—it was—

  I had a vision of an upturned face staring wide-eyed into the wreckage of the Hardcastle gym. That nameless face was the first thing I saw every morning, and the last thing I saw at night. It had starred in my wildest nightmares, taunting me, driving me crazy for weeks.

  Dominic … Donnelly … Donovan.

  It was him.
>
  CHEATING INVESTIGATION

  INTERVIEW WITH CHLOE GARFINKLE

  MS. BEVELAQUA: I’ve noticed that you and Donovan are pretty good friends.

  CHLOE: I guess.

  MS. BEVELAQUA: It would bother you if he had to leave the Academy, wouldn’t it?

  CHLOE: Why would he have to leave?

  MS. BEVELAQUA: You have a brilliant mind, Chloe. You must have noticed that Donovan doesn’t share your academic abilities.

  CHLOE: He’s good at a lot of things I’m not.

  MS. BEVELAQUA: You know as well as I do that operating a video game joystick doesn’t compare to the kinds of strengths we value here.

  CHLOE: Well, maybe. But he passed the test.

  MS. BEVELAQUA: Did he?

  CHLOE: You’d know better than I would. The scores were reported to the school, not to me.

  MS. BEVELAQUA: We’re beginning to suspect that someone helped Donovan. Was it you, Chloe?

  CHLOE: How could I possibly—you mean a hacker? That would be hard. You’d have to override the encryption of a secure internet connection from the state!

  MS. BEVELAQUA: Exactly. I see you know how it’s done.

  CHLOE: Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I’d do it! Not for my own mother!

  MS. BEVELAQUA: But for your boyfriend?

  CHLOE: Donovan is not my boyfriend! I don’t have a boyfriend!

  MS. BEVELAQUA: Calm down. No one is making any accusations—yet.

  CHLOE: Honestly, Ms. Bevelaqua, we knew Donovan was in trouble with the test. We offered to help him study, but he just couldn’t—it didn’t work out.

  MS. BEVELAQUA: Define “we.” You and who else?

  CHLOE: Are you asking me to rat out my friends?

  UNWELCOME

  DONOVAN CURTIS

  IQ: 112

  I was pretty good at video games, but never had I felt more comfortable with a joystick in my hand than when I was driving Tin Man. The robot was like an extension of my will. The slightest twitch of my finger and he was instantly obedient to the controller. It was as if my every thought could make him dance.

  For once, we weren’t in the lab. With the state robotics meet barely a week away, it was time to simulate competition conditions. The team had spent all morning converting the gym into a perfect copy of the Dutchess Auditorium, where the tournament would take place. Tin Man moved back and forth, accepting inflated rings from Abigail and placing them on the pegs we had attached to the gym’s climbing apparatus. We’d even set up the “pit,” which would serve as our headquarters at the meet. It supplied everything from tools and spare parts for Tin Man to a cooler of “YoukilAde”—a high-energy drink that, according to Noah, hydrated faster than Gatorade.

  Most of the team was gathered around Oz, their eyes panning back and forth from the robot to the teacher’s stopwatch. They let out an audible groan when I raised one of the rings too high, and had to stop the robot to lower the mechanism down to the peg. That cost us time for sure.

  “Easy, Donovan,” the teacher cautioned. “Remember, you’ve got a stronger motor in the forklift.”

  At last, Tin Man placed the final ring, swung around, and headed for the starting position. The stopwatch beeped and Oz called out our time. “Best we’ve ever done, people. Even with a few hiccups.”

  “This is going to be our year!” Latrell crowed.

  We broke out the YoukilAde and toasted Tin Man and one another. Chloe had brought brownies, so it was kind of a party. It actually reached the point of some good-natured trash talk directed toward Cold Spring Harbor, and how Tin Man was going to leave their robot lying in the dust.

  Of course, our team members were too polite for real trash talk, so I had to show them how it was done: “Their hunk of junk doesn’t stand a chance against Tin Man! Their hunk of junk wouldn’t stand a chance against Tin Man’s grandmother!”

  “Tin Man can’t have a grandmother,” Noah interjected. “A machine is not a living entity, and has no familial line.”

  Probably why I never ran into any robots on ancestry.com.

  “We get the point,” Oz put in, grinning. “Let’s keep it to ourselves. It’s a little premature for a victory celebration.”

  “There’s no way Cold Spring Harbor can match the kind of times we’re putting up,” Kevin enthused. “Not unless they’re running their robot on rocket fuel.”

  I’d never been much of a joiner, so this was my first taste of how it felt to be part of a team that was a real contender. And not just a part. With the robot completed, I was more important than any of them. All those geniuses, and the one person who could make Tin Man perform at championship level was the dummy who got stranded in the gifted program by mistake. I didn’t have a clue how to design, build, or program a robot. But it was up to me to bring home the gold.

  For the first time since I’d landed at the Academy, I truly belonged.

  The heavy metal gym door was thrown open with such violence that it pounded against the cinder block wall. There, framed in the light from outside, was nothing less than an avenging angel.

  Dr. Schultz.

  I swear he crossed the gym in three gigantic strides, shooting sparks from his eyes. I considered running, but what for? Even if I could manage to escape, where did I think I could go? I was completely and totally busted.

  “Dr. Schultz—what a surprise,” said Oz. “You’re just in time to see us put Tin Man through his paces.”

  “That will have to happen some other time.” The superintendent’s voice was colder than his expression, if possible. The eyes fell on me. “Donovan Curtis—your parents are on their way.”

  Chloe was the first to clue in to the gravity of what was going on. “Donovan might not be gifted in the same way as the rest of us, but he’s the heart and soul of our team! He’s the heart and soul of our class!”

  Dr. Schultz regarded her sternly. “Donovan’s problems go far beyond trying to be what he’s not.”

  I followed him out of the gym, while the squawking and protesting of my teammates rang off the rafters.

  “He drives the robot!”

  “We’re dead without him!”

  “He is so gifted!”

  “He brought us Katie!”

  “He showed me YouTube!”

  “He’s one of us!”

  Their support would have made me feel good if I hadn’t been on my way to the end of the world.

  I scrubbed hard with the polishing cloth, and Madagascar got a little shinier. Maybe. It was so dark in the subbasement of the administration building that it was hard to tell Africa from South America.

  I was in the dungeon—or at least the closest thing they had to a dungeon in the Hardcastle school district. My sentence was to polish up the bronze world I had knocked off Atlas’s shoulders all those weeks ago. The worst part wasn’t the polishing; it was chipping off years of bird droppings that had ossified by a chemical process I’ll bet even Noah Youkilis couldn’t explain.

  It was all useless, of course. There was no way Schultz was going to put this thing up again. Not after what had happened. But he wanted it perfect and gleaming in its hiding place. Actually, what he really wanted was for me to suffer. Believe it or not, cleaning the celestial sphere—as part of twenty hours of community service—was my only punishment for everything that had happened. My family was not going to have to pay for repairs to the Hardcastle gym. I was off the hook—a survivor, just like my ancestor, James Donovan, when he climbed out of the icy North Atlantic and into the lifeboat. Whacking the statue with a branch had been a dumb thing to do, but, in the end, it fell within the range of normal wear and tear. The rusted bolt was at fault, not me. Now the only question was, would the insurance company pay for a design flaw from a foundry that no longer existed?

  “You got off easy, Donovan Curtis,” the superintendent had told me sternly at the meeting with my parents. “I hope you realize that this could have gone a lot harder on you.”

  He called me by my full name, al
most as if he was afraid he might forget it again. I couldn’t blame him. These past weeks must have been like chasing a ghost. That’s probably why he was so animated when he added, “I suppose I don’t have to tell you that you’re no longer a student at the Academy for Scholastic Distinction.”

  Seated between Mom and Dad, I’d recoiled as if he’d slapped me. I didn’t much care about the Academy—I’d never belonged there in the first place. But it hurt to be off the robotics team.

  My mother cried, but that wasn’t exactly breaking news. She cried whenever anyone got voted off the island on reality TV. I understood her disappointment. As of today, I wasn’t gifted anymore. Not only that, but I was responsible for the biggest town disaster since the famous gas-line explosion of 1986, which ruptured a drainage pipe and filled the Hardcastle Public Library with raw sewage up to the second floor.

  Worse still was how Dad took it in stride. Some of that might have been his good mood at finding out he wasn’t going to have to foot the bill for a new gym. Mostly, though, it said he had never truly believed I was gifted in the first place.

  His only comment was, “Do you think turpentine will take that bumper sticker off the car?”

  I never gave much thought to the fact that me being at the Academy had been such a big deal to him. But for some reason, it bugged me that he wasn’t more upset to learn that the whole thing was a sham.

  “You always suspected, huh, Dad?”

  He was quiet for a moment, then, “You know that website you like—the one about the ancestors and great-granduncles and old-time relatives? Well, I did my share of that kind of poking around when I was your age.”

  That didn’t make sense. “They had ancestry.com when you were a kid?”

  “Well, back then they called it the library. But if you go through enough microfiches, you can learn the same things. The names you dig up, I’ve heard most of them before—Irish forebears who moved to America, Canada, England, Australia—places like that.”