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  “Thanks, Miss Goodyear,” I retorted absently. Katie was seven months pregnant, possibly with a baby hippo.

  “One more wisecrack about my sumo stomach and I’ll sit on you,” she threatened. “You think this is a vacation for me?”

  “Not for you; for Brad,” I returned. “He’s got an eleven-thousand-mile buffer zone from all this sweetness and light.”

  I regretted it the instant the words passed my lips. Normally, the two of us could go back and forth insulting each other for hours. But Katie lapsed into a melancholy silence, a far-off expression in her eyes. It wasn’t hard to figure out the cause of her reverie. The father of her unborn child was on the opposite side of the world in a war zone. And even though First Lieutenant H. Bradley Patterson spent most of his time inside the armored shell of a tank, it had to be on her mind that her husband was in a risky line of work.

  Mom came over and placed her hands reassuringly on Katie’s shoulders. “Brad’s surrounded by the best-trained people with the best equipment money can buy.”

  But her daughter’s mind turned out to be elsewhere. “Beatrice is coming.”

  “Beatrice?” Mom echoed. “You mean Brad’s dog? I thought she was staying with your mother-in-law.”

  “She was,” Katie explained miserably. “But Fanny called me this morning. She said she can’t cope, and she’s coming this afternoon to drop off Beatrice.”

  “We’re getting a dog?” I asked, mildly interested.

  “That mutt hates me,” Katie moaned. “That’s the reason she was supposed to go to Fanny in the first place. Beatrice will never forgive me for taking her place in Brad’s life. For all I know, she blames me for getting him shipped out. Like I make deployment decisions for the Marine Corps.”

  “She’s your dog too, Katie,” Mom lectured. “And we’d be delighted to take care of her while Brad’s serving his country. Right, Donnie?”

  “I’m not touching the poop scoop,” I said firmly.

  My mind was on Schultz, not dogs, that morning. At school, I waited to be called to the office. Between classes, I searched for the summons taped to my locker. Nothing. The anxiety was eating me up from the inside. When the PA announcement finally came, it was almost a relief.

  “Would Donovan Curtis please come to the office? Donovan Curtis to the office.”

  It was the longest walk I’d ever taken. At each open door, hostile faces glowered out at me. Remember, I was still the guy who disrespected our beloved basketball team. When the news got around that I was also responsible for unleashing the runaway globe that bowled out the gym, I was really going to be Public Enemy Number One.

  At last, I rounded the corner, and the glassed-in reception area came into view. To my surprise, the avenging angel waiting for me was not Dr. Schultz, but Mr. Fender.

  “When you serve a detention with me, Mr. Curtis, you serve it to the end. And you don’t leave until I tell you it’s time....”

  He went on for a while, trying to scare me, I guess. The poor guy had no way of knowing that, considering the payback I was expecting from Schultz, a rampaging grizzly couldn’t scare me. He cut me loose, though, explaining that, thanks to the damage to the gym, we students had “suffered enough.”

  I had a sneaking suspicion Schultz wasn’t going to see it that way.

  I couldn’t say how much anybody had actually suffered, but the disaster at the basketball game was definitely the hot topic at school.

  “When the glass blew out, I thought it was an explosion!”

  “Like a terrorist attack!”

  “Did you see the statue with the top part missing? It looks like my grandfather when his back goes out!”

  “I heard the gym floor is permanently messed up!”

  “When they catch the guy who did it, they’re going to hang him on a meat hook!”

  “Yeah!” Nussbaum chimed in. “I pity that poor loser! His life isn’t worth a used Kleenex!” He turned to me. “So, Donovan, when do you think you’re going to get busted?”

  “Shhh!” I pulled the Daniels into the boys’ room, and checked the stalls for possible eavesdroppers. “This is no joke! The walls have ears!”

  “Dude.” Nussbaum was offended. “We’d never rat out a friend.”

  “Listen, that call was a false alarm—just Fender for skipping out of detention. I don’t understand why Schultz hasn’t come after me yet.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t know who you are,” Sanderson suggested.

  I shook my head. “He wrote down my name. I told him where I go to school. He’s the superintendent. He’s got access to every file and record there is.”

  “Yeah, did you pick the wrong guy to get caught by or what?” Nussbaum agreed. “The head honcho of the whole district.”

  “I’m wondering if it’s not as bad as it looked,” I mused in a low voice. “A little cleanup, a little wood polish—”

  “I heard they’re going to have to redo the whole gym floor,” Sanderson put in. “It costs, like, zillions of dollars.”

  “And don’t forget the glass doors,” Nussbaum added. “You’re a dead man walking.”

  I totally agreed. So why wasn’t it happening? All day long, and the following days too, I squirmed while rumors spread like head lice and the Daniels predicted my downfall. There was no escape from the tension at home, where reports of firefights in Afghanistan dominated CNN. Then, on Wednesday, Katie’s mother-in-law dropped off the dog.

  The times I’d seen Beatrice, she was a rocket-powered hairball. But the cinnamon chow chow that slunk into our house was listless and mewling.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Mom asked.

  “She’s dying!” Fanny declared dramatically, and tried to walk out the door.

  Katie held on to her arm. “How do you know? Did she get hit by a car? Is she sick?”

  Her mother-in-law wasn’t interested in the details. “I can’t cope with this at my age!” And with that, she was gone.

  Mom reached down to pat the dog. Beatrice snapped at her hand. She tossed a warning growl over her shoulder at Katie, just in case she might be contemplating a similar move.

  “She’s too mean to die,” I observed.

  “She can’t die,” Katie said tragically. “Brad loves her.”

  “Brad loves you, too,” I returned. “What does that say about Brad?”

  “He’ll never forgive me if something happens to her!”

  “Well, that’s not exactly fair, is it?” Mom put in. “If anything went wrong, it was on Fanny’s watch, not yours.”

  “That’s her whole modus operandi,” Katie argued.

  “The minute she saw the writing on the wall, she dumped the dog on me! And how can we take care of Beatrice if she won’t even let us go near her?”

  As if in answer, Beatrice picked herself off the floor, walked over to me, and lay down on my feet.

  “Donovan!” my mother exclaimed.

  “What did I do? I didn’t do anything!”

  “Beatrice likes you!” Katie said in an awed whisper.

  “So?”

  “So you can look after her,” Mom reasoned, like this was a huge honor.

  I declined. “Forget it. Besides, if Brad is such a baby about Beatrice, you have to wonder if he’s the right person to be in charge of a twenty-million-dollar tank.”

  But when Beatrice refused to eat, I had to hand-feed her a few lumps of liver-flavored kibble. When it was time to take her out, I was the only one she would allow to put the leash on. When Katie made her a bed in the basement, she wouldn’t even go down the stairs. I knew I was going to have a roommate. Just call me Dog-Whisperer Donovan. As if I didn’t have enough hassles.

  Dad came home at six, bringing the mail. “There’s a letter from the school, Donnie. Is there anything you want to tell us before we open it?”

  By that time, my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth, so I just shook my head and waited for the ax to fall.

  Who knew how much trouble I was in? Suspended? Pr
obably. Expelled? Not out of the question—especially since Schultz thought I’d done it on purpose. I had done it on purpose—the hitting-the-statue part, anyway.

  While Dad read, I monitored the telltale vein in the top left corner of his forehead. It bulged a little, but not nearly as much as it had during the aftermath of the toupee liftoff. That had to be considered an encouraging sign.

  At last, he handed me the letter. “You have an explanation for this?”

  “I—I—” Where would I even start?

  My eyes fell on the page.

  To the parents of DONOVAN CURTIS: The time has come to recognize your child’s hard work and commitment to excellence as a student in the Hardcastle Independent School District. This letter is to inform you that DONOVAN has been selected to attend the Academy for Scholastic Distinction (ASD), a special program geared toward gifted and talented students, tailored to their exceptional abilities and extraordinary potential for academic achievement....

  It said more—a lot more, about school transfer paperwork, and registration forms, and which bus route would take me to my new placement at the Academy. I barely saw any of it. My eyes couldn’t get past words like excellence, distinction, gifted, and especially Donovan Curtis.

  Gifted? Me? I was the guy who skateboarded down waterslides and shot a Super Soaker at an electric fence. When people heard my name, they thought, Don’t try this at home! not gifted.

  I wasn’t being expelled; I was being promoted.

  Dad was grinning from ear to ear. “I always knew that the real problem was they just weren’t challenging you.”

  Mom looked worried. “Is everything okay?”

  “Donnie’s gifted!” Dad crowed.

  “It’s a mistake,” Katie scoffed. “The kid’s about as gifted as a caterpillar. He brings home a B and it sets off six days of skywriting and fireworks.”

  Much as I hated to agree with Katie, she had a point. My grades weren’t terrible, but they were nothing to write home about. Come to think of it, I remembered the day all the nerds and brainiacs took the special aptitude test to see who got into the gifted program. I remembered it because nobody even asked me to give it a try. And I wasn’t insulted because I wasn’t gifted.

  My eyes skipped down to the bottom of the page.

  My heartiest congratulations once again. Your child is a credit to the Hardcastle Independent School District.

  Sincerely,

  Dr. Alonzo Schultz

  Superintendent, HISD

  Schultz.

  The only program Schultz would recommend me for was Alcatraz. Didn’t he realize who I was? I mean, the guy made a point of getting my name so he’d know exactly who to burn at the stake!

  It came to me in a giddy flashback to the day of The Incident. Right after Schultz let me go, his secretary asked for the roster of new kids for the Academy. The superintendent’s response was the last thing I remember before bouncing out of there.

  His exact words: “It’s on my desk, Cynthia. You can’t miss it.”

  Had that big doofus scribbled my name on the gifted list by accident? And everybody else thought it was there because it was supposed to be? It seemed crazy, but it did explain the two inexplicable things going on in my life right now: 1) why Schultz hadn’t come to kill me yet, and 2) why I’d just been invited to go to genius school.

  I laughed out loud. People thought I acted without thinking? This was a thousand times worse than hitting a statue with a twig. It was a shoo-in for the Bonehead Moves Hall of Fame!

  “What’s so funny?” Dad asked.

  I almost spilled the beans. How many chances do you get to show that the guy who runs the entire city school system is an even bigger dipstick than you are? Besides, it’s not like my parents weren’t going to find out eventually. Sooner or later, Schultz would realize his mistake and …

  Or would he? The only district officials who saw me that day were Schultz and his secretary, and neither of them had ever met me before. They worked in the administration building, not Hardcastle Middle School. The paper my name was written on was surely gone now, crumpled up in a wastebasket or fed through a paper shredder. The one thing the superintendent knew about me was the school I went to. That was the only way he could get to me.

  The gifted letter tingled in my hands. If I was at the Academy, he wouldn’t be able to find me. It was the realm of brainiacs and goody-goodies, the last place you’d look for a kid who put a bronze globe through a glass door.

  A tiny voice spoke up from the depths of my spleen: Forget it. Not in a million years. You won’t last ten minutes in the gifted program. There’s never been anybody more ungifted than you.

  Mom was flushed with happiness. “I always knew this day would come. It was only a matter of time before people realized how special you are.” She sniffed back a tear of emotion. “Beatrice was our good-luck charm. Things are finally starting to turn around for this family. I can feel it.”

  “I feel it too,” added Dad, putting his arms around her. “Wait a minute—Beatrice?” His eyes strayed to the hall, where the languid chow chow was chewing on his newspaper, reducing it to an inky pulp.

  Up until that instant, I honestly don’t think I was going to go through with it. But since Brad had shipped out and Katie had moved back in, the tension in our house had been simmering just below the boiling point. And now this extra stress with the stupid dog. How could I pile my own problems on top of that? Especially when Mom and Dad looked so proud—something that didn’t happen every day where I was concerned.

  I thought of my namesake, James Donovan, on the foundering Titanic. What would he do—sink or swim?

  “Gifted,” I said a little louder, as if trying it on for size. “I guess I’d better go to school and clean out my locker.”

  UNARMED

  CHLOE GARFINKLE

  IQ: 159

  <
  A gift you get for nothing. This you have to pay for.>>

  Okay, I know it’s not a real hypothesis—by that, I mean something you can design an experiment to test. But it’s true. There’s a price to being gifted.

  The cost is your life. You don’t die or anything like that. But you don’t live either. Free time? Forget it. You go to a special academy that gives you extra work to suck up every spare minute—especially since it probably takes forever to get there. Schools for the gifted are few and far between. Chances are you don’t live near one. Friends? Those are the people you slave alongside. They might be awesome, but how would you ever find out? You’re too busy for them, and they’re too busy for you. Sports? When? And besides, why play when you probably stink?

  <>

  What about TV or video games? Oh, please. You’re far too smart for that. Pep rallies? For what—the robotics team? Forget it—and the same goes for school dances, funny-hat day, drama club, charity drives....

  “Dances?” repeated Abigail Lee when I brought up the subject in homeroom. “Who do you want to dance with? Him?” She pointed at skinny, needle-nosed Noah Youkilis.

  She had a point. Most of the guys at the Academy for Scholastic Distinction weren’t exactly what you’d call Hollywood hunks. I didn’t expect bodybuilders, but it would be nice if they could grow a set of shoulders between the lot of them. And it wouldn’t hurt to spend a little time outdoors to put some color in those prison-pale faces.

  <>

  Then again—being smart requires you to examine things from all sides—why pick on the guys? We girls weren’t exactly homecoming queens either. Abigail was a genius biochemist, but her greatest fashion statement was her white lab coat. She looked like she hadn’t combed her hair since 2007. Or me, for that matter. I’d scored a perfect 2400 on every SAT practice test since sixth gra
de, but who was I to talk? Here I was, almost fourteen, and I’d never danced with a guy who wasn’t related to me. I’d never been to a party except for kiddy things with balloons. I wasn’t going on the cover of Seventeen anytime soon, that was for sure.

  “Okay, so it doesn’t have to be a dance,” I told Abigail. “But why can’t it be something? Every day millions of kids around this country do millions of normal activities, and they have a great time at it. Why can’t we?”

  “The statewide robotics meet is coming up,” she offered.

  Sigh.

  I took robotics. I was good at it. I was good at all of it. I totally belonged at this school. But why did it have to mean that I couldn’t be a regular person too?

  Mr. Osborne, our homeroom teacher, who was also head of the robotics program, breezed into the lab. “Let’s hurry up and take attendance. We’ve got a lot to do today.”

  We were all there. Where else would we be? We were any teacher’s dream, yet at that moment it made me sad. I had no desire to cut class—but maybe that was the problem. When was the last time one of us broke the rules? This morning, while checking on my experiment in the growth of hydroponic flax, I’d noticed the paper I’d taped to my desk lamp to concentrate the beam onto the seedlings. It was a certificate of merit I’d received for perfect attendance at school. I’d earned seven of these over the years, and what use were they to me? Makeshift lampshades.

  <>

  When was the last time anybody even showed up late?

  “Sorry I’m late.” A tall sandy-haired boy appeared at the door. “Is this Mr. Osborne’s class?”

  “This is the robotics lab,” the teacher replied. “And you are?”

  “Donovan Curtis,” the newcomer replied, waving a printed form. “I’m supposed to be in this homeroom.”

  “Right—our fresh blood from Hardcastle Middle.” Oz accepted the paper and examined it.

  Abigail leaned over to me. “That can’t be right! He’s coming to this school?”