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  “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?

  UNREPAIRED

  DONOVAN CURTIS

  IQ: 112

  The grade glowered at me off the cover sheet of my social studies paper: D-minus.

  “Is that graded on a bell curve?” I asked Mrs. Shapiro.

  She was almost sympathetic. “No, Donovan. It’s just graded.”

  “Oh.”

  I wasn’t normally grade-obsessed, but this really threw me. The thing is, I had no chance with the kind of math and science they taught in this place. If I was going to have any prayer at all of hacking it in the Academy, I’d have to rock subjects like English and social studies. That’s why I was so shocked about the D-minus. I’d worked really hard on this paper. Maybe I hadn’t aced it by gifted standards. But I’d figured I’d get a least a B. I would have settled for a C!

  The teacher sighed. “Is there anything you want to tell me? Is something wrong?”

  Something was wrong, all right. When the biggest effort I’d put into a school project since kindergarten pulled a D-minus, yes, it was pretty fair to say that something was wrong.

  She interpreted my silence as an invitation to probe further. “At home, perhaps?”

  “Well, it’s just that I have ADD.” That was pure blind inspiration. Sanderson had ADD, and occasionally he got cut a little extra slack because of it.

  Mrs. Shapiro’s expression softened immediately. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “I guess I was too distracted by other things.” She looked a little suspicious, so I added, “I really wanted to make it on my own. ADD doesn’t sound very gifted.”

  “That’s nonsense,” she reassured me. “You’d be astounded how often giftedness is accompanied by some sort of learning disability.” She handed the paper back to me. “Why don’t you work on this for another week?”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “Well …”

  “And we’ll see what we can do about raising your grade.”

  Hmmm, maybe there was more to this learning disability racket than met the eye. After all, ADD was just the beginning. With a little bit of effort, I could work up a case of obsessive-compulsive disorder that would knock your socks off. And what about dyslexia? That could be just the ticket to ward off any D-minuses that might be coming down the pike in English.

  I put my all into the social studies paper, and Mrs. Shapiro grudgingly upped me to a C. I fared no better in English class. Dyslexia or not, C-minus was the best I could come up with, and that was a stretch. Have you ever read Beowulf? Even the Cliff Notes could kill you.

  I expanded my list of disorders. Restless leg syndrome was a good one. It explained all my fidgeting. And my nonspecific bladder issues allowed me to spend as much time in the bathroom as outside of it. I had this recurring nightmare that all my teachers got together and compared notes on my various illnesses, weaknesses, and diseases. At the end of the dream, an ambulance pulls up to the Academy to haul me off to intensive care. But when the attendant takes off his surgical mask, it isn’t a paramedic; it’s Dr. Schultz. Then I’d wake up, choking and spitting, because Beatrice was sleeping on my face.

  Yes, the chow chow was still a fact of life—I should say a fact of my life, since she totally loved me. Props to Katie—she tried to help out. But every time she even got in the same room with her husband’s dog, Beatrice growled her off. All the mutt wanted was me. She spent her nights in my bed and her days in my dresser drawer, because my scent was on my sheets and clothing—which meant I spent nights and days scratching at itchy dog hair. There wasn’t a part of my body the chow chow hadn’t napped on yet. I should open up for business as a parking lot. I’d make a fortune in dog biscuits.

  I would have put a stop to it, except that I was beginning to think Brad’s mother was right. Beatrice really was sick. Her energy level was absolute zero, and she ate nothing at all, which was amazing, because her stomach seemed fatter than ever. Nussbaum’s pet snake had more get-up-and-go. When the cold-blooded animals are livelier than the warm-blooded ones, you know you’ve got a problem.

  Katie was freaking out. “If anything happens to Beatrice, Brad’s going to drive his M1 halfway around the world and run me over.”

  “Not a good idea,” I told her. “You’re a pretty big speed bump. We don’t want to owe the Marines a new tank.”

  Poor Katie: her belly was expanding, her butt was widening, her ankles were thickening, and her varicose veins looked more like a road map every day. She was almost as big a mess as Beatrice—except that Katie hadn’t started peeing on the floor.

  That unpleasant surprise came in the form of a warm puddle on the carpet as I made my way downstairs for breakfast.

  “That mutt has got to go!” I howled, hopping on the steps, pulling off my soggy sock.

  My dad grinned at me from the front hall. “Is that how you support our troops? By evicting their pets?”

  “I don’t want to live in a chow chow’s toilet!” I complained.

  He laughed appreciatively. “Good thing you went to charm school before you got picked for the Academy.” Even Dad cut me a little slack these days. No wonder the gifted kids were different. They lived in a bubble. “I’m going to pick up a carpet steamer on my way to work this morning. Change your socks. I’ll give you a ride.”

  Outside, my eyes were drawn to the new bumper sticker on Dad’s car:

  PROUD PARENT OF AN HONOR STUDENT

  AT THE ACADEMY FOR SCHOLASTIC DISTINCTION

  “I’m not an honor student,” I managed, understatement of the year. “I just go there.”

  He was unperturbed. “Everybody’s an honor student at that place. It’s an honor just to walk in the door. We’re all proud of you, Donnie. Your mother and me, Katie—”

  “Right,” I snorted. “She said I’m dumber than her bladder-challenged dog.”

  Dad started the car. “She may not say it in so many words, but don’t think she isn’t feeling it. These are tough times for our family, what with Brad deployed and the baby coming. And now Beatrice—like we don’t have enough stress in our lives already. Then you step in and do something for everybody to feel good about. It’s like it was sent from heaven.”

  I felt as if I was losing my mind. Hiding out in the gifted program, and carrying the emotional well-being of my entire family. No pressure.

  At the small appliance shop, I hung back while Dad spoke with the salesman. There was a copy of the town paper lying open on the cashier’s desk. I nearly threw up my breakfast when I read the banner headline:

  REPAIRS IN LIMBO THANKS TO “STATUE-GATE”

  Physical Education classes at Hardcastle Middle and High Schools are being held outdoors despite the frigid winter temperatures. The glass double doors of the athletic facility are still boarded shut, and 25 percent of the floor is badly damaged. The school district is ready to roll on the repairs; a contractor has been hired.

  So what’s the holdup?

  The Parthenon Insurance Group is refusing to pay, arguing that the damage was caused by “engineering negligence” in the statue of Atlas, a portion of which rolled down the hill and smashed into the building. The offending object, Atlas’s “globe of the world and heavens”—all 400 pounds of it—was affixed by a single bolt, which corroded over the years. Th
is “design flaw,” Parthenon argues, is the responsibility of the statue’s manufacturer. However, Classical Bronze Foundries, Inc., went bankrupt in 1998, leaving the school high and dry.

  The Hardcastle School District has filed suit against Parthenon, but the case is likely to drag on for years, according to Superintendent Alonzo Schultz. In the meantime, the physical education program is out in the cold. All varsity basketball home games have to be relocated, and even the middle school’s annual Valentine Dance will take place elsewhere. Dr. Schultz holds out little hope for an early resolution unless he can track down a “person of interest” in the case....

  Yikes! If the insurance company stiffed the school district, would this “person of interest” have to pick up the tab? It wasn’t my fault Schultz cheaped out and bought a bum statue from a company that went bankrupt! Classical Bronze Foundries probably tried to save a few bucks on bolts and had to pay it all back a hundred times over in lawsuits.

  But I’ll bet our superintendent was the only genius who put his Atlas at the top of a hill overlooking a breakable gym!

  With a sinking heart, I watched Dad haggling with the salesman, trying to save every penny. We weren’t poor, but money was tight, especially with an extra mouth to feed—Katie—and a baby on the way. The one good thing about Beatrice’s hunger strike was that we weren’t blowing a fortune on dog food. There was no way we could afford to fix a busted gym. It didn’t take Noah Youkilis or Abigail Lee to do that math.

  I got to the Academy earlier than usual, which gave me some much-needed extra time to work on my science project. Abigail’s was entitled “The Abiotic Synthesis of Organic Compounds”; Chloe’s had something to do with the wave/particle duality of light, whatever that is; Noah’s, “The Youkilis Constant,” was this number he’d developed that supposedly explained the expansion of the universe in the first few seconds following the Big Bang. Mine was called “Chow Chows: A Special Breed.” Obviously, it wasn’t as impressive as the others, but I was really slaving over it. My plan was this: I was never going to outscience the Academy kids, but I could give it the personal touch. Hey, if I was stuck being hospice nurse to a dying dog, at least I should get a project out of it. I had photographs, and sound recordings of barking, and microscope slides of fur and drool samples. If I loaded up enough stuff, Mr. Holman would have to give me a decent grade on sheer volume. And if he turned out to be a dog lover, I’d be golden.