Ungifted (18 page)

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.

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
.

 

 

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?

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.”