Ungifted (2 page)

“Help me!” I called to the Daniels. But they were heading in the opposite direction. They liked to watch me do stuff; they had a lot less interest in hanging around for the consequences.

Heart sinking, I projected the course of the runaway globe. The prognosis was not good. It was hurtling straight for the parking lot, where a lot of innocent cars were waiting to get bashed in. Desperately, I threw myself headfirst at the juggernaut. When my shoulder struck the heavy metal, it felt like running into a brick wall. If it changed the direction at all, it was about a millionth of an inch. Flat on my face now, all I could do was watch.

The globe screamed down toward all that expensive machinery, bounced off an upturned curbstone, and caromed toward the building. The cars were safe, but the world and heavens were now on a collision course with the basketball game.

It pulverized the glass doors, sending up a blizzard of shards that obscured the entrance. I heard a very sharp whistle blast, like the referee was calling a foul on Atlas, or possibly me.

There was another relative on ancestry.com. He wasn't very much like me. I doubt I would have remembered him at all, except for his name—James Donovan. I'd wondered if I was named after him, although my mother claimed she'd never heard of the guy. He emigrated from Ireland in 1912, which would have been fine except that the ship he picked was—think Atlas here—the
Titanic
.

As decision makers, he and I were pretty much on the same level.

But get this: He didn't die. He was plucked from the freezing water alive.

James Donovan was a
survivor
.

If I'd inherited any of those skills, I had a sinking feeling they were about to come in handy.

T
o be the superintendent of a school district like Hardcastle, with its forty-seven buildings and more than thirty thousand students, was a huge responsibility. A lot of administrators would have hundreds of complicated rules to follow. I only had one: No screwups.

So when I took time out of my busy schedule and burdensome duties to attend a middle school basketball game, I expected to see orderly students, good sportsmanship, and happy alumni. What I did
not
expect to see was a giant metal ball blasting into the gymnasium, scattering players like tenpins. Not only did it create a dangerous situation, but it also reflected very badly on the Hardcastle schools.

Miraculously, no one was injured. Still, there was a lot of chaos as the parents of the players rushed to their sons on the floor in an effort to protect them from whatever this onslaught was.

I knew instantly. That globe was part of the statue of Atlas that stood on the knoll overlooking the school. And it certainly hadn't rolled itself down to the gym. I raced through the shattered door and onto the lawn. I could see the ribbon of crushed grass all the way back to the figure of Atlas, who looked peculiar, bent under the weight of absolutely nothing.

The culprit lay in the flattened path, raised up on his elbows, staring at the damage, guilty. “You, there!” I called.

The boy tried to scramble up and run, but he couldn't get any traction on the squashed turf. By the time he found his feet, I was upon him, and he was caught.

“Come with me to my office.”

His shoulders slumped. “Yeah, okay.” He looked as worried as he ought to be. I drew some small satisfaction from that.

The administration building was on the very same campus, but the boy didn't speak on the way over, not even to protest his innocence. A fat lot of good that would have done him. I had him dead to rights. And the evidence—a four-hundred-pound bronze sphere, and the damage it had caused—spoke plainly about what he had done.

At last, we reached my office, and I glared at him across my desk. “Do you know who I am?”

He shook his head, and had the grace to look a little scared.

“I am Dr. Schultz, Superintendent of the Hardcastle Independent School District. And I'll have your name and your school's name right now.”

“Donovan Curtis. I go here—I mean Hardcastle Middle, where, uh,
it
happened.”

I wrote the information on a piece of paper on the cluttered desk in front of me. “Well, Donovan Curtis, I don't have to tell you that you're in big trouble right now. You're lucky that no one was hurt or even killed by that stunt of yours. Why would you do such a thing?”

“It was an accident.”

If he thought he could get away with an excuse like that, he had picked the wrong administrator. “A giant metal ball doesn't plow through a building by accident.”

He spoke up again. “I hit the statue with a branch, but I didn't think the world would fall off.”

“You didn't think—”

My secretary, Mrs. De Bourbon, came bustling in, looking worried. “I'm so sorry to disturb you, Dr. Schultz, but you're needed urgently back at the gym. Someone called the fire department from a cell phone, and you're the only one with the authority to send them away.” She frowned. “Nothing's on fire, is it?”

“No, of course not.” I was halfway to the door when I hesitated. What to do with the boy? He was looking hopeful, as if he were home free. But believe me, he wasn't. It would serve him right if I left him sitting here, cooling his heels, while I went out to deal with the mess he'd made! But who knew how long that would take? By now those firefighters could be finding code violations in the gym! And I had a dinner meeting across town....

I skewered him with my most severe expression. “You can go. I'll send for you tomorrow morning, and we can continue this discussion.”

He was out of there like a shot. I wasn't far behind him when Mrs. De Bourbon called me back.

“I'm sorry to bother you again, but Student Services needs the list of the new candidates for the gifted program.”

I sighed. Did everything have to pass through me? I was only one person! “It's on my desk, Cynthia. You can't miss it.”

What a nightmare! There was damage to the gym floor in addition to the doors, which were a total loss. The foundry that had made the statue had gone out of business five years ago, so good luck getting a replacement globe for Atlas. The district's insurance agent was on vacation for the next two weeks.

I missed my dinner meeting and my dinner. By the time I got back to my office, I was almost insane with aggravation. This was exactly why I couldn't tolerate screwups. There was no such thing as just one. The first led to the second, and pretty soon they were coming at you in battalions. I needed to accomplish one real thing on this miserable day, and I knew exactly what it was going to be: I was going to call that boy's parents and let them know the damage and chaos their son's vandalism had caused.

I scanned my desk for the paper where I'd written his name. It was gone.

I scoured every item on that desk, and not just once. Nothing.

“Cynthia!”

But she had already left for the day.

How could this be? That boy must have snuck back in and stolen the paper, hoping I'd forget his name among the thirty thousand students I'm responsible for! Well, he was wrong about that! His name was—his name was—

Sudden overpowering chagrin.

I had broken my only rule.

I
f I didn't die of stress that night, I probably never will. Each time the phone rang, I was convinced it was Schultz, calling to rat me out to Mom and Dad. Every knock at the door meant the police were here to arrest the guy who'd bombed a basketball game with the weight of the world. Whenever my dad's BlackBerry pinged, I was positive that was the newsflash. It didn't make for good sleeping. It didn't make for
any
sleeping.

Mom was shocked at the sight of me over the breakfast table. “I was studying,” I told her with a yawn wide enough to drive a truck through.

“You look like Wile E. Coyote after the Roadrunner dropped him off a cliff,” said my sister, Katie. She was twenty-six, and had moved back in with us while her husband was deployed to Afghanistan with the Marines.

“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....”