Ungifted (23 page)

“Donovan!” Abigail was last. Her eyes were huge, her expression desperate.

I started shouting instructions, struggling for calm myself. “Take the joystick and—”

She had a better idea. She thrust the controller into my hands, and backed away, panting.

What could I do? I lowered the lift mechanism, tipped up the ring and skewered it with one of the forks. Then I delivered it to its destination, deftly raising it, and placing it onto the peg.

Wasting no time, I wheeled Tin Man around and headed back toward Chloe. She looked devastated, shaking her head tragically. I understood the message instantly. I was too late. Pot-zilla had already picked up the final ring and was headed toward the peg and victory.

I saw red. After sabotaging us, Cold Spring Harbor was
not
going home with first prize. Not while I had the joystick in my hand. I drove Tin Man right into the path of the big shiny pot.

“Donovan!” shouted Oz. “
Stop!
”

Pot-zilla was bigger and heavier, but Cold Spring Harbor didn't know that Tin Man had a secret weapon—a powerful motor in the lift mechanism, one that had polished every floor in the Academy for Scholastic Distinction.

A split second before impact, I engaged the forklift. Tin Man picked up Pot-zilla bodily, the larger robot's Mecanum wheels spinning without traction.

Absolute pandemonium broke out. The Cold Spring Harbor kids were screaming, but my team was matching them in volume. The head judge was blowing his whistle, but it could not be heard over the general din. Neither could Schultz, who was shouting at me from behind Chloe. Anyway, I couldn't stop now. Tin Man was a bundle of circuits, incapable of revenge fantasy, but I was all too human.

Cold Spring Harbor's driver was trying to free Pot-zilla by thrashing with its lifting arms. I needed to act fast. Tin Man had been designed for competition, not combat, so I had to improvise a little. I swiveled ninety degrees and, using Pot-zilla as a battering ram, I charged the scorer's table.

Oz hollered, “
Do-o-o-on-o-o-o-va-a-an!
” It came out a ten-syllable word.

But I was committed. The judges scrambled for cover as I slammed that big pot right into the steel-reinforced corner of the table. Pot-zilla bounced off, dented. One lifting arm hung limply by its shiny bulk. The other reached for Tin Man with evil intent. I backed my robot away.

A shriek behind me penetrated even the chaotic noise of the crowd. Noah bounded onto the scene. He snatched up one of the judges' abandoned chairs, and brought it down, WWE style, on Pot-zilla's polished crown.

Wham!
And then again.
Wham! Wham! Wham!

If the cybernetic pot hadn't been finished before, it was finished now. It wobbled once, and keeled over, lying there, an upended cockroach, wheels turning like struggling legs.

The auditorium had been rocking with excitement, dismay, horror, laughter, and outrage. But now that the action seemed to be over, a strange hush fell as people waited to see what would happen next. Considering the craziness of the situation, it was a strangely familiar moment to me. The impulsive act was over, but the consequences had not yet descended on my head. It was as if time had ground to a halt, and we were all frozen there. What the future held I couldn't predict, but I had a sense that it had something to do with Dr. Schultz, pushing through the throng toward me, his face a thundercloud.

A high-pitched voice suddenly cut through the eerie silence. “
Donnie—
” It was Katie, struggling down the grandstand steps. “
Donnie—it's time!
”

I was so wrapped up in the insanity that I wasn't thinking straight. “Time for what?”

Chloe wasn't like me. She was in the gifted program for real. “The baby!” she exclaimed. “Katie's having the baby!”

<<
Hypothesis: The speed of the drive is directly proportional to the acuteness of the crisis
.>>

T
he yellow minibus squealed up to the emergency entrance of St. Leo Medical Center, and the disqualified Academy robotics team piled out, bearing Katie Patterson with us. While Oz and Donovan handled the patient registration, Katie and the rest of us lay on the waiting-room carpet, practicing Noah's breathing technique.

“Don't worry,” Katie assured the two bewildered Daniels. “This pregnancy is a group effort.”

“Cool,” said the taller one, but he looked a little unnerved.

A door swung open, and an orderly appeared, pushing a wheelchair. “Mrs. Patter”—he gawked at us on the floor—“what's going on down there?”

“It's okay,” Latrell told him. “We're the birthing team!”

“We only do robotics in our spare time,” Noah explained.

Katie was loaded into the chair and brought to a case room. We followed, every last one of us. The staff wasn't too keen on that, but they had no choice. We were all her coaches, except for the Daniels, and they kept their mouths shut for a change. I'd never seen them so well behaved.

We were in there forever, breathing and timing contractions with our robotics stopwatch. We studied the final sonogram, and kept a close eye on the fetal heart monitor that Katie wore. Everything was fine, but Donovan seemed really scared, even more than his sister, and she was the one having the baby. He spent most of the time on the phone, trying to locate his parents to let them know what was going on. We all took turns calling home to inform our families that this robotics meet was going on a lot longer than usual.

Finally, the doctor decided it was time to take his patient into delivery. As the brother, Donovan went too. The rest of us congregated in the waiting room to—well—wait.

You could tell the two Daniels were pretty cowed by the whole adventure.

“So is this, like, business as usual for the gifted program?” the taller one asked. “I mean, do you do this kind of stuff a lot?”

Oz favored him with an exhausted chuckle. “You mean trash a robotics meet and have a baby? No. It's fair to say this is a big day even for us.”

“What's going to happen to us?” Abigail wondered anxiously. “Do you think we might be banned from future competition?”

Oz shrugged miserably. “I don't know. Interfering with another robot is a very serious offense. There are bound to be consequences.”

“It was worth it!” the shorter Daniel exploded. “I've known Donovan since first grade, and that was him at his best! Real gladiator stuff!”

“It was WWE,” Noah amended.

“You were great too, kid,” the other Daniel assured him. “Mess with you and pay the price. I learned the hard way.”

I spoke up. “What Donovan did was against the rules, but it was
right
. Cold Spring Harbor interfered with our robot before he interfered with theirs.”

Our teacher sighed. “That's assuming the judges noticed. If they didn't, they'll see the attack as unprovoked.”

“But effective,” Noah put in.

Kevin rubbed his hands together. “It was beautiful to see that tin pot with a big dent in it.”

“I was hoping the arm would fall off,” Latrell added wistfully.

“Well, they definitely didn't deserve to win,” Abigail said reluctantly. “Even if that means we can't win either.”

Jacey opened her mouth to speak, and I braced for one of her odd random comments. Instead, she said softly but with conviction, “Way to go, Donovan.”

It hit me just then how different we all were since Donovan had been mistakenly sent to the Academy. The mayhem that had ended the robotics meet would have freaked us out a few weeks ago. Now we were gloating over having destroyed our enemy. If Oz had hoped Donovan would become more like us, here was proof that the opposite was true.
We
had become more like Donovan.

I love my school, but I'd always yearned for us to be a little more normal.

<<
Hypothesis: Today we finally got there
.>>

We'd been cooling our heels for about an hour when Dr. Schultz came into the waiting room. The superintendent's hair was wild, his tie undone, his normally immaculate suit rumpled.

Spying us, he rushed over. “Any news?”

“Nothing yet,” Oz informed him.

He looked frazzled. “I've got your robot in the trunk of my car, but the rest of your equipment is in the storage room at the auditorium. All except the YoukilAde. That got spilled out in the … confusion.”

“What did the judges finally decide?” asked Oz, and I could tell he wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“You were disqualified and so was Cold Spring Harbor,” the superintendent reported. “Orchard Park were the winners, but I don't think that means much this year. The whole thing was a major fiasco. This is supposed to be a friendly science competition, not a gang rumble.”

“Are we in really big trouble?” Abigail asked in a small voice.

“I'm honestly not sure,” replied Dr. Schultz. “I inquired several times, but no one would give me a straight answer. The judges have never dealt with this kind of misconduct before. That might work in our favor.”

“We should probably keep a low profile in the robotics association for a while,” Oz suggested, and we all chimed in our agreement.

Low profile or not, this was one robotics meet I'd never forget. The image of Donovan working the joystick, exacting Tin Man's revenge, would forever be burned onto the inside of my eyelids. I'll bet the others—even Abigail—felt the same way.

<<
Hypothesis: To take a robot designed to place rings on pegs and turn it into an instrument of destruction requires a kind of giftedness that none of us have
.>>

It was then that the heavy swinging door was flung wide and Donovan staggered out to the waiting room, wide-eyed and white-faced. He was quite a sight in green scrubs and a surgical cap. “It happened,” he rasped.

“And?” I prompted eagerly.

“It's a girl,” he managed. “Katie had a baby girl!”

The waiting room erupted in cheers and we mobbed him with backslaps and congratulations.

<<
Hypothesis: !!!!!!
>>

Okay, that wasn't a hypothesis. It was just awesome.

“Dude, you're an uncle!” the taller Daniel exclaimed. “You did it!”

“
Katie
did it,” I amended. I threw my arms around Donovan and gave him a big hug.

He seemed startled, and I admit it was a little closer than any of the others got. But I was just so happy for Katie. I
knew
the day Donovan stepped into the robotics lab that there were great things ahead. And this was the greatest of them all.

Donovan worked his way through the well-wishers and nearly jumped out of his scrubs at the sight of Dr. Schultz.

“You can't blame Donovan,” I jumped in. “Cold Spring Harbor started it.”

The entire team burst into a babbling description of how our opponents deliberately knocked the ring out of Tin Man's control.

“I couldn't let them beat us,” Donovan finished. “Not that way.”

“I don't appreciate rule breaking,” the superintendent said gravely. “School spirit, however, is something I appreciate very much. Whatever else you are, Donovan Curtis, you're a loyal teammate.” He smiled. “And please pass on my congratulations to your sister, her husband, and their new daughter.”

“Wait a minute!” Noah's brow furrowed. “It can't be a daughter. The sonogram clearly showed a boy.”

Oz laughed. “Well, I guess you were wrong about that.”

The look on Noah's face as he took in the enormity of that statement was sheer wonder. “Wrong …” he repeated, dazed. “I was … wrong.”

“It's no big deal, Noah,” I told him gently.

“It's a colossal deal. I'm
never
wrong.” All at once, his normally serious expression dissolved into a large goofy grin. “This is the greatest moment of my life!”

“Maybe, if you get really lucky, you can be wrong again someday,” Donovan teased.