Ungifted (24 page)

Noah considered this. “I'll work on it in summer school.”

“No, you won't.” Oz was jubilant. “This class was short fourteen hours of Human Growth and Development instruction. But remember, real-life experience counts as triple time—”

I snapped to attention. “We've been with Katie four hours already. One more hour and—”

A flicker of hope animated Abigail's features. “No summer school?”

Dr. Schultz smiled. “Perhaps some good has actually come out of this horrendous experience. I will personally sign your credit.”

“But we have to put in the final hour,” Oz added.

“I wouldn't leave anyway,” I announced. “Not till I've seen our baby!”

<<
Hypothesis: Maybe the Human Growth and Development requirement isn't so pointless after all
.>>

I
refuse to let this mess leave a hole in my record.

I spent hours, days even, trying to draft the perfect line to take credit for being on the robotics team without taking blame for what the robotics team had done.
Disqualified
was such an ugly word;
banned
was even worse.
Conduct unbecoming a scientist
—no, don't even go there.

I finally went with:
2012 State Robotics Meet, First-Place Power Ranking (DNF)
. Maybe no one would look into the definition of DNF (Did Not Finish), or realize that there was no such thing as a first-place power ranking—which just meant that our robot beat the snot out of Cold Spring Harbor's robot. I don't think Harvard's admissions department would be too impressed by that. It wouldn't hurt someone like Noah. He would get into college wherever he wanted. Sadly, he would probably go nowhere at all. I never thought I'd say this: There was such a thing as being too smart. Confession: I was jealous of Noah. I'd give anything to spend an hour inside his head, to take a mind like that out for a test drive. But I wouldn't want to be him—even though he'd always be above a black mark like the robotics meet, which would be an Ivy League deal breaker for the rest of us.

Another thing Harvard could never be allowed to find out about: how close I came to going to summer school for Human Growth and Development. Do you think their admissions department would care that it wasn't my fault? Of course not. Everybody knows who goes to summer school: People who can't pass in the fall, winter, and spring. People who actually have to open up their report cards to find out their grades. People who think a Rhodes scholarship is Driver's Ed. At least I'd been spared
that
black mark—thanks to Donovan Curtis.

Yes, I know I was really hard on Donovan, and said a lot of terrible things about him. And I stand by my original opinion that he never should have been in the gifted program. But that doesn't mean that we all weren't really lucky for the Atlas incident that put him in Oz's class.

Which brings up the final piece of information that Harvard could never be permitted to learn. Ditto Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth, Stanford, Penn, and Cornell. If anyone accuses me of this, I'll deny it. I might even sue.

I was the one who hacked into the library computer and helped Donovan cheat on the retest.

Surprised?

Me too.

I
'm not sure how the clip made it to YouTube.

The organizers said that the official video of this year's state meet would never be released because our “disgraceful thuggish behavior degraded school robotics programs everywhere.”

Somehow, though, the video of Tin Man vanquishing the competition appeared the very next day under the title “Robots Behaving Badly.”

I would have called it “The Second-Most Fantastically Awesome Blow for Justice Ever Struck by an Automaton (after the Terminator Turned Good).” But that might have been too long. People on YouTube don't want to
read
; they want to
watch
. You have to keep it simple to generate traffic. Example: “Robots Behaving Badly” had already surpassed “Tin Man Metallica Squarepants Exposes Teacher's Underwear” in barely a week online.

I felt a little insulted that this new clip had so easily bested my most popular video. But it was okay, since I was the costar of “Robots Behaving Badly,” bounding onto the scene at the end to beat the Cold Spring Harbor entry into submission with a folding chair.

It was a great action sequence, every bit as exciting as the real steel-chair battles in WWE videos. I could be wrong, though.

After all, I've been wrong before.

The old-fashioned dot-matrix printer in the main office made a screeching noise as it spat out my class schedule. It sounded like victory. The secretary tore off the page and placed it on the counter along with my student card and locker information.

She smiled at me. “New in town?”

“I've lived here all my life,” I told her. “It just took me this long to get thrown out of the gifted program.”

This great day never could have happened if I hadn't been wrong about the sex of Katie Patterson's baby. Just the thought that when I calculate, interpolate, extrapolate, infer, deduce, adjudge, analyze, derive, figure, reason, or surmise something, there's a chance that I might not be right filled me with a sense of infinite possibility. Surprise didn't come exclusively from YouTube anymore. It was a gift.

I owed this, too, to Donovan. Without him, I never would have crossed paths with Tina Mandy Patterson, seven pounds, fourteen ounces. I'd suggested Marie Curie Patterson, but Katie said no. Tina would be named after the star of the day of her birth—Tin Man.

I pointed out that, since Tin Man had been disqualified, he wasn't technically the star of the robotics meet or anything else. But Katie overruled me. And anyway, Orchard Park Patterson was a really stupid name for a baby girl.

I'm not big on babies, but I had to admit that Tina was a very cute specimen of one. Subscribe to my YouTube channel to see what she looks like. There's a clip of her spitting up on my shoes that's particularly excellent. It's my favorite because I got to hold her. Katie gave each of us a turn so long as we promised to wash our hands for three minutes uninterrupted. One minute would have been plenty given the strength of the antibacterial soap in the maternity ward, but I kept my mouth shut because I didn't want to miss my chance.

Chloe got in trouble for hogging the baby.

I thanked the secretary, gathered my things, and left the office.

I was wrong
. It still tickled me to think about it. And for sure that's what had given me the confidence to do what needed to be done to make this glorious moment possible.

“
Noah?
” came a voice behind me in the hall.

I wheeled, and there he was, the author of all my good fortune. My former schoolmate and now my schoolmate again.

Donovan. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

I felt my chest swell with pride. “This is my new school.”

He was shocked. “They kicked you out of the Academy? Because of the chair?”

“Oh, no,” I replied. “They didn't even mention that. It was because I helped you cheat on the retest.”

First he looked surprised, then angry. “I knew it! If you weren't a genius, you'd be an idiot! You shouldn't have done that, Noah! I wasn't going to be able to hang on in there much longer anyway, test or no test. Why would you risk your whole school career to cheat for me?”

“I didn't,” I informed him cheerfully. “I just
said
I did.”

His voice was rising. “But why?”

“Ms. Bevelaqua told me cheating was a serious offense, and whoever did it would be expelled. How could I pass up an opportunity like that?”

Donovan groaned. “You're crazy. And the worst part is, now I'm never going to know who really did it.”

I shrugged. “Sure you are. It was Abigail.”

“No way!” His eyes bulged. “Abigail hated me from the first day I walked into the lab! Why would she help me?”

It's strange to me how often I have to explain the obvious to people. “For your robot-driving skills and your sister. Abigail has always been about one thing—Abigail.”

“I don't believe it,” Donovan said stubbornly.

“Believe it,” I recommended. “I had to erase all the computer evidence that she did it when I created the fake evidence that
I
did it.”

He took this in with a mixture of amazement and resignation. “You're crazy.”

“I don't care,” I replied readily. “See, now that I go here, I can say that. Who cares? Not me! I could not possibly care less! What do I care?” It felt good, like I was unburdening myself of a great weight.

He heaved a sigh. “Well, congratulations, I guess. You got your wish. You managed to get yourself booted out of the only school with half a chance of challenging you.”

I was honest. “The Academy wasn't very challenging either.”

“More challenging than here,” he shot back. “This place is a slumber party for a guy like you. Maybe even a morgue.”

I shook my head earnestly. “I was
wrong
about Katie's baby, and that means I can be wrong about anything. Challenge isn't going to come from any curriculum, no matter how hard they make it. It's going to come from life.”

That sounded pretty good, even to me. I felt the exhilaration of facing the unknown. I wasn't just heading into the future; I was taking it down, WWE-style. I was Noah Youkilis, version 2.0, and the best was yet to come!

Then again, I could always be wrong.

How awesome was that?

T
he image was fuzzy at first. Noah pounded the keyboard of his laptop and the picture solidified into a rugged face, obscured by goggles, a chinstrap, and a heavy black helmet. Interference crackled over the audio, and a loud motor roared in the background.

“Lieutenant Patterson?” Noah ventured timidly. Louder: “Lieutenant Patterson?”

My brother-in-law looked around in confusion.