Ungifted (3 page)

He went on for a while, trying to scare me, I guess. The poor guy had no way of knowing that, considering the payback I was expecting from Schultz, a rampaging grizzly couldn't scare me. He cut me loose, though, explaining that, thanks to the damage to the gym, we students had “suffered enough.”

I had a sneaking suspicion Schultz wasn't going to see it that way.

I couldn't say how much anybody had actually suffered, but the disaster at the basketball game was definitely the hot topic at school.

“When the glass blew out, I thought it was an explosion!”

“Like a terrorist attack!”

“Did you see the statue with the top part missing? It looks like my grandfather when his back goes out!”

“I heard the gym floor is permanently messed up!”

“When they catch the guy who did it, they're going to hang him on a meat hook!”

“Yeah!” Nussbaum chimed in. “I pity that poor loser! His life isn't worth a used Kleenex!” He turned to me. “So, Donovan, when do you think you're going to get busted?”

“Shhh!” I pulled the Daniels into the boys' room, and checked the stalls for possible eavesdroppers. “This is no joke! The walls have ears!”

“Dude.” Nussbaum was offended. “We'd never rat out a friend.”

“Listen, that call was a false alarm—just Fender for skipping out of detention. I don't understand why Schultz hasn't come after me yet.”

“Maybe he doesn't know who you are,” Sanderson suggested.

I shook my head. “He wrote down my name. I told him where I go to school. He's the superintendent. He's got access to every file and record there is.”

“Yeah, did you pick the wrong guy to get caught by or what?” Nussbaum agreed. “The head honcho of the whole district.”

“I'm wondering if it's not as bad as it looked,” I mused in a low voice. “A little cleanup, a little wood polish—”

“I heard they're going to have to redo the whole gym floor,” Sanderson put in. “It costs, like, zillions of dollars.”

“And don't forget the glass doors,” Nussbaum added. “You're a dead man walking.”

I totally agreed. So why wasn't it happening? All day long, and the following days too, I squirmed while rumors spread like head lice and the Daniels predicted my downfall. There was no escape from the tension at home, where reports of firefights in Afghanistan dominated CNN. Then, on Wednesday, Katie's mother-in-law dropped off the dog.

The times I'd seen Beatrice, she was a rocket-powered hairball. But the cinnamon chow chow that slunk into our house was listless and mewling.

“What's wrong with her?” Mom asked.

“She's dying!” Fanny declared dramatically, and tried to walk out the door.

Katie held on to her arm. “How do you know? Did she get hit by a car? Is she sick?”

Her mother-in-law wasn't interested in the details. “I can't cope with this at my age!” And with that, she was gone.

Mom reached down to pat the dog. Beatrice snapped at her hand. She tossed a warning growl over her shoulder at Katie, just in case she might be contemplating a similar move.

“She's too mean to die,” I observed.

“She can't die,” Katie said tragically. “Brad loves her.”

“Brad loves
you
, too,” I returned. “What does that say about Brad?”

“He'll never forgive me if something happens to her!”

“Well, that's not exactly fair, is it?” Mom put in. “If anything went wrong, it was on Fanny's watch, not yours.”

“That's her whole modus operandi,” Katie argued.

“The minute she saw the writing on the wall, she dumped the dog on me! And how can we take care of Beatrice if she won't even let us go near her?”

As if in answer, Beatrice picked herself off the floor, walked over to me, and lay down on my feet.

“Donovan!” my mother exclaimed.

“What did I do? I didn't do anything!”

“Beatrice likes you!” Katie said in an awed whisper.

“So?”

“So you can look after her,” Mom reasoned, like this was a huge honor.

I declined. “Forget it. Besides, if Brad is such a baby about Beatrice, you have to wonder if he's the right person to be in charge of a twenty-million-dollar tank.”

But when Beatrice refused to eat, I had to hand-feed her a few lumps of liver-flavored kibble. When it was time to take her out, I was the only one she would allow to put the leash on. When Katie made her a bed in the basement, she wouldn't even go down the stairs. I knew I was going to have a roommate. Just call me Dog-Whisperer Donovan. As if I didn't have enough hassles.

Dad came home at six, bringing the mail. “There's a letter from the school, Donnie. Is there anything you want to tell us before we open it?”

By that time, my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth, so I just shook my head and waited for the ax to fall.

Who knew how much trouble I was in? Suspended? Probably. Expelled? Not out of the question—especially since Schultz thought I'd done it on purpose. I
had
done it on purpose—the hitting-the-statue part, anyway.

While Dad read, I monitored the telltale vein in the top left corner of his forehead. It bulged a little, but not nearly as much as it had during the aftermath of the toupee liftoff. That had to be considered an encouraging sign.

At last, he handed me the letter. “You have an explanation for this?”

“I—I—” Where would I even start?

My eyes fell on the page.

To the parents of DONOVAN CURTIS: The time has come to recognize your child's hard work and commitment to excellence as a student in the Hardcastle Independent School District. This letter is to inform you that DONOVAN has been selected to attend the Academy for Scholastic Distinction (ASD), a special program geared toward gifted and talented students, tailored to their exceptional abilities and extraordinary potential for academic achievement....

It said more—a lot more, about school transfer paperwork, and registration forms, and which bus route would take me to my new placement at the Academy. I barely saw any of it. My eyes couldn't get past words like
excellence
,
distinction
,
gifted
, and especially
Donovan Curtis
.

Gifted?
Me?
I was the guy who skateboarded down waterslides and shot a Super Soaker at an electric fence. When people heard my name, they thought,
Don't try this at home!
not
gifted
.

I wasn't being expelled; I was being
promoted
.

Dad was grinning from ear to ear. “I always knew that the real problem was they just weren't
challenging
you.”

Mom looked worried. “Is everything okay?”

“Donnie's gifted!” Dad crowed.

“It's a mistake,” Katie scoffed. “The kid's about as gifted as a caterpillar. He brings home a B and it sets off six days of skywriting and fireworks.”

Much as I hated to agree with Katie, she had a point. My grades weren't terrible, but they were nothing to write home about. Come to think of it, I
remembered
the day all the nerds and brainiacs took the special aptitude test to see who got into the gifted program. I remembered it because nobody even asked me to give it a try. And I wasn't insulted because I
wasn't gifted
.

My eyes skipped down to the bottom of the page.

My heartiest congratulations once again. Your child is a credit to the Hardcastle Independent School District
.

Sincerely
,

Dr. Alonzo Schultz

Superintendent, HISD

Schultz.

The only program Schultz would recommend
me
for was Alcatraz. Didn't he realize who I was? I mean, the guy made a point of getting my name so he'd know exactly who to burn at the stake!

It came to me in a giddy flashback to the day of The Incident. Right after Schultz let me go, his secretary asked for the roster of new kids for the Academy. The superintendent's response was the last thing I remember before bouncing out of there.

His exact words: “It's on my desk, Cynthia. You can't miss it.”

Had that big doofus scribbled my name on the gifted list by accident? And everybody else thought it was there because it was supposed to be? It seemed crazy, but it did explain the two inexplicable things going on in my life right now: 1) why Schultz hadn't come to kill me yet, and 2) why I'd just been invited to go to genius school.

I laughed out loud. People thought
I
acted without thinking? This was a thousand times worse than hitting a statue with a twig. It was a shoo-in for the Bonehead Moves Hall of Fame!

“What's so funny?” Dad asked.

I almost spilled the beans. How many chances do you get to show that the guy who runs the entire city school system is an even bigger dipstick than you are? Besides, it's not like my parents weren't going to find out
eventually
. Sooner or later, Schultz would realize his mistake and …

Or would he? The only district officials who saw me that day were Schultz and his secretary, and neither of them had ever met me before. They worked in the administration building, not Hardcastle Middle School. The paper my name was written on was surely gone now, crumpled up in a wastebasket or fed through a paper shredder. The one thing the superintendent knew about me was the school I went to. That was the only way he could get to me.

The gifted letter tingled in my hands. If I was at the Academy, he wouldn't be able to find me. It was the realm of brainiacs and goody-goodies, the last place you'd look for a kid who put a bronze globe through a glass door.

A tiny voice spoke up from the depths of my spleen:
Forget it. Not in a million years. You won't last ten minutes in the gifted program. There's never been anybody more ungifted than you
.

Mom was flushed with happiness. “I always knew this day would come. It was only a matter of time before people realized how special you are.” She sniffed back a tear of emotion. “Beatrice was our good-luck charm. Things are finally starting to turn around for this family. I can feel it.”

“I feel it too,” added Dad, putting his arms around her. “Wait a minute—
Beatrice?
” His eyes strayed to the hall, where the languid chow chow was chewing on his newspaper, reducing it to an inky pulp.

Up until that instant, I honestly don't think I was going to go through with it. But since Brad had shipped out and Katie had moved back in, the tension in our house had been simmering just below the boiling point. And now this extra stress with the stupid dog. How could I pile my own problems on top of that? Especially when Mom and Dad looked so proud—something that didn't happen every day where I was concerned.

I thought of my namesake, James Donovan, on the foundering
Titanic
. What would he do—sink or swim?

“Gifted,” I said a little louder, as if trying it on for size. “I guess I'd better go to school and clean out my locker.”

<<
Hypothesis: Being gifted is not a gift.
A gift you get for nothing. This you have to pay for
.>>

O
kay, I know it's not a
real
hypothesis—by that, I mean something you can design an experiment to test. But it's true. There's a
price
to being gifted.

The cost is your life. You don't die or anything like that. But you don't live either. Free time? Forget it. You go to a special academy that gives you extra work to suck up every spare minute—especially since it probably takes forever to get there. Schools for the gifted are few and far between. Chances are you don't live near one. Friends? Those are the people you slave alongside. They might be awesome, but how would you ever find out? You're too busy for them, and they're too busy for you. Sports? When? And besides, why play when you probably stink?