Gifted (13 page)

“I don't know,” she whispered hoarsely.

I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her to her feet. “He must have hit you pretty hard.”

“I thought you were
far away
.” She eyed me narrowly. “You were right over there, weren't you? I thought I saw your beady little eyes.”

“You did not see my beady little eyes. You couldn't have seen them because they were waiting over at the tower for
you
.” I steadied my voice, which tends to shake when I lie. “It might have been a squirrel you saw or a sea turtle, but it was definitely
not
me.”

“You weren't at the tower, George. I went there first. Then I got worried and came looking for you.”

That made me gulp. But I looked her squarely in the eye and said resolutely, “I was inside, at the top. Honest! And then
I
got worried and came looking for you.”

“Forget it,” she sighed. “Take me to the nurse. I think my nose is bleeding.”

We plodded onward through the trees and I snuck a glance at Anita. Blood trickled from her nose. Her cheeks were puffy, and her hair was a tangled mess of brown frizz and pine needles. I thought,
Of all the luck! Poor Anita!
The fact that her bad luck had been my good luck I refused to think about.

The plan was for me to escort Anita to the nurse, then sit outside the door to wait for her in the darkness until she came out. But as I was fulfilling my part of the second part it hit me that the darkness had suddenly become
really
dark and until the Bruise Brothers were taken into custody, it would do Anita no good to have me get beaten up as well.

So I made my way over to the safe confines of Cabin F, where I saw that my bunkmates were packing their bags. I joined them, feeling relieved for the first time all day. We would soon be going home.

And later, when I'd learned from Mr. Z that the Bruise Brothers would certainly be expelled for what They'd done to Anita, I snuggled down into my sleeping bag and let sleep wash over me in a soothing wave, calm and peaceful at last.

Not realizing, of course, that what I was feeling was the calm before the storm.

I slept like a baby all through the night, then fitfully as dawn approached, like a baby having a nightmare. For a nightmare was what I had.

It started out as a good dream, one I remembered having had before. I was in my bedroom, except my bedroom had turned into an enormous laboratory—a real state-of-the-art laboratory with the latest high-tech equipment and plenty of menials bustling around doing the grunt work. And there I was, in the very center of things, standing at a podium and describing my latest research on mitochondrial DNA, with my lovely assistant by my side. My lovely assistant was usually Allison Picone in these dreams, but in this one it was Mr. Zimmerman, which should have tipped me off right away that things were going to get ugly.

But as I said, at first it was a good dream. I was much older, tall and distinguished, impeccable in my white lab coat and looking a heck of a lot like Brad Pitt. The press was there, gathered around and straining to
pick up my every word; even the president was there. And I had made a colossal discovery. I had come upon a particular strand of DNA that indicated a strong evolutionary relationship between the common chimp, the pygmy chimp, a certain rare subspecies of orangutan, and a number of key offensive linemen in the NFL. The genetic consistency was startling, and the ramifications would shake the scientific community, not to mention Monday Night Football, to its very foundations. Journalists' pens were scratching feverishly at tablets and flashbulbs were flashing away when suddenly Sam Toselli elbowed his way through the crowd and got right in my face.

“Why didn't you tell me my Junior Scientist project was no good? You watched me work on it for months, pretending to help me, knowing the whole time that it wouldn't work. I embarrassed myself in front of everybody, and you let me!” He balled up his fists, ready to strike. “I thought we were friends.”

“Sam!” I cried. “We are friends!”

I stepped back and raised my hand in a peace gesture, feeling sure he wouldn't hit a man wearing sunglasses, but he stepped forward as I stepped back. Behind me I felt Mr. Zimmerman blocking my retreat. “You have to face your fears, George,” he muttered in my ear, “if you want to overcome them!”

“You wanted to make me look stupid,” Sam bellowed, “just to make yourself look smart! I trusted you! I wanted to be like you!”

I shrank back, just avoiding his blow, and, turning around, felt a surprising burst of courage—because the Music Man had turned into Anita. I got behind her and tried to remember what his project had been about. Had it
something to do with animal behavior? Was it “How High Can a Dog Count?”

“It was hardly my fault,” I told him bravely, over Anita's shoulder. “Your findings were inconclusive, your presentation ill-prepared, and your methods lacked vision. I believe the dog may have, too.” But even as I said this, my conscious mind knew it wasn't right. His project had been called “How Airplanes Fly: A Demonstration of Bernoulli's Principle” and used paper airplanes. And it would have been impressive, too, had his airplanes not had kamikaze tendencies.

Sam lunged forward, grabbed me by the throat, and began shaking me hard, dislodging my teeth and sending them rattling around in my mouth. Harder and harder he shook, and the rattling got louder and louder until I woke up panting. I could still hear the rattling noise. It was the wind blowing hard against the cabin windows, and as I lay on my bunk fully awake, the gusts sounded like waves crashing on the beach right outside our door.

Hurricane Judith had come early.

I jumped out of bed to check out the weather, forgetting for the moment that I was on the second story, and it must have been my subsequent fall to the floor that woke my sleeping bunkmates. But wake they did. As I hobbled painfully over to the nearest window, one by one they got up to join me, having caught my excitement like a contagious illness.

You know, there's nothing like severe weather to bring people together and give them a shared sense of respect for the mighty forces of nature. The ten boys of Cabin F stood united in the window, awed and spellbound, watching the wind blow a heavy yellow garbage can onto its side, then roll it across the Compound with enough velocity to knock an unsuspecting Mrs. Love, who was outside the female latrine, off her feet. The ground was still dry at this point, or it would have been even better.

The rain began to fall as Mr. Zimmerman served our breakfast, a nutritious bran muffin and a warm box of apple juice, which we consumed just as the electricity went
out. While we ate, the Music Man paced the room, already draped in a navy blue rain poncho that billowed like the plumage of a bird, the guy ready to bug out at a moment's notice.

Our bags were packed, piled in a heap on the floor, and we were told to sit as far away from the two windows as we could. So, naturally, all ten of us crowded on Mr. Z's cot. We had our flashlights out and spent half the time making shadow puppets on the wall and the other half training the beams to fall on Mr. Z's expansive scalp area. When two or three of my bunkmates sniffed the air dramatically, claiming that they could still smell the mustard, the Music Man broke the party mood with a shake of his luminous dome.

“Knock it off!” He raised a navy blue wing in warning. “Just eat your food. We'll be leaving any minute.” He glanced fearfully at the window, at the glass dancing in the frame. He checked his watch for possibly the hundredth time, and when that ceased to satisfy, he started pacing again. Sensing his anxiety and being in a mellow mood myself, I invited him to come over and join us—take a load off, as it were—not intending my usual offense.

“Thank you, no,” he bleated irritably. “I prefer to stand.”

“It's just a storm, Mr. Zimmerman,” I said. “Don't worry. I've seen bigger.”

“Just a storm? Have you ever witnessed a hurricane before? Obviously not,” he snapped, answering his own question, “or you wouldn't call it ‘just a storm,' let me tell you.”

“Have you ever witnessed a hurricane, Mr. Zimmerman?” a voice asked behind me.

“As a matter of fact, yes, I have. Hurricane Donna,
which happened to strike New England on September 12, 1960, to become the fifth strongest hurricane of record to hit the United States. My family was summering in Rhode Island,” he explained, “a part of this country where we believed a hurricane making landfall to be as likely an event as a blizzard hitting Miami in July. Consequently, we did not take the warnings seriously. We thought it would be ‘just a storm,' too, and by the time we tried to evacuate, we couldn't. All the roads had closed. We nearly died in that hurricane,” he continued, softly. “I was five years old. It was the most horrifying experience I ever hope to have.”

Everyone got quiet. I did, too, in order to do the math, and as the Music Man droned on, it occurred to me that he was fifty years old—much older than I ever would have thought. I stared at him. He'd always seemed sort of young and peevish to me. Maybe not in his first youth, more like his second or third. It just goes to show how little you know about a person.

“The floors were shaking.” He demonstrated with his hands. “The walls were wobbling. The pressure got so low that it sucked the water from the toilet just like a vacuum, and we huddled there in the bathroom for five hours in the dark, listening to glass breaking all over the house; pictures falling from the walls; furniture crashing together; our roof, the neighbors' roofs, ripping off… .” He shook his head, remembering. “It was terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. Something I do not intend to experience twice.”

He studied the window again, with understandable fear in his eyes. None of us knew what to say. We sat quietly, following his gaze, nobody moving, until a tree branch smacked the glass and we all jumped.

The Music Man checked his watch.

“Eight thirty. Traffic. It must be traffic,” he said more to himself than to us. “The buses are coming, but they must be stuck in traffic.”

He started pacing again.

At precisely nine thirty we were told by a rather moist Mr. Harris that the buses had arrived, and by that time the rain was falling in sheets.

We put on our rain gear, those of us who'd remembered to pack any, that is. I found a bright yellow rain slicker in my bag with an insulated foul-weather hood, and when I say “bright,” what I mean is radioactive. I shoved it back in before anyone else saw it. I think I would have drawn fewer horrified stares prancing all the way to the parking lot in the nude. I put on my black aviator jacket instead and made a mental note that if I ever went off to camp again, I would definitely pack for myself. Not that I would ever go off to camp again. Still, I couldn't wait to test my new waterproof field-and-stream boots, featuring slip-on convenience and an optional toe warmer, the temperature of one's toes being critical at times like these.

We grabbed our bags. I tried to balance my duffel bag and sleeping roll symmetrically, one on each hip like a good pack mule, when I noticed my backpack was missing. I had never taken it back from Anita following her
melee
in the woods.

I looked for her as the eighth grade made a mad dash to the parking lot. The buses were there in a long line opposite Mr. Zimmerman's pickup truck, the bed now dressed in a flapping blue tarp to protect our backdrops. With my jacket over my head, its fuzzy collar serving as a
sort of visor and keeping my glasses fairly dry, I surveyed the scene.

It was utter chaos. Students were pushing each other up the steps, really fighting to get on first, while teachers, hanging on to the bus doors for dear life, pretended to find their students' names and check them off lists. I spotted Anita making for the last bus in line and ran to catch up with her.

“Hello!” I screamed into her ear, hoping to be heard over the wind. Anita gave a hop as if electrocuted, and when her feet touched down, she slowly turned around, and my eyes nearly popped their sockets. She looked
ghastly
. Her left eye was purple with bruises, and there was a big yellow bump on the lid. It hurt me just to look at it.

“Boy, am I glad I found you!” I shouted. “I was getting really worried!” I dropped my bags and put an arm around her neck, placing a tender hand on her shoulder in case I should reel. A look of pure gratitude flowed from her eyes. At least it flowed from the right eye. I wasn't about to look at the left one again.

“I've been looking all over for you!” I yelled. “I hope you still have my backpack! I've missed it like crazy!”

The right eye stared at me for a long time and her mouth opened, but no words came out. I wondered if the beating had given her a concussion. She looked brain-affected. I was about to repeat myself, only slower and clearer so that the words might penetrate, when she suddenly sprang to life.

“Your backpack?”

I nodded.

“You were worried about your backpack?”

I nodded again. She was slow, but she was getting the picture.

“Ask Mr. Harris!” she shrieked, causing me to bound backward and the people around us to stare. “He took it from me last night, after you ran off and left me! You want to know something, George?” she said evenly, but with an evil glint in her good eye. “I wish they had gotten you. You are the meanest person I've ever met. You don't care about anyone but yourself. I hope one day you wake up and find out what you're really like! Because then you'll have nobody! And it'll be too late!” She spun on her heel and stomped up the steps of the bus.

I shook my head. Anita was having another mood, which meant I would be getting the silent treatment again. For two hours and fifty-seven minutes. My book and my CD player would make all the difference, especially since the thought of gazing at the back of Allison Picone's head no longer appealed to me. I would have to retrieve my backpack.