Gifted (4 page)

The movie was followed by an overview of the science program given by the two eighth-grade science teachers,
Mr. Larry Harris and Mrs. Marjorie Love, both of whom I knew quite well, having spent so much of my leisure time in the science lab.

Orientation was followed by a hasty lunch, and the hasty lunch was followed by a mass exodus into the sundrenched Valley of Death, a.k.a. the Compound, where we stood around waiting to be assigned teams.

The way it worked, the eighth grade was divided into ten teams that would rotate through various stations as listed on the itinerary. Luckily for me, Anita was on my team, and even luckier for me, so was Allison Picone. Not that Allison ever talked to me, but at least when she ignored me, I knew it was because she didn't know I was there. It was
not
because she didn't like me. There's a significant difference there.

Anyway, my team was to meet its team leader, Mrs. Bruder, a Language Arts teacher, at the shoreline for a little beachcombing exercise, and conditions for it could not have been more favorable. A surprisingly hot October sun crowned a sheer azure sky. The white sand sparkled on the beach below. I let Anita carry my backpack so that I could take off my jacket and tie the sleeves around my waist, and I found myself whistling a happy tune and feeling not a single care in the whole wide world, except for maybe a vague apprehension that my Hershey bars might not survive the heat.

Anita was puffing along and sweating like crazy, and her red face was getting even redder. The rest of the hair that had been pulled back smooth in the morning had escaped into wisps of brown frizz, and the impression she gave was one of prevailing misery. I relieved her of my backpack and thought,
poor Anita
, though not for the first time.

Last April she and I went together—well, not together, I mean at the same time—to the spring dance at school, and the reason I bring this up is to say that when Anita applies a little elbow grease, she can make herself look very presentable. Remarkably presentable. I couldn't believe just how good she'd looked that night. She'd let her hair go all curly the way nature intended, and her mother had let her for one night only to wear makeup. At first I didn't recognize her, and then when I did, I had this odd feeling that I was looking at the Anita of the Future. And she acted different, too, that night. Very happy and talkative. Not at all her usual self.

She was talkative now, but not very happy. “Paranoid” was more the word. She was puzzling over the Bruise Brothers' new behavior toward me. I submitted the obvious answer.

“Maybe They like me now.”

“Oh, come on!” Anita laughed scornfully. “Not in a million years. No, there's something up. You'd better watch your back, George, especially tonight when you go to sleep.”

I stiffened. “Is it so unbelievable that They might like me?”

“I'm not saying that. I'm only saying that it's spooky, that's all. I don't trust them. Do you remember how we first met, George?”

“Hmmm …” I scratched my chin and thought for a moment. “No, I don't.”

“Well, I do! I pulled you out of a garbage can, remember? It was the first day of sixth grade, and Sam and those idiots tried to throw you out during lunch. People were emptying their trays all over you.”

I grimaced. I had forgotten that.

“And right after that, Drew Lewis ran your underpants up the flagpole. Those shorts with the dancing lab rats on them? You remember that?”

I waved her silent. “A harmless locker room prank.
That's what guys do
. It's all in the spirit of fun. You obviously don't know how guys have fun.”

“All I know is you wept like a baby when you saw everyone standing out there saluting your shorts.”

“All of that was before my dad became principal,” I reminded her.

“Right! And then they started picking on me!”

“Look,” I told her as patiently as I could, “if you want to harbor a grudge, that's your privilege. But it isn't healthy for you. So let's say no more about it.”

We continued our walk in a somewhat hostile silence until we reached the scarlet gypsy who was to be our team leader. Red hair, red cheeks, red lips, red nails. The Bruder was what you might call a “vibrant” woman, but I liked her. She nicknamed me her “Little Gumdrop” and relied heavily on my knowledge of literature in the classroom.

She was standing knee-deep in a pile of colorful plastic pails and yoo-hooing at us with both hands as we trickled across the shore in twos and threes, the rings on her fingers spitting sparks into the hot sunshine.

“Here we are!” she cooed, fitting a red sun hat atop her flaming red hair. “Here we come now! I see we have our packets in hand!”

I scanned the group. Nobody special as yet. Except … there she was in the center of her gaggle of girlfriends. Allison Picone. A vision in denim. In the flesh! My jaw dropped just as Anita gave me a wicked jab in the ribs with her elbow.

“Did you bring a pen?” she growled.

A pen. I looked at my hands. No, no pen. I hadn't even brought my packet. This wasn't like me.

“Forget it,” she muttered. “We'll have to find one later.”

“Today, gumdrops, you shall become beachcombers!” Mrs. Bruder's voice rang out. “Detectives of the bay! You are to follow your Beachcomber's Checklist, and you are to look for at least one organism from each group to put into your bucket. I want you to go slowly and look carefully. Don't be afraid to dig, dig, dig. Get messy! And try not to kill the poor little things. We'll let them loose when we're done.”

The Bruder let us loose at the water's edge, each with a pail, a shovel, and a small magnifying glass. As I mentioned before, I absolutely detest sand, so I decided right away that if this was going to work, Anita would have to do the spadework and I the identifying.

“You can share my checklist with me, George,” Anita said, getting a little pushy, “but you go find us a pen.”

I looked around. Kids were moving to and fro in a daze along the beach, not really sure what they were doing, except for Allison Picone and her ugly girlfriends, who were not moving at all, being absorbed in their usual heavy conversation. Well, call me daring a second time, but instead of approaching the teacher to borrow a writing implement, as I might have done, I walked right up to Allison and her ugly friends. The ugly friends parted like the Red Sea at the sight of me. And then I said to Allison in a clear, deeply masculine voice, “May I borrow a pen?”

She looked at me, surprised, but the important thing was she
looked at me
. Then she said, “Yeah, I guess so,”
and handed me the pen that was in her hand. Handed it
to me
. And then the ugly girlfriends fell in around her again, and their conversation resumed.

Now this might not seem like a lot to you, but I hadn't felt Allison's eyes on me or heard her voice speak to me since the day I fell in love with her at our Valentine's Day party back in the second grade. I remembered it as a sort of Hallmark commercial, complete with music, although the score sometimes changed according to my mood. There I was minding my own business, sitting at my desk and working diligently on weaving a red and white place mat out of construction paper as a gift to bring home to Mother, when I looked up to find Allison Picone standing in front of me with a big stack of envelopes cradled in one arm. Her other arm was reaching for my face, and dangling from its dainty hand was a single envelope. Over the years the memory had become so misty that Allison had turned into the Lady of the Lake and the outstretched limb seemed to be holding the sword Excalibur … but time will do that. Anyway, Allison handed me the envelope, on which “George” was spelled without a single vowel, fluted out the word “here” in a delightfully musical voice, and then proceeded to give me a smile that not only melted my heart, it ripped it straight from my body and left it quivering on the ground at her feet. And it had been lying there quivering ever since.

I sighed. The memory might have been a distant one, but that one distant memory had kept me going through a lot of long days.

And I would have sighed again, but Anita chose this precise moment to startle me out of my reverie with a loud clearing-the-throat noise, followed by a
harsh “Will you wake up! We need to look for marine worms.” So I shoved my happy thoughts aside for the moment, hefted a shovel in one hand and a bright yellow pail in the other, and proceeded to get down to business.

Anita dug, dug, dug, and got messy. I did my part by peering over her shoulder and offering my encouragement, but when I noticed my feet getting wet, I decided to make a suggestion. “That's where we need to go,” I said, indicating the jetty, an outcrop of rocks that projected about thirty yards into the surf.

It turned out to be a real hotbed of marine organism activity. All kinds of scummy sea life seemed to be thriving in little puddles between the rocks. I checked our list. Finding sea lettuce wouldn't prove too difficult. We just had to look for anything green and slimy. I doubted the Bruder would know one algae from another.

As far as mollusks went, first among the choices was the naked sea butterfly. A little risqué for eighth grade science, in my opinion, but I would keep a sharp lookout. Being a warm day, one of these uninhibited creatures might start parading about.

Now, sponges, I knew, liked to cling to the undersides of rocks. Anita reached down into a dark crevice and
ripped off a couple of portions of sponge to drop into our pails. I checked off Finger Sponge, since she'd used her fingers to get it. I mean, it wasn't as though I was getting a grade for this.

Another mollusk was the snail, and snails would be a whole lot easier to hunt. Anita got down on her knees and prepared to get messy again, and I located a flattish rock nearby, where I could sit, sun myself like a lizard, and get ready to “identify.” Below us on the beach I noticed Mrs. Bruder in conference with Allison and Company, and I surmised that the group was being advised to cut the chatter and get busy. Then, to my horror, they all looked up in my direction, and in the next instant the girls were coming straight toward me. The group was headed by Brooke Walters, Allison Picone's best friend and Chief Lieutenant of the Ugly Girlfriend Corps. I was scared witless, but I managed to maintain my cool by turning swiftly on my rock and falling off the edge of it onto a more jagged one.

Anita put her head up and said, “I can't leave you alone for a second, can I?”

I hoisted myself back up and gingerly felt my rear end. Yep, the seat of my shorts had ripped, but luckily for me my jacket was still tied to my waist and it would serve me well.

“Whatever you do,” I said to Anita, “just act natural.”

“Yes,” Anita replied, “it's natural for me to be up to my armpits in crud.” Then she said, “Oh, great,” when she saw the approaching stampede. “What in the world do
they
want?”

I didn't answer her. Allison Picone, delicate flower that she was, was treading slowly and delicately over the
dangerous footing, while the Ugly Ones seemed to be having no trouble whatsoever swarming up the big black boulders. I saw in a flash that this might be a fine opportunity to rush down and offer her a gallant hand, but then realized that, with the way things were going, I could very well have lost my shorts entirely.

“Hi, George!” Brooke Walters caroled, with a nasty gleam in her eye. “We couldn't find the common mollusk … but then we noticed
you
sitting here.”

I refused to make the connection.

“Mrs. Bruder said that if anyone could help us,
you
could, George,” piped Carly Flynn, one of the low-ranking officers.

I silently cursed the Bruder.

“Wow!” Brooke gushed, spying the contents of our buckets. “You guys found lots of stuff!” Anita grabbed the pails and lowered them to the safety of her crater just as Allison Picone's golden head rose like the magnificent morning sun over a nearby boulder … and she was in our midst.

Here's where I shine
, I thought. I cleared my throat and lowered it an octave. “What have you found so far?” I was looking directly at Allison, of course, but Brooke Walters took it upon herself to answer me.

“We haven't found anything yet. It's hard to know what to look for without any pictures to go by.”

“C'mere, George!” Anita hollered from the depths of her grotto. I excused myself and went to see what was worth interrupting me for. She held up a relatively large snail shell, and I was delighted to see a slimy protrusion wriggling at its underside.

“Check it out!” Anita said proudly.

I took it from her.
A live one
. To Anita, I said, “Well done.” Then I held it aloft and said, “Ladies, allow me to introduce you to the common mollusk.” Anita gave me a ticked-off look. I don't think she'd intended to share her find with the females. They'd never been very kind to her. But I was determined to shine in any way that I could, so I made myself a mental note that if things worked out to my advantage with Allison, I would send Anita a nice basket of fruit.

“This, I believe, is what is commonly known as the moon snail.” I seated myself back on my flattish rock, and Allison Picone seated herself right next to me. The Ugly Ones gathered round me as if I were a cauldron.

“How can you tell?” Allison asked me. How could I tell? I couldn't really, but I thought it sounded good. And then I thought,
Boy, her eyes are really blue
.

“Well, if you look at your lunar calendar, you'll find that we are right now in the phase of the full moon, and that's when these little buggers come out.” Did I sound cool? It was hard to tell, but at least I had her attention. And then I lost visibility as a big spray of ocean caught me in the face and saturated my glasses. I took them off and rubbed them on the sleeve of my jacket. Allison must have gotten it in the face, too. She was looking at me with rapidly blinking blue eyes.