Gifted (8 page)

“We are stopping here because here is where we stay!” he said, not untriumphantly. He walked into the building's murky depths, and I had no choice but to follow. Surely we were breaking a law of some kind, if only a law of nature! But I knew better than to try to appeal to his sense of propriety, since he probably didn't have one, so I continued to keep my mouth shut.

The door led into a little, recessed, alcove sort of room decorated with a counter and a couple of filthy mirrors, but we kept right on walking until we hit the main room, or “center stage,” as he called it. There was a shower area at the far end, and in the foreground a dozen sinks stood opposite a dozen stalls.

I saw immediately what my punishment was to be. All
lined up and waiting for me were a pile of rags, a big bucket, and a cardboard box filled with an assortment of toxic cleaning products. Mr. Z held out a pair of latex dishwashing gloves and said, “You can start with the floor over in that corner, George. Oh, and by the way, I'd be careful if I were you. I saw a pretty big spider there earlier this morning.” He jumped up to park his can between two of the sinks and sat there looking smug and swinging his crossed legs at me.

He's just trying to irk me
, I thought, giving him my iciest stare. I put on the yellow gloves and bent down to examine the contents of the box. Domestic Science was hardly my forte. I decided to wing it and picked up a lethal looking nonaerosol can and made my way over to the corner, where I found out right away that the Music Man had been wrong. It wasn't a pretty big spider residing there, but a whole
community
of pretty big spiders, and they had hair that would have been long enough to braid had I been so inclined. So I did the only thing I could do. I let out a piercing scream.

Mr. Zimmerman burst into an explosion of high-pitched laughter, and if I've described it before as a tenor voice, I can only tell you that soprano was what I'd meant. The noise ricocheted off the tile walls until even the spiders were too shocked to move.

He calmed it down to a controlled simper and dried his eyes. “Let me ask you something, George. What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“A geneticist,” I muttered, because it was too hard to mutter “cytogeneticist.”

“Ah, George the Geneticist. Do you think a geneticist has to work very hard at what he does?”

“Maybe, but it's hardly this kind of work!”

“But I'll bet it gets messy, the work a geneticist does.” He clapped his hands. “Tell you what, George. Why don't you pretend this latrine is your lab and that those spiders over in that corner are waiting to be dissected and studied under your microscope.”

“That's high school biology,” I told him. “Genetics is a bit more complex, involving cells, and chromosomes, and DNA, and DNA isn't
hairy
.” But that only made him laugh harder. The acoustics in the room were insufferable.

“Like I told you before, George, you have to face your fears if you want to overcome them!” he declared pompously.

I bit my lip and began attacking the floor with my rag. What I was trying to accomplish I didn't know. The floor tiles were the color of dirt anyway, so the Music Man would have had no way of knowing whether or not they were getting clean. He just wanted to see me shame myself. And I was doing a pretty good job of it. I was also sweating like a horse. When my efforts had taken me all the way across the room, Mr. Zimmerman suddenly bounded off his perch and stood a moment looking over my shoulder. I sat back, convinced he was going to tell me that enough was enough and that I had learned my lesson, but he didn't. “You missed a spot,” he announced smugly, pointing with the toe of his shoe before hopping back up to his seat.

I thought to myself,
If I can find a way to trap the Bruise Brothers inside that bunker, then there's no reason on earth why I can't find a way to get the Music Man in there with Them. And if They're in there long enough, who knows? They may even resort to cannibalism!

I finished the floor cheerfully then, and when I stood
up to drop my yellow gloves into the box from whence they came, Mr. Zimmerman dropped a bombshell on me.

“If you think you're done, think again. You're about twelve sinks and twelve toilets away from being done.”

I don't know how I got through the next hour or so, but visualizing my music teacher being eaten alive by the Bruise Brothers certainly helped. Eventually, though, he must have had an attack of conscience because he told me I could pack it in and remove the gloves. I pulled out my itinerary, thinking the score had been settled and that I was free to move on, but he shook his glossy scalp at me.

“It's not over yet. Pick up the box and follow along.”

So I picked up the box grimly and followed him grimly across the Compound to the boys' latrine. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the five Thugs barging up the footpath that led to the beach, and as I watched Mr. Z prop open
that
latrine door with yet another convenient nearby garbage can, I couldn't help smiling to myself. A morning's exertion under the hot sun, combined with so much sea air, would surely leave Them ravenously hungry.

I spent the better part of the morning on my knees in one comfortless position after another, and if there was a lesson to be learned at all from my punishment, it was that latrines are
sick
. Especially the toilets. And to make matters worse, when I straightened up from the one I'd been scouring and released my breath, I found that I was feeling my mom's pain, which made me miss her terribly and wish she could have been there to lend me a hand.

Mr. Zimmerman spent his sojourn in the boys' latrine with his behind stuffed between the sinks as he had done in the girls', only instead of sitting and laughing the entire
time, he was doing what looked like paperwork, and seemed pretty engrossed in it, too.
No doubt earning that pittance of a paycheck
, I thought. Still it wouldn't hurt to make nice with the man, so I cleared my throat and said brightly, “How's it going your way, Mr. Z?”

I must have startled him, for he jumped eight inches, and when he landed back on the countertop, I felt the floor quake beneath me.

“Oh, very well! Thank you, George. It's going very well. Yes.”

Now I was curious. “What are you doing?” I asked. It turned out to be the right thing to ask because a pleased look lit up his homely features.

“Come over here. I'll show you.”

I peeled off the yellow gloves and assumed a look of interest, thinking that if I played my cards right, I could possibly turn this into a lengthy break.

“I'm rewriting one of the songs for the show. You see, when I wrote the musical, I didn't know as much about Cape Rose as I do now. For example, I didn't know that a German submarine had surrendered here. I'm trying to inject more facts into the play. Give the audience a more accurate account of her history without changing the play's general composition, which I still feel is quite good.”

I read what he'd written and thought,
He has got to be kidding
. But I put a fascinated look on my face and said, “This is fascinating. How does one learn to compose like this? Did you have to study a lot, or is it just a knack?”

That made him happy. Flushing an unbecoming pink, he said, “A blend of both, I think.” The expression he wore was similar to one a dog would wear after being called “a good fella.” And a rather simple dog, at that.

“You're not just putting me on now, are you, George?”
He scrutinized my face carefully. “Because if you're really interested in this musical, you can help me with the sets I've got to build. I want them ready for the stage crew before our three o'clock rehearsal.”

“Oh, I'm really interested,” I said. I really was. Anything that would get me out of the latrine would hold my interest, especially if it involved helping my music teacher make an even bigger ass of himself on opening night. “And I'd especially like to learn something new,” I added, to give my sincerity just the right touch. “I was afraid to ask before, but I really want to help you.”

“Well, I'll be,” Mr. Z said, smiling warmly. He helped me gather up all the cleaning stuff I'd left scattered about, and when he slid the trash can aside so that I could get the box through the doorway without killing myself, I found I had but one regret—that I hadn't developed an interest in musical theater a good two or three hours earlier.

Shuffling over the compound under the weight of my burden, I managed to make eye contact with a group of teachers standing around in a chitchat, and the looks they gave me were looks of concern and dismay. From the Bruder I sensed a certain outrage at what was happening to her poor Little Gumdrop, which made me wonder what the teachers had thought upon hearing
The Tale of the Midnight Mustarding
. What a shock it must have been. I answered their looks with a brave face, one that I hoped would impart the message that “boys will be boys” and that their George could take his punishment right along with the best of 'em, and I followed Mr. Z like a lackey to an area behind the mess hall where large pieces of particleboard stood propped against the building.

“These are the backdrops,” he said, taking the box out of my arms, “and what we need to do first is build stands for them. Have you ever built a tree house, George?”

A tree house?
I forced a blank look over the appalled one that had distorted my features and shook my head. “But I know how to operate a hammer, if that would help! I remember using one in Wood Shop once.”

He stood a moment, lost in thought.

“I have a better idea. How about if you make a trip to my pickup truck to bring back more lumber. Just small scraps. A dozen or so. You can transport them in this …” He disappeared around the side of the building and returned pushing an old wheelbarrow.

I stared at him in awe, thinking,
How surprisingly macho!

“You have a pickup truck?”

“How do you think I got all this wood down here? Go on, George. It's in the parking lot where we first came in. Do you think you can find the way? Or do you want me to come with you?”

“Oh, I know where I'm going,” I said confidently, because my agile brain had already grasped the significance of the task at hand. To get to the parking lot one entered the woods, and I realized in a flash that this would enable me to perform a spy mission to find that bunker.

So without further ado I took the splintered handles of the rusty contraption in both hands and set off. Going the distance with this thing would not be easy, what with the ground full of sand and ruts, and, more often than not, sandy ruts. But I wheeled the thing with enthusiasm, thinking not only would I be able to spy out my area of operations but I might also catch an inspiring glimpse of Allison Picone somewhere about.

Navigating over the rut-infested Compound would have been a lot easier had the Compound been less infested
with students as well. A number of teams were there now with their team leaders, and divining a course through all that humanity was not easy for one wheeling a barrow.

After I'd made it across and found myself up against yet another team of student scientists, I decided to stop and have a little rest. Because it was
my
team kneeling around at the edge of the forest, and the inspiration I had been thinking about just moments before was right in front of me, inspiring away. And looking pretty industrious about it, too. Allison Picone's yellow tresses were skimming the ground as she bent her head low over what looked like a little pile of dirt. Actually, they were all doing it, bending down low over dirt, even the Ugly Girlfriends, and they were working quietly now, with none of their customary cross talk.

And I could see why. Their leader today was none other than Mrs. Marjorie Love, Science Teacher and Exacting Taskmaster. No one dared goof off in that lady's presence because Mrs. Love, in spite of her name, was nobody's fool.

Anita was there hovering over her dirt, and since I was more than a little curious to know what everyone was doing, I crept up behind her.

You can't sneak up on Anita. I think her wiry hair must serve as an antenna or something because she spat out, “What do you want, George?” while I was still yards away.

I crouched beside her. “What are you doing?” I asked. She was sifting dirt through a little mesh apparatus.

“We're separating the soil from all the other junk so we can test it for non-point-source pollutants,
if you must know!”
she whispered frostily.

Mrs. Love eyed us sharply through her goggles, but seeing that it was me and not just
any
student creating a disturbance, she nodded a greeting my way and went back to her work. I can't say Mrs. Love ever actually fawned over me the way most teachers did, but she always treated me with the kind of respect one scientist would naturally bestow upon another.

Anita was scooping the soil up with her fingers now and spilling it into a little plastic bag, and somehow, without losing a single particle of dirt, she managed to shove her right shoulder back hard so that it almost caught me in my chin. “Will you get lost!” she hissed.

I got up quickly. She was getting physical now. But before I walked away, she whispered, “Is it true you smeared Mr. Zimmerman last night?”

So, word had gotten round
. “Yes,” I said, “it's true.” I figured that if I had to take all the blame for the deed, then I might as well take all the credit, too. Anita just shook her head.

“You know your new friends, George? Well, I think it's a good thing you found them. You guys were made for each other.”

She was wrong, of course, but only I knew that. Anita's problem is that she leaps to conclusions all the time and never gives a person a chance to explain himself. I would have told her that They weren't really my friends, that it was all just an evil plot to ruin my life, but I could tell she didn't want to talk to me when she said, “Buzz off and leave me alone!”