Hypergifted, p.12
Hypergifted, page 12
To my surprise, C.T. walked straight up to me. “Got a minute for a few questions?”
“You mean about Noah?” I asked.
In answer, he tilted his phone. The image on the screen was one that I was heartily sick of looking at: Me, freeze-frame in the blizzard, high up on Mount Everest.
“I’ll be right back,” I said to Raina.
“We’re working,” she reminded me. “This game’s almost over. Then we’re due at the pool.”
Everything I did got the Overbrook Seal of Disapproval. I couldn’t please her if I went to the United Nations and brokered world peace.
“Yeah, but—” I gestured toward C.T.
“We have an unpredictable camper,” she added with a meaningful gesture in Jalen’s direction. “We need all hands on deck.”
“I—” I looked over at my picture frozen on C.T.’s phone. It wasn’t me, but who was going to believe that? I had to set the record straight. “I’ll be right back.”
And with that, I deserted my furious co-counselor and headed over to the golf cart to join the student reporter.
“I guess Noah isn’t the only superstar in Butternut Hall,” he greeted me.
I had a mini panic attack. For a second there, I thought he’d somehow figured out we were hiding Porquette in our bathtub.
“You didn’t tell me you were a mountain climber,” he added, and I realized he was talking about the Everest clip.
“It isn’t me,” I told him. “I know it looks like me, but it isn’t.”
“Come on,” he chided. “Why would you want to hide something like that? Wilderton has a thirteen-year-old genius and his roommate is a famous daredevil. You shouldn’t be hiding in Noah’s shadow. Our students need to know about you.”
“I’m not a daredevil—”
C.T. swiped the Everest picture aside and a new video began to play on the phone. Some guy stood on the roof of a building, buffeted by high winds. He ran to the edge and leaped off like he was Superman or something. Just before he pulled his parachute, he swooped past the camera and—
It was me! I had just taken a flying leap off nothing less than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai—something else that had never happened.
Before I reached the ground, the video ended and a new one began. This time I was dressed in a parka, mushing a dog team across the high Arctic. And that morphed into a diver in a shark tank menaced by a great white that could have swallowed a Smart car. Close-up on the scuba mask: me again.
“It can’t be me,” I barely whispered.
“Don’t be so modest,” he persisted. “You can’t tell me it’s not you. It’s you to the life!”
“Don’t you think I’d want to take credit for this stuff if it was true?” I exploded. “I’d be the greatest showboat in human history! My face would be on cereal boxes!”
“So why won’t you let me tell your story?” he demanded.
“Because it’s not true! I can’t prove that guy isn’t me, but you’re going to have to take my word for it that he isn’t!”
C.T. was disapproving. “If you’re trying to keep a low profile, it was a pretty dumb idea to post all those videos on social media.”
“I didn’t do that either,” I pleaded. “I don’t know who put them out there. Probably the real guy—the one who looks so much like me.”
On the phone, another clip—this one of me bungee jumping—came to an end only to be replaced by something else. It wasn’t me this time. It was a large pig, seen from the side, prancing through a field of daisies. Drawn in Magic Marker across the flank was the Fibonacci spiral.
C.T.’s eyes bulged. “Is that Porquette?”
“How should I know?” I babbled. “All pigs look alike!”
He frowned. “And what’s that symbol supposed to mean? I see it all over the campus.”
At this point, my head was absolutely spinning. It was weird enough to wrap my mind around all those videos starring the me who wasn’t me. But this? Porquette as the grand finale? And what was she doing outdoors in a field of flowers when I knew for a fact that she was poisoned by elderberries and didn’t have the strength to climb out of our bathtub? The video couldn’t be old, because Porquette had the Fibonacci spiral drawn on her. That was new. In its own way, it was just as impossible as me on Mount Everest.
One thing was clear. I had to get the attention off Porquette—and the only alternative was the strange symbol on her flank.
So I blurted, “I think it might be a club. There’s a sign-up sheet in the student union.”
C.T.’s eyes rose to his hairline. “A new club?”
That was when the cornhole match ended, and I was called away to join the celebration.
23
Hypernewsflash
THE WIRE: WILDERTON UNIVERSITY’S DAILY NEWSPAPER
PORQUETTE ALIVE!!!
Stunning Video Offers Proof of Life . . . and Opens a New Mystery
By C.T. Beldner, Staff Reporter
Porquette, where are you?
For the past three weeks the entire campus has been asking that question. Now, finally—after rumors of kidnappings, assassination attempts, and all manner of skullduggery—our first particle of real news. A video has surfaced online showing our mascot very much alive and well.
The clip, which has appeared on several major platforms, shows Porquette enjoying herself in a field of English daisies. Professor Milton, chair of Wilderton’s geography department, insists there is no such place in our local topography.
The only other clue is a strange pictogram on Porquette’s side—a tight spiral expanding into a sweeping arc. The image will be familiar to Wilderton students. It appears widely around campus, usually in places where the emblem of the Society of the Gavel has been drawn. Could this be a new rival secret society here at Wilderton University? There’s a sign-up sheet on the bulletin board in the student union—and it bears that symbol. It contains not a word of explanation. You just have to know.
“It’s the Society of the Curly Tail,” claims Darius Marshall of the Gamma Kappa fraternity, whose name was first to appear on the sheet.
“We don’t know where Porquette is,” puts in his housemate Edward Zhao. “But if anybody does, it’s these guys.”
According to Wilderton’s bylaws, once the university’s mascot has been missing for thirty days, it automatically triggers the search for a replacement. Dean Kendrick has acknowledged that the policy is still in force today. Yet many on campus believe that as long as our mascot is alive—and the video proves she is—Porquette is irreplaceable. Because of her, we are all wild hogs. Fine swine, top of the line.
Will she come back to us? Only time will tell.
Time and, perhaps, the Society of the Curly Tail.
24
Hyper32
Noah Youkilis
32. What an excellent number. You don’t have to be a genius to wrap your mind around 32, but there’s enough to it to keep a genius happy. When I look at 32, I see all the prime factors—2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2. Two to the fifth power. And 32 in binary is written as 100,000. What could be simpler or more elegant?
But the main reason why 32 was my new favorite number was this: There were 32 names on the sign-up sheet for the Fibonacci Society.
A lot of people thought I was proud of my 206 IQ, or getting into college at thirteen, or all the prizes and fellowships I’d won over the years. But I actually didn’t care about any of that stuff. I cared about this. My secret society was a hit. What could be more satisfying than that?
Even Darius and Edward signed up and they were in the Gavel, the greatest secret society of them all. To be honest, I wasn’t sure whether it was possible to belong to both. The Fibonacci Society was so fresh out of the package that I hadn’t decided on a lot of the rules. Did you have to give up your Gavel membership before we’d let you in? I was still a little ticked off at the Gavelers because I wasn’t accepted yet, even after I’d cleaned the gutters at Gamma Kappa house—and that was no small job.
The real dilemma was how did you let people into a secret society without making it un-secret? There were a lot of real secret societies in the world—the Gavel, Skull and Bones, Red Dragon, the Seven Society. But those had been around for decades, sometimes centuries. It didn’t say anywhere what they did when they were first starting out. With the Fibonacci Society, I was just going to have to wing it.
“Wing what?” Donovan demanded when I asked his advice. “There is no Fibonacci Society, just a bunch of pictures on rocks and benches. It’s a total non-thing.”
As much as I appreciated Donovan’s opinion, this irritated me a little. “Everything is a non-thing until someone breathes life into it—whereupon it becomes a thing. Would thirty-two people sign up for a non-thing?”
“They didn’t sign up for your thing,” he argued. “They’re convinced the Fibo-whosis is Porquette’s tail.”
“Everyone knows the Fibonacci spiral,” I insisted. “That would be like not recognizing the shape of a triangle or a circle or globular cluster M13 in the constellation of Hercules.”
“To them, it’s a pig’s butt,” he retorted. “They think they’re joining the Society of the Curly Tail.”
As if on cue, a warbling, drawn-out sound came from the bathroom. Porquette’s groaning had become more frequent lately—and it seemed to be getting louder.
“That’s the downside of secrecy.” I had no hard evidence of this, but it seemed logical. “New recruits never have complete information until they actually become members.”
“Complete information?” Donovan threw up his hands. “How about no information? Your thirty-two new members totally believe your secret society is all about Porquette! They only joined because they think they’re getting their mascot back. Everybody on campus is talking about it. The curly-tail guys kidnapped Porquette as a stunt to introduce themselves to the world. And the worst part of that isn’t that it’s wrong—it’s that it’s half right! You do have Porquette—just not for the reasons they think. And if this leads to us getting found out, your thirty-two members are going to come after us with torches and pitchforks!”
I had to admit this was beyond my understanding—and I understood practically everything. “And this is happening because the Fibonacci spiral reminds people of a pig’s tail?”
Donovan nodded. “That plus the video.”
“Video?”
“There’s a video going around on social media,” Donovan explained. “Porquette walking through flowers. You can see the spiral you drew on her side.”
I was stunned. “That flies in the face of all logic! Yes, I drew the symbol on her, but there was no video and she hasn’t left our bathroom since! It has a zero percent probability factor!”
Porquette punctuated this with another painful snort from the tub.
“Yeah, well,” Donovan began, “it wouldn’t be the weirdest video that’s popped up on the internet lately—”
He was interrupted by a sharp knock at the door.
“JoJo!” Donovan hissed at me. “Get in the bathroom and keep the pig quiet.”
But then a voice—definitely not JoJo’s—called, “Noah? Are you in?”
I opened the door. There in the hallway, looking extremely out of place, stood Dean Kendrick. I didn’t know what to say, so I just stood there while he stepped past me into the room.
Donovan, who’d made it 90 percent of the way to the bathroom to calm Porquette, froze in his tracks and came back to help me greet our visitor. “Hi, Dean Kendrick,” he said in a voice that made me marvel at its casual tone. “How’s it going?”
A low gurgling noise came from the bathroom. Donovan and I recognized it as a burp from Porquette, but luckily, the dean didn’t notice. “This is very homey,” he commented, surveying the room. “Nice work, Noah.”
“Am I in trouble?” I asked. “I’m sure Dr. Menzies told you my AIDAN project deleted itself.” In all honesty, I was less worried about that than I was about Porquette behind the bathroom door. If Dean Kendrick found her there, no statistical analysis could put the possibility of catastrophe any lower than 99.9 percent.
“That’s what I came to discuss,” he told me. “I want to assure you that Wilderton is more than just your university. We’re your family. And families stick by each other through thick and thin.”
There was another pig burp, so I rambled on. “I feel bad about it. You gave me this great scholarship, found a job for Donovan, and everything I worked on disappeared into a puff of smoke.”
“Family,” the dean repeated, although he sounded a little more pained. “We have total confidence in you, Noah. I wanted to deliver that message in person.”
Donovan shot me a pointed look. He always talked about how the gifted kids were cut a lot more slack than the regular students. Here was another example of that.
“Well, I’ll let you both get on with your evening—” As Dean Kendrick opened the door, his gaze fell on a hockey gauntlet, scratched and bleeding padding, sitting on my dresser. “May I ask—have you by any chance had the opportunity to visit Pershing Union this summer?”
I was utterly frozen, but Donovan leaped into the conversation. “That glove belonged to the guy who lived here before us. He must have been a hockey player.”
“Ah, yes.” The dean was almost out the door when Porquette let loose a groan of misery that nobody could miss.
My eyes locked with Donovan’s in a flash of pure dread. Were we found out?
Donovan clutched his jaw and groaned in imitation of the noise from the bathroom. “Ohhhh, this toothache! It’s been bugging me all day!”
Dean Kendrick stepped outside. “Student Health Services has a dentist every Wednesday. You can make an appointment in the morning.” And he was gone.
Donovan collapsed onto his bed. “We can’t live like this much longer.”
* * *
The next time I visited the sign-up sheet in the student union, all fifty signature lines were full. Additionally, names were scribbled on the back and also on an extra paper that had been stapled to the bulletin board: 113 applicants in all. Not an elegant number like 32, but still something to be proud of.
But the question of what my next move should be was becoming more and more complicated. For example, how many of these signees should be let into the Fibonacci Society? Surely not all of them. If too many people were in on something secret, there’d be nobody left for it to be secret from.
So I’d have to pick and choose. I didn’t know any of these names. I didn’t know any of these students. I’d have to interview 113 applicants to determine if they had Fibonacci status. And what exactly would that be? What traits made a person Fibonacci-worthy?
I was coming to realize that a 206 IQ would take you only so far. I might have been capable of high-level thinking, but I was only one person. An undertaking like this was going to require legwork. I couldn’t do it alone. I needed help.
Obviously, my first choice should have been Donovan. But I already knew he was a big, fat no. From the very beginning, he’d thought the Fibonacci Society was a bad idea.
There were only two other people I could rely on. Darius and Edward were the first two names on the sign-up sheet, which meant they had plenty of enthusiasm for getting in. Better still, they were Gavelers, which meant they knew what secret societies were supposed to be like. There could be no better choice for Fibonacci members two and three than a pair of full-fledged Gavelers. They could be my lieutenants. Best of all, I knew exactly where to find them—Gamma Kappa house on Fraternity Row.
I almost walked right past the place. The Greek letters over the front entrance had been covered by a bedsheet with a messy version of the Fibonacci spiral spray-painted across it. Curious. The windows were open, and loud music was pounding out into the campus.
I knocked on the door, but nobody answered. After a while, I let myself in. There was a serious party going on. I knew this because I recognized it from videos I’d seen on YouTube. There were about thirty college students packed into the living room, dancing or lounging on the couches, eating pizza and snacks. As I stood there, somebody cut the volume on the music, and in the sudden silence, everyone chorused:
“All hail
the curly tail!”
Then the music came roaring back and the chaos continued.
It was hard to move because the house was crowded and all the gyrating bodies were so much bigger than me. I finally found Darius and Edward in the kitchen in the middle of a competition to see who could swallow the largest dollop of whipped cream in a single gulp. There were seven contestants, faces smeared with white. Those who weren’t choking were laughing as if nothing had ever been so funny.
I marched into their circle and hollered, “I have to talk to you!”
My answer was a blast of whipped cream that struck me right between the eyes. For a moment, the whole world went white.
I wiped the foam off my glasses and tried again. “It’s really important!”
Eventually, Darius dragged me into the laundry room, where it wasn’t quite so loud.
“What can I do for you, little man?”
Where would I even start? Donovan had been right all along. No one had joined the Fibonacci Society. They all thought this was the Curly Tail! And Darius and Edward were just as deluded as everybody else!
I looked up at him, trying to take him seriously, even though his eyebrows were frosted with whipped cream. “This is all wrong!”
“You’re just young,” Darius tried to explain. “When you get to be our age, you’ll appreciate a killer party—”
