Hypergifted, p.2
Hypergifted, page 2
We were definitely the youngest ones here. The only people who didn’t have beards were the girls—or that’s what it seemed like.
“I’ve never felt so out of place in my life,” Donovan half whispered.
I was a little surprised to hear him say that. To me, Donovan was the coolest guy in the world, always at home, always at ease. I was the misfit. I was too smart for the Academy, but I didn’t fit in at regular school, either. Basically, there was one place where I was the odd man out: the universe.
An interesting conundrum began to form in my head: Donovan, who expected to be comfortable most places, felt like an oddball here. But since I was an oddball everywhere, Wilderton University didn’t throw me at all.
Had I reached the point in my life where my misfit status would finally come in handy?
When we found Butternut Hall, Dad pulled up to a back entrance where a few other cars were loading and unloading.
Because it seemed like the friendly thing to do, I introduced myself to the student in the car next to ours, who also seemed to be moving in.
“How do you do? I’m Noah Youkilis, an incoming freshman majoring in computer science.”
He was carrying two beanbag chairs, but he dropped them both to stare at me. “What are you—eight?”
“Thirteen,” I corrected him. “But don’t feel bad. It’s an understandable mistake due to my short stature.”
“You’re in the wrong place, kid,” he informed me. “This is college, not Gymboree.”
“My IQ is two hundred and six,” I explained. “I’m sure yours is much lower. You’re lucky.”
Donovan steered me away from the student, who seemed to be getting angry.
“Don’t be mad,” he advised the guy over his shoulder. “He’s a genius. Which has nothing to do with being smart.”
Between Donovan, my parents, and me, it only took a few trips to transfer our belongings into room 115, which was going to be home for the summer. It was a cinder block rectangle—I calculated 208 square feet—with a small bathroom at one end. There were bunk beds, two dressers, two desks, two chairs, and a tiny refrigerator.
Donovan set his duffel on the lower bunk, took out the waffle iron, and set it in the place of honor atop his dresser, the cord dangling over the side where there was no plug. “There,” he announced. “I’m unpacked.”
My mother was amazed. “Why did you bring that?”
I provided the explanation. “There’s no purpose to it. It’s absolutely random. How uplifting is that?”
At that moment, my father arrived in the room, carrying the last two of my elderberry bushes. “Well, that’s everything. You guys are officially moved in.”
As he set down the clay pots, a single moth took flight from the branches and began to flutter around the room.
Wordlessly, Donovan picked up the waffle iron, opened up the two sides, and slammed them shut on the winged insect.
“I guess it has a purpose after all,” he said, looking mildly pleased.
Thereby proving me wrong—which didn’t happen often to somebody with a 206 IQ.
It was another reason why two people as different as Donovan and me had come to be friends.
3
Hyperpiggy
Donovan Curtis
After Noah’s parents left, we got our campus tour—from Dean Kendrick himself, no less. Dean Kendrick was the number two guy at Wilderton. The top dog, President Aberfoyle, was away on sabbatical right now, which was when big-shot university honchos traveled the world doing educational things or whatever.
Our first view of the dean came when he rolled up to Butternut Hall in a tricked-out golf cart. He leaped out and enfolded me in a bear hug. “Noah Youkilis!” he gushed. “You have no idea how happy I am to welcome you to Wilderton!”
I wriggled loose. “I’m Donovan. He’s Noah.”
Unfazed, he transferred the hug to Noah and repeated his greeting word for word. Noah shrank away, mumbling, “Don’t do that.” He didn’t like to be touched by strangers. Or even by people he knew, come to think of it.
“I think our proud university offers exactly the level of intellectual stimulation you’ve been yearning for,” the dean continued. “I’m not sure you know this: You have the highest IQ of any student who has ever crossed our threshold . . .”
As Kendrick droned on, it began to sink in to me that this guy expected Noah to be the next Shakespeare or Einstein or Elon Musk—and the credit for all that would go to the wonderful dean who brought Noah to Wilderton.
Well, dream on, Dean Kendrick. The poor slob had no idea he’d recruited a “genius” who believed that the highest point in human achievement was YouTube.
The dean introduced us to the driver of the golf cart. “Say hello to C.T. Beldner, journalism student extraordinaire. As part of his senior thesis project, he’ll be chronicling the start of your Wilderton journey, Noah.”
C.T. looked about twenty, with the same sparse beard that so many of the male students seemed to have. As we shook hands all around, the newcomer eyed me suspiciously. Since Kendrick ignored me like I wasn’t even there, my identity became the mystery of the moment. Noah was the genius; who the heck was I supposed to be?
“I’m Donovan,” I introduced myself. “I’m just along for the ride.”
“Are you starting college too?” C.T. asked me.
I brayed a laugh right in his face. “Yeah—that’s funny.”
The tour took a lot longer than expected because Noah kept getting carsick in the golf cart, so every now and then, we had to pull over and take a break. I didn’t have the heart to tell Dean Kendrick that we’d already seen most of the campus while driving around trying to find Butternut Hall. The only difference was this time we got to hear about how most of the buildings were named after guys who died way back before the invention of the wheel.
“Most of the cobblestones on these paths come from Europe,” the dean was explaining. “They arrived in America on ships where they served as ballast. Nicholas Wilderton himself repurposed them for our pathways. Even in the nineteenth century, this university saw the value of recycling.”
From behind the wheel of the golf cart, C.T. shot me a side-eye that was almost an apology for Dean Kendrick’s boring personality. It proved that college students weren’t all that different from middle school kids.
“Of course,” the dean went on, “most of our academic buildings are connected by underground passages as well. You won’t have to trudge through snow during the harsh winter weather.”
“I get claustrophobia in tunnels,” Noah said with a shudder.
“Understandable,” Kendrick put in quickly. “I enjoy a bracing walk on a cold morning.”
It was pretty obvious the dean was determined to be in harmony with his 206 IQ golden boy at all costs. What a creep!
“Is that the football stadium?” I asked, pointing to a gray dome that loomed over the entire east side of campus.
“We’re very proud of our Wild Hogs,” the dean supplied. “They finished sixth in the Cropland Conference last season. Are you a football fan, Noah?”
Noah shook his head. “Professional wrestling is my sport. I watch the videos on YouTube.” He looked a little green, like he was getting carsick again.
“What’s that?” I asked, indicating a barnlike structure set up as a lean-to surrounded by chicken wire.
“That’s the sty, obviously,” the dean replied impatiently. Like why wouldn’t everybody already know that?
“You have a sty?” I persisted. “Like for pigs?”
C.T. laughed. “For one pig, anyway. Porquette lives there. She’s our wild hog—the mascot of our sports teams.” I must have made a face, because he added, “If you’re going to survive around this place, you’d better learn to appreciate this particular lady-pig. The whole campus loves her.” With a finger, he flattened his nose into a snout. “Fine swine—”
“Top of the line,” the dean finished, replicating the snout, which seemed pretty out of place on him.
Noah frowned. “The lifespan of the average pig is twelve to eighteen years. Do you expect anyone to believe that’s the original Porquette?”
“Obviously not.” The dean chuckled. “Every now and then we have to retire a pig and choose a successor. Students from our award-winning Agriculture college make the determination of when it’s time for a new Porquette—or in the case of a male, Porky.”
C.T. got the idea that the Wilderton Wire needed a picture of the college’s smartest new student with its beloved mascot. So off we went to the sty, which smelled like a hundred pigs lived there, instead of just one. I could tell Dean Kendrick wasn’t thrilled with this little side trip. He started breathing through his mouth as we approached the lean-to. I was doing some of that myself.
To my surprise, Noah actually seemed excited at the prospect of meeting Porquette. He gave me his phone along with instructions on how I should video this moment so he could post it to YouTube. And then Porquette emerged from the lean-to, and we got our first good look at the mascot of Wilderton University.
“That’s a pig?” Noah breathed. “It’s more like—a hippopotamus!”
Okay, he was exaggerating, but not by much. Porquette stood almost as high as Noah’s waist and a good forty inches in length. But while Noah was skinny and insect-like, the pig was solid as a boulder. If you drove a car into her, it seemed like the car would suffer more damage than the animal. She waddled up to us and plopped her ample belly into the mud of the sty, sending blobs of dirt and straw in every direction. We all got hit, but it was worth it to see Dean Kendrick with a splotch of filth running down the immaculate crease of his suit pants.
C.T. wanted a close-up of genius and mascot, but Noah was too uncoordinated to get over the fence. So the student reporter had to settle for a shot of Noah straddling the top post, half-tangled in chicken wire, with Porquette looking up at him almost in amusement.
“Let’s keep the tour moving,” the dean suggested, scowling at his soiled clothing. “We don’t want to get bogged down on any one thing.”
It took the three of us to extricate Noah from the chicken wire so we could bid our farewell to Porquette and breathe again. I was no Dean Kendrick fan, but I was happy to get back to the non-pig portion of the tour.
As we were climbing back into the golf cart, I noticed a small outcropping of rock with an image painted on it of a mallet surrounded by stars. I’d seen it a few other places around the campus—on rocks and benches and once even on the side of a building. I’d assumed it was just graffiti, but the same picture was definitely coming up again and again.
“What’s that?” I asked.
Kendrick seemed pleased that I’d noticed. “That’s Wilderton’s secret society—the Society of the Gavel. You’ll notice that symbol all over the campus.”
Noah jumped on that like a dog on a dropped hamburger. “Secret society? What does that mean?”
“All the best universities have them,” the dean explained. “Yale has Skull and Bones. William and Mary has the Flat Hat. Emory has the Order of Ammon. We at Wilderton like to think that the Society of the Gavel is the oldest and most prestigious of them all.”
“But what’s it about?” Noah persisted. “What does the Society of the Gavel do?”
“Nobody really knows,” the dean replied. “Every now and then, a group of old members makes a donation in the name of the Gavel, but we can never be sure, not even of the donors’ identities. Not until they die. They’re buried as Gavelers—and then it’s too late to ask them any questions.”
“How do you apply?” Noah asked eagerly.
“You don’t,” C.T. told him. “They have to recruit you. They say that only one out of a hundred students is ever approached to join the Society of the Gavel.”
C.T. and the dean had no way of knowing this, but I was all too familiar with what was going on. Noah was becoming quiet and focused, his questioning rapid-fire. It was the way he’d reacted the first time I showed him YouTube. When he set his headlights on something, that 206 IQ was relentless until he’d learned everything there was to know about the topic. It looked like the Society of the Gavel was next on the list.
The tour went on for another hour, but it never recaptured Noah’s attention. He wasn’t interested in the student union or the research library or even the state-of-the-art Technology Center. Yet every time we passed a gavel and stars painted on a paving stone or a wall or a broken-down fence, he just about leaped out of the golf cart. C.T. tried to interview him for the Wilderton Wire, but Noah responded to every question with a question of his own about the Society of the Gavel—how they got started, why they chose a gavel as their symbol, and, most important of all, what qualities they looked for in new members.
I could tell Dean Kendrick was becoming a little impatient with Noah’s nagging. “It’s a secret, Noah. That’s why they call it a secret society. If everybody knew about it, it wouldn’t be secret anymore.”
At long last, C.T. steered the golf cart into the driveway in front of Butternut Hall. I wondered if Noah was going to call attention to the three elderberry bushes I’d helped him transplant in a line of shrubs outside the window of our dorm room. But my roommate didn’t bring up the subject. For Noah, if it didn’t have a gavel on it, it wasn’t worth mentioning.
“Well, now you’ve seen our corner of the world.” Dean Kendrick shook hands with Noah, ignoring me once more. “Your first class is at the Technology Center at nine a.m. tomorrow. Let me just say once again how thrilled we are to have you at Wilderton.” And now that Noah was all squared away, he climbed back into the golf cart so he and C.T. could drive off.
“Hey, wait a minute!” I blurted. “What about me?”
“What about you?” he asked, like I was a pesky insect that needed to be swatted.
“I know I’m not in college or anything like that,” I went on, “but aren’t I supposed to have some kind of job here while Noah—you know—does his thing?”
The dean looked completely blank. I experienced a moment of sheer panic. Was this dumb school so anxious to snag Noah that they lied about having a job for me? Tomorrow my parents were leaving for Paris and the start of their second honeymoon. It would be the final touch of this wonderful summer if I was stranded here for months with nothing to do.
C.T. came to my rescue. “Dean Kendrick, didn’t you say that Donovan was going to work in the Explorers Program?”
I clung to it like I was a drowning sailor and this was my lifeline. “What’s the Explorers Program?”
“Oh, yes,” the dean said, snapping his fingers in recollection. “The Explorers Program is a summer camp the university offers for the young children of faculty and graduate students. You’re going to be a counselor-in-training.”
“Congratulations, Donovan,” Noah approved. “You’ll be shaping young minds.”
I made a face. In other words, I was going to be a babysitter. But come to think of it, that was a job I already had.
I would be spending my summer babysitting Noah.
4
Hyperbaloney
Raina Overbrook
Counselors Meeting—8 a.m.
Home base for the Explorers Program was the lobby of the main athletic building, east campus, not far from the football stadium and the pool complex. I made sure to be there at seven-thirty because if you’re not early, you’re late.
The place was totally empty when I arrived. No one else was there, not even the camp director, Mr. Arthur Podborski, who everyone called Mr. Arthropod—a little joke from the biology department. Humor hit differently here in the university world, where everyone was smart and educated.
Anyway, I didn’t mind being first. I needed a little extra time to be alone with my thoughts because this was going to be a big summer for me. I was a full counselor this year instead of just a counselor-in-training. So I’d be in charge of my very own group of campers, even though I was only thirteen.
I was used to everyone around me being older. Both my parents were professors at Wilderton, so I’d lived here my entire life. On campus, even the freshmen were eighteen or nineteen. I had to crane my neck just to look the students in the face. But in the Explorers Program, I’d be working with kids ages six to ten. I’d grown three inches in the last year—they might have to look up to me!
A little closer to eight, the other counselors began to trickle in, but Mr. Arthropod still wasn’t here. That was a little irritating. Camp was scheduled to begin at nine. We’d be meeting our campers in an hour. We needed to get this meeting started so we’d be ready!
Most of the other counselors were college students who were spending the summer on campus. That was another thing about university life. There was always a large pool of students who worked cheap in order to help pay their tuition and expenses. So I was surprised when a boy who seemed just about my age walked into the room. I knew all the sub-college-age kids who lived at Wilderton, but this guy was new. I was sure of it. If he was local, he would have gone to my middle school. Unless he went to boarding school, but he didn’t have the look. He seemed relaxed, laid-back, comfortable in his own skin. For sure, he didn’t break his neck to get here at seven-thirty. Then again, nobody else did that either—and Mr. Arthropod, the head of it all, still hadn’t arrived.
So I walked up to the new kid and held out my hand. “Hi, I’m Raina.”
We shook.
“Donovan,” he introduced himself with a shy smile. He had a rumpled appearance as if he’d just fallen off the back of a moving truck, but I couldn’t help noticing that his teeth were dazzling white and perfect.
“I thought I knew everybody our age on campus,” I told him. “Are you new here?”
“I’m just here for the summer,” he replied.
I nodded wisely. “My folks are professors too.”
“I’m not with my parents,” he explained. “I live in Butternut Hall with this kid from my hometown. It’s kind of a long story. He’s getting a full scholarship—”
I exploded with excitement and cut him off. “You’re here with Noah Youkilis? Why didn’t you say so?”
