Hypergifted, p.8
Hypergifted, page 8
We entered the campus and passed the statue of General Pershing. The Gamma Kappa brothers put a prom dress on him every year, but now was not the time for that. We had serious business to attend to.
Luckily, Pee-yew was just as dead as Wilderton in the summer, and now, after midnight, the campus was deserted. We ditched the car in the maintenance lot and popped the trunk. There sat a duffel bag containing hockey equipment: visored helmet, chest protector, shoulder and elbow pads, reinforced pants, shin guards, and heavy gloves—everything except the skates and stick.
“What’s this for?” Noah asked.
“Safety first,” I told him.
We suited him up. The stuff was a little big, but it would serve the purpose nicely—to protect him from a mascot that maybe wouldn’t want to go with us. Last but not least, Eddie handed him the empty duffel bag, which we would use to hold our captured prize.
Noah could barely move in all that gear, so we had to gently prod him along as we approached the field house on foot.
Eddie brought bolt cutters, but as it turned out, the main door just swung wide and we scrambled inside. We passed two locker rooms, a weight room, and a museum of team pictures and trophies. It was an obstacle course of sports equipment—stationary bikes, tackling dummies, boundary markers, and what seemed like enough netting to cover the entire campus.
We finally found it at the far end of the building: a wire mesh enclosure that went about halfway up to the ceiling. There was a faint barnyard scent—although nothing like the smell our Porquette could generate. A sign hung on the wire: DANGER: LIVE ANIMAL.
There was a door, but we lifted Noah right over the fencing and set him down in the pen.
“All right, kid,” I said. “Go get him.”
Noah looked mystified from the depths of his mask. “Where is he?”
I gestured to the corner of the enclosure where a mangled dog bed sported the name HAL. Slumbering there, half obscured by puffs of fuzz, lay an odd-looking creature about a foot long. At first glance, it was almost skunk-like in black and white. But it was larger and more like a weasel. The top of its body was stark white from its flat head to the tip of its tail.
Noah let out a cry of alarm. “It’s a honey badger, the fiercest animal in nature!”
Before I could holler “Noah, look out,” Hal was streaking across the enclosure, emitting a loud noise somewhere between a grunt and a rattle. In a flash, the honey badger scrambled up the shin guards, flailing at the padding with long, sharp claws. Terrified, Noah keeled over backward and Hal sprinted the length of his body and went straight for his face, biting and scratching at the plexiglass visor.
Eddie and I reached down, grabbed Noah by the shoulders, and lifted him up and over the wire fencing. We probably would have ended up bringing Hal with him to attack all three of us. But at that moment, Noah’s now-shredded Wild Hogs hockey jersey fell off. It dropped to the floor of the cage and the honey badger dropped with it, growling and snarling, looking for something to fight. All it found was the duffel bag. In about five seconds, the aggressive animal had torn it to ribbons. If we had tried to contain Hal in that thing, we would have been clawed to death in the car before we’d made it as far as the statue of General Pershing.
“Let’s get out of here!” Noah wailed.
Eddie and I exchanged a look. Who were we to argue with an actual genius? At this point, there was nothing to be gained by hanging around. Pee-yew might have been a worthless third-rate school for losers, but you had to give them credit. Their mascot was a match for anyone—even Godzilla.
We burst out of the field house to be greeted by another piece of bad news. A white campus security car was headed our way, blue light circling.
“Run!” howled Eddie, and we kicked into high gear—at least two of us did.
Noah wasn’t the greatest athlete in the world to begin with and he was hampered by the bulky hockey gear. The last thing we saw as we jumped into the VW was Noah in the hands of a uniformed Pee-yew rent-a-cop.
We didn’t have to deal with the disturbing scene for long. Eddie stomped on the gas, and we were out of there.
“What are they going to do to him?” Eddie wheezed.
“He’ll be fine,” I insisted as we whipped past General Pershing and headed out onto the main road. “If he’s such a genius, let him talk his way out of it.” Like there could ever be an explanation for going after a honey badger while dressed like one of the New York Rangers.
We never actually made the decision to turn around. It was more like Eddie took his foot off the accelerator, and we coasted to a stop on the outskirts of Conifer. And when we got going again, we and our guilty consciences were heading back toward Pershing Union. We had gotten Noah into this mess. It was our responsibility to get him out again.
Once we were back on campus, Eddie killed the headlights, and we crept back toward the field house, driving across the grass instead of the well-lit road. Noah stood meekly by the rent-a-cop, who was on his phone. The security car was parked not far away, blue light still twirling.
I dug around the glove compartment and came up with a string of unused firecrackers and a book of matches. Eddie killed the engine and we rolled up to a spot about fifty feet behind the car.
I jumped out of the VW and, staying low, scampered through the pulsing blue glow. I lit the wick and tossed the string in through the open window of the security car.
A series of seven loud bangs in rapid succession shattered the quiet of the night. Shocked, the rent-a-cop ran over to his vehicle, and I ran to Noah. Eddie started the VW and screeched up to us. I stuffed the bewildered Noah into the back seat, jumped in after him, and pulled the door shut. Eddie stomped on the gas, and we took off.
“You came for me!” Noah exclaimed in a quavering voice.
“Of course,” I gasped. “Gavelers never give up on each other.”
Eddie’s nervous eyes were on the rearview mirror. “Don’t look now, you guys. We’ve got company.”
I peered out the back window. The security car was on our tail, coming up fast. The rent-a-cop was at the wheel, grim, determined, and really ticked off.
He gained on us, honking his horn, until we sailed through the gate. Then, once we were off campus and out of his territory, he fell away. I was able to start breathing again.
“What if he read the license plate?” Noah worried.
Eddie brayed a laugh. “This old piece of junk burns so much oil that there’s nothing but black gunk back there. You couldn’t read that plate with a telescope.”
It was almost two a.m. when we pulled up in front of Butternut Hall to drop Noah off. He was exhausted after his ordeal and so were we, to tell the truth. The whole point of this ruse with the Society of the Gavel was to suck Noah into making our lives easier. Tonight, somehow, the wheels came off that plan. Sure, we put the kid to work, but we had to work twice as hard to rescue him.
Before he got out of the car, he lectured us on a thousand and one reasons why you should never try to kidnap a honey badger and how no amount of hockey equipment could ever make you safe from one. He told us their scientific name was Mellivora capensis and that in the wild, they had been known to take on cobras and lions—and win.
“Yeah,” I finally agreed. “I guess we’re going to have to figure out a different way to get Porquette back.”
At the mention of Porquette, Noah got really weird again. Not that Eddie and I were complaining. At least it got him to shut up about honey badgers.
But it made me wonder: This kid didn’t think Pershing Union had anything to do with Porquette’s disappearance. If Noah was as smart as everyone said, maybe we should be listening to him.
He was definitely right about honey badgers.
14
Hyperpajamas
Noah Youkilis
I put on a brave face as Darius and Edward drove off that night. I actually stood in front of Butternut Hall and waved until the car disappeared into the darkness. But it wasn’t easy.
I tried to tell myself that what I’d just experienced was like a YouTube video in real life. There was a really famous one about honey badgers. Only tonight had been a lot different from watching something on a screen. The correct word for it was terrifying. I needed to study that—but not now. I’d wait until my heart rate dropped below my IQ score. I was still pretty rattled.
I relaxed a little as I walked down the hall to room 115—until I remembered that the bathroom was now the unofficial home of Porquette. I once read an article that said today’s college students were more stressed out than ever. I definitely agreed, even though the article hadn’t mentioned anything about pigs who were suffering from elderberry poisoning.
No sooner had I inserted my key in the lock than the door was thrown open. There stood Donovan, eyes blazing.
“Where were you?” he demanded. “I thought you took off to saddle me with that!” He inclined his head toward the closed bathroom door.
I was stunned. For all my 206 IQ, it never once crossed my mind that I could get away from the Porquette conundrum simply by leaving. Sometimes there was a simplicity and directness to Donovan’s thought processes that went beyond genius. I knew this because I was the genius they went beyond.
“I was out,” I explained. “With Darius and Edward.”
He looked me up and down, taking in the scratched and shredded pads that still covered most of my body. “Where? At a hockey game? Looks like you lost.”
“There was a honey badger involved,” I admitted.
He just stared at me.
Since Donovan already knew that Darius and Edward were my ticket into the Society of the Gavel, I was able to give him some of the details of what had happened at Pershing Union.
He looked alarmed. “And you never told them Porquette’s in our bathtub?”
I was offended. “Of course not. I went through a lot to keep our secret! You’re welcome, by the way.”
Donovan heaved a sigh. “Noah, you’ve got to stay away from those two Gamma Kappa creeps. All they want from you is a free housekeeper. That’s bad enough, but tonight they could have gotten you killed. If that mascot had gone for your face—”
“He did,” I put in. “We had to throw away the visor. It was so scratched I couldn’t see through it.”
“The point is they’re not Gavelers. They’re just using you for what you can do for them. They can’t get you into the Society of the Gavel, because they’re not members either.”
“They have to be,” I insisted. “AIDAN identified them with ninety-nine-point-seven percent probability. AIDAN is proving to be even more capable than I expected. Dr. Menzies said it’s by far the most powerful AI system in Advanced Computer Seminar.”
My confidence in AIDAN must have made me raise my voice, because at that moment, there was a disturbance from the direction of the bathroom—scrambling sounds accompanied by loud grunting.
We rushed over and threw open the door. The mascot’s small feet were clattering around the bottom of the tub, but she seemed to lack the strength to get herself upright. Donovan ran the shower, and the cool water seemed to calm the pig down. I brought the garbage bag we used to store her food and she gobbled down a couple of kaiser rolls and a hunk of cabbage from the salad bar at dinner. Pigs were supposed to eat vegetables, but Porquette was a bread fiend. She could inhale a French baguette in the time it took to say “ooh la la.”
Donovan was nervous as we watched her feasting. “She must be really sick.”
“But then wouldn’t she be losing weight?” I wondered.
A sharp knocking made us both jump.
“Noah?” called a girl’s voice. “Donovan? Everything all right in there?”
It was JoJo, the RA. Donovan never lost his cool. We closed up the bathroom and answered the door.
“Gotta keep it down, guys.” JoJo yawned. Her eyes fell on me in my battered sports equipment. “New pajamas?”
“I—I—I—” I stammered.
“He was trying on his hockey stuff,” Donovan supplied.
She nodded. “There are better things to do at two in the morning—like sleeping. Good night.” And she shuffled back toward her room.
Relief flooded over both of us as we relocked our door. That was a close one.
Donovan had to help me out of the hockey pads because Darius and Edward had fastened the Velcro really tight.
“Why are you so obsessed with the Society of the Gavel, anyway?” he asked me. “A bunch of pictures on rocks. So what?”
“They’re secret,” I replied. “The only way to find out what makes them so special is to become a member.”
“How do you know they’re special?” he challenged. “If you want to see who’s special, try looking in the mirror. What are the odds that even the best of those Gavel geeks is even half as smart as you?”
He was missing the point, of course. There were plenty of ways to be special that had nothing to do with intelligence—WWE wrestlers who were like twenty-first-century titans; YouTubers with millions of subscribers; even someone like Donovan himself, who could be special through his sheer ordinariness.
Taken one by one, the Gavelers might not have been special at all. They had made themselves special just by the fact that they were Gavelers.
And if they could accomplish that, why couldn’t I?
15
Hyperwhosis
Donovan Curtis
Camp was different in a post-Porquette world.
Of course, it wasn’t post-Porquette for me. I knew exactly where the missing pig was—and I would have given a lot for her to be anyplace else.
But for the rest of the Wilderton community, their darling mascot was missing. And that changed everything.
There was no laughing. No jokes. No good-natured teasing. Oh, we still had our sports, our games, our activities. We went swimming and to arts and crafts. Our daily schedules weren’t any less jam-packed. But we went through them with grim businesslike determination. We played a soccer match because that’s what it said on the paper. And when the ball got kicked out of bounds into the trees, players from both teams went after it. Finding the ball took about eight seconds, but there was a twenty-minute delay while everybody searched for Porquette in an area that had already been well searched by Wilderton’s grounds staff.
One time, when we scored a goal, I made the mistake of cheering, “Isn’t this awesome?”
Group Baloney made a point of letting me know how awesome it wasn’t.
“Winning is fine and all that,” Luna lectured me. “But some things are more important.”
Things like having your pig handy.
I tried again. “Come on, guys. This is supposed to be a camp, not a funeral parlor! Where’s your Baloney spirit? Baloney power!”
They left me hanging.
“What were you thinking?” Raina chewed me out as we trudged to the cafeteria for lunch. “None of us are going to forget about Porquette. And bringing up funeral parlors—not smart. Our kids are trying to believe that their mascot is alive and well.”
I could vouch for the fact that she was alive. Well was a trickier question. There was nothing on the internet about elderberry poisoning for pigs. That was the problem with Noah’s science. It was so cutting edge that Google hadn’t heard about it yet.
The lunchroom was too quiet. All you could hear were eating noises and the occasional clash of cutlery. No laughter. No shouts. No counselors snapping at their charges to settle down. That was another thing about post-Porquette life at camp: There wasn’t much misbehavior. Claire didn’t pick fights with the other teams. Manny stopped losing his cool. Even Victor the Underestimator left plenty of time to make it to the bathroom. You’d think Raina would have been happy about that. She wasn’t. It was just too odd.
No one could keep their eyes off the mountain of uneaten ham sandwiches in the food line. Nobody would take one anymore—as Manny put it, “just in case.”
“Oh, come on!” I exploded. “Porquette’s not dead! And even if she was, do you think she’d be a ham sandwich already?”
I finally shut up when Raina kicked me under the table for upsetting the kids again. None of them actually sobbed out loud, but I could see tear tracks down Luna’s delicate cheeks.
There was one aspect of camp that hadn’t changed at all. Right after lunch, Jalen disappeared as we were waiting for the kids to come out of the bathroom station.
This time it didn’t cause so much as a ripple. Not even Raina seemed too upset.
“He’ll be back,” she said confidently. “Let’s just go through our afternoon and let him find us.”
And we did. Our biggest concern was that someone would notice we were one camper short. If reports of that somehow trickled up to Mr. Arthropod, that would count as a serious “Leave me alone” violation.
We shouldn’t have worried. The other groups were just as upset and distracted as Baloney. And anyway, thanks to occasional dentist appointments, stomachaches, and family trips, it wasn’t that unusual to be down a kid. It didn’t ring any alarm bells that it happened to us more often than to anyone else.
Sure enough, late in the afternoon, when we got to arts and crafts, he was already there, working on the wallet he intended to give to his grandfather, the university president. At this point, Raina and I didn’t bother to ask him where he’d been or why his pockets were full of marbles, which he shared with his fellow campers.
“Any sign of Porquette?” Victor probed anxiously.
Jailbreak Jalen shook his head. “And I kept my eyes out the whole time.”
Which meant exactly one thing: Wherever Jalen was going during these disappearances, we could rule out room 115 of Butternut Hall.
* * *
The dorm should have been the one place I could decompress. For obvious reasons, though, it was even more stressful than camp.
