The School for the Insanely Gifted

by Dan Elish

  An usher stepped out of the theater. “The show’s about to start! Anyone with tickets, time to take your seat!”

  Harkin looked toward the doors. “I guess that means us. Though a musical about a bunch of dogs is not the Thunk’s idea of fun.”

  Daphna’s eyes strayed to a poster outside the front entrance. There were pictures of the cast, each of them dressed as a giant dog.

  “What does Cynthia play again?” Harkin went on. “A German shepherd?”

  “Nah,” Daphna said. “I think a golden retriever.”

  The two friends joined the crowd pushing for the entrance. Just as they were handing their tickets to one of the ushers, the sound of a siren filled the street. Four police officers on motorcycles cleared the path for a blue stretch limo.

  “Whoa,” Daphna said. “I wonder who this is?”

  Harkin shrugged. “Maybe the pope?”

  Daphna didn’t know about the pope, but she knew that Broadway openings were often a good place for celebrity sightings. When the limo pulled to a halt, one of the police officers opened the door. As the crowd pushed closer, Daphna stood on tippy-toes to see. A rail-thin woman dressed in an elegant red gown stepped out of the limo, followed by a man in a lime green suit who was as round as his wife was thin.

  “It’s the mayor!” someone cried.

  Indeed it was—Samson Fiorello, the man who had put five more teachers into every public school, replanted Central Park’s Great Lawn with palm trees, and built subway cars with coffee bars—one of New York City’s most popular leaders in years.

  As the crowd cheered, the mayor waved happily, then waddled after his wife toward the entrance.

  “Looks like this is the place to be,” Daphna said.

  Harkin nodded. “Come on. Let’s grab our seats.”

  Chapter 3

  An Antelope and a Flex-Bed

  Afew hours later, Daphna sat in between Cynthia and Harkin in the front seat of the boy’s Thunkmobile. The opening of The Dancing Doberman had been a triumph. The crowd laughed in all the right places and cheered wildly at the final curtain. Better still, the mayor and his wife gave Cynthia a standing ovation at the end of her first-act solo, “For a Dollar, I’ll Holler for a Collar.”

  “You were great,” Daphna told Cynthia. “Really and truly.”

  Harkin grinned ruefully. “Best musical about dogs I’ve ever seen.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Daphna said. “You stole the show.”

  Daphna watched her friend accept the compliment with a satisfied smile. Even out of makeup she looked radiant. As Daphna’s mother had always said, “That girl looks glamorous even hanging upside down from a jungle gym.” Daphna had to admit it. With long blond hair, poise beyond her years, and a singing voice that the New York Times had called “miraculous,” Cynthia Trustwell had been a striking presence from the day the two friends had met at the Blatt School playground on the first day of kindergarten. Now, just a month past twelve, Cynthia had the bearing and grace of a true star. Even so, offstage she preferred ripped jeans and oversize cardigan sweaters to fancy dresses. Instead of contact lenses, she wore pink-rimmed glasses.

  “Whatever,” Cynthia said. She unwrapped a stick of bubble gum and popped it into her mouth. “Harkin’s right. It’s just a dumb show about a bunch of dumb dogs. Right now, I’m totally focused on my one-woman musical version of Macbeth—you know, by Shakespeare? I just wrote an awesome opening number, ‘Three Witches in a Pot.’ I’d do anything to get it on Broadway. But who’s got five million bucks to put on a show?”

  “But your songs have got to be better than the junk in The Dancing Doberman,” Harkin said.

  “Don’t worry,” Cynthia said. “They are.”

  Daphna smiled. Like many students at the Blatt School, Cynthia had a healthy appreciation of her own abilities.

  “So what is this thingamabob that you’re driving, anyway?” Cynthia went on to Harkin. “I keep expecting it to either break down or take off to Jupiter. It’s really made of a bunch of taxis?”

  “And the front seats are from a bus,” Harkin said. “That’s why it’s got such good legroom.”

  “Have you shown this rig to your parents?” Daphna asked.

  “Not yet.” Harkin grimaced. “If you can believe it, my dad wants me to come to his lab this Saturday to help him work on some new experiments on the wingspan of a housefly.” He honked at a bus and went on. “What could be duller than studying a fly? I was going to spend the weekend finally perfecting Gum-Top!”

  “Gum-Top?” Cynthia said. “You’re still working on that old thing?”

  Harkin nodded. He was just as passionate about his ideas as Cynthia was about hers. “I’m aiming to test it soon. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Wait a second,” Daphna said. “You mean you’ve really done it?”

  The idea was so old that she had forgotten whose idea it had been. Cynthia, the gum chewer, claimed she had thought of it back in first grade. Daphna remembered getting the idea herself a year later one day during recess. Regardless of who was responsible, Daphna had never given it much of a chance. How could a stick of gum be made to work as a minicomputer that allowed its user to see websites in their head as they chewed?

  Harkin accelerated past a taxi. “Darn right, I’ve done it! I just need to make a few minor adjustments.”

  “Well, lemme be your guinea pig when you test it,” Cynthia said. “I’ll chew and run searches on rich Broadway producers at the same time.”

  “Deal.”

  Harkin took a wide turn and rumbled down 100th Street.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Daphna said as her friend slowed in front of her building.

  Harkin turned to her. “You sure you don’t want to come with us to the cast party?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Too tired. You guys have fun.”

  “The mayor is supposed to drop by,” Cynthia said. “He promised to do a belly dance.”

  “Record it for me on your phone.” Daphna faked a yawn.

  “You don’t fool me, kiddo,” Cynthia said, blowing another bubble. “You’re going to get right back to work on that rhapsody of yours.”

  Daphna poked Cynthia’s bubble with a finger, popping it.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  Daphna gave Cynthia a quick kiss on the cheek, climbed over Harkin, and stumbled onto the sidewalk. After Daphna retrieved her scooter from the contraption’s triangular trunk, Harkin called, “Later, Daph, dude!” and peeled out. Daphna chained her scooter to her usual streetlight and trotted up the front steps. The door to Ron’s apartment swung open the minute she stepped out of the elevator.

  “How was the opening?” he asked.

  Daphna shrugged. “If you like singing dogs, it was great.” In the background Daphna could hear the distinct sound of his three-year-old son wailing. “Is Little Jack okay?”

  “Oh, he’s fine,” Ron said. “Just had a bad dream.”

  With that, Jack let out a particularly loud shriek. With a quick “Sweet dreams, princess,” Ron disappeared back into his apartment. Daphna pushed open the door to hers. She hung up her coat, then took in the dark room with a sigh. Night was when she missed her mom the most. Daphna longed to tell her about the amazing evening she had just had: the Broadway opening, Harkin’s wild new car, seeing the mayor. She longed to feel her mother rub her hands through her thick auburn hair. She even longed to hear her mother call her Miss Sadie P. Snodgrass, the silly pet name she had made up when Daphna was born. “Tell me about school today, Miss Snodgrass,” she would say (or “Snods” for short), and Daphna would curl up in her lap and they would talk. Daphna sighed, and a deep sadness washed over her.

  Dah, da, da, dum, dum, dee!

  Daphna heard the glimmer of a new melody in her head. Time to transform the living room back into a music room and put the finishing touches on her rhapsody. But turning to Harkin’s control panel, she stopped short.

  Was that a noise?

  Daphna knew every sou
nd the old apartment could make. The squeak of the refrigerator. The creak of the closet door. But this particular creak—for that’s what it was—sounded different.

  Was there a pigeon on the windowsill?

  Worse, a mouse in the bathroom?

  Daphna drew in a breath and turned slowly to face the empty apartment. The room was still. Too still. Was someone hiding behind the sofa? Under the coffee table?

  “Relax,” she told herself, exhaling. Her heart pounded. “It’s okay.”

  Daphna opened the one window wide and drew in a cleansing breath of warm spring air. The street below was quiet and peaceful. Daphna calmed herself enough to turn back to the apartment when a shadow appeared out of the far closet. Before Daphna could so much as gasp, a tall, dark figure lurched her way but tripped over the coffee table and hit the floor with a loud “Oof!” In the half-light, Daphna saw that the intruder was dressed entirely in black. On his face was a mask that made his eyebrows and ears abnormally large and turned his nose into a snout. Though his face was hidden, Daphna simply knew: it was the same man she had seen lurking outside her building before Cynthia’s opening.

  “Where is it?” he demanded, rising quickly to his feet.

  “Where is what?” Daphna managed.

  In a flash, he was across the room, lifting Daphna by the armpits. Up close, the mask was terrifying. It was as though Daphna were being accosted by a giant antelope.

  “The Flex-Bed.”

  At least that’s what Daphna thought he said, because by that point she was too scared to be sure of anything.

  “Where’d she keep it? Is it with Billy?”

  Billy?

  Daphna had never been in a fight in her life, but instinct told her what to do next. As the man lifted her closer to his face—close enough to smell his sour breath through the strange mask—she jerked up her knee and connected with the soft part of his gut. With a loud grunt, the man dropped her to the floor and stumbled backward. Daphna flew across the room and slammed the heel of her palm into the button next to the word Kitchen. The coffee table rose off the floor, and the stove barreled from a far closet toward its place by the grandfather clock. To Daphna’s dismay, the man was able to gather his wits enough to dodge it.

  “Hah!” he shouted. “Missed!”

  But he never saw the refrigerator.

  Bam!

  Daphna had never been so happy to have needed some air. The intruder somersaulted through the open window and fell two stories onto a parked car. By the time Daphna was at the window herself, he was hobbling down the street.

  “Wait!” Daphna called after him. “What’s the Flex-Bed? Who’s Billy? Who are you?”

  The man broke from a pained trot to a half run. A moment later, he was around the corner. Then Daphna heard a frantic knock on her door. She knew who it had to be: Ron. This time he was holding Little Jack, who was wide-awake in his pajamas. Jazmine stood to their side, in her nightgown.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “We heard the loudest noise,” Ron said.

  “Big noise!” Jack said. “Like a choo-choo.”

  Though Daphna briefly considered telling them what had happened, she quickly decided against it.

  “No, no,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  Ron looked skeptical. “Really?”

  “I just forgot to move a box when I pressed Kitchen. The fridge slammed it out the window.”

  It took another few minutes, but Daphna finally convinced Ron that she was all right. After a good-night kiss to Little Jack, the family returned to their apartment and Daphna was left alone with her thoughts.

  The Flex-Bed? What in the world was that? Who was Billy?

  Daphna considered going to the police, then dismissed the thought. Was there any reason to think she’d be taken seriously if she burst into the local precinct saying that a man dressed as a giant antelope had broken into her home and asked about a Flex-Bed? No, Daphna would be better off investigating the break-in on her own. That didn’t mean, however, that she wasn’t going to take precautions. At the time he had put in the interchangeable rooms, Harkin had also installed a security system. With a flick of a switch under the windowsill, Daphna’s front door automatically triple locked, and retractable bars enclosed the window.

  “There we go,” Daphna said out loud. “Safe and sound.”

  She took a final look out the now-barred window. No sign of the strange intruder. She doubted that he would be back—at least not right away. Still, she was too worked up to go to bed. Daphna called Harkin on her cell phone. As the sounds of a wild party filled the room, his face appeared on her grandfather clock.

  “Decided to join us?” he called above the sound of a brass band. “The mayor’s doing the fox-trot with Cynthia’s mom.”

  Despite everything, Daphna laughed. As she expected, the sound of Harkin’s voice made her feel better instantly.

  “I’d love to,” Daphna said. “But listen up. Something happened.”

  She spilled the news. Harkin (and then Cynthia, who he had called to the phone) insisted on coming over to keep guard. But Daphna assured them that she was fine.

  “A giant antelope?” Harkin said. “Weird.”

  “And a Flex-Bed?” Cynthia said. “Even weirder.”

  “You’re sure you don’t want company?” Harkin asked. “We can start the investigation now. I’ll track this antelope down in my Thunkmobile, then run him into the East River.”

  Daphna knew that it made sense to get right on the intruder’s trail, but she was just too exhausted. Instead, she suggested that they continue the discussion the following morning before school, at their usual place—an orange bench that stood by the seesaws in the Blatt School playground.

  By the time she hung up, Daphna could barely keep her eyes open. She had flirted with the idea of working on her rhapsody late into the night, but now it was all she could do to change into her pajamas, press the Bedroom button on her control panel, brush her teeth, and crawl into bed. A moment later, she was asleep.

  Chapter 4

  Myron Holds His Ground

  The next morning, after a quick breakfast with Ron, Jazmine, and Little Jack, Daphna grabbed her book bag and bolted for the door. While most of her classmates commuted to school by bus, car, or subway, Daphna was one of the lucky few who lived in the neighborhood. Down the block, she turned the corner, and moments later, there it stood, nestled between a neighborhood drugstore and an Indian restaurant: the Blatt School for the Insanely Gifted.

  The famed school had once been the private residence of Cecil C. Brackerton, one of New York’s most prominent millionaires. Though the old home had fallen into disrepair by the time Ignatious had purchased it, he hadn’t wasted any time before remodeling it in his own colorful image. He’d had the exterior painted bright yellow and the shutters a vibrant pink. An orange wrought-iron door was installed in front, and the roof was fitted with a giant turquoise dome. The manicured grounds were adorned with beds of violets, lilies, and roses, then enclosed in a fence painted shiny gold. A passerby would not be faulted for thinking the school had been transported to New York from an amusement park.

  If only it had a different name. Over the years, Daphna had grown tired of people—sometimes complete strangers—asking her how it felt to be insanely gifted. An old lady had once even stopped her on the street and peered into one of her ears, saying, “Let’s see that brilliant mind at work.” Why couldn’t Ignatious simply have named his school the Blatt Institute? Or at the very least the Blatt School for the Very Gifted? But Ignatious wasn’t a man to mince words.

  “To call the school anything else would be dishonest, wouldn’t it?” he had said in an interview a month before the school had opened seven years earlier. “My students have gone through a battery of intensive tests. Every one of them possesses intellectual and creative capabilities that truly are insane!”

  Daphna thought back to her first day of kindergarten. How she had clutched her mother’
s hand in the school yard. How her mom had leaned down to give her a kiss and told her that everything was going to be okay. She had met Harkin, even then in a blond ponytail, while playing with blocks. And Cynthia? After their initial meeting on the playground, she had stood before their class that first day and sung a flawless rendition of “Doe, a deer.”

  Daphna pushed through the front gate and followed a cobblestone path that veered in and around three separate flower beds, then curved around the back of the building to the playground. Her fellow schoolmates—that year, there were precisely one hundred students in the school, from kindergarten through eighth grade—were killing the final minutes before class playing freeze tag, scaling jungle gyms, and seeing how high they could go on the swings. Daphna cut around a group of kids playing kick the can, heading toward the orange bench near the seesaws and the meeting with her two friends.

  It appeared that Cynthia and Harkin had drawn a crowd. At first, Daphna assumed Cynthia was being mobbed by well-wishers congratulating her on her Broadway opening. Instead, the focus was on a boy wearing bright purple jeans, a lime green polo shirt, and shiny yellow loafers. Perched on his nose was a pair of thick glasses. His hair was slicked back and parted down the middle.

  “No, no, no!” he was crying. “It’ll be out soon!”

  He was Myron Blatt, son of Ignatious Peabody Blatt. It was rumored that Myron had failed the school’s rigorous entrance exams and that his father had bent the rules to secure his admission. But whether or not he was truly worthy of the label “insanely gifted,” Myron Blatt was still a member in good standing of the seventh grade.

  “Very, very soon!” he went on.

  “When already?” a small boy asked.

  He was Daphna’s classmate Jean-Claude Broquet, who had moved to the States two years earlier from Paris.

  “I don’t have exact dates, for crying out loud,” Myron said. He had a high voice that cracked when he got excited. “He doesn’t tell me everything.”

  “It’s been forever since your dad released the Hat-Top,” Jean-Claude went on. “Practically two years!”