The School for the Insanely Gifted

by Dan Elish

  Blinking the water back from her eyes, she heard Mrs. Zoentrope’s voice come into focus.

  “Strange,” the teacher said. “What are those names?”

  “What?” Daphna said.

  She hadn’t noticed at first, but there on the other side, written in loopy green ink—her mother’s signature color—were three names. The first was smudged and only partly legible:

  “W. Zoo . . . Ferd?” Daphna read. “Who’s that?”

  Mrs. Zoentrope shrugged. “No one I’ve ever met.”

  Daphna went on to the next two names.

  “Cassandra P. McFuzz and Billy B. Brilliant.”

  Daphna’s skin went cold. Cassandra P. McFuzz meant nothing to her. But wasn’t Billy the name the antelope man had mentioned? She flipped the picture over to the other side.

  Was one of these men Billy?

  Chapter 8

  The Coming of Gum-Top

  Daphna burst out of Mrs. Zoentrope’s office, desperate to share the unexpected picture with Harkin and Cynthia, but she knew she would have to wait if she wanted her friends’ undivided attention. Harkin was in his own office, frantically working on Gum-Top. And Daphna knew there was nothing she’d be able to do to take Cynthia’s mind from her one-woman Macbeth.

  Besides, Daphna had work of her own to do. She spent the rest of the afternoon putting the finishing touches on her rhapsody, but every few measures she couldn’t resist sneaking peeks at the mysterious picture. She knew that her mother had attended the College for the Extraordinarily Talented, where she had majored in meteorology. Aside from those two facts, Daphna knew very little of her actual day-to-day life. The mother she had known was warm and kind but focused solely on her daughter and her work. The younger woman in the picture clearly had time for good friends. Billy B. Brilliant? W. Zoo Ferd?

  At three o’clock the Blatt gong reverberated through the hallways. Daphna quickly packed her book bag and took off at a flat-out run down the many flights of stairs all the way to the lobby, where she sprinted past the statue of Ignatious Peabody Blatt to another staircase by the back entrance that led down to the science labs.

  Down, down, down, she went, the telltale hisses and burbling of scientific experiments growing in intensity. Daphna glanced down one hall to see a student soldering an arm onto a robot. The distinct aroma of cinnamon wafted from another of the labs. Perhaps some student was making the world’s largest apple pie? Or was the cinnamon being used as a surprise ingredient in a new face cream?

  Who knew?

  With a deep breath, Daphna took in the rich scent and kept running. Now wasn’t the time to think about what her fellow classmates were creating. Daphna needed someone to bounce ideas off of right now.

  On the fourth floor beneath the lobby, she cut onto a white corridor that rapidly slanted downward toward a row of student offices. Through a small window, she saw Wilmer Griffith frantically writing equations on a blackboard. A room down, a young girl—no older than first grade—was knitting fur onto a mechanical dog. A room after that, Jean-Claude Broquet was busy translating the American Constitution into Medieval French. Then there was Wanda Twiddles. In her office, she was hanging upside down from a bar on the ceiling, studying the underside of a giant model suspension bridge.

  Daphna hurried past one final door with an ominous sign over its window:

  BEWARE: VERY LARGE GRASSHOPPER!

  Then she was there: Harkin’s office.

  “Hey, Daph!”

  Running toward her down the hall came Cynthia, dressed in her usual torn jeans, boots, and cardigan sweater.

  “My one-woman Macbeth is finished,” she cried. “I decided to have Banquo’s ghost do a rumba with Macbeth—which might be hard, since I’ll be playing both parts, but I’ll pull it off. If I don’t get this thing on Broadway soon, I think my head will explode.”

  Daphna laughed. “That’d be dramatic.”

  “I know, right?” Cynthia said. “What’s the deal with Gum-Top? Is Harkin ready for us?”

  Before Daphna could answer, another voice called out—this time from inside the office.

  “Who goes there?”

  “It’s us, Harkin,” Cynthia called. “Open up!”

  The door swung open, and Daphna peeked inside. Pieces of machinery—insides of cars and motors—lay strewn on the floor. On the opposite wall stood a shelf overflowing with books, mostly on engineering. To the left of the front door lay a simply enormous tome entitled One Million and One Ways to Change a Spark Plug.

  The vast array of books and stray engine parts was nothing compared to what stood against the far wall. Daphna thought it resembled the Thunkmobile without the wheels. A series of interconnected pipes rose out of a large metal box, then twisted almost all the way to the ceiling in a series of increasingly small figure eights. Every few seconds, a puff of purple smoke whooshed out of the pipe closest to the door with a loud clang while a steady, thin stream of green smoke hissed out of the pipe farthest away.

  Harkin was hunkered over his desk. Wearing a one-piece jumpsuit and a thick pair of metal glasses—his work attire—he was inspecting what appeared to be a small, rectangular piece of cardboard with a pair of tweezers. At first he was so engrossed by his work that Daphna thought he had forgotten about them. But then he suddenly looked up.

  “I really should keep this secret for Monday,” he said. “Even from you. But I just can’t resist.” He held up the cardboard. “I did it. Meet Gum-Top! The computer that you chew.”

  Daphna was stunned. Had Harkin really done it? Turned an idea first floated as a joke in first or second grade into a reality?

  “My cocreators are skeptical,” Harkin said, scolding them with a waved finger. “You doubt the work of the Thunk.”

  Daphna shook herself. “No, no. I don’t—it’s just that . . .”

  Cynthia finished the thought for her. “Does it really work?”

  Harkin slipped off the thick metal glasses and wagged his head. “It does. I chewed a piece and read the New York Times online. The front page appeared right before my eyes. I focused on the link to the sports section, and voilà! It took me right there. I read an article on the connection between high batting averages and eating fried jellyfish. Here. Chew!”

  As he wagged the stick under Daphna’s nose, she wrested it from him and held it up to the light. It certainly looked like an ordinary piece of gum. She took a deep whiff.

  “What’s it smell like?” Cynthia asked, leaning close.

  “That’s peppermint!” Harkin shouted, unable to contain himself.

  “With a hint of orange,” Daphna said.

  “Exactly,” the boy said. “The orange helps the chewable software run more smoothly.”

  “How about a piece for me?” Cynthia said.

  Daphna looked at Harkin. “Should I break this one in two?”

  Harkin shook his head. “I don’t know if half a piece will emit a strong enough signal to get online. Don’t chew yet, Daphna. Give me a second.”

  Harkin ran across the room and turned a purple knob on the side of the machine. It began to clang loudly—so loudly, in fact, that Daphna had to cover her ears.

  “Sorry!” Harkin shouted. “I’m still refining it. It’ll only last a second.”

  The machine clanged ten more times, each time louder than the one before, then stopped. As soon as Daphna took her hands from her ears, it began to shake like a washing machine in a spin cycle. An array of colored lights on its side began to flash.

  “That’s the computer,” Harkin announced. “It’s putting the chewable software into the gum.”

  No sooner were the words out of the boy’s mouth then the machine hissed out a stream of orange smoke.

  “That’s the flavoring!” Harkin cried. “Now hold on.”

  Daphna’s heart jumped. “Hold on?”

  The machine began hopping up and down, thumping against the floor with a series of loud whacks. Without even realizing, Daphna and Cynthia held each other to kee
p from falling to the ground. Even so, the floor shook so violently that they sank to their knees.

  “All right! Now watch!”

  The machine stopped bouncing. With a series of fast, short pffts, pieces of gum shot into the air, arced across the room, and landed in a bucket by the far wall.

  “Works every time,” Harkin said.

  Harkin held up the bucket to Cynthia. She shoved a piece into her mouth and began to chew vigorously.

  “Go ahead, Daph, dude,” Harkin said.

  Daphna held her gum in her hand another moment, looking it up and down, still half believing she was about to be the butt of some sort of colossal joke. But then she shrugged and popped it into her mouth. With a few good chews, the sharp taste began to spread.

  “You’re doing great,” Harkin said.

  “Doing great?” Cynthia said. She laughed. “A monkey could do this.”

  “Chew faster,” Harkin said. “Now think of a website. Don’t laugh. This is serious. Just do it!”

  Cynthia rolled her eyes at Daphna. “Okay, I’m thinking about thedancingdoberman.com. But I don’t see what that’s going to—”

  Cynthia stopped talking.

  “What?” Daphna asked.

  Cynthia’s jaws began to work even faster. She appeared to be transfixed, looking straight ahead, seeing something no one else could. “This is amazing.”

  Harkin jumped into the air. “It’s working, right?”

  Cynthia shook herself and turned to Daphna. “I’m seeing the actual website in my head,” she said. “Just by thinking about it. There’s the home page. There’s the page with the cast’s bios. And there’s a video of the opening-night party.”

  Daphna had barely chewed her piece, but now she chomped on her gum like it was the last piece in the world.

  “Good,” Harkin said. “Now think of a site.”

  Daphna thought of one of her favorites, composers.org, a website with information on famous musicians.

  “Do you see anything?” Cynthia asked.

  Daphna shook her head. “Not yet.” She looked at her two friends accusingly. “Are you sure—”

  But just like Cynthia, she was hit right between the eyes. Suddenly composers.org opened before her, almost like looking at the hologram of Harkin in her grandfather clock.

  “Oh my gosh,” she whispered, then looked at Harkin. “You really are insanely gifted.”

  Harkin rubbed his hands together wildly. “I can’t deny it!”

  “How long will I be online?” Daphna asked.

  “For as long as the gum has flavor,” Harkin said. “Which should be about five more minutes.”

  Cynthia paced the room, eyes staring into space. “There are the reviews. ‘The Dancing Doberman is no dog.’ There’s my picture. Man, I make an ugly golden retriever. And look! Someone started a fan group. ‘Bark if you love Cynthia Trustwell.’ They’re giving free tickets to people who volunteer to give a rescue dog a home.”

  Daphna was getting into the spirit, also pacing the room, reading off the website that only she saw. “I’m scrolling through a biography of George Gershwin. He grew up in New York, you know. His first hit song was ‘Swanee.’ He wrote Rhapsody in Blue when he was twenty-five.”

  “You’ve written your rhapsody at age eleven and three-quarters,” Harkin said.

  Daphna nodded. “I still need to name it. Something cool. Got any suggestions?”

  Harkin didn’t answer. Instead he reached to the ground, picked up a half-twisted hubcap, and hurled it at the door with all his might.

  “Hey! Private!”

  Daphna looked toward the door. Through the biography of George Gershwin, she caught a glimpse of a boy with his hair parted in the center before he disappeared.

  “Myron?” Daphna said.

  “It’s him, all right,” Harkin said.

  “I caught him snooping around my office earlier this morning,” Daphna said.

  That was enough to get Cynthia to stop reading her press clippings.

  “When I came out of my meeting with Ignatious, I saw him snooping around the offices on the sixth floor.”

  Daphna exchanged a worried glance with her friends. Harkin said what they were all thinking.

  “Do you think he’s trying to steal an idea to get on Cody Meyers?”

  “I don’t know,” Daphna said. “But let’s find out.”

  She pushed through the door. Down the far hall, Daphna saw a shape disappear down the corridor.

  “Myron!”

  Daphna led the charge down the hall of offices, past Wanda Twiddles (who was now hanging upside down by one foot), Jean-Claude Broquet (who had the entire United States Constitution laid out on the floor of his office), and finally Wilmer Griffith (who was scribbling equations so furiously, he had written off the blackboard and onto the wall without even noticing).

  “Where’d he go?” Harkin asked.

  “Don’t know,” Cynthia said.

  Daphna stopped running and chewed as hard as she could.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Going to blattschool.edu and finding Myron’s office.”

  Daphna was amazed by how quickly Gum-Top responded to her thoughts.

  She saw the site before her, then went to the section marked “Map,” then scrolled to the name “Blatt, Myron.”

  “It’s one floor up,” she said.

  Daphna and her friends sprinted up the stairs. When they arrived at Myron’s office, they found an empty room. There was a clutter-free desk in the corner and not a shred of evidence that Myron had done a bit of work all year.

  “He’s looking to steal an idea, all right,” Cynthia said. “Look at this.”

  “He could be anywhere now,” Harkin said.

  Cynthia nodded, then took a scrap of paper from the floor and spit out her gum.

  “Out of flavor already?” Harkin said.

  Cynthia nodded. “Yeah, I just went offline.”

  “How about you?” Harkin asked Daphna.

  If she struggled, Daphna could still make out the Blatt School website, but with a few more chews it vanished.

  “Gone,” she said, and spit the gum out onto a piece of tissue.

  “I think it needs another flavor to sustain the link,” Harkin said. “Something sharp. Maybe lime?”

  “Could work,” Cynthia said. “I guess we’ll have to wait until Monday to catch up with Myron.”

  They returned to Harkin’s office to lock up the Gum-Top machine for the weekend, then walked up four flights of stairs to the lobby. But the moment they pushed through the back door to the playground, Daphna saw her opening. She had been itching to talk about the antelope man. She now had another clue to add to the discussion. She reached inside her book bag and pulled out the picture.

  “So, guys, listen up,” Daphna said. “I want you to see something.”

  Chapter 9

  A Visit to the Basement

  During the walk to Daphna’s apartment, it didn’t take long to boil the case down to its unassailable facts.

  First, that when the antelope man had said, “Where’d she keep it?” he had to be referring to Daphna’s mom.

  Second, that one of the keys to discovering the antelope man’s secret identity lay in figuring out the meaning of the term “Flex-Bed.”

  How or if any of it related to “Billy,” and whether the “Billy” in question was Billy B. Brilliant, no one knew. But by the end of talking everything out, Daphna knew where they had to start looking: a storage bin in the basement where her mom used to keep old papers.

  Now that the plan was set, Daphna began to feel uneasy. A week earlier, she had finally found the courage to clear out her mother’s closet and pack away her clothes in a giant trunk. That had been painful enough. To root through her mom’s storage bin felt like the final admission that she was gone forever. Yes, the plane’s wreckage had been found but not her mother’s body, which meant that she might still be alive somewhere. What if she had survived the cra
sh? Or parachuted to safety? Unlikely, but it was possible.

  Still, Daphna knew she had no choice but to look for clues wherever she could find them. At her building, she put the picture of her mother and the two men in her back pocket and dumped her book bag in her apartment. Then she led Harkin and Cynthia to the basement. Stepping out of the elevator, the three friends found themselves in a dimly lit hallway. A row of low-hanging pipes and wires ran a foot overhead. Though Harkin and Daphna cleared them easily, the taller Cynthia had to duck periodically as she made her way down the hall.

  “Pretty eerie down here,” Harkin said.

  “You’re not kidding,” Cynthia said. She pushed a strand of wires out of the way. “What do all these pipes and wires do, anyway?”

  “Water, electricity, cable TV,” Daphna said. “I’m not sure if even Ron knows.”

  She led her friends past the recycling room, Ron’s office, and the cellar door of an adjoining restaurant. Next came the laundry room.

  “I saw a mouse in there once when I was five or so,” Daphna said. “Scared me half to death.”

  “Aha!” Harkin said. “I knew there was a reason you had me install a washer/dryer in your new kitchen.”

  Daphna stopped in front of a heavy red door.

  “Here we go,” she said.

  She gave the door a firm push and reached around in the darkness for the switch. Light from two low-hanging bulbs filled a room that was lined with large black storage bins. Now that she was in the room, Daphna’s heart began to beat faster, but with excitement as much as anxiety. Her mother had talked fondly of her childhood in upstate New York, especially her close relationship with her own parents. On the other hand, she had been strangely tight-lipped about Daphna’s father. Beyond the cause of his untimely death at the hands of a cup of sour yak milk, Daphna knew nothing about him.

  She led her friends down a narrow aisle lined with storage bins, each belonging to a different tenant. Then she took a sharp right and stopped by a black bin with a thick “Apt. 3A” scrawled on the top in black Magic Marker. It was locked.