The School for the Insanely Gifted (11 page)

Chapter 19
Time for Good-bye

E
arly the next morning, Daphna, Harkin, and Cynthia stood in Billy's front yard by the Thunkmobile. All their new friends—the monkeys, Cook-Top, Harrison, the special defense Tops, and, of course, Billy—had gathered to see them off.

The previous night, Daphna had taken a brief stab at convincing Billy to come along but had quickly given it up as a lost cause. It was obvious that Billy was comfortable with the choices he had made and was happy in his chosen home.

That didn't mean he wasn't open to having visitors. As the morning sun beat brightly onto his front yard, Billy smiled.

“Come back this summer,” he said. “Stay for a while.” He winked at Harkin. “Maybe you and I can collaborate on something.”

“It's a date,” the boy said.

“And you,” Billy said, turning to Cynthia. “Your elephant will be waiting.”

Before the girl could reply, the animal came trotting into the yard and nuzzled Cynthia with its trunk.

“Deal,” she said.

Finally, Billy turned to Daphna. The time had gone so quickly. Though she cherished their conversation by the pond, hearing Billy's stories of her mother had made her hunger to know more. There was something she wanted to tell him too—something silly. With their departure only minutes away, it was now or never.

“Remember the funny names you and my mom gave each other in college?”

“Of course I do,” Billy said.

“Well, my mom had a funny name for me too.”

“Why doesn't that surprise me? What was it?”

Daphna laughed, even more embarrassed than she thought she'd be. “It's pretty stupid.”

“Stupider than Billy B. Brilliant?”

“Okay, if you put it like that.” Daphna laughed. “My mom used to call me Miss Sadie P. Snodgrass sometimes. Or just Snods. Isn't that crazy?”

Daphna had expected Billy to laugh—or at least
pretend
to laugh. Instead he was momentarily expressionless.

“What?” she asked. “Not funny?”

Billy snapped back to life, wagging his head and pulling at his long beard. “Oh, no. No! It's great. Sadie P. Snodgrass, huh? Very like your mom. I like it. I like it very much!”

There was an awkward silence. Daphna wondered if she had done something wrong. Then Billy leaned down and kissed her cheek, scratching her face with his thick beard.

“Good-bye, Daphna.”

“Bye, Billy.”

Harkin and Cynthia climbed into the flying car. As Daphna turned toward the door, she threw herself into Billy's arms. The large man held her tight, then kissed the top of her head.

“See you this summer,” he said.

“Yeah. This summer.”

Daphna climbed into the Thunkmobile choking back tears. Cynthia squeezed her hand. Harkin flipped a switch, and the roof closed over them. He turned on the ignition, and the car came to life with a cough, a bang, and a puff of blue smoke.

“By the way,” Cynthia called out the window to Billy over the sound of the motor, “what are you going to do with the antelope men?”

At that, Billy's gang of monkeys chattered wildly among themselves. Some of them simulated a game of catch.

Billy laughed. “We'll probably make them clear some fields and haul some rocks for a while. When I think they're ready, I'll let them go. Then again, maybe I won't.”

Daphna waved out the window a final time.

“Safe travels!” Billy called.

There was still so much that Daphna wanted to say and so much she wanted to know. Before she had time for another good-bye, she was slammed back into her seat. The car screamed past the group of monkeys and the cabin. Twenty feet from the edge of the clearing, Harkin pulled hard on the green lever. The car climbed quickly, narrowly clearing the wall of trees that surrounded Billy's cabin. As Daphna and Cynthia tightened their seat belts, Harkin stepped on the accelerator. The car burst out of the quiet valley air directly into the raging snowstorm of the mountain above. It was a minute of howling wind and wild bumps. But with Harkin steady at the controls, the car climbed past the majestic peak of Kilimanjaro.

Daphna looked out the window and took a final look into Billy's valley. They had defeated the antelope men and destroyed the plans for the X-Head, but Daphna knew that this didn't mean Ignatious wouldn't try something else. There were final chapters to be played out in the story. As the Thunkmobile hurtled home, she only hoped that the ending would be happy.

Chapter 20
A Rude Return

A
short hour into their trip home, Daphna gave voice to something that had bothered her since the previous night. Given what they now knew about Ignatious, should she and her friends even compete for the Insanity Cup?

“We should concentrate on proving to the world that Ignatious is a crook instead of trying to win a prize,” she said.

“No way,” Cynthia said. “If we withdraw from the competition, Ignatious will suspect that we know something.”

“He will?”

“Absolutely,” Cynthia said. “But if we stay in it, we can keep our cover and work behind the scenes to expose him.”

“Makes sense to me,” Harkin said.

With a plan in place, Daphna and her friends took turns napping. After a light lunch, Cynthia went into the back compartment to put the finishing touches on her one-woman
Macbeth
while Daphna tweaked the end of her rhapsody and Harkin pondered the best way to introduce Gum-Top. When the Thunkmobile finally approached New York Harbor, the sun was rising over the city, casting an orange glow on the water.

“Is it really only morning here?” Daphna asked.

“Don't forget about the time difference,” Harkin said. “It's much earlier in New York than in Africa. As we've flown home, we've kept even with the rising sun. It's Monday morning.”

Cynthia smiled. “The competition is in a few hours.”

Daphna felt a shiver. Did her rhapsody stand a chance? Who knew? But there was no turning back now. In the distance stood the Statue of Liberty.

“That lady's a sight for sore eyes,” Daphna said.

Harkin directed the flying car over the last stretch of water. In moments, they were gliding easily over the city streets, headed uptown.

“A lot different from the valley, huh?” Cynthia said.

“One thing you can say about New York,” Daphna said. “It never really changes. Buildings, people, taxis, and buses.”

The New York they left was the New York they returned to—at least at first glance. Rush-hour traffic filled the morning streets. Busy people, bustling to work, crowded the sidewalks. But with another look or two, Daphna noticed something strange. Though it was only eight in the morning, a long line of people wended its way out the front door of a store and halfway down the block.

“I wonder why they're open so early,” Daphna said.

“Or what they're selling,” Cynthia added.

Harkin shrugged. “Maybe some hot new book has been released?”

“Or a shoe store is having a big sale?” Daphna said.

“It could be a church giving out free breakfast?” Cynthia said.

Under normal circumstances, any of those ideas might have been correct. But Daphna soon learned that things were anything but normal. Two short blocks later, a similar line of people wound out of another store. And that still wasn't all. A block after that, there was another—this line ran all the way down the street.

“I think we need to take a closer look,” Daphna said.

Harkin pulled a series of levers and brought the Thunkmobile closer to the ground. Down below, a fourth line of people wound out of yet another store—this line meandering down the street to a bus stop.

“They aren't waiting for the bus, are they?” Cynthia said.

“Don't think so,” Daphna said. Then she saw something. Her skin went cold. “Look!”

“What?”

“The sign!” Daphna said.

By that point, it had come into sharp focus. It read:
MEET GUM-TOP
!

Daphna was stunned. For once in his life, Harkin was speechless, trying to comprehend what had happened.

“Gum-Top?” he sputtered. “Do you mean . . . ?”

“He stole it!” Daphna said.

If there had been any doubt about Billy's version of past events, they were swept aside now. It was official: Ignatious was a fraud.

“I know who did his dirty work,” Cynthia said. “Myron!”

Harkin hit his steering wheel with his open palm. “It had to be!”

It made sense. Ignatious had put his under-achieving son to work snooping around the school, looking for the best student work to steal as his own.

“We'll turn him in,” Daphna said. “Tell the press about Billy.”

“But Ignatious is world famous,” Harkin wailed. “And who's Billy B. Brilliant? A nobody who no one has ever heard of. Who would believe us?”

“But—” Daphna began.

“But what?” Harkin went on. “I don't even have proof that I developed Gum-Top. Don't forget, I kept it so secret, no one else even knew it existed.”

For the next few moments, Daphna and her friends rode in stunned silence. Harkin glided the car over store after store, with line after line of people waiting to buy their very own packs of Gum-Top. Some of the lines weren't even stretching out of computer stores. One line was coming down the block outside a candy shop; another was outside a pet store; another wound out of a bank. Every proprietor, no matter what they sold, was getting in on the action.

What was even more unusual than the hordes of people standing in line was their behavior when they exited the stores. Directly beneath the Thunkmobile, a young woman walked right into a lamppost. A man barely missed being run down by a grocery truck.

“They're totally out of it,” Daphna said.

Fortunately, the people of New York were too focused on the websites taking form before their eyes to notice the strange car flying overhead. Harkin dropped even closer to the ground.

“It's a new era,” Cynthia said.

“Generation Gum-Top,” Daphna said.

If she was amazed by what was happening on the average New York street, she was flabbergasted by what had become of Times Square. As Harkin guided the Thunkmobile up Seventh Avenue, Daphna's jaw dropped. In the past two days, Ignatious had bought up every single piece of advertising space in the square. Gone were the billboards promoting movies, musicals, and plays. Gone were the signs advertising cars, computers, and shaving cream. Now every single one of them was a tribute to the glories of Gum-Top.

“I've seen actors with smaller egos,” Cynthia said.

The signs were as much a testament to Ignatious himself as to the product he purported to have developed. At 42nd Street was a giant billboard that featured a photo of Ignatious holding out a piece of chewing gum. The words below read:

Up a street, a billboard showed Ignatious placing a piece of gum in his mouth with a caption saying:

Gone was the giant billboard of Ignatious that Daphna had admired the night she had seen The Dancing Doberman. In its place was an even bigger billboard, an absolutely enormous picture of Ignatious's face, his mouth open wide in hysterical laughter. The text read:

“I can't believe that a week ago I would've been cheering that bum on,” Harkin said. “Now he makes me so mad, I want to make him a special pair of rocket-engine sneakers and blast him to the Andromeda galaxy.” He turned to the window and screamed down, “I made the Gum-Top! It's my idea! Mine!”

“Watch it!” Daphna cried.

Harkin was so furious, he had come inches from crashing his car into yet another billboard of the not-so-great Blatt.

“Let's get over to school,” Cynthia said. “Maybe there's a way to expose Ignatious yet. Like they say about opera, it ain't over until the fat lady sings.”

Harkin pulled on the green lever. The little car gained altitude for the short trip uptown. Straight ahead was a blimp. On one side was a giant picture of Ignatious's face. On the other it read in gold lettering:

Harkin shook his head. “The next day or two is going to be really tough around here.”