The School for the Insanely Gifted (14 page)

Chapter 25
A Surprise Rescuer

D
aphna sat in her chair, maniacally working her jaws.

Harkin paced anxiously. “You've been chewing for two minutes already!”

“I'm doing my best! It's hard to get online from down here.”

Daphna had seen a glimmer of the Blatt School website, www.insanelygifted.com, in her head, but it disappeared before she had time to scroll to the link to student email.

“Lemme try,” Harkin said.

Daphna rose to her feet. “With my chewed piece of gum? I can do this.”

“Chew faster!”

“I am.”

“Faster!”

And then it happened.

“I'm online!”

Working quickly, Daphna navigated to student email, called up a blank letter, and addressed it to Wilmer, Wanda, and Jean-Claude. With Gum-Top's flavor beginning to fade, she thought out a quick message.

Trapped in basement dungeon. Suspect the contest was rigged. Help us stop Ignatious before he . . .

The connection was fritzing out. With the Blatt School website disappearing, Daphna quickly pressed Send.

“Did you send it off?” Harkin asked.

Daphna nodded. “I think so.” The gum lost its flavor. When she spit it out, she realized how badly her jaw ached.

When five minutes turned to ten and ten to twenty, Daphna began to give up hope.

“You think they got the message?” Harkin asked.

Unable to sit still, he was up and pacing.

“I hope so.”

“And you're sure you got it off in time?”

“I think so.”

Then Daphna heard it: the sound of footsteps.

She ran to the cell door and peered down the dim hallway. Daphna held her breath but then exhaled heavily: It was the guard, returning to pick up their trays. He did his job efficiently and offered no information, either about who had won the contest or how long Daphna and Harkin could expect to stay locked up. When he was gone, Daphna sank back into her seat, so downhearted that she didn't talk to Harkin for two full minutes. She didn't even look up when she heard another set of footsteps heading toward them.

“Him again,” Harkin said. “The guard.”

Daphna smiled ruefully. “Maybe he's bringing dessert?”

She sat up, ears pricked. These footsteps sounded different—lighter, faster. Daphna looked at Harkin. Clearly, he had heard the same thing. They ran to the cell door.

A small figure darted around the corner, then hurried toward them, in and out of the dim light. Was she seeing things?

“Thelma?”
she said.

The pigtailed girl was half trotting, half skipping toward them. Then she was inserting a key into the cell door, her face scrunched into its usual frown.

“Thelma,” Harkin repeated.

“Don't be so surprised,” she snapped. “I intercepted your email to Wilmer.”

The door clicked open.

“Why?” Harkin asked.

Thelma pursed her lips like she had just sucked on a bad piece of fruit. “Who cares?” she cried, pigtails flapping. “There are more important issues at hand. The X-Head, for instance. Everybody is already wearing it. Before long Ignatious will be able to get inside their heads, control their minds—have his way with the entire city.” The girl shook herself. “I am
such
a fool. No brains at all.”

“You're a fool?” Daphna asked. “I don't get it.”

Thelma's filmy blue eyes widened. “Don't tell me you guys are even bigger morons than me. What do you think? That after your friend Cynthia sent Ignatious the formula, thousands of copies of the X-Head magically materialized, ready to be distributed? No, Ignatious needed someone here to oversee the operation. And that someone was me.”

Harkin gasped. Daphna didn't think she had ever seen her friend look so surprised.

“You?”
the boy said.

Thelma frowned and wrapped a pigtail around her finger. “That's right, Thunk. Who else in this joint do you think could do it? Wilmer?
Myron?
Don't make me laugh.”

Who would have thought that Thelma had the skill to convert Billy's formula overnight into an unlimited supply of ready-to-go X-Heads?

“Didn't think I was smart enough, huh?” Thelma said.

“No,” Daphna said. “I always knew you were smart. Honest. It's more that
I
feel stupid. I never suspected that Ignatious would use students to do his work.”

“Me neither,” Harkin said.

Thelma let loose a high-pitched burst of laughter. It might have been the first time Daphna had seen her with her mouth open in six full years as classmates. Daphna could see why. Thelma's two front upper teeth were crooked, forming an X in the center of her mouth.

“You guys don't know much, do you?” Thelma snorted.

“What do you mean?” Daphna asked.

“What do I mean?” Thelma said. She shook her head and began to pace. “Don't you see it? That's the whole point of this stupid school. Yeah, it's a great place, right? We learn a lot. But do you really think that Ignatious founded it out of the goodness of his heart? He founded it so he could
steal
his students' best ideas. So Myron could steal your Gum-Top, Thunk. So he could bribe Cynthia to steal the formula for the X-Head. So he could use someone like me to get it ready. Ignatious Peabody Blatt cares more for the color of his sideburns than his students—you can bet on it!”

Daphna's eyes were wide in amazement. Could it be true? Had Ignatious's sole purpose for founding the school been to steal ideas from his students? It was impossible to believe.

But it made perfect sense.

“For a bunch of insanely gifted kids, we're a bunch of morons,” Thelma went on. “If I had known exactly what I was doing, I would've never helped Ignatious get the X-Head ready so quickly. But now we've got to stop him.”

“Can he really control the minds of the users?” Daphna asked.

Thelma shook her head. “Not yet. The X-Head has to be in the eye for six hours or so before he has full control. But after that? He could command the entire city to bark like a dog or baa like a goat if he wants. Now hurry!”

The girl scurried back down the hall, leading Daphna and Harkin quickly around a corner, then down an even darker corridor, then to the left, then back to the right.

“This way!” Thelma barked, and trotted up a back stairway.

“So were we right?” Daphna asked. “Ignatious gave Cynthia the Insanity Cup?”

“Not only was your friend declared the winner, but old Ignatious only allowed five other contestants to even enter!”

“No!” Harkin said.

“It's true,” Thelma said. “And no one good either. The first was this young kid with a giant tuba.”

“You mean Blugle-horn,” Harkin said. “We met him.”

“Who else?” Daphna asked. “Was there a dancing rat?”

“Yeah, a tap-dancing rodent was there,” Thelma said. “Along with some guy who wrote poetry in Finnish and a girl who said she had evidence of ice cream on Mars.”

Daphna and Harkin followed Thelma out into a small storage closet filled with erasers, boxes of chalk, and other assorted school supplies. Thelma pushed open a door and slowly stuck her head into the lobby. Daphna stood behind her and held her breath.

“Coast is clear,” Thelma said. “Everyone must be at the TV studio.”

“Which is where we'd better get going,” Harkin said.

The three children stepped into the lobby. As always, it was impossible not to be drawn to the giant statue of Ignatious Peabody Blatt or to notice the school credo in bold black lettering:

“What a joke,” Harkin said.

Daphna sighed. “After all these years of thinking the great Ignatious Peabody Blatt was the most amazing person on Earth, it's hard to get used to the fact that he's a cheat.”

Thelma chewed a pigtail. “Tell me about it.”

Despite Ignatious's shady motives, his school had been a wonderful place for many of his students.

Daphna looked at Harkin and Thelma. “Just because Ignatious doesn't live up to his own motto doesn't mean we can't, right?”

“Right,” Harkin said.

Thelma turned to the door. “Let's go!”

Daphna and Harkin followed their guide through the back playground and out a side exit that led past the Indian restaurant to 97th Street.

“What are we going to do once we get to the studio?” Daphna asked. “Complain about how Cynthia won? We'll just look like a bunch of bad losers.”

“That may be,” Thelma said. “But we have to find a way to expose Ignatious and stop Cynthia.”

Daphna shivered. It was still hard to believe that one of her best friends had betrayed her.

“What's wrong?” Harkin asked her.

“Just trying to get used to the new reality,” Daphna said.

As if to put to rest any nagging doubts, Daphna got her final proof. Across Columbus Avenue stood a newsstand with a computerized news feed running across its top. The headlines were big enough to make out from a distance.

“FAMOUS CHILD ACTRESS TO APPEAR ON ‘CODY MEYERS'!”

“TRUSTWELL TO PERFORM ONE-WOMAN ‘MACBETH' ON TV! THEN BLATT TO PRODUCE SHOW ON BROADWAY!”

And finally: “CODY TO CYN: C YA SOON!”

As if to rub it in, a cab whizzed by with its radio blaring: “That's right, friends! Ignatious Peabody Blatt has a new product. The X-Head! Magical contact lenses! What will this man come up with next?”

“It stinks, doesn't it?” Daphna said.

Harkin could only nod.

“Come on, guys,” Thelma said. “If we want to stop them, we've got to hurry!” She turned to Harkin. “Don't you have some sort of flying car we can use?”

“That's the Thunkmobile to you,” Harkin said. “Now follow me!”

Chapter 26
Chaos at the Studio

C
an you unscrunch it?” Daphna asked. The children stood by the side of Harkin's contraption. “I mean, Cynthia has your wristwatch.”

Harkin grinned. “The Thunk plans for every contingency.” He reached for a small emergency valve on the back right hubcap. With a cough and a shudder of pink smoke, the car rolled sideways into the street and unscrunched to its full size. Harkin jumped behind the wheel, Daphna took the passenger seat, and Thelma climbed over her to the middle.

“Okay,” Harkin said. “Hold on till I get this puppy airborne!”

He gunned the engine, then slammed it into gear. The Thunkmobile rocketed past cabs on Columbus Avenue.

“Yee-haw!” Thelma cried. “I like the way your buggy moves.”

“But watch the bus,” Daphna called. “The bus!”

Indeed, Harkin was gaining rapidly on a bus. Instead of slowing down, he pressed hard on the accelerator.

“Fly, Thunkmobile!” he cried, yanking on the green lever.

The car whooshed into the sky, barely skimming the top of the bus and a delivery truck before soaring high over the buildings of Central Park West.

Thelma beamed. “Awesome takeoff. Look at those people down there. They're squirrel size!”

“Where's Cody Meyers's studio?” Daphna asked. “Downtown?”

“Yep,” Thelma said. “On Fourteenth Street.”

“Hold on,” Harkin said. “This is gonna be a short ride.”

A short ride but plenty of time for Daphna to look more closely out the window and see what had become of New York. The lines out of stores they had seen earlier that morning were now twice as long. New owners of X-Heads filled the streets, walking aimlessly down the sidewalks staring blankly before them. On 59th Street, a young woman came within inches of getting run down by a cab. On 54th, a man walked directly into an open manhole as another bumped into a hot-dog vendor. And the theater district was chaos. Cars honked and slammed on their brakes as passersby wandered in front of traffic, staring at websites only they could see.

“It's a city of zombies,” Daphna said.

“No wonder Billy wanted the formula destroyed,” Harkin said.

“Billy?” Thelma said.

Daphna caught Thelma up on their African adventure, from their introduction to Billy through the battle of the Tops and the discovery of the formula in Billy's old textbook.

“So he let Cook-Top burn the formula?” Thelma said.

Daphna nodded. “Yeah. But not soon enough.”

“Look!” Harkin called. “That must be the studio.”

Across Union Square Park, swarms of people stood behind a series of police barricades. Reporters and TV crews wandered around looking for something to report or someone—anyone—to interview. Lines of people waiting to buy their very own X-Heads came out of every single store.

As Harkin circled closer to the ground, the same blue limousine that he and Daphna had seen outside the opening for
The Dancing Doberman
pulled up to the front of the hall.

“It's the mayor again!” Daphna said.

Harkin and Thelma pressed their faces to the window.

“Look at him waddle out of the car,” Harkin said.

“He's a bowling ball, and his wife is a pencil,” Thelma said.

Harkin was hovering no more than a hundred feet over the crowd. Once the mayor was inside, people below finally began to look up and point.

“It seems we're making an entrance,” Harkin said. “Let's find a place to land.”

Daphna grabbed the door handle and looked at the street.

“That's weird.”

“What?” Thelma said.

“It's not us they're looking at.”

Pedestrians stared past the Thunkmobile to something else flying even higher in the sky. Daphna wheeled around to see a small dot floating above them.

“What's that?” she asked. “A plane?”

“I think it's a helicopter,” Harkin said.

Daphna squinted. “Is it a blimp?”

“It's a balloon!” Thelma cried.

Daphna's heart jumped. She looked at Harkin, giddy with disbelief.

“Do you think it's him?” Daphna asked.

“I think so,” he said.

Who else could it be?

“It's Balloon-Top!” Daphna said.

The balloon—for it was a balloon—was close enough for Daphna to make out a large man with a red beard, waving both arms. Next to him was a laptop computer holding a spatula and a pot.

“Is that Billy B. Brilliant?” Thelma asked.

“It is,” Daphna said, laughing. “And look. He brought along Cook-Top!”