by Dan Elish
As they approached their seats, Daphna turned her focus to the stage. Wearing a bright red dress that perfectly matched the color of her lipstick, Elmira Ferguson was standing behind a podium while a technician set up a microphone. Behind her was a baby grand piano. On the other side of the podium stood a sturdy oak table. Hanging down from the center rafters was a movie screen for those students whose insane gifts required a demonstration with slides or video.
“Here we go,” Cynthia said.
“Nice,” Daphna said. “Front-row center.”
“How’d you spot these anyway?” Harkin asked.
Cynthia shrugged. “I’m an actress. I’m used to looking for empty seats. Come on, let’s sit.”
Cynthia took the one closest to the aisle while Harkin sat down in the middle. As Daphna settled back into the plush velvet of the remaining seat, Cynthia turned to Harkin.
“Hey, lemme use your wristwatch computer?” she said. “I want to send a quick email to my parents telling them we’re back.”
“It’s yours,” the boy said, holding out his wrist. “And while you’re at it, send emails for us too.”
“You got it.”
As Cynthia got to work, Elmira Ferguson raised her hand for silence.
“Let’s get started, shall we? We have one hundred insanely gifted students here, and we want to give everyone an equal chance.”
A round of applause rippled across the theater. Another paper airplane sailed through the air, this one gliding to a safe landing on the stage next to the headmistress’s foot. As a row of older students began to stomp on the floor, Elmira kicked the paper airplane offstage, then raised her hand once again for silence.
“There is one introduction to make before we start. We all know him! We all love him! Let’s give an insane welcome to our good friend Ignatious Peabody Blatt!”
As Blatt made his way from the wings to a raucous round of applause, flashbulbs popped. The whir of TV cameras filled the room. The entire theater balcony was filled with the press.
“Far be it from him to pass up on some publicity,” Harkin whispered.
“Or a new outfit,” Cynthia said. “Look at him. No wonder he couldn’t meet with me. He was changing!”
In the hour since they had met outside the school, Ignatious had changed into a pink shirt, orange suit, and blue suspenders. His cowboy boots were sea green. To mark the occasion, the Great Blatt appeared to have dyed his eyetooth gold and his sideburns silver.
“Thank you, dear friends! Thank you!”
Students and faculty had risen to their feet. Daphna and her friends were the only people sitting in the entire room.
“Do we stand?” Cynthia asked. “We are in the very front row.”
“I don’t know about you,” Harkin said, “but I’m not even clapping.”
“Me neither,” Daphna said.
Ignatious paced the stage, blowing kisses and crying, “Thank you, dear students! Thank you!”
The students began to stomp the theater floor once again. This time the beat was punctuated with a riotous chant: “Gum-Top! Gum-Top! Gum-Top!”
Daphna could practically feel Harkin’s blood percolating in his veins.
“Easy,” she whispered.
It was too late. Harkin rose to set the world straight. Cynthia pulled him back to his seat.
“Shhh!” she said.
“Save it for later,” Daphna said.
“But . . .”
“Later!” Cynthia said.
“Yes, yes,” Ignatious said, gesturing broadly. “I’m so very proud of Gum-Top!” He glanced to the front row and caught Harkin’s and then Daphna’s eyes. “But now, boys and girls, before we get started in the judging for the first Blatt School Insanity Cup, I wanted you, my dear, cherished students, to be the first to hear about something extra-special. My next product!”
Another product?
It was as though Ignatious had set off a package of firecrackers in the middle of the room. With the introduction of Gum-Top, everyone assumed that Ignatious would rest on his laurels for a while. Was he really coming out with something else so soon?
“It’s Blatt-Foot!” a boy shouted. “Toenail polish that turns your big toe into an iPod!”
As conjectures flew across the room, Harkin looked at Daphna. “I don’t like the sound of this.”
“Me neither.”
“You will see that some of your teachers are passing something out—something that comes in a container—one for each eye,” Blatt continued. “For my next invention is a sort of contact lens. But not just any contact lens. This invention of mine is a computer that the user puts in his or her eyes. A computer that I call the X-Head!”
Harkin shot out of his seat so quickly, Daphna feared that he would take off. “The X-Head?” he shouted. “That’s Billy’s idea!”
Harkin’s words were lost in an explosion of applause and shouts as teachers lined the aisles, passing out contact cases to the entire student body.
“The X-Head?” Daphna asked Harkin. “How in the world did he get it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m putting a stop to this right now!”
Harkin got no more than a step toward the stage before Cynthia stuck out an arm and pushed him backward. The very second Harkin’s rear end hit his seat, there was a loud click. Daphna looked to her lap. A seat belt had snapped shut around her! Another had snapped shut around Harkin.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Daphna didn’t have time to answer. The chairs dropped straight through the floor. The last thing Daphna saw as she disappeared into the lower depths of the old Brackerton mansion was Cynthia’s face gazing down at her with an inscrutable smile.
Chapter 24
A Way Out
Daphna and Harkin came to a rough landing on a dirt floor. How far had they fallen? One hundred feet? Two hundred? It was hard to tell. But there was no doubt about where they were: in the dim light, Daphna could make out the outlines of four walls and a door made of bars.
“A cell,” Daphna said.
“Try a dungeon,” Harkin said.
There was one piece of good news. When Harkin tried his seat belt, it opened. So did Daphna’s. Soon she and Harkin were pulling at the door. Locked.
With a sigh, Daphna felt the walls—the room was made of stone. The air was damp.
“This is seriously creepy,” she said.
Harkin looked back up to where the trapdoor in the ceiling had already closed tight. Then he met Daphna’s eyes.
“What I want to know is where’s Cynthia?”
It didn’t take long for the two friends to piece together the facts. But it took a good five minutes more for Daphna and Harkin to believe what those facts suggested. Had Myron been right? Had Cynthia been the one to betray them? As hard as it was to accept, it began to look that way. Why else had she been able to lead them to the empty front-row seats? Why hadn’t her seat descended into the dungeon along with theirs? Most important, who else could have possibly gotten Ignatious the formula to the X-Head?
“It would explain how the antelope men found us at Billy’s, too,” Harkin said. “Cynthia might have put that tracking device on the Thunkmobile.”
“Why would she do it?” Daphna asked.
“Maybe Ignatious agreed to fund her one-woman Macbeth in exchange for the X-Head?” Harkin said.
“She wouldn’t do that,” Daphna said. “Would she?”
Harkin shrugged. “I don’t know. People have been going nuts at this school lately. And Cynthia has been obsessed about her show.”
Daphna tried to spin alternative scenarios. Maybe Cynthia was being framed? Maybe Myron really was the thief? Maybe someone else? But every time Daphna tried to think of a reason Cynthia was innocent, she returned to the image of her friend’s strange smile, seconds before she disappeared. Why had Cynthia looked so closely at the X-Head formula, as though she was committing it to memory? Why had she pushed Harkin back into his seat seconds
before the chairs fell? Why had she asked to use his wristwatch computer?
Harkin paced the small cell.
“Our options are limited,” he said.
Without Harkin’s wristwatch computer, they had no way to send out a message for help. And even if they did, what could anyone really do? Daphna and Harkin could already see how it would play out. Once they were released (if they were released), Ignatious would simply deny everything. So would Cynthia. It would work, too. After all, there was no hard evidence to prove that either Gum-Top or the X-Head weren’t Ignatious’s ideas. Even if Billy B. Brilliant somehow materialized from Africa, the media would never take the word of an overweight hermit over the man they think is the greatest genius in the world.
“Maybe it’s stupid,” Daphna said, “but I can’t help hoping that we’re wrong and that Cynthia is out there, trying to break us out.”
“Yeah,” Harkin said, leaning back into his chair. “That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”
If Cynthia was trying to engineer their escape, she wasn’t having much luck.
Half an hour had passed before a man in a black turtleneck and dark slacks emerged from the darkness of the dimly lit corridor on the other side of the door.
“I brought you lunch,” the man said. “I’ll be back for the trays in an hour.”
He left the food by a narrow opening at the bottom of the door.
“You have to let us out!” Daphna said.
“At least tell us who won the contest?” Harkin called.
The man continued down the corridor without turning to acknowledge the questions. Daphna looked down at her plate—the spaghetti and meatballs smelled surprisingly good, and despite everything, she was hungry.
“Might as well eat,” she said. “You never know. Some energy might help us figure out our next move.”
“Maybe,” Harkin said. “Anyway, I’m half starved.”
The two friends carried their trays to their respective seats. Daphna took a long swig of milk, then a bite of pasta.
“Not bad,” she said.
Harkin laughed.
“What?”
“Hard to believe, but the last thing I had in my mouth was a piece of Gum-Top.”
Daphna smiled. “Yeah, me too.”
She took a second bite of pasta but stopped midchew.
“What?” Harkin asked. “Got an idea?”
“Gum-Top.”
“Gum-Top?” Harkin wrinkled his brow. “Ignatious stole it, remember?”
Daphna was so excited that she almost upset her tray when she stood up.
“Gum-Top, Harkin! You have another piece, right?”
“Yeah, I do. One . . .” Then Harkin got what Daphna was thinking. “I mean, yeah!”
“Let’s see if we can chew our way online from down here and send out some emails.”
Harkin riffled through his pockets for the gum. “Who should we contact? My parents won’t do any good. The police?”
Daphna was pacing now. “No, they’d never believe us. Let’s assume the worst: that Cynthia made a deal with Ignatious to take her on Cody Meyers in exchange for stealing Gum-Top and the X-Head.”
“Which would mean,” Harkin said, “that her Macbeth was picked as the winner of the Insanity Cup.”
“Right!” Daphna said. She wheeled around. “What would happen if hard workers like Wilmer, Wanda, and Jean-Claude found out the whole thing was fixed?”
Harkin’s eyes went wide. “They’d go nuts.”
“Bonkers!”
“They’ll be out for some serious blood!”
“We might be able to convince them to break us out!”
“We might at that!”
Harkin finally found the piece of gum. “You want to do the honors?”
Daphna popped the last remaining piece of Gum-Top into her mouth and got chewing.
Chapter 25
A Surprise Rescuer
Daphna 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 though
t 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.
