4. Fresh Fish
While Adelaide got Shari settled down in one of the guest's rooms, presumably, Mr Wozniak took Giovanni on a quick tour of the lodge. The hallways wandered seemingly at random, at different levels. There would be a short four-step stair in the middle of one hallway, and all the rooms on the far end would be only three or four feet higher than the rooms in the near end of the hallway. And, in some other hallways, there were steps going up and then going down for no apparent reason. Some corridors had five doors in a row on one side, and none on the other. And there was this one corridor that led nowhere, and had no doors on either side, just blank walls. As they walked around, Wozniak kept pointing at different doors and saying things like, "closet, study hall, closet, library, my office, dorm, closet, closet, closet, classroom, closet, dorm…" It seemed as if most of the doors in the house led to closets. When Giovanni asked if that was true, Mr Wozniak gave him a rather weird reply.
"Well, usually they are closets, but you can never tell for sure…"
After walking what seemed a straight line, without two consecutive turns in the same direction, Giovanni was surprised to find himself back in the kitchen, entering now through a different door than before.
"Okay," said Mr Wozniak "That's just the first floor, but you'll spend most of the time there, so that's enough for the moment. Let me show you to your pod, now… Yes? Question?"
"Yeah, you just said 'just the first floor'. So, how many floors are there in this place?"
"Oh, there are several. At the moment, and off the top of my head, I would say four… Yes, about four sound right, at the moment… Question?"
"Erm… No, now that I think about it, no, thanks, no more questions…," Giovanni said while screwing up his face in consternation.
"Very well. Walk with me while I explain how things work around here. The School is a special educational system for Gifted students. We only have about fifty students in each center, and we have many centers nationwide. They are all part of The School. In each center, we group the students according to aptitude level. This center here is for novices. Now, don't go feeling all self-conscious and stuff, eh? You're a novice because you didn't know you were Gifted until very recently, and some of the kids here knew they were Gifted, but had never before been able to use their Gift. The students here range from age eleven to seventeen, so don't be surprised to find yourself in a classroom sitting next to a child on one side and a grown-up on the other side. Like I said, it's all done according to aptitude. You will all stay here as long as you need to stay."
"Well, that don't make no sense!" Giovanni was quick to protest. "How can you keep us all in the same classrooms, if an eleven year old will be studying elementary-grade Math, for example, while a seventeen year old will be studying Physics?"
"Ah, that's why we have tutors to work individually with every child, for the regular classes you'll need to take in order to get your High School Diploma in this state. Those three ladies you met, Agatha, Tabitha…"
"And Bagatha…," muttered Giovanni.
"Ah, you liked that, didn't you? Yes, the three Furies, as they are known to our people, they are the tutors for all the regular classes and stuff. They'll get you squared away proper, they will. You'll see, that without having to attend the skull-numbing drudgery of regular classes, you'll find that regular school-work is all easy-piecey lemon-squeezey!"
Giovanni cocked an eyebrow at the alliteration.
"Anyway, you'll have time to learn all the differences in your new education. You are now officially Gifted! Welcome to The School for the Gifted!" Wozniak patted Giovanni on the back, forcing him to brace himself against the corridor's wall. "So, tonight I will take you to your pod. This year, we only had forty-three students, so you make lucky number eleven in your pod. We have barrack-like dorms, so you get a bed, a footlocker, and a dresser to put away all your stuff, and get to sleep with ten other people around you. Cozy, eh? Well, that's really everything you need to know tonight. We're here: Welcome to your pod!"
Wozniak and Giovanni stood in front of a solitary door in the middle of a long hallway. Wozniak opened the door and stepped through, with Giovanni hesitating a little bit at the threshold.
From his vantage point, the pod looked like any other barrack he had seen in movies, except the walls were covered with posters of teen idols, violent video-games, and heavy metal bands. All around the room there was a happy maelstrom of children, candy wrappers, torn notebooks, dirty socks, laundry of indefinable cleanliness status, and many other pieces of debris, which made Giovanni feel almost home. Everything stopped suddenly, when Wozniak raised his alto voice.
"Okay, everyone settle down, already! I bring you… Fresh fish!! Go get 'em, tiger!" And Wozniak pushed Giovanni into the room with one of his gigantic paws, smiled at him once, and slammed the door shut. Maybe it was his imagination, but Giovanni thought he heard locks turn and chains rattle against the door.
He turned around, and was confronted by ten faces looking at him with various degrees of curiosity, friendliness, and, in one or two faces, malice. He felt chagrin momentarily, when he noticed that most of the kids were younger than him. A lot younger. And he was flabbergasted to see two or three girls in the group. That was going to make shower-time interesting and uncomfortable. He did not look forward to early mornings, when his body did all sorts of weird things of its own volition, and all of them apparently designed to embarrass him.
"Well, here goes nuthin'," thought Giovanni. Then, he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and resumed his slouch. "Alright, which one is my bunk?"
He was surprised when the smallest of all the children piped up, "Why, that's just rude, boy. Where are your manners? Why don't you introduce yourself? Or, never mind, who cares? Maybe just pay the toll, give us whatever dollar bills you have in your your wallet, and maybe we'll tell you which one is your 'boonk'… Then again, by the sorry raggedy looks of you, you might only have coins!!" Some of the kids with the more unfriendly faces chuckled.
"Fine, if that's how you want it…" Giovanni, at five foot nine and a hundred thirty pounds soaking wet, was small for his sixteen years of age. But his long career in boarding schools had toughened him enough so that he hadn't allowed anyone to haze him without reprisals since he was thirteen. It might have cost him many bruises and puffy eyes, but nobody messed with him afterwards. He was wiry, and had learned to use his monkey-strength to his advantage against bullies: He just never stopped, he kept coming no matter how bruised and battered he was, like a wild animal.
So he took three steps up to the obnoxious child, who didn't stop smiling until Giovanni had grabbed him and was holding him upside down, dangling him by his ankles a few inches over the floor.
"Now," said Giovanni, cool and collected "Just point me in the right direction, won't ya?"
Two of the oldest children, who seemed to be all of thirteen, pulled out identical slender sticks from their back pockets, and pointing them at Giovanni's back, yelled in unison, "Boils and Rash!" Two red sparks shot from the tips of their sticks towards Giovanni's back.
Some of the children screamed in fright, and the youngest girl actually yelled, "Behind you!!"
The moment the sparks connected with Giovanni's back, he arched in pain for a second, and let go of the offending child, who landed on his head and was knocked out for a while.
"Ow! That burns!" Giovanni kept trying to reach behind his back, to rub the place where the sparkles had hit. "Alright, you mother-lovers, it's on!"
Giovanni and his two bony fists advanced on the two kids who still had their sticks pointed at him. They looked at him wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Out of the corner of his eye, Giovanni noticed that they all looked flabbergasted.
He was about to reach for those two heads to knock them together when the door banged open and Mr Wozniak seemed to fill the entire room all of the sudden.
"What in the name of Bocephus are you two doing with your wands out? Didn't I tell you to put them away after dinner? Gimme!" His huge hand made it seem as if the wands had disappeared when he closed his fist over them. "Every one in bed in thirty seconds! Now!!"
Giovanni could have sworn that the wind created by Wozniak's roar had blown all the children into their beds. At last, with everyone laying down and still, he saw the only empty bed, and went to lay down on it, with his clothes on.
"Good night!!" Another roar, and the lights went out.
While Adelaide got Shari settled down in one of the guest's rooms, presumably, Mr Wozniak took Giovanni on a quick tour of the lodge. The hallways wandered seemingly at random, at different levels. There would be a short four-step stair in the middle of one hallway, and all the rooms on the far end would be only three or four feet higher than the rooms in the near end of the hallway. And, in some other hallways, there were steps going up and then going down for no apparent reason. Some corridors had five doors in a row on one side, and none on the other. And there was this one corridor that led nowhere, and had no doors on either side, just blank walls. As they walked around, Wozniak kept pointing at different doors and saying things like, "closet, study hall, closet, library, my office, dorm, closet, closet, closet, classroom, closet, dorm…" It seemed as if most of the doors in the house led to closets. When Giovanni asked if that was true, Mr Wozniak gave him a rather weird reply.
"Well, usually they are closets, but you can never tell for sure…"
After walking what seemed a straight line, without two consecutive turns in the same direction, Giovanni was surprised to find himself back in the kitchen, entering now through a different door than before.
"Okay," said Mr Wozniak "That's just the first floor, but you'll spend most of the time there, so that's enough for the moment. Let me show you to your pod, now… Yes? Question?"
"Yeah, you just said 'just the first floor'. So, how many floors are there in this place?"
"Oh, there are several. At the moment, and off the top of my head, I would say four… Yes, about four sound right, at the moment… Question?"
"Erm… No, now that I think about it, no, thanks, no more questions…," Giovanni said while screwing up his face in consternation.
"Very well. Walk with me while I explain how things work around here. The School is a special educational system for Gifted students. We only have about fifty students in each center, and we have many centers nationwide. They are all part of The School. In each center, we group the students according to aptitude level. This center here is for novices. Now, don't go feeling all self-conscious and stuff, eh? You're a novice because you didn't know you were Gifted until very recently, and some of the kids here knew they were Gifted, but had never before been able to use their Gift. The students here range from age eleven to seventeen, so don't be surprised to find yourself in a classroom sitting next to a child on one side and a grown-up on the other side. Like I said, it's all done according to aptitude. You will all stay here as long as you need to stay."
"Well, that don't make no sense!" Giovanni was quick to protest. "How can you keep us all in the same classrooms, if an eleven year old will be studying elementary-grade Math, for example, while a seventeen year old will be studying Physics?"
"Ah, that's why we have tutors to work individually with every child, for the regular classes you'll need to take in order to get your High School Diploma in this state. Those three ladies you met, Agatha, Tabitha…"
"And Bagatha…," muttered Giovanni.
"Ah, you liked that, didn't you? Yes, the three Furies, as they are known to our people, they are the tutors for all the regular classes and stuff. They'll get you squared away proper, they will. You'll see, that without having to attend the skull-numbing drudgery of regular classes, you'll find that regular school-work is all easy-piecey lemon-squeezey!"
Giovanni cocked an eyebrow at the alliteration.
"Anyway, you'll have time to learn all the differences in your new education. You are now officially Gifted! Welcome to The School for the Gifted!" Wozniak patted Giovanni on the back, forcing him to brace himself against the corridor's wall. "So, tonight I will take you to your pod. This year, we only had forty-three students, so you make lucky number eleven in your pod. We have barrack-like dorms, so you get a bed, a footlocker, and a dresser to put away all your stuff, and get to sleep with ten other people around you. Cozy, eh? Well, that's really everything you need to know tonight. We're here: Welcome to your pod!"
Wozniak and Giovanni stood in front of a solitary door in the middle of a long hallway. Wozniak opened the door and stepped through, with Giovanni hesitating a little bit at the threshold.
From his vantage point, the pod looked like any other barrack he had seen in movies, except the walls were covered with posters of teen idols, violent video-games, and heavy metal bands. All around the room there was a happy maelstrom of children, candy wrappers, torn notebooks, dirty socks, laundry of indefinable cleanliness status, and many other pieces of debris, which made Giovanni feel almost home. Everything stopped suddenly, when Wozniak raised his alto voice.
"Okay, everyone settle down, already! I bring you… Fresh fish!! Go get 'em, tiger!" And Wozniak pushed Giovanni into the room with one of his gigantic paws, smiled at him once, and slammed the door shut. Maybe it was his imagination, but Giovanni thought he heard locks turn and chains rattle against the door.
He turned around, and was confronted by ten faces looking at him with various degrees of curiosity, friendliness, and, in one or two faces, malice. He felt chagrin momentarily, when he noticed that most of the kids were younger than him. A lot younger. And he was flabbergasted to see two or three girls in the group. That was going to make shower-time interesting and uncomfortable. He did not look forward to early mornings, when his body did all sorts of weird things of its own volition, and all of them apparently designed to embarrass him.
"Well, here goes nuthin'," thought Giovanni. Then, he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and resumed his slouch. "Alright, which one is my bunk?"
He was surprised when the smallest of all the children piped up, "Why, that's just rude, boy. Where are your manners? Why don't you introduce yourself? Or, never mind, who cares? Maybe just pay the toll, give us whatever dollar bills you have in your your wallet, and maybe we'll tell you which one is your 'boonk'… Then again, by the sorry raggedy looks of you, you might only have coins!!" Some of the kids with the more unfriendly faces chuckled.
"Fine, if that's how you want it…" Giovanni, at five foot nine and a hundred thirty pounds soaking wet, was small for his sixteen years of age. But his long career in boarding schools had toughened him enough so that he hadn't allowed anyone to haze him without reprisals since he was thirteen. It might have cost him many bruises and puffy eyes, but nobody messed with him afterwards. He was wiry, and had learned to use his monkey-strength to his advantage against bullies: He just never stopped, he kept coming no matter how bruised and battered he was, like a wild animal.
So he took three steps up to the obnoxious child, who didn't stop smiling until Giovanni had grabbed him and was holding him upside down, dangling him by his ankles a few inches over the floor.
"Now," said Giovanni, cool and collected "Just point me in the right direction, won't ya?"
Two of the oldest children, who seemed to be all of thirteen, pulled out identical slender sticks from their back pockets, and pointing them at Giovanni's back, yelled in unison, "Boils and Rash!" Two red sparks shot from the tips of their sticks towards Giovanni's back.
Some of the children screamed in fright, and the youngest girl actually yelled, "Behind you!!"
The moment the sparks connected with Giovanni's back, he arched in pain for a second, and let go of the offending child, who landed on his head and was knocked out for a while.
"Ow! That burns!" Giovanni kept trying to reach behind his back, to rub the place where the sparkles had hit. "Alright, you mother-lovers, it's on!"
Giovanni and his two bony fists advanced on the two kids who still had their sticks pointed at him. They looked at him wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Out of the corner of his eye, Giovanni noticed that they all looked flabbergasted.
He was about to reach for those two heads to knock them together when the door banged open and Mr Wozniak seemed to fill the entire room all of the sudden.
"What in the name of Bocephus are you two doing with your wands out? Didn't I tell you to put them away after dinner? Gimme!" His huge hand made it seem as if the wands had disappeared when he closed his fist over them. "Every one in bed in thirty seconds! Now!!"
Giovanni could have sworn that the wind created by Wozniak's roar had blown all the children into their beds. At last, with everyone laying down and still, he saw the only empty bed, and went to lay down on it, with his clothes on.
"Good night!!" Another roar, and the lights went out.
To Be Continued…
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