Gordon Korman - HarperCollins Children's Books

y that time I’d stopped listening. I’d never met thisnew kid, but I already had him perfectly sized up inmy mind.Donovan Curtis was normal.Normal! We had a lot of talents in our homeroom.Normalcy wasn’t one of them. Noah’s IQ was offthe charts, but he’d yet to hold a conversation witha real human being this year. Most of the time, hedidn’t even make eye contact. He always seemed tobe speaking to the empty space over your left shoulder.Or Jacey Halloran, who had already discoveredan uncharted galaxy, but still couldn’t figure out howto open a combination lock. Or Latrell Michaelson,our mechanical marvel, who took cars apart and putthem together again blindfolded—for fun. He couldn’tmanage to wrap his mind around the fact that he hadto wait in the food line to buy his lunch. Every singleday was World War Three in the cafeteria.We had kids who had set academic records, andpublished books, and won every conceivable prize andhonor. We had kids who could quote you the exactline of dialogue that’s spoken 94 minutes and 30 secondsinto The Matrix or Return of the Jedi.What was missing was somebody—anybody—normal.36