Chapter 1

Curry Lands on His Feet

My first glimpse of Curry Buckle’s astonishing powers came the day we dumped him from his chair in sophomore biology class. Like most teachers at Kluge Island High, Mr. Flatski taught two subjects. Science courses all day—becoming snarlier with each passing hour—then he coached football. We called him Old Flattop because of his haircut: upright bristles thick as a doormat. I say we, but I’d arrived that summer from off-island and hadn’t blended in. I carried a notebook with Darwin Bownes written in block letters so people would learn my name, but I think they already knew because of my dad taking over the newspaper, which had everyone stirred up. Anyway, the class avoided provoking Mr. Flatski because he could go off like a gaffed halibut.

On this particular September afternoon, he had his back turned, drawing the double helix of a DNA strand on the board. The classroom looked like a theater, with desks on four curved terraces facing a long counter fitted with sinks and gas burners. I always sat in back, on the top riser where, through the rear windows, I could see the wing with the girl’s shower room. The frosted shower room glass had a corner missing from one pane and I always hoped to see something interesting but never did. As Mr. Flatski drew rungs in the double helix with different colored markers, I noticed Curry Buckle had fallen asleep at his desk using his book as a pillow. Curry was short, stocky, with no neck to speak of. Quiet guy, but good-natured, often wearing a doofus expression of amusement as if absorbed in some private joke. I think my real reason for sitting in the back is that I felt safe sitting next to Curry. Safe that he never sneered at me or pretended I didn’t exist or made snide comments. He had this aura of dorky weirdness about him that made others leave him alone.

But not that day.

Choker Durant sat immediately in front of me, one riser lower. Biology didn’t interest Choker. Not the kind you learned from a book. He was the alpha male in the patch of hallway by the Coke machine where the sophomores hung out, his tight polo shirt revealing a self-inflicted skull tattoo on a thick biceps; his loose ’board-baggies revealing an inch of butt cleavage. Curry Buckle didn’t belong to Choker’s crowd. In fact, he probably ranked numero uno on Choker’s loser list.

I must have been on a different kind of list. Three weeks into the term, classmates should have loosened up toward me. But no. Our family moved here from the mainland that summer when dad bought the weekly newspaper: the Kluge Island Whalebone. People acted like dad had ripped out the island’s beating heart for breakfast. It didn’t help that the prior editor, who at age eighty-two had slumped dead over his last editorial, had been a character in the local islands for decades. The grudge carried over to me. No one wanted me at their lunch table, so I brought sandwiches from home and ate outside on the bleachers. Even among a sophomore class small enough to fit in one room, I felt invisible. So when Choker turned to me, his thick-featured face parted with a canine grin, and recruited me to humiliate a fellow classmate, well... it’s not that I wanted to be Choker’s friend, but if I could just show everyone I was up for a little fun... Curry Buckle seemed a small sacrifice.

Choker pointed to the right rear leg of Curry’s desk. I hesitated, hearing the squeak of Mr. Flatski’s marking pen over Curry’s light snoring. But Choker egged me on with a gesture and I caved and hunched over to grab a rear desk leg. Choker took the front leg. At his nod we both lifted.

Had Curry not been leaning toward the open side of his desk, he might simply have plopped to the floor like a bag of dog food. But he was leaning, and Choker gave Curry an extra shove, causing him to pitch forward and tumble down to the next terrace, and his momentum carried him all the way to the ground level, where he did a face plant before the studly alter to science, behind which stood Old Flattop, hands on hips, face hot enough to fry an egg.

“Buckle?” Flatski said between clenched teeth. He never called anyone by their first name.

Curry looked up, groggy. “Yessir?  Um, sorry sir.”

“Do I not talk loud enough for you, Buckle?  Do you need to sit closer?”

Flatski wasn’t exactly yelling, but it looked like every cell in his body wanted to.

“Yessir. Nosir.”

Then Flatski looked in my direction. “You two—Bownes is it? —and Durant.”

My blood heated like soup.

“Bring that desk down front so Buckle can hear better.”

We did.

“That’s right, make yourself comfortable. Now in all the commotion, I’ve forgotten where we were. Buckle, remind me.”

Curry looked up and swallowed. My chest tightened and I wished I could have taken back what I’d done.

“Sir,” I said, rising from my seat.

“Bownes?”

“I, uh... that is, we...”

Then Choker Durant turned and gave me a fierce scowl that promised if I said one more word, he’d wait for me after school, as long as it took, and would pound me beyond recognition of my own mother.

“What is it Bownes?”

“Er...” I gulped. “His book. He’s dropped his book.”

I picked it up and stepped down the risers to hand it to Curry. I avoided his eyes at first, but my guilt forced me to give him a brief look of apology. He blinked hard as I held the book out. Then, with a nod of thanks, he accepted it.

“Well, Buckle?  Where were we?” Flatski said.

Keeley flagged her arm.  “I know where we were.  You were about to explain how cytosine bonds with—”

Flatski glanced sharply her way.  “Did I ask you?” He returned his glare to Curry.

“Ummmm." Curry looked at the whiteboard, looked down at his book, then looked back at the board, and blinked hard. “Well, I guess that would be your basic DNA strand. Dee-oxy... um... deoxy... ribonucleic acid?”

Curry had never impressed me with a special grasp of biology, or any other subject. In this case, Mr. Flatski had yet to tell us exactly what he was diagramming. But from the bulging look on Flatski’s face, Curry must have guessed right. The bulging look also told me Curry would have done himself a favor if he’d guessed wrong.

“So, Buckle, you know so much about it, you can clown around during the lesson. Maybe your classmates aren’t as brilliant as you are. Why don’t you step up here and finish the lesson for them?" Mr. Flatski held a marker over the lab table, cords of muscle lacing his hairy arm.

“That’s all right,” Curry said, leaning back from the marker.

No, it’s not all right. Get up here. Capiche?”

Curry capiched. We all did, I suspect. We capiched that anyone who upstaged Old Flattop must be trashed before the show could go on. Curry stood, took the marker, looked at the unfinished diagram on the board, then did an open-mouthed head-tilt of pure astonishment. He stood flat-footed for the longest time, frozen in position as if sculpted from Spam. Blocky head, bad haircut, and wire glasses bent and re-bent. Then, never taking his eyes from the board, he shuffled past the lab table, and began labeling parts of the double helix.

“The sides of the ladder are made of sugar and phosphate molecules,” he said, “and they alternate. The rungs make a code for genetic information... using four different chemicals. The red is cytosine." He wrote cytosine on the board. “Green is guanine. You see, the cytosine will bond only with the guanine, and not with the thymine or adenine.”

Mr. Flatski’s jaw sagged.

Curry stepped back from the drawing and frowned at it. “Actually, this shows the helix twisting to the left, but it always twists to the right. This is true for all organisms, but we don’t know why."

Curry turned to see if he should continue, but Mr. Flatski’s mouth seemed stuck in the open position.

Then the class brainiac, Keeley Uncas, waved her thin arm. I’d heard somebody say she’d been homeschooled the last couple years by her father, a doctor, and she knew her stuff. At least her father used to be a doctor—supposedly he’d been de-stethoscoped for being a quack. Somebody important had died. Keeley always seemed to be waving her chicken-bone arm, especially if someone else answered correctly, then she’d add her two cents.

“Curry,” she said in an uppity tone, “did you know if you straightened out the DNA strands from one cell, expanded them to the thickness of spaghetti, and laid them end to end, they’d reach to the moon and back six times?”

Curry again blinked hard. “Well, yes, it does say that in a footnote at the bottom of page forty-nine. Just one time, actually.”

“Hey Keeley, your noodle is overcooked,” someone said.

The class giggled.

Keeley’s fine black eyebrows bunched up over her piercing dark eyes and her mouth turned down.

Old Flattop just glared like a man unsure whether he’s been set up. He waved Curry back to his seat, gave us an extra-long assignment, then the bell rang. We didn’t stampede out as usual; everyone paused to look at Curry as they filed past, as if he was a traffic wreck.

But it was me whom Curry kept his eyes on--deep, unblinking eyes--and I knew we had unfinished business.