Hidden Talents

“If someone hated you, did it really matter why? I didn’t know. Maybe it mattered.”

Martin’s dorm mate Cheater, an Asian American, believes Chinese are hated because they’re smart. In a building full of delinquents who, once they hate you, don’t much care why, Martin must take care with his sarcasm, lest he makes enemies who can hurt him. He’s smart enough to realize that hate isn’t limited to school kids and that Cheater’s problem extends well beyond Edgeview’s walls.

“At least I wasn’t the center of attention. In this class, there was no center of attention. I was just one bubble in a glass of cola, clinging to the side while a giant soda straw of a teacher tried to stir things around and suck us up.”

Martin dreads his first day of classes at Edgeview. He tries to be inconspicuous, but it doesn’t quite work. Standing out at this school is hard when the other students have such weird hang-ups, but Martin’s sarcastic wit sets him apart. In math class, he amuses himself by turning the whole thing into a metaphor in which the students are fizz in a drink and are in constant danger from the teacher-as-straw.

“Maybe anyone can write, but won’t some people stink at it? I mean, anyone can paint, but most people really stink at that. I know I do. The last painting I tried looked like dog puke. And the same for playing the violin or making a chair. Have you ever heard someone who’s really bad on the violin? It’s not very pleasant. And I sure wouldn’t trust my butt sitting in any chair I’d made with these two hands.”

English teacher Ms. Nomad believes that writing is a wonderful form of self-expression and that anyone can do it. Martin tries to pop her balloon of optimism with some harsh, if valid, truths about how hard the arts can be. Ironically, his caustic comment, put to paper, demonstrates his skill with words.

“I didn’t see how they could mess with something as simple as gym. On the other hand, it’s amazing what adults can do when they set their minds to it.”

Martin puts his finger on a central problem in the story: The staff at his school are, in some respects, as clueless as their students. Even worse, some of the teachers are just as troubled as the children.

“A kid might help another kid who fell into a river, and a kid might help another kid search for a lost baseball, but there isn’t a kid I’ve met who will help another kid out of a humiliating situation. We just aren’t built that way.”

Kids arrange themselves into a pecking order by teasing each other. Boys especially will test others to see what they can take and how they handle it. Those with the most composure—who can give as good as they get, or at least shrug and laugh it off—rise higher. If an adult sets up the humiliation, the taunt becomes risk-free and therefore irresistible. Strangely, this process often bonds people together: Passing such tests confers membership when the victims prove they can withstand the pain.

“You don’t fill a room with posters of places you’ve been. You fill it with dreams.”

Geography teacher Mr. Langhorn decorates his classroom with travel posters. An angry man, he demands from Martin some inkling that the boy has learned anything during class; Martin intuits that Langhorn is a blowhard who has no real experience of the world he claims to understand. At the same time, Martin’s observation about posters lyrically expresses his yearning to have dreams that aren’t squashed by the adults in his life.

“Dad liked to remind me that life wasn’t fair. I’d heard that from him more than once. And then he’d tell me all the things I should be thankful for, and then he’d tell me how easy my life was compared to when he was a kid. And I’d tell myself I couldn’t  wait to get away. Well, here I was. Away. For real. I’d never been away from my parents like this before—not in a place I couldn’t leave. I was on my own. There were teachers all over the school—Edgeview had no shortage of adults—but that didn’t change the fact that I was on my own. None of the adults here had any reason to care about what happened to me.”

Martin describes the biggest problem in his life—his angry, blowhard father—and how that problem has landed him in a continuation school for delinquents. He sizes up his situation, which seems pretty grim: He’s on his own in a hostile environment where even the nicest staff members will be hard-pressed to help him. Martin is just beginning to realize that he’s become his own worst enemy. He has no idea how to handle his new situation, but he’s willing to take stock and go from there.

“I saw a painting once that showed a couple of guys climbing a hill. At first, there was nothing special about it. But if you stepped back and let your eyes relax, the whole scene turned into a picture of a grinning skull. I felt Edgeview was like that. Whatever I saw right now, it wasn’t the whole picture.”

As he gets used to the Edgeview routine, Martin begins to dig below the surface. He wants to understand what’s happening in the background—the things that secretly drive students and faculty—because simply following procedures is a sucker bet. He doesn’t yet know whether the school is as darkly purposed as he suspects.

“‘What if we get caught?’ I asked after I’d stepped away from the ladder. Lucky shrugged. ‘What can they do? Shoot us?’ I saw his point. We were already at the end of the line as far as getting in trouble.”

The one good thing about being at the bottom of the heap is that there’s nowhere to go but up. If a person has been rejected by society, they’re suddenly free to do things that would once have cost them their social standing. The boys thus have a certain amount of rebellious liberty. Ironically, this realization gives them more self-confidence; they can also do productive things.

“As much as I hate to admit it, I was starting to have fun in the library. If I told the guys that I was enjoying myself, I’d be kidded without mercy. They’d probably start calling me Bookman or Wordboy, or something like that. I certainly wasn’t a brain, and I didn’t think of myself as the kind of kid who studies stuff or learns things just for fun, but this was almost as good as a game.”

Despite all the earnest teachers, the drills and homework, and the students who make fun of studying, a child may stumble onto the fun of learning—the puzzle, the quest for an answer, the thrill of discovery—and then must hide that pleasure from others for fear of being ridiculed. It’s ironic that many kids must work around the educational system to get value from it.

“There were kids everywhere, but I’d managed to end up alone. Way to go, Martin.”

It’s one thing to offend teachers; it’s quite another to alienate the people Martin needs as allies at a tough school. In his eagerness to convince his friends that they have psychic powers, he pushes them away. Martin has much to learn about what people do and don’t want to hear from him. This discovery becomes the centerpiece of his growth as a person.

“If someone told me I had a special ability, I’d be thrilled. It would be great to know what people were thinking, or to know what was going to happen. It would be extremely cool to move things with my mind or see the future. But there was no point daydreaming about that. I didn’t have any special talents, except maybe the power to get my teachers so angry they’d strap me to a chair and shock me or slam my head against a wall.”

Martin’s special ability is hidden just beneath the surface of his sarcasm. He can no more recognize his own talent than can Torchie or Cheater or Flinch or Trash. His quest to learn about himself begins with his attempt to help his friends with their special abilities.

“Did I want to be right, or did I want to have friends? It didn’t seem fair that I had to choose, but that’s the way it had worked out.”

Everyone wants to be heard; it’s hard when what they have to say is what no one wants to listen to. Martin’s problem is one that everyone faces eventually. He must learn how to stay true to his beliefs without making enemies over them. It’s one of the most difficult skills everyone needs to learn.

“If you want to see something badly enough, you’re going to see it even if it isn’t there.”

Martin realizes he’s seeing superpowers everywhere when maybe he’s just overly eager to prove he’s right about his friends’ abilities. This insight makes him more cautious and exacting about the evidence he needs, so he’s less likely to try to prove too much and lose everyone’s respect.

“But how could I tell them what to do when I didn’t even know what it was like to have special powers? That would be like a cat trying to teach a dog to bark.”

Now that he’s convinced his friends that they have powers, Martin finds himself looked up to as the leader. He must coach them, somehow, despite having no apparent power of his own. Martin must dig deep to find resources within himself that can help them—compassion, creative insight, patience. In the process, he grows as a person in ways that help himself as much as his friends.

“Once you got dumped at Edgeview, everyone assumed you’d never get better. We were all treated as if we were incurably sick.”

A student voted into the school by the teachers can’t leave until he’s old enough to exit the educational system entirely. As an asylum for disruptive students whom the system regards as mentally ill, Edgeview shares an essential trait of psychiatric hospitals: They’re very hard to get out of. This is due, in part, to the fact that most patients in such institutions suffer from fairly severe forms of mental disruption. It’s also partly because both patients and staff begin to think of inmates as permanently ill. Martin and his friends, then, are trapped even if they learn how to manage their unique minds so they can function in society.

“‘Why would they close Edgeview?’ Torchie asked. ‘I guess some people don’t think the school is doing any good.’ It felt strange to realize that there were people arguing over what was best for me—people who had never met me, people who had never bothered to ask my opinion.”

Edgeview’s crisis expands Martin’s worldview. He begins to see that his school experiences are governed by decisions made elsewhere. Knowing this, he understands Edgeview better and realizes that the adults involved aren’t out to hurt him but instead may, in fact, wish him to succeed. At the same time, he knows that other adults in far-off places who don’t know or understand him have power over him and may misuse that power. His new perspective may help Martin cope with his situation more wisely.

“‘I don’t know about you guys,’ Lucky said, ‘but I’m tired of everyone treating me like garbage.’ He stopped walking and turned to face the Edgies. ‘Nobody’s pushing me around.’”

Lucky voices a viewpoint that’s growing rapidly among the Psi Fives: They’re not freaks but talented kids who deserve respect. This improvement in self-esteem may get them into trouble, as with the mob of boys from town who want to fight them, but it also gives them the gritty persistence to get through problems and work to make things turn out for the better.

.“How would you like me to treat you, Martin? […] I don’t have a clue. Not a clue. It’s like you’re waving me closer with one hand and slashing a knife with the other.”

Mr. Briggs expresses his frustration with Martin, who’s normally rude and uncaring but suddenly brings the teacher his lost wallet. Martin is just beginning to see how much his behavior confuses his teachers, who don’t mean to alienate him and don’t understand his coldness. Martin has some distance to go before fully expressing his growing desire to get along with them.

“‘Do you really care what happens to Edgeview?’ Lucky asked me. I thought about Principal Davis and his punishments. I thought about Mr. Parsons and his anger. But I also thought about Mr. Briggs and his passion for teaching. And Miss Nomad, who cared too much. And Ms. Crenshaw, who tried to make classes interesting. And I thought about all the kids who needed some place in the system. I nodded.”

Finally realizing what’s important to him, an increasingly compassionate Martin recognizes the value hidden beneath all the problems at Edgeview Alternative School. In this moment, his life turns a major corner, and his future possibilities begin to open up.

“We didn’t admit our own powers until you forced us to accept the truth. It’s the same with you. You have a talent, too. You can’t see yours. But we sure can.”

Lucky explains to Martin what Martin once explained to him: He’s too close to his own power to see it. As with all of his psychic friends, Martin’s afraid that, if he accepts his unusual talent, he’ll also have to accept that he’s abnormal and has a mental illness. Once he sees that his talent isn’t a liability but maybe an advantage, he’ll begin to use its possibilities.

“My world had been yanked on its side. Or flipped inside out. The past flooded over me, all those times I’d lashed out. All the pain I’d caused. Striking. Slashing. A thousand injured faces littered the trail of destruction I’d carved.”

On realizing what his super-talent is, Martin goes through the same painful process as his friends: He feels regret for all the hurt he has unleashed on others. This pain, though, opens him to how he can use his power to do good in the world.

“I’ve decided it’s okay to use my talent to make people feel good, as long as I’m not doing it because I want something from them. I guess it’s my way of making up for getting so many people angry. The last thing I want is to be a bully. Not all bullies use their fists. Some use words.”

Abused by Bloodbath and his father, Martin never wants to do that to anyone else. Instead, he’ll use his power to bring happiness for its own sake. It’s not a bad power to have, the ability to make someone smile.