Hidden Talents by David Lubar

Talent, noun: a special often athletic, creative, or artistic aptitude OR a general intelligence or mental power: ability.

When you think of talents, your mind probably jumps to someone who is a gifted poet, artist, musician, chef, or carpenter; maybe someone who plays a school sport or an extreme sport (skateboarding, motocross, etc.); or perhaps someone who has the ability to work with children or animals.

What if your talent wasn’t so widely accepted or recognized? What if your talent was construed as misbehavior, a problem so big that you were sent away to a last resort for the most dangerous and rebellious teenagers?

Martin Anderson has been assigned to Edgeview Alternative School, after being expelled from every junior high he’s attended. I guess you could say he’s been expelled from his family as well, all due to his lack of respect for authority mixed with his inability to restrain himself from speaking his mind. Call him a smart-aleck or worse, but it’s like a disease he can’t control. He finds your weakness and uses it to verbally insult you.

When Martin gets off the bus at Edgeview, he walks into a world full of students deemed out of control. A world with a bully named Bloodbath, who lives up to his name, and teachers who either try too hard or scream too loud and a principal with a taste for electric shock therapy.

Not everyone at Edgeview is bad. There are a select group of students that Martin becomes friends with. Students, like Martin, who seem to misbehave but really have Hidden Talents. Torchie has a flair for fire, starting them; Cheater can hear other’s thoughts; Lucky has a gift for finding lost objects; Flinch possesses the ability to see what’s coming; and Trash has the capacity to move objects with his mind. Once Martin discovers they all have psychic abilities, he realizes that what once was bad can be used for good. But will it really be so easy? What would you do with your Hidden Talents?