“That’s not Mom,” I said.
“Nope, that was Carla Hall. Quiet little thing. She agreed to go to the dance with me that year because Maw Mazie promised to make us sloppy joes before the dance.”
“She went with you for a sloppy joe?”
“I’ve told you, Maw’s cooking was a powerful force in the neighborhood. Don’t tell Maw Shirley, but Maw Mazie’s corned beef hash was legendary.”
“Gross, people liked that back then?” I shuddered and turned to the last page that was listed by Dad’s name. “What the . . . ?”
It was the clubs page, and Dad’s club was pictured on the top right. And there was Dad, standing front and center in a lab coat and safety goggles, holding a clunky-looking piece of metal proudly toward the camera.
“The Future Club?” I asked.
Dad nodded. “Or what you might have called a future robotics club. We built small machines, battery powered, and raced them. They didn’t do all the amazing things your robots can do today, of course. But they could use a few double-A batteries to drive in a straight line, and it was pretty gnarly.”
“What is gnarly?”
“Our version of epic.”
“Oh, so gnarly meant awesome.”
He shook his head. “No, we had awesome. Awesome meant awesome. Really awesome was bogus. Really bogus was tubular. And that robot right there? The one that I built with my own two hands? That robot was fully gnarly.”
It didn’t really look all that gnarly to me. It looked big and clumsy and square, and like it wouldn’t have won a single race.
“Did it win?” I asked.
“Not a single race,” Dad said. Yep, just as I thought.
“Oh.”
“Well, it wasn’t really the robot’s fault. You see, the whole team got smallpox and we had to be quarantined for two whole weeks.”
I gasped. “Really?”
Dad winked at me. “No, of course not. I heard you telling Randy your plan the other night. I don’t suppose you’ve found a supplier for your live smallpox strain?”
“No, the plan has some complications,” I said.
“I see.” He leaned the broom against the wall and sat next to me on the bumper. “You know, Luke,” he said, “I had the best time building that robot. The entire world was possible, and it was up to me to decide what that world would look like. It was the most powerful time of my entire life, because there were no boundaries. I could make happen what ever I wanted to make happen, just because I believed. We didn’t have robots back then, not like you do now. But I could build one, and it could look like this and it could race forward and who knew what else it could do? It was up to me to dream that up. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Not really,” I said.
“I’m saying,” he said, ruffling my hair the way he always did whenever he felt we were having a moment together, “you have the power right now to believe in what ever you want to believe in. You can believe that you can make a robot. You can believe that you will lead your robotics team to victory, and you can believe that you will have fun doing it. And maybe even make a few lifelong friends. Friends who’ll hawk loogies into lemonade with you, if that’s what’s necessary. You can believe anything you want. Pretty cool, huh?”
I nodded, because I was pretty sure he’d just made a really big point that I just wasn’t really getting at all yet.
“You can even believe,” he said, giving me a Dad look, “that you and your brother will still have a great relationship, even though he’s leaving.”
Ah. There it was. The point.
“Okay,” I said.
“Excellent,” he said. He stood up and went back to his broom. “I’ll finish up in here. You should get some aliens defeated before the maws and paws get here and steal the TV away from you.”
I sat there a moment longer and stared at the picture of Dad holding his robot. He looked so happy, like he totally believed in that bot. I closed the book, but stayed on the bumper holding it on my lap for a while.
“So why didn’t you win?” I asked.
He shrugged while still sweeping, his back to me. “Because we’re Forest Shade Middle School. We don’t win. It’s sort of our thing.”
CHAPTER 20
PROGRAM NAME: Pep Talk of Doom
STEP ONE: Robot climbs on podium
STEP TWO: Robot gives amazing speech
STEP THREE: Robot gets hit in head with rotten tomato and falls off podium
For reasons I couldn’t quite understand, I wasn’t dreading our Monday robotics meeting as much as usual. Sure, it may have had something to do with Missy being officially gone, but there was also this little matter of Lunchbox Jones, black eyes and all, being there. I was hoping that him not stuffing me into my locker the week before was a good sign that maybe he wasn’t quite as mad as I’d expected him to be.
I decided to press my luck that morning with another trip to the restroom before gym. This time, I pushed the door open gently, at first just a few inches, and then, after seeing that he wasn’t directly on the other side of it, opening it fully.
Once inside, I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I mean, I generally know what to do in a restroom. I’d pretty much known that since I was two. But I didn’t really have to do those things at the moment, and standing around trying to do those things right next to Lunchbox Jones seemed like a pretty scary move.
As usual, Lunchbox was at the sink. His jacket was on the radiator, his repaired lunchbox balanced on top of it. His chin was dripping, and so were the edges of his hair, and his face was red as if it had just been scrubbed. He looked at me in the mirror. His eyes had purple smudges beneath them, but they were small smudges, and his nose looked like a normal nose.
He paused, I paused, we both stared, it was uncomfortable. I sort of wished I’d stopped while I was ahead and had just gone to gym without nosing into Lunchbox’s business. But I couldn’t help myself. I was curious. Why was he in here washing up every morning? All kinds of theories were running through my head. The current favorite was that he was an escapee from juvenile detention and was hiding in the woods at night, eating raw squirrels and painting his face with mud so he could blend in with his surroundings. It was possible—those kinds of things happened in TV shows all the time.
I bent my knees, just in case he should turn into a muscle-bulging super-villain and I should need to bolt, but after a few seconds, Lunchbox went back to his washing, and then turned to the paper towel dispenser and started rolling off a long sheet of paper towel.
Slowly, I walked to the sink next to his and turned on the water. I cupped my hands underneath the faucet, and then bent over the sink and splashed the water on my face. It was cold, and some of it went down the front of my shirt. But I pretended I didn’t notice. I gathered another handful and splashed it over my face, too. And then a third.
By then, Lunchbox was done drying his face and had put his jacket back on. The warning bell rang, and he picked up his lunchbox and left the room. I saw all of this in my peripheral vision, of course. To Lunchbox, I was so busy studying my wet face in the mirror, I didn’t even notice he was gone.
Alone in the bathroom, I stared at where he’d just been, then ripped off my own paper towels and dried my face. I hadn’t needed to wash up—I’d taken a shower that morning—but that wasn’t the point.
I had gotten held up cleaning up my art supplies in seventh period, so by the time I got to robotics, the rest of the team was already there. Mr. Terry was fussing with the computer. He seemed to be having troubles getting it to boot up, and everyone except Lunchbox had gathered around to check out the problem.
“There seems to be a program interfering,” Mr. Terry said, scratching the top of his head. “It keeps telling me to open it up.”
“So open it,” I said.
Mr. Terry gnawed on a thumbnail. “What if it’s a virus?” he asked.
“What if it’s a program that makes the computer self-destruct?” Stuart s
aid. He made a booming noise and tossed a little mushroom cloud of sunflower seeds toward the monitor.
“Or makes the whole world self-destruct,” the Jacobs said together and then fist-bumped.
“Aw, yeah,” Stuart said excitedly. “And there will be, like, tidal waves and lava pits and stuff, and the only people who can save the world are the Forest Shade Middle School Rallying Robo-Raccoons.” He pretend-punched something only he could see in front of him.
“Stop talking about destruction,” Mikayla said. “It’s bad for the complexion. Plus, if the computer destructs, our software will be gone, and need I remind you we haven’t written a single program yet? We do have a tournament in a few weeks, you know.”
“Not if the world is gone,” Stuart said. He tossed another mushroom cloud of seeds at Mikayla. She rolled her eyes and turned back to Mr. Terry.
“I agree with Luke. Just open it and see what happens,” she said.
Mr. Terry looked uncertain. His finger hovered over the mouse for so long, we all leaned in another six inches. And then, finally, with agonizing slowness, he clicked.
The screen went blank and we all gasped.
But then there was a blip of light. And another. And some static. And then, it flickered on with the worst possible image.
Worse than the computer self-destructing. Worse than the world self-destructing and the tidal waves and the mushroom clouds and even worse than Stuart’s wimpy air punch.
It was Missy Farnham’s face.
Right in the middle of our computer screen, smiling that smug Missy the Cruel smile, her head tilted in that I-beat-you-again Missy the Cruel tilt. We all gasped again.
And then she started to speak.
“Hello, Forest Shade robo-losers. As you can see, my superior computer skills have allowed me to hack into your program. To be short about it, you have to watch this video if you want to get into your robotics files. Cool, huh? My guess is you probably broke the computer trying to figure out what was wrong with it. Or thought it was going to do something stupid like self-destruct or blow up the world or something.”
She shook her head like we were pathetic, an action that somehow managed to be just as infuriating on video as it was in person.
“So the reason I’m recording this video is to tell you a few things. One, you’re losers. Except for maybe you, Mikayla.”
Mikayla beamed.
“You’re actually just annoying and your toe skills are dumb, but you’re not a loser.”
Mikayla’s face fell.
“But the rest of you? Definitely losers. Especially you, Luke Abbott. You’re the loserest of all of them. And none of you can deny it, because you go to Forest Shade, and if there’s one thing that Forest Shade does, it’s lose. I am so happy to be at a school now that doesn’t lose at everything. Which brings me to the point of this video. One thing I didn’t mention to you guys at the last meeting was that Goat Grove has a new robotics team. Just started this year. Actually, just started right now. By me. That’s right, I am going to be a proud Billybot. And I have assembled an elite corps of dedicated future architects, engineers, and computer gurus to complete one mission and one mission only.”
She leaned closer to the camera. We all leaned farther away from the computer monitor.
“Our mission: to beat the pants off the Forest Shade Middle School Rallying Robo-Raccoons. And, oh, we will be so successful.”
She threw her head back and laughed, just like the evil witches do in Disney movies. I half expected a couple of devoted animal minions to come out of nowhere and join her with toothy giggles, and then for all of them to break into song with purple and black mist swirling in the background.
“Oh, Luke Abbott, I can’t wait to see your face when you admit defeat,” she said. “Good-bye, Forest Shade losers! And good luck! You are going to need it!”
And, just as suddenly as it had blinked on, the computer screen blinked off. There were a few moments of blue screen, and then our robotics program pulled up.
“Whoa,” the Jacobs breathed.
“Wow,” Stuart added.
“I know,” Mikayla said. “Can you believe she said my toe skills were dumb? How rude.”
“Yes, yes, very rude,” Mr. Terry said. “But we shouldn’t give anything that she said another thought. She was just being . . .” He searched for the right word.
“Missy,” I supplied. “She was just being Missy.”
Mr. Terry brushed his hands off. “Regardless, we have our program up and running now, so we need to get to work. Who thinks they’d like to give it a try?” He fiddled with his eyebrow, which was starting to fill in with teeny stubs. “Other than Luke, that is.”
Everyone stepped back. Except for Lunchbox, who was, as always, slouched in a chair on the other side of the room, totally silent and removed from the rest of us.
“Oh, come on, troops. You can’t let Missy get into your heads. Let’s rally, just like our name says! It was just . . . what do you young people call it now? Smack talk. It was smack talk. She’s trying to scare us.”
Everyone took another step backward.
“I don’t know, Mr. Terry,” Stuart said. “It kind of worked. She’s got engineers.”
“Not real engineers,” Mr. Terry said. “They’re kids just like you. Er . . . they’re kids, anyway. All we have to do is go over our manual.” He looked around, patting the papers on the robot table a few times. “Where’s the manual? Anyone seen the manual?”
Everyone took another step.
“It just seems kind of impossible now,” Mikayla said. “If we can’t even beat Goat Grove, what’s the point? It’s so embarrassing to lose all the time.”
“I could have sworn I left that manual right here,” Mr. Terry said. He lifted a corner of the mat and peered under it, as if maybe he just wasn’t seeing a giant book taking up the center of the table.
The Jacobs slumped onto a couple of benches by the jigsaw. “She’s right,” one Jacob said.
“We’re losers,” the other Jacob agreed.
“I’d rather be at home working on my toe strengthening exercises than losing to Missy’s Billybots,” Mikayla said.
“Yeah, I think we should all give up,” Stuart said.
The Jacobs nodded.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. In some ways it was the smallpox invasion I’d been hoping for. Only instead of actual smallpox, it was smallpox of the spirit. The team was falling apart. The manual was missing, not one thing had been programmed, and everyone was giving up, admitting defeat before it even happened. It was beautiful.
So why did it feel so wrong?
If we gave up, if we disbanded and forfeited the tournament, I could go back to playing with Randy every afternoon. I could go to the tournament in November. It would be perfect.
But all I could see in my head was that photo of Dad holding his robot and grinning like he’d just created the best thing ever. All I could hear was his voice: It was the most powerful time of my entire life, because there were no boundaries. I could make happen what ever I wanted to make happen, just because I believed.
I felt something begin to stir inside me. A sort of wrenching, adrenaline-pushed roil that began in my fingertips and spread to my chest. It worked its way up my throat, making my ears burn and my cheeks flush, and filled my mouth, and I could hardly believe it, because I was suddenly very aware that . . .
“She was wrong,” I said out loud, before I even realized the roiling feeling was spilling right out of me. I looked around. Somehow I’d ended up standing on a chair. I didn’t remember climbing up there, but it seemed right. All eyes were on me. I went with it. I swallowed and took a deep breath. “Missy was wrong. Completely. She always was. We are not losers. We are whoever we want to be, because we have brains and we have hearts and we can try. And nobody, not even Missy the Cruel, has the right to make us feel like something we want to do is impossible, because we have every right to believe we can win. There were people in this
school before us. They built and they dreamed and they believed. And they lost, too, but think how awesome it would be for us if they had won. Imagine if we went to Goat Grove or James Peterson or Saint Francis and we had a history of winning, so we won all the time because that was what we do. Imagine if we had a whole set of PRETTY GOOD coffee mugs in our trophy case.
“I tell you, people, it is our job to win. It is our job to do that for our younger brothers and sisters and for our children and grandchildren and for any student who will someday attend Forest Shade Middle School. We will win! We will prove Missy wrong and we will be victorious! We will do that because we have to, and because we can! We can all spit in Missy’s lemonade together! Now, who’s with me?” Somehow both of my fists were in the air, stretching so high above me, my shirt was exposing my belly button. I was breathing hard. I was sweating. I felt great. I let out a victorious roar.
Mikayla and the Jacobs blinked at me. Stuart chomped on a sunflower seed.
Mr. Terry cleared his throat. “Maybe I left the manual in my classroom,” he said and scurried out of the room.
“I’ve got homework,” Mikayla said, gathering her things together.
“We do, too,” the Jacobs said, following her to the door.
Stuart stood up. “Maybe a little less chocolate at lunch, Luke,” he said, then followed the others.
“What? You’re quitting? You’re letting Missy Farnham win? Just like that?” I asked.
They stood in a little cluster, gazing at one another, gazing at me. Finally, Mikayla nodded. “Yeah,” she said.
“After that whole speech, you’re just giving up?”
She shrugged. “I guess we are. Oh, well. It was fun while it lasted.” She slipped out the door.
“Not really,” Stuart said as he followed her out.
The Jacobs just left, shaking their heads in unison.
I realized my arms were still upraised. I let them drop slowly to my sides.
“Really? Quitting? All of them?” I muttered, stepping down from the chair. “I thought it was a pretty good speech.” I shook my head and went for my things. “Like Missy Farnham could do any better.” I picked up my jacket and shrugged into it. “Her speech was terrible compared to mine. I clearly had the better speech. They’ll never hear a speech as good as that one ever again in their whole lives. Quitting. Bah.”