That was pretty much the opposite of Missy the Cruel. She was tiny, with skinny legs and dimples. Her pigtails hung straight down her back in perfect little lines, and her freckles didn’t spell out anything. She was, to me, a rabbit-eating ogre. She was, to the rest of the world, adorable.
I looked down, down, down at her dainty little face. “I don’t eat ear dirt,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “It’s not nice to lie, Luke. Lying Luke. Luke the Liar. Liaruke. I’ve seen you do it.”
“You have not ever seen me eat my ear dirt!” I said, probably a little too loudly, because the Jacobs backed away a step.
Stuart stared at me. “Dude,” he said, a sunflower seed slipping out the corner of his mouth and falling down his shirt, “that’s gross.”
I shuddered. Missy the Cruel, Toezilla, the sunflower boy, and the nonidentical identical Jacobs? This was going to be a very long season.
“Maybe we should just get to work,” I said, diving into the box of bot parts, trying not to imagine my hands getting coated with foot-sweat particles.
“Now, that’s what I like to hear,” Mr. Terry said, coming into the room. He clapped his hands twice. “We’ve got a bot to build and program.” He rubbed his hands together the way the paws sometimes do when the maws bring out big platters of food.
Mr. Terry squeezed in between the Jacobs and leaned over the box of parts with his hands on his hips. He hoisted his pants and then picked up a plastic brick. “This, my friends, is the motor. This is what will power our bot to do all the things it needs to do.”
“It’s just a dumb block,” Missy said. She leaned over to me and whispered, “Like your head.”
I glared at her.
“Yes,” Mr. Terry said. “But we’re going to add to it. That’s what all these parts are for. We’ll add arms and sensors.”
“And feet?” Mikayla asked. She splayed her toes out and waved them over the box. “I think our bot should have feet. Feet are very useful.”
“Er, it probably won’t have feet,” Mr. Terry said. “But, of course, that’s entirely up to you. This is your team. I’m just here to make sure you don’t burn down the school. Oh, and here’s the rest of the team now!”
We all looked up just in time to see a great hulking shadow blot out the doorway and choke the sun out of existence.
“What?” the shadow said, only it boomed like:
(with ear drums bursting and power poles snapping in half and stuff).
“Is that . . . ?” a Jacob whispered.
“Lunchbox Jones,” the other Jacob finished in a low, ominous voice.
Sure enough, the shadow emerged into the room, wearing a camouflage jacket and carrying a bright-blue lunchbox.
Correction. Missy the Cruel, Toezilla, the sunflower boy, the two nonidentical identical Jacobs . . . and Lunchbox Jones.
This wasn’t just going to be a very long season; this was going to be the last season of my life.
CHAPTER 7
PROGRAM NAME: Building Disaster
STEP ONE: Bot tries to build second bot
STEP TWO: Building bot picks up pieces and stares blankly at them
STEP THREE: Building bot gives up and jams pieces up own nose
“What’s that?” Walter said as I wrestled the parts box into my locker for the hundredth time since Monday’s meeting. The box was dented and beat up, a corner of the cardboard ripped. He held out a white bag and beamed. “Peanut cluster?”
I reached in and grabbed a handful of candy. I stuffed one into my mouth and smiled. I loved Peanut Cluster Friday, and Walter’s mom had really outdone herself this time.
“It’s a robot,” I said. We headed toward our first classes.
“Didn’t look like a robot,” Walter said. “Looked like a bunch of plastic pieces and sunflower seeds. And it kind of smelled like feet.”
“It’s not technically a robot yet. I have to build one,” I said.
“How?”
I stopped, reached into the bag again, and thought. “Actually, I have no idea.”
I wasn’t even sure how I got nominated to build it. One minute we’d all been sharing a group tremble over the terror of having to call Lunchbox Jones our teammate, and the next I’d been walking out the door, promising the group I’d have a robot ready by our next practice. It wasn’t until I found myself shoving the box into the tiny space at the bottom of my locker that I realized what I’d done. I basically knew three things in this world:
1.Cheeseburgers
2.Strategies for avoiding girls’ birthday parties
3.How to hack into the glitches in the Alien Onslaught program for maximum cheatability (which, Randy and I agreed, isn’t cheating if you know how to beat the actual game)
Note: There used to be a 4th thing I knew—the complete and total awesomeness of my brother, Rob—but that has since been removed from the official list, for obvious reasons.
Also note: How to build robots was not anywhere on that list.
“You could get a book,” Walter said. He pointed at the library, which we were just passing.
“A robot-building book?”
He shrugged, his long curls bouncing on his shoulders. “Why not? I have books on how to build cars. My mom has books on how to garden. My dad learned how to say Does this celery smell rotten to you? in five different languages out of a book. Surely there are books about building robots.”
I peered through the library door. The librarian smiled and waved at me. My ears burned and I started walking again. “Maybe later,” I said. “I have to get to gym. Besides, I haven’t even tried anything with it yet. I bet I can figure it out without any help.”
“Yeah, probably. It was a bad suggestion. Last one?” Walter said, shaking the bag.
“Nah, that one’s yours.”
He pulled out the last candy, shoved it into his mouth, wadded up the bag, and tossed it into a trash can. “I’ll bet it’s way fun to build robots,” he said.
I stopped in the gym doorway and gave him what Dad calls one of my You’ve Got to Be Kidding looks. “The parts smell like feet,” I said.
Walter shrugged. “Yeah, there’s that, I guess.”
“Great news, men!” Coach called as he strode across the gym to where we were sitting in our squads. “The Goat Grove quarterback is definitely out for the season! Broken wrist!” He clapped his hands enthusiastically, then seemed to catch himself and bowed his head. “I mean, it’s a terrible sorrow and we all should send him well wishes that he heals quickly. But otherwise, great news!” He clapped his hands so hard his whistle bounced up and down on his chest. I couldn’t help thinking of Paw Stanley and how he’d have loved to get his hands on that whistle.
Ten minutes later, we were, predictably (because he called us “men”), feeling the pain. By my count, we had four bloody knees, two turned ankles, and seven guys who’d plain given up on life. Also, someone walked into the back of a parked car on the way outside and the car alarm was busting out all our ear drums.
“Coach Verde?” Radford Perry asked, panting, lying on the ground next to the goal post. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot,” Coach said, still trying to sound enthusiastic, but only sounding as tired as we all felt.
“Why are we doing this?”
“I’ve already told you. The Goat Grove quarterback is out for the season. It’s our shot. Wouldn’t a trophy look good in that trophy case up front?”
“We have a trophy case? At this school?” someone asked.
“Of course we do,” Coach said. “And you could be the first ones to put a trophy in it. Wouldn’t that be great?”
We all gazed at one another. A few guys shook their heads. A few others coughed and held tissues over their bloody noses. The car alarm continued bleating. I was getting a headache.
“Now, who thinks they’d like to give the football team a try?” Coach asked, bouncing up and down on his toes. “Come on, don’t be shy. We’ll start practice on Monday. Wh
o’s excited?”
Again with the gazing, the coughing, the car alarm. Some pitiful groaning provided a lovely melodic backbeat. If Forest Shade Middle School had an official theme song, that would have been it. I started writing lyrics in my head:
We are Forest Shade, we live in fear.
We’re not mighty! That is very clear.
If you want to beat us, all you have to do is show up . . . wait, no, that doesn’t rhyme . . . appear! All you have to do is appear.
Because we are the raccoons. Anyone can kick our . . .
“You. Luke Abbott, can I count you in?”
I jumped, looked around. I realized I was the only one still on my feet.
Rookie mistake. There were two general rules of thumb if you didn’t want to be singled out in a class. Don’t stand out, no matter what. Wear shirts the same color as the cinder block walls if you have to. Or if the blending-in thing isn’t working for you, try method number two: volunteer for everything, no matter what, so the teacher gets tired of you and starts looking for someone else to torture.
In neither of those rules of thumb do you stand around on the football field looking like the only guy who doesn’t have a broken bone.
“I can’t,” I said. I held one foot off the ground gingerly, like a bone had suddenly sprung a crack.
“Say, you’re Rob Abbott’s brother, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I hear he’s going into the marines this summer.”
I took a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”
“Well, a good marine like that must have a brother who plays football.”
I felt my eyes narrow. Good marine. Good marine, good marine, good marine. Didn’t anyone ever talk about anything else?
“No, sir,” I said, clenching my fists.
“Well, why not?” he asked.
“Because,” I said. “Because I’m on the robotics team.”
Well, at least robotics was good for something.
The last bell of the day had rung, and I was on my way to the front door when I saw Lunchbox Jones standing by my locker. Actually, he was standing directly in front of my locker, his arms crossed over his chest. His lunchbox dangled at his side.
My whole body went numb from the waist down. Was I walking? I didn’t think I was walking. I didn’t want to be walking. Because if I was walking, that would mean I was stupid enough to be moving toward Lunchbox Jones and surely I wasn’t stupid enough to be doing that.
But I looked down at my feet and, sure enough, that was exactly what they were doing.
I tried to just keep going, pretend I didn’t see him, pretend I didn’t need to get my history notes out of my locker to study for Monday’s test. I’d just take an F. No big deal. Nowhere near as big a deal as occupying the same breathing space as Lunchbox Jones, who might decide my tongue looked like it would make a really great bow tie.
But he wouldn’t let me get past.
“Hey,” he said. “You.”
And, of course, that was when my feet finally decided to stop moving. Really, feet? Couldn’t you even be half as smart as Mikayla’s feet?
“Me?” I said, trying not to twitch.
“Yeah, you. You finish that robot yet?”
“What robot? I mean, no. I mean, of course I have. It’s, um, it’s at my house. Cleaning. It’s cleaning my room. I programmed it to do that. And stuff.” It began to dawn on me that perhaps my feet weren’t the only part of my body not as smart as Mikayla’s feet. I willed my eyes not to drift to my locker, where, of course, the robot really was. It was like I was afraid that Lunchbox would suddenly grow x-ray vision and see it in there. And then wad me up like one of Walter’s candy wrappers and toss me in the trash.
“Okay,” Lunchbox said. He pushed away from my locker and began walking—slowly and scarily sauntering in that slow, scary Lunchbox way—down the hall.
Okay? Okay? That was it? Just okay? I almost died, and all he had to say for himself was okay?
I waited for him to turn the corner out of my sight, and for my hands to stop shaking, and then I turned the dial and opened up my locker. The already-ripped corner of the box caught on the edge of the locker door and ripped all the way open, spilling robot parts and sunflower seeds all over the hallway floor. Great.
I opened my backpack and scooped the pieces into it, cramming the power brick down on top of them with a crunch so I could zip the bag closed. Satisfied, I hoisted the backpack onto one shoulder—it weighed a ton now—and headed down the hall, the opposite way that I’d come. Dad would wait for me.
A few seconds later I pushed through the library doors. The librarian smiled and waved at me again.
“Can I help you find something?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m wondering if you have any books on how to build robots.”
CHAPTER 8
PROGRAM NAME: The Clog
STEP ONE: Robot moves into brother zone
STEP TWO: Robo-brother is too brothery
STEP THREE: Robot springs leak, rusting his robo-face
Randy and I took so long beating the alien queen in level 19 that I forgot all about the robot until Dad stood in front of the TV to block my view.
“Dad! Move! I’ve almost got her!” I said, leaning the Ultimate Gaming Zone so far to see around his leg, I almost fell over.
“What’s going on? What happened? Why aren’t you doing anything?” Randy said in my earpiece.
“You’ve got a big mess of stuff on the kitchen table,” Dad said. “Books, backpack.”
“I’ll get it later,” I said, peering at the tiny piece of screen I could see between his knees. He squeezed his knees together, forcing me to stop.
“What’s happening? Are you still there, Luke? The queen is getting away!” Randy yelled. “Don’t let her get away! What are you doing? Talk to me, man! Don’t leave me out here alone! They’re swarming me, they’re swarming!” He started making choking noises, because sometimes Randy could get a little dramatic about our games. I heard the telltale hollow sounds of the game ending. We’d lost.
Exasperated, I let the controller fall into my lap. Dad stayed rooted in his spot. He didn’t look pleased, or at all sympathetic to letting the queen get away. “I’ve been calling for you for half an hour,” he said.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
“Well, you’re hearing me now. Clean up your mess.”
“It’s not a mess,” I argued. “It’s important robotics research.” Translation: it was highly inconvenient for me to pick it up right now.
Dad glanced behind him at the TV. “Yes, obviously it’s very important. Move it. I want it gone before the maws and paws get here.”
“Okay, fine,” I said. Dad left. “I’ve gotta go,” I said into the microphone.
Randy was still making faint tortured gagging noises, but stopped abruptly. “Oh, okay, dude. No problem. You in trouble?”
“Nah, I just have to work on some stuff.”
“Oh, you gotta clean your room?” He started in with the gagging noises again. Any chore that involved stepping away from the computer made Randy feel like he was going to die.
“No, I have to build a robot.”
The gagging noises stopped again. “Dude, you serious?”
“Yeah.”
“Does it, like, walk and talk and destroy humanity?”
“No, it just pushes blocks into squares and drives over obstacles and stuff.”
“Oh. Still, a robot is cool.”
“I guess.”
I logged off the game and trudged into the kitchen. I seemed to be doing a lot of trudging lately. Which wasn’t entirely normal for me. I mean, I wasn’t much of a skipper and nobody ever said, Hey, that Luke Abbott sure has pep in his step!, but these days my legs just didn’t seem to really want to go along with anything the rest of my body was having to do.
Dad was peeling about a billion potatoes, which must have meant the maws were going to make gnocchi. Dad always st
arted by peeling the potatoes on gnocchi night because the maws would spend so much time arguing over which was the correct way to peel a potato, by the time the gnocchi was made, we would all be in bed for the night.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of gnocchi. And after Dad ruined my game, I wasn’t the biggest fan of Dad at the moment, either. And then I heard the rumble of Rob’s car pulling into the driveway. Great. I definitely wasn’t the biggest fan of hanging around when Rob was home.
I took my backpack and books into my bedroom and put them on my bed, then looked around for something to do.
My eyes landed on the robot-building book. It had a photo of a boy in safety goggles tightening a screw on a metal plate. He was wearing kneesocks like the picture of my dad at the skating rink on his ninth birthday.
Surely I could find something more exciting to do.
I cleaned my room. From top to bottom. Which didn’t really take that long, because it was Friday, which was the day Dad cleaned the entire house from top to bottom. So I spent a long time straightening my video game cheat-code books and blowing dust off my old Pokémon figures from my serious Pikachu phase.
I looked at the book again. The kid was grinning as if building a robot was the most fun thing he’d ever done in his whole life and he’d just won a big award for Most Positive Robot Builder Ever.
Surely there was something else to clean.
I wandered around in my room for a while longer, until it was obvious that I was officially out of ways to stall and it was time to figure out this robot thing.
I opened my backpack and dumped the parts on the floor. I listlessly picked up a long plastic piece that bent at one end. I rooted around until I found a matching piece and held them up. Together, they looked like smooth plastic claws. Or a gray mustache. I rested them across my top lip and scrunched it up to hold them there.
“Halloo, I’m Mr. Mustache Man,” I said. “I love my mustache. Do you see my mustache? My mustache is monstrous. My mustache is magnificent. Mustache, mustache, mustache.”