Welcome to Dweeb Club

by Betsy Uhrig

  None of us “jumped in.”

  “Get out of there,” Hoppy ordered Vincent.

  “You don’t know how to drive,” I said on top of her.

  Vincent chose to respond to me only. “It’s a big golf cart,” he said. “How hard can it be?” He turned the key in the ignition, and the engine started purring cooperatively.

  Meanwhile, the two security guards who had been chasing Lara and Hoppy emerged from the building. The one chasing me was probably still on the people-mover, farther back than he’d been before. Stomping toward us grimly were a tall, burly guard and a smaller, more sidekick-looking guard.

  What could we do?

  There were several things we could have done, none of them involving stealing a golf cart. But Vincent had already managed to shift the thing into drive, and it was starting to roll. Hoppy, Lara, and I scrambled aboard, and Lara actually told Vincent to “Floor it!”

  I guess he did floor it, because we all lurched backward under the tiny g-force for a second. But “high speed” and “golf cart” are words you never see together for a reason. We pulled away from the curb and then started to putter along the lane at a leisurely-golf-outing pace.

  Any healthy and toned Woozle employee who used the backward people-movers every day could have easily run alongside us and kept up a conversation at the same time. But the guards didn’t seem eager to chase the runaway cart on foot. They climbed into the other one and started puttering along after us, yelling something we couldn’t really hear but was probably along the lines of “Stop!” and “Come back here!” and “We’re not kidding around!” The big one kept his original grim expression, but the small one was getting red and shiny in the face.

  Picture the most ridiculous low-speed chase you can. Then add one inexperienced driver (Vincent), one extremely critical passenger-seat occupant (Hoppy), two—let’s be honest—sort-of-thrilled backseat passengers (Lara and Jason), two yelling uniformed men (Burly and Sidekick), and multiple speed bumps. I don’t know how long it would have gone on—both parties moving at top velocity (= slow), always about the same distance apart—if Hoppy hadn’t told Vincent to “Hurry up!” and Vincent hadn’t reached the golf course portion of our drive at the same time.

  “I’m going to off-road it,” Vincent announced, and he jerked the steering wheel and headed out onto the impossibly smooth green grass of the Woozle golf course.

  “They’re going to follow us, you know,” said Hoppy. “They’re in a golf cart too, you realize.”

  “I think I can lose them,” said Vincent.

  And then he got to say something in real life that most nerds only dream of. He said it in the perfect tone, with the exact right amount of seriousness. I’m just glad I was there to hear it.

  “Evasive maneuvers!” Vincent cried.

  * * *

  Vincent’s family went on vacation every summer and did a lot of things that they would never do at home. Among these are zip-lining, white-water rafting, and racing go-carts. Vincent’s sister, Karen, was actually the family go-cart champion, but Vincent had been getting good over the years. And now that hard work paid off.

  Unlike the guards chasing us, Vincent was not afraid to take sharp corners around water and sand. He also wasn’t worried about chewing up the grass, which the guards likely were. So it was on the golf course that we managed to put distance between us and our pursuers. Lara and I could only hang on for dear life as we swerved around golf hazards and bumped over some low hills. We screamed a few times, when it really felt as if one or both of us was about to be launched out the cart’s open sides.

  Meanwhile, Hoppy was yelling a steady stream of things at Vincent that will not be repeated in this official history. Fill in whatever you want—it was worse. Hoppy knew some interesting terms, and I think she was making up some new combinations on the spot.

  Finally, we reached the tree line at the far side of the golf course, and Vincent applied the brakes for what felt like the first time. Hard.

  “Where are the guards?” he asked when we’d come to a violent stop and Hoppy was taking a breath between tirades and Lara and I were checking for scrapes and bruises.

  “I don’t see them,” I said, peering behind us.

  “We should get out and head into the woods,” said Vincent. “We can hide there.”

  I waited for Hoppy to object, because that was the dynamic between her and Vincent today.

  “Let’s go,” she said instead.

  Chapter 51

  THE WOODS BESIDE THE WOOZLE golf course weren’t real woods, you will recall. They were a collection of carefully pruned and maintained trees with a boardwalk and jogging trails winding around them at a respectful distance. There wasn’t a lot of cover in here for fugitives, is what I’m saying. We kept off the trails, trotting after Vincent, who sure looked like he knew where he was going, though I knew then and he admitted later that he didn’t.

  It was easy to move around even off the trails—no fallen logs or half-buried rocks or thornbushes here in Woozle’s Hundred Acre Wood. Just soft, fragrant pine needles and the occasional tasteful fern clump. But the four of us soon ran out of steam. We halted, panting. We could see the golf course in the distance, and the abandoned golf cart. The second cart was parked behind it. The mismatched guards were standing next to it.

  Remember that scene in The Fellowship of the Ring movie where the hobbits are hiding from the Black Rider in the woods? They are down below the road in a gully or something, and he (it?) is standing right above them in those huge otherworldly boots, not seeing them. I was thinking about that scene when I said, “Maybe we could stop running and hide under the boardwalk till they go past.”

  “Like the hobbits,” said Vincent immediately.

  “Maybe we could live under there like trolls,” Hoppy grumbled. But she was already ducking beneath the boardwalk and taking a seat on the slightly damp ground.

  The rest of us followed.

  “I would like to point out,” said Hoppy when we’d settled into a cramped cluster behind a screen of ferns, “that we would probably be in no actual trouble at all if we’d just run from the building and kept going. On foot. Without stealing a golf cart.”

  We could see the truth of that, of course. In hindsight. The four of us sat there, feeling the damp creep into the seats of our pants (at least I assume I wasn’t the only one feeling that), reviewing our recent actions and decisions.

  I know Vincent felt the unspoken finger of blame pointing in his direction. He was chewing the inside of his cheek and avoiding eye contact. I was also pretty sure Hoppy would speak the finger of blame soon.

  “You have to admit, though,” said Lara before Hoppy got the chance, “the whole chase thing was kind of awesome.”

  “Right?” said Vincent.

  I glanced at Hoppy. She shrugged. “It kind of was.”

  “It totally was,” I said.

  Vincent reached over to give me a low five.

  “So what do we do now?” Lara asked. “Sit and wait for them to capture us?”

  And here is where it occurred to us that no one was looming, Nazgûl-like, on the boardwalk above, searching for us. There was no yelling, no footsteps, nothing.

  No one was chasing us anymore.

  “I’ll have a look around,” I said. I crawled out from under the boardwalk and surreptitiously detached my damp pants from my butt.

  I looked around the woods and didn’t see any living creatures at all. Did no birds or squirrels live here? Some tame ones, purely for the amusement of the Woozle workers on their nature hikes? Apparently not. I checked out the scene on the golf course. No Burly and Sidekick. No golf carts.

  “They’re gone,” I told the others. “The guards must have taken both carts back to the building.”

  “Well, that’s a bust,” said Vincent.

  “They got what they wanted,” said Hoppy. “Which wasn’t us, obviously.”

  “Huh,” Vincent said.

  “Are you di
sappointed?” Hoppy asked him.

  “A little,” Vincent admitted. “Though on the plus side,” he added, checking his new Woozle pedometer, “look at all the steps I got in!”

  Chapter 52

  THE DAMP-PANTS SITUATION, PLUS THE lack of being chased, brought the others out from under the boardwalk. We sat on the edge of it as if it were a dock, legs dangling over the side.

  “I guess we should try to find the parking lot,” I said. “Luke might be looking for us there.”

  We glanced around. The Woozle woods weren’t exactly dark and deep, but they were large. None of us was sure where the parking lot was from here.

  “Just call your uncle,” said Hoppy. “Tell him where we are.”

  “I don’t have a phone,” I said. “With me,” I added, because Hoppy was giving me the pitying stare that seventh graders with phones gave those without.

  “I’ll call him, then,” she said, her pitying stare turning into a knowing one. My lie had been too little too late.

  “I don’t know his number,” I said.

  Hoppy was on the verge of putting her hands around my scrawny neck and squeezing, when we heard Luke’s voice calling from the direction of the golf course. “Jason!” we heard. “Come on out of there. No one’s mad… anymore.”

  It turned out we’d been easy to find. Vincent’s tire tracks across the golf course were going to keep the Woozle grounds people busy for a while.

  We trooped out of the woods and met Luke at the edge of the golf course.

  He grabbed me by the back of the neck in his version of an affectionate gesture. “You all okay? No one hurt?”

  “We’re fine,” I said. “Sorry we caused such a, ah…”

  “Commotion?” Luke offered. “Train wreck? Flaming bag of poop?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No lasting harm done,” he said. He grabbed Vincent by the shoulder. Vincent flinched. “Nice diversion, there, Vince,” said Luke. “You bought me some valuable time.”

  “Really?” said Vincent, ignoring the “Vince.”

  “Sure,” said Luke.

  “Are the laptops fixed?” asked Hoppy.

  “As fixed as I could get them,” said Luke. “There may be a few bugs, but they should be good to go.”

  “And we’re really not in trouble?” Lara asked.

  “I think Shannon is smoothing things over as we speak,” said Luke. “Let’s get out of here, though, in case they change their minds.”

  * * *

  When I was a bit younger, my mom and I were in a mother-son book club with a few other mother-son duos. We read kids’ books (which all the mothers secretly enjoyed) and talked about them once a month. It sounds awkward, and sometimes it was, but mostly it was interesting, especially when we got into mother-son arguments. The point here (and I am getting to it) is that the mothers always seemed to think that the adults in these kids’ books were irresponsible. If the adults had simply stepped up and gotten involved in the kids’ troubles, they claimed, a lot of problems could have been avoided.

  To which the sons in the group would always respond that if the adults had indeed gotten involved in their kids’ problems, the books would have been twelve pages long and super boring.

  Which is why it’s hard for me to have to record here that it was Shannon who saved our bacon with Woozle.

  Luke explained to us as we walked to the parking lot that Shannon had told Woozle security that we weren’t responsible for our behavior because we suffered from a syndrome called adventure deficiency syndrome.

  “No one at Woozle can resist a diagnosis,” Luke said.

  Adventure deficiency syndrome, Shannon had lied, was a result of too much screen time and not enough time spent in the outside world. Sufferers had so little adventure in their lives, she told the guards, that when confronted with even the smallest chance of a chase scene, they couldn’t resist. She’d invited our group to Woozle to introduce us to the outside world, she said, and it had all gone sideways.

  “The guards actually asked her if there was a foundation they could donate to,” Luke concluded.

  “Is there?” said Vincent.

  “There is not,” said Luke. “And don’t get any ideas.”

  Shannon was waiting for us at the car with our backpacks and swag bags.

  We thanked her for the bacon-saving, and she laughed it off. “Not much happens at Woozle,” she said. “The cube-dwellers will be talking about this for quite some time. I might have to plant a few adventure deficiency syndrome websites around, just for backup, but that won’t take long. It’ll be fun!”

  Lara, as nerd-struck as ever, looked like she might faint as Shannon handed over her backpack.

  My backpack felt weirdly heavy when I picked it up and shoved it into the trunk. I could only hope that Shannon hadn’t put a package of “brownies” in there.

  Chapter 53

  THERE WERE NO “BROWNIES” IN my backpack, I discovered that evening when I decided to at least pretend to do some homework. The extra weight was a laptop.

  I had figured that Shannon would hand the Prescient laptops over to the school on Monday, but here was one of them in my backpack. Why hadn’t she told me it was there? I wasn’t going waste time trying to figure out why she’d done it, though, when it was so convenient that she had. This whole commotion / train wreck / flaming bag of poop had started because I wanted to be alone with a laptop and ask the help screen some questions. And now I was. Which meant I wasn’t doing any homework tonight.

  It took the laptop longer to power up than it had before. But finally it came to life, and I was confronted with one of those dark screens that mean you didn’t shut down the correct way last time and now the computer is angry with you.

  Then the error messages began.

  The Prescient operating system has encountered a Sudden Aquatic Plunge (S.A.P.) event and needs to reboot,

  it told me in that hyperdramatic language of angry computers everywhere.

  Be aware that an unavoidable System-wide Loss of Operant Parameters (S.L.O.P.) may occur upon initial reboot, with simultaneous Garbled Linkage of Outmoded Presentation (G.L.O.P.).

  Whatever that meant. I wrote it down in case I needed to refer to it later, which is a good thing, because otherwise it wouldn’t be included in this history.

  To begin Catastrophic Recovery Upload Deployment (C.R.U.D.) program, please press any key.

  I pressed G, because it was right there in the middle of the keyboard.

  Except that one.

  What the…?

  Just messing with you. C.R.U.D. in progress… in progress… in progress…

  I waited as this scrolled by for a couple of minutes.

  C.R.U.D. complete. If S.L.O.P. and/or G.L.O.P. occur upon startup, immediately shut down the Prescient system and reboot. Do not try to operate the Prescient system with S.L.O.P. and/or G.L.O.P. in effect. The Prescient system is not reliable under these conditions.

  The usual computer gobbledygook, as far as I was concerned. Anyway, the home screen was up now, and I was in business.

  Luke had said the laptops were fixed—or as fixed as he could get them. But he didn’t know anything about the midnight files. So I decided to have a look at a recent recording. Just to make sure the future hadn’t been washed away by the sprinklers.

  I pulled up a midnight recording from earlier in the week and let out a big breath. There was the bright and bustling cafeteria, exactly as it should have been. Or would be. Or wouldn’t be anymore? Hoppy was standing by the trash cans, overseeing some kid as he nervously separated his recyclables. And there was Sonia with a new boy, both wearing retro gas-station-attendant shirts.

  Vincent and I were at our customary table, alone. He was reading a textbook. I was shoveling lunch in and talking with my mouth full, probably about my hopeless crush on Lara. Several tables over were Steve with his lump of hair and Nikhil with his shred of mustache and Andrew in his MIT sweatshirt, along with several other kids. They wer
e all laughing.

  And there was Lara, standing in the doorway as usual. Ignoring poor Jason as usual. Cool and aloof and—what? No longer destined to be, right? She hadn’t vanished from the recordings, but she might as well have. She wasn’t going to happen. Which meant that maybe none of this was going to happen? I could only hope so.

  I closed the file and opened the T.W.E.R.P. screen. I had some serious questions for it.

  Warning! yelled the screen as soon as I opened it. S.L.O.P. and G.L.O.P. in effect. Vital filters misapplied. Reboot before proceeding.

  I did not reboot. Booting had taken long enough.

  I have a question, I typed.

  Hello, Jason, said the screen, calming down. What do you want to know?

  What, exactly, did I want to know? For the first time since we’d seen our future selves, I couldn’t think of a question. I waited so long the screen went dark, and I wiggled the cursor to wake it up.

  Finally, I typed in the most obvious question of all:

  Can we change the future?

  The screen didn’t blink.

  I certainly hope so, it said. That’s what all this has been about.

  Aha! No more “That does not compute”!

  H.A.I.R. Club is about changing the future? Not school security? I typed.

  Yeah, right. Security. Great club you have there: watching really high-definition dust bunnies roll around in the empty corridors after school and finding out who wrote “weenies” on the door of the boys’ locker room. Of course it’s about the future, Jason. H.A.I.R.: Helpful Advance Information Revelation. Or how about Help Avoiding Irrevocable Results? I don’t know—I’m not Prescient’s acronym expert. It doesn’t matter. I knew Steve wouldn’t be able to resist a club called H.A.I.R. (Don’t tell me—he thought it stood for Hair And Its Relations or something, didn’t he?) And I knew if Steve joined, you would too.

  Chapter 54