Before I even knew what was happening, Marcus tossed some money on the table and ran out of the restaurant. Willa rolled her eyes. Charlie’s jaw was practically on the floor.
I sat, stunned. Marcus liked me? My brain went numb with shock. I opened my mouth to speak but I seemed to have forgotten what words were and how to use them.
Willa elbowed me in my side. “You like him, right?”
I nodded vigorously.
“Are you really going to sit here and let him run away all embarrassed, thinking he just made a fool of himself?”
I shook my head.
She smiled. “Do you need me to come with you or do you think you’ll be able to speak on your own?”
“I … speak,” I managed. Then I started pulling money out of my pocket.
“Don’t worry about it,” Charlie said. “Pay me back later. Go!”
I dashed outside, looking left and right. If Marcus had been running this whole time, I’d never catch up. But I saw him walking slowly, head down, toward the gazebo in the common.
I jogged to catch up. He must have heard my ragged breathing as I got close because he turned around and stopped.
“Wait,” I said, bending over to catch my breath. “Wait up.”
Marcus sat down on the bottom step of the gazebo. “You don’t have to say anything because you feel bad. I get it. You and Charlie forever, blah, blah, blah.”
“It’s not like that,” I said, sitting down beside him.
“It’s not?” His eyes filled with hope.
“Charlie and I are best friends and always will be. But I like someone else.”
“Oh,” Marcus said, his shoulders sagging. “Who?”
He really didn’t know? I smirked. “He’s a year older than I am and super smart. He’s an awesome gamer, and I recently found out that he’s really brave. Sometimes he’s too sarcastic, but sometimes I’m too sarcastic, so I guess that’s okay.”
“Do you mean … ?” Marcus slowly pointed toward his chest.
“Yes, you, dummy.”
A giant smile spread across his face. “I like you, too, dummy.”
An awkward silence drew out between us. As much as this was one of the top three most exciting moments of my life—Marcus liked me! OMG!—my mind went back to tonight and everything we had to do.
I rested my elbows on my knees. “So there’s really no Gamer Squad?”
“Nope.”
Dread churned in my stomach. “So we’re on our own tonight.”
“Not quite, lovebirds,” Willa said, coming around the other side of the gazebo with Charlie. “I hope you didn’t forget about us.”
Not for a second. Willa didn’t know how to program, but she could be the lookout for the Vegans. Charlie’s chemistry knowledge probably wouldn’t come into play, but maybe those football tackles would. Working together as a team, we could do this.
I stood, feeling a sense of determination rising inside of me. “This ends tonight. We’re going to catch the rest of the aliens, fix the code, and send them back home.”
Willa aimed a thumb at the woman and her son who were setting up their fruit stand. “I’ll go buy all their oranges.”
“I’ll bring my laptop,” Marcus offered.
“We can set the trap in the small patch of woods in my backyard,” I said. “And I’ll bring the salt.”
Charlie raised a finger into the air. “Not to burst this bubble of enthusiasm we’ve got going, but we have one little problem.”
I raised my eyebrows. “And that is?”
“We need to replay what we did the night of the field trip with the reversed code. But how do we get a whole bunch of aliens to the observatory?”
I thought for a minute. We would need a giant car with multiple rows of seats. Then I remembered Jason and his friend with the SUV. “I think we will need to involve someone who really doesn’t want to be involved.”
Charlie shook his head. “No. Please, no.”
I gave him a look. “His friend’s SUV is big enough to fit all of us and the aliens.”
“How am I supposed to convince Jason to get involved?” he screeched. “And how would I explain a truck full of aliens to his friend?”
I patted him on the shoulder. “You’re smart. You’ll figure it out.”
So you’re going to hang out in that tiny section of woods behind the house and play games on your phones,” Dad said, glancing at me and then back at the road.
We were on our way to my favorite pizza place to bring take-out home for dinner. Since we didn’t have school tomorrow, I’d run the idea past my parents to let me stay out late with my friends, catching video game aliens.
“Yep, that’s the plan,” I said.
He shook his head. “Your games are very different from mine. When I was your age, I stayed in the house with my Atari.”
“If I could go back in time and show your little Atari-loving self what games of the future looked like, you would be pretty psyched. You wouldn’t even consider sitting on the couch and watching home-design shows with Mom.”
Dad laughed, one of his big booming laughs that usually embarrassed me in public. But it was just the two of us in the car, so I didn’t care. I laughed along with him.
“You make a good point, kid.” He gave me a wink. “Maybe I should start downloading some of those games on my phone. Maybe I’m missing out.”
I continued to smile, but on the inside I drew back. I didn’t want Dad to play my games. In fact, after we got the alien problem squared away, I was deleting Alien Invasion and every other Veratrum game from all my devices. This made two games in a row that had unleashed chaos on my town. I wasn’t taking any chances.
Dad’s car slid into a parking spot. He handed me a wad of bills. “Want to run in and get the pizza?”
“Sure,” I said. Anything that got us off the topic of games.
Wolcott House of Pizza was a small, dimly lit restaurant that mostly catered to people getting take-out. But they had a few tables if you didn’t mind the noise and the front door constantly opening and closing while you were trying to eat. I walked up to the counter and checked on our order. It wasn’t ready yet, but I paid the cashier and stepped back to wait.
A couple of Willa’s popular friends—Chloe and Megan—were giggling at a table, and I didn’t want them to see me. So I grabbed a seat behind a giant fake potted palm tree and scrolled through my phone.
“Order sixty-two!” the burly man behind the counter yelled.
I glanced at the receipt in my hand. I was order sixty-four, so it wouldn’t be long.
The little bell rang as the door opened. Willa glided in, her long hair trailing behind her as the wind carried it. She looked like she was in a commercial for expensive shampoo. I glanced down at my reflection in the darkened screen of my phone and noted all the frizz that had escaped my ponytail. I looked like the “before” part of a commercial.
“Sixty-two,” Willa said as she plopped some money down on the counter.
The man handed her a giant pizza box. I thought about getting up to say hi, but before I could, her two friends jumped up from the nearby table.
“Willa!” they called, as they hovered around her like hummingbirds, one fixing the collar of her pink shirt while the other picked off a piece of possibly imaginary lint.
“Hey, guys,” Willa said. “Good to see you. My mom’s waiting in the car, though.”
“Will we see you tonight?” Chloe asked. “At Robbie’s birthday party?”
I watched through two plastic palm fronds. Willa hesitated and got that oh, no look on her face you get when you realize you totally forgot about something.
“You forgot, didn’t you?” Megan crossed her arms.
Willa grimaced. “Yeah, I totally did. I have other plans. I’ll have to miss it. Sorry!”
She turned to leave but then Chloe practically yelled at her back, “Are you hanging out with Bex Grayson?”
Megan made a horrendous face at the mere
mention of my name. “Yeah, what is with you lately? Are you turning into a nerd?”
Willa froze in place, the pizza box held out in front of her. Then she slowly turned around.
My heart rose up into my throat. I didn’t want to watch this. I didn’t want to hear it. But I couldn’t turn away. I’d spent the last few weeks trying so hard to trust Willa after she’d thrown our friendship away like an out-of-style sweater. We were so close to becoming real friends again. And now it was all going to blow up right in front of my face. Well, not really, since I was hiding behind an artificial palm tree. But pretty much.
“Yes, I’m hanging out with Bex again tonight,” Willa said. But her voice didn’t show any embarrassment or fear. It was loud and confident.
She raised her chin defiantly. “And, yeah, I am kind of nerdy. It’s who I am. Take it or leave it. You’re my friends, but Bex is, too. I was a jerk to her for a long time, mostly to impress you. But I won’t do that again. If you want to be cool with me, you have to be cool with her. We’re a package deal.”
The girls stood silently for one shocked moment. Then Chloe broke the silence. “Okay, fine. Relax.”
Megan twisted a long strand of hair around her finger and shrugged. “We’ll see you tomorrow then.”
The girls walked back to their table, and Willa walked out. No big fight. No drama. No grand betrayal. My chest rose and fell as my pounding heart slowed back to normal.
“Sixty-four!” the man yelled.
I snuck around the potted tree, grabbed my pizza from the counter, and flew out the door.
Dad was singing in the car. Terribly. He turned down the radio as I slid into the passenger side.
“Hey, was that Willa I saw coming out of there a minute ago?” he asked.
“Um, yeah.”
“Are you friends or not friends these days?”
I grinned to myself. “I’ve been pretty confused about that, but I think I’ve figured it out.”
With my belly happily full of pizza, I brought a picnic blanket out to the small area of woods behind my house. The sun had almost completely set, and a couple of stars had already begun to twinkle in the clear sky.
Charlie was already there, stacking up the oranges Willa had bought from the fruit stand. “Pyramid or square?”
I chuckled. “Does it really matter?”
“Pyramid,” he decided. “It looks cooler.”
I shook out the blanket and laid it down beneath a nearby tree. “We are going to be staring at that pile of oranges for a long time, so anything that makes it more exciting is good.”
He placed the last orange on the top. “Well, I have the most exciting job!”
I settled onto the blanket and brought my knees up. “And what’s that?”
Charlie placed a rope in my hand and explained how he’d used his engineering skills to create a booby trap system that hung above the trove of oranges. My eyes followed the rope from my hand, up to a tree branch, and around the dark brown sack of salt I’d put out there earlier.
“So when the Vegans get to the pile of fruit, you let go of the rope?” I asked.
“Yep.” Charlie beamed proudly at his contraption. “And the sack of salt will fall on them. Enough salt to knock them out immediately. Then you can carry one and I’ll grab the other.”
“Pretty cool.” I nodded, impressed. “Now let’s hope I can work my magic on the game’s code.”
Charlie sat down beside me with a let’s talk look on his face that I knew too well. “You really refused an awesome invitation to a secret group because they wouldn’t include me?”
I shrugged, feeling a little embarrassed. “Of course. You’re my best friend.”
“I appreciate that. But if you ever get a cool opportunity again, don’t let me hold you back. We don’t have to do everything together to be best friends. I mean, you’re not joining the football team.”
I laughed at that. “Very true.”
He nudged my sneaker with his. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather hang out tonight with Marcus alone?”
I gave him a look. “Just because I have a new friend that doesn’t mean I’m leaving my best one behind.”
He seemed pleased with that. “The same goes to you,” he said. “I know you were hoping this football thing was just a phase, but it’s not. I really like it. I’m having fun.”
A lump threatened to form in the back of my throat and I gulped it down. “I just don’t want you to change. I like my nerdy, science geek Charlie.”
“People don’t have to be one thing. I can be into sports and science. I can be a jock and a nerd!”
I laughed so hard that I snorted. “You can start a new clique. The jock nerds.”
“Hey.” He gave me a wry smile. “I have a science joke for you.”
“Well it’s about time,” I said.
“Did you hear about the blood cells that met and fell in love? It was all in vein. Get it? Vein? Vain?” He wiggled his eyebrows.
I didn’t want to laugh because the joke was so ridiculously terrible, but I couldn’t help it. A fit of unstoppable giggles poured out of me.
“Hey, great job being quiet,” Willa said as she poked her head around a tree. “The aliens will never know we’re here.”
Marcus came a second later, looking all cute in jeans and a gray Wolcott zippered hoodie. “I brought my laptop.”
“Sit here,” Charlie said, standing up from his spot next to me. “You two will need to work together.”
Marcus settled down beside me and our knees knocked together. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
I flashed him a smile that I hoped didn’t look as awkwardly nervous as it felt. The breeze picked up and I shivered in the cool night air. I’d been so anxious that I hadn’t thought to bring a jacket.
Marcus unzipped his hoodie and wordlessly held it out to me. He had a long-sleeve T-shirt on underneath.
“Thanks,” I said, slipping my arms into the warm sweatshirt.
He booted his laptop and pulled a USB cord out of his pocket. “Ready to get to work?”
“Sure. But you’ll need to connect to my Wi-Fi.”
“Already did. You should tell your parents that using their publicly listed phone number as their password isn’t the brightest idea.”
I snorted. “Nerd.”
“Geek,” he said back with a grin.
I giggled. “Dork.”
“I’m going to throw up if you two don’t stop,” Willa grumbled.
Marcus and I exchanged a look and stifled our laughs. Then he cracked his knuckles and began typing. We attached my phone to his PC, and his decompiler worked its magic.
While we searched the code, Charlie and Willa came up with an early-warning system that required a lookout. Willa volunteered, since she could whistle and Charlie could not. Plus, I knew he really wanted to be the one to use his rope trap.
“There,” I said pointing at a section of code. “That’s the summon functionality. That’s what I pressed when the phone fell into the machine and teleported the aliens.”
Marcus narrowed his eyes. “All the code is written in Java except this one line.”
I followed his pointing finger. “That’s weird. I don’t recognize that programming language at all. It’s not Objective C or C++ either. I’ve never seen it before.”
“It’s almost like it’s a new language entirely,” Marcus said with awe in his voice.
“That’s it, then. That’s the line we need to reverse.” My heart pounded wildly in my chest.
Charlie moved closer and looked at the screen over my shoulder. “How are you supposed to reverse the code if you don’t know the language?”
I chewed on my lip. “All programming languages have fundamental concepts like variables, functions, data input.”
“And this looks to be object oriented,” Marcus added.
“It’s a surprisingly simple line of code,” I said. “So what if we just switch the variables?”
Marcus looked at
me. “Change from a = c to c = a?”
I took a deep breath. “It’s the best guess I have.”
“Me, too,” Marcus agreed.
He made the change and then spent the next several minutes recompiling the code and reinstalling it on to my phone. Next he unplugged my phone from his PC and gingerly handed it back to me.
The phone felt like it weighed a thousand pounds in my hand. We’d done it, but we didn’t know if it would work. The only way to test it was to try it, and we’d only get one shot. The pressure felt like a giant weight on my chest.
“Nothing to do now but wait,” Charlie said.
Darkness had fallen over the woods. We fell into an easy quiet. It was almost relaxing with the moonlight filtering through the leaves. I leaned my back against a tree and listened to the night sounds—crickets, frogs, Willa whistling …
I shot up. Willa was whistling! She’d seen something!
“Everyone on alert,” Charlie whispered.
Marcus and I sat still as statues. Charlie gripped the rope tightly in his hands. A breeze rustled the branches. I squinted at the shadows, wishing I had night vision. We couldn’t exactly bounce a flashlight beam around. We had to stay hidden, wait, and pounce.
A twig cracked behind me. I had to force myself to stay still and not turn around.
The dim glow of the Vegans’ translucent blue skin flashed between two trees on the right side of my vision. That was strange. If the Vegans were coming from the right, what was coming from behind? Goosebumps rose up and down my arms. I slowly risked a glance over my shoulder. Nothing but darkness looked back.
“Bex,” Charlie whispered. “Ready?”
“Yeah, sure.” I forced myself to focus on the job at hand. As soon as the salt knocked the aliens out, I had to grab one of them. “Is Jason all set?”
“Yep. Just waiting for our text,” Charlie said.
The Vegans moved in closer. They were kind of cute, glowing in the night. They made sniffing noises at the air. I could tell they realized the oranges were near because they were making excited clicking noises. They reached the little clearing between the trees and gasped when they saw the orange pyramid. They must have thought they just won the fruit lottery.
Close Encounters of the Nerd Kind Page 9