The EngiNerds Strike Back

by Jarrett Lerner

  Because something out there is apparently threatening the continued existence of our planet.

  And we, the EngiNerds, are supposed to help put a stop to it?

  That right there is more than enough to cause some terror.

  I mean, we’re kids.

  Yeah, sure—smarter-than-average, mechanically and technically proficient kids.

  But still kids.

  And due to that, I highly doubt, whatever the threat is, we’re going to have much luck convincing any adults to help us out. What are we supposed to do, tell our parents or the police that there’s this big cloud that’s actually a spaceship, and that the alien piloting the thing around came down to Feldman’s Field to tell us that our planet is in serious danger? Mm-hmm. Like that’s going to work.

  But there’s no point dwelling on all that just yet, not when we don’t even know the specifics of the problem we’re dealing with. So I do my best to shove the crazy-making thoughts and panic-inducing terror away. I remind myself that, in addition to being the bravest person in the world, Dan might also be the most brilliant. If he says we can trust this alien, we can.

  So I get back to my snail-paced walk home.

  I linger.

  I loiter.

  I dilly-dally.

  I dawdle.

  And I guess I do a good job of it.

  Because soon enough, I don’t even have to try to delay.

  Suddenly, I can’t help but do it.

  It’s a tree that does it to me first.

  Not a particularly special tree.

  Just…

  … a tree.

  You know, a trunk and a bunch of leaves and some branches.

  But looking at the tree, and at the same time thinking about the fact that something is threatening to obliterate it—that makes the tree seem like nothing short of a miracle.

  And then everything else is seeming miraculous too.

  Not just all the other trees.

  But the bushes.

  And the flowers.

  And the birds.

  And every single individual blade of grass.

  Even the cars passing by and the stores across the street.

  And all the people, too, everyone so busy living their lives, looking at their phones or zipping by on their bikes or sipping coffee or nodding their heads along to whatever’s playing in their earbuds or cars.

  We’re all here, together, in this moment, our personal paths just so happening to crisscross as our planet spins around a star in an impossibly vast, ever-expanding, mind-bendingly mysterious universe. It’s just all so wonderful and strange and beautiful and fascinating and—

  “Earth to Captain Oblivious! Earth to Captain Oblivious!”

  The voice barges into my brain and chases everything else out of it.

  I blink—and realize that I’ve stopped halfway across the street, in the middle of a crosswalk, and that I’m blocking an SUV that’s trying to make a turn.

  “HELLO?!”

  It’s the driver of the car, his head sticking out of the window.

  “You gonna move sometime this century, or what?!” he demands.

  For half a second, I consider sharing with him what I’d been thinking—all that stuff about our crisscrossing paths and our strange, beautiful universe, and how we’d better not take it for granted, because you never know when it might, you know, all of a sudden be reduced to dust. But then the guy yanks his head back into his car and slams his hand down onto the horn.

  BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

  So I just hurry across the street and get on my way.

  7.

  I MANAGE TO MAKE IT all the way home without getting hit by a car or walking into a tree or doing anything else too Captain Oblivious–y.

  Kitty’s at the door waiting for me, tail wagging and tongue flapping. Probably because I’m late for his usual Saturday afternoon walk.

  He’s looking from me to his leash, which is dangling off one of the hooks of the nearby coatrack, his eyes bouncing back and forth like he’s watching a fast-forwarded tennis match.

  Me.

  Leash.

  Me.

  Leash.

  Me.

  Leash.

  Finally, I grab the leash and clip it to Kitty’s collar.

  He yelps with gratitude and excitement, leaps into the air, then rolls over onto his back and wriggles around like he’s trying to scratch a terrible itch. He’s not, really. It’s just one of the many odd ways that the pooch expresses joy.

  Watching him, a part of me envies Kitty—his obliviousness. I mean, the dog has never had a serious worry in his life. He exists within an impenetrable bubble of certainty that everything is okay and is going to go on being okay. It all sounds pretty darn nice.

  But another part of me realizes that if we, the EngiNerds, really can do something about this threat to our planet… well, then we’ve got to do it. We can’t just turn away, however daunting and terrifying it is. Deep down, I know that pretending everything is fine doesn’t magically make everything fine. Ignoring a problem will never, ever fix it.

  Kitty rolls over and climbs back up onto his feet, completing his we’re-going-for-a-walk celebration. Then he yanks me out the door, across the porch, down the steps, and up the sidewalk, as eager as if he hasn’t been outside in a week.

  8.

  IT FEELS LIKE KITTY AND I run around outside for hours.

  Partly that’s because I can’t help but sneak glances up at the sky every thirty seconds or so. And there are plenty of clouds in it. But none of them ever appear to be sinking any lower. They’re all stubbornly stuck up there in the atmosphere.

  Still, my thoughts pick up speed every time I look at them. The concerns, the questions—they come at me fast.

  Where’s Dan?

  What’s he doing?

  Is he scared?

  Is he okay?

  Will I ever see him again?

  Should I have kept him from going up there?

  Should I have at least asked the alien more questions before I let him go, like my parents used to ask me back when they first started letting me go out on bike rides by myself?

  Like, where will you be going?

  When will you be back?

  Will you promise not to do anything dangerous or dumb?

  And a couple other pretty important questions:

  Why in the world is our planet in grave danger?

  Who or what is about to annihilate it?

  When Kitty and I finally get back home, I’m sure it’s got to almost be dinnertime.

  But when I step into the kitchen and check the clock, I find that a mere fifty-two minutes have passed.

  Fifty. Two. Minutes.

  Mikaela wasn’t kidding when she said this was going to be the longest wait in history.

  I head up to my bedroom and kill some time by making a list of things I could do to kill some time.

  Then, one by one, I do them.

  I inventory the shoeboxes of supplies that I keep on my shelves and in my closet.

  I put away all the books and tools and toys that have gathered on my desk and piled up on my floor since I last put them away.

  I clean out and organize my backpack, then refill every one of my mechanical pencils with lead and even replace all the erasers that need replacing.

  I’m just about to pull out my puzzle collection and count the pieces in each box to make sure none are missing when my mom calls me downstairs.

  I head down to talk to her, for the first time in my life actually kind of hoping that she’ll give me some chores to do.

  She doesn’t.

  But she does something nearly as good.

  She puts me in charge of ordering dinner.

  So I sift through the stack of takeout menus we keep in the kitchen drawer and call in an epic order from General Noodles.

  I hang around downstairs until the food arrives and engage my parents in a rousing game of Guess How Many Pairs of Chopsti
cks We’ll Get With Our General Noodles Order.

  Dad guesses two dozen.

  Mom goes with three dozen.

  I throw out an even fifty.

  We’re all wrong.

  Our food arrives with sixty-three of the slim utensil-holding paper packages.

  I’m pretty sure that’s an all-time high.

  We eat.

  Midway through the meal, the phone rings. And even though I’ve managed, briefly, to distract myself from thinking about Dan, as soon as I hear that sound, my thoughts bounce right back to him, sucked there like a bunch of iron fillings to a magnet.

  “I’ll get it!” I shout.

  And I’m out of my seat before my parents can even put down their chopsticks. I grab the phone and dart upstairs to my bedroom.

  “Hello?”

  “Remember the time John Henry Knox tried to tell that joke about the piece of rope?”

  It’s not Dan, but Jerry.

  And apparently he called me up to… talk about something that happened—what was it—a year and a half ago?

  “He couldn’t get it out right,” Jerry continues. “He kept doing it backward, saying the punch line before the setup. And Max found that so funny that he started cracking up, and he—he—”

  Now it’s Jerry who’s cracking up. And Jerry’s laugh? It’s one of those infectious ones. Hearing it, you can’t help but feel good—or at least a little better than you did before you heard it.

  “He—he—”

  Smiling, I finish for Jerry:

  “He peed his pants.”

  Jerry erupts.

  Which gets me laughing too.

  “And then—” Jerry says, squeezing the words in between laughs where he can. “Then Amir—he—he said—”

  “Oh yeah!” I laugh again, remembering. “He said every time he laughs he pees a couple drops.”

  “A couple drops!” Jerry shrieks.

  I plop down onto my bed, sink my head into my pillow, and cast my mind back to that day. It was a good one. A great one, even. Our worries were microscopic. Maybe even nonexistent. We laughed and laughed. And it occurs to me then that that’s what Jerry’s up to. Offering some relief from this worrisome waiting for Dan. Which he knows might be most intense for me, his best and oldest friend.

  Man.

  Everyone deserves a friend as awesome as Jerry.

  But he’s not done yet.

  Once he recovers from his latest bout of laughter, I hear a series of clicks and beeps. And then:

  “You have reached the Knox Residence.”

  It’s John Henry Knox, of course.

  Jerry must’ve patched him in.

  And even though John Henry Knox is most likely the most annoying know-it-all in human history, even though he possesses the astonishing capability to ruin every conversation he enters and I therefore try to strictly limit the amount of conversations I have with him… well, it’s actually kind of nice to hear the kid’s voice.

  There’s another bunch of beeps and clicks.

  And a second later, Max is on the line.

  Then Amir.

  And Alan.

  And Simon.

  The only one of the EngiNerds that Jerry can’t get on the phone is Edsley.

  But he does finally reach Mikaela.

  And since she wasn’t there for John Henry Knox’s first attempted telling of the rope joke, we ask him to give it another go.

  Which somehow leads to even more laughter than it did the first time.

  An hour later, when we all hang up, my throat aches and my eyes are still watering.

  Have I forgotten about Dan?

  Of course not.

  Are my worries about him gone?

  Not even slightly.

  But thanks to my friends, I’m able to bear them a bit more easily.

  Thanks to my friends, I’m even able, eventually, to close my eyes and get some sleep.

  9.

  I WAKE UP BRIGHT AND early.

  Or just early, since it’s still not all that bright out yet.

  It seems like the sun has just poked its head up into the sky, but it’s hard to tell, what with all the clouds crowding the horizon.

  I spend a couple minutes peering at the cottony puffs and tufts out of my bedroom window, desperate for answers about Dan.

  Is he still up there?

  Is he okay?

  Are we going to be able to handle whatever this threat to our planet is?

  Finally—and quietly, so I don’t wake up Kitty and my parents—I head down to the kitchen.

  There, I pluck a cookbook off the shelf and page through it until I locate the most complicated-looking breakfast recipe I can find.

  Why?

  Did I, in the middle of the night, decide that, should the planet not be reduced to dust, I’m going to dedicate the rest of my life to perfecting the frittata or creating the world’s greatest quiche?

  Nope.

  I just want to keep myself good and distracted until Dan finally arrives and fills me in on what the heck is going on.

  But I don’t even make it past the Table of Contents before I hear it:

  Knock! Knock! Knock-knock knock!

  Knock!

  Knock!

  It’s Dan’s knock.

  The same one he always does and has done since the second grade.

  I slam the cookbook shut and hurry for the door.

  10.

  “THANK GOD YOU’RE—” I SAY as I swing open the door.

  “Here?” says Mikaela.

  “You’re not Dan.”

  She looks down at herself. Then back up at me.

  “Correct,” she confirms.

  I glance behind her, at the clouds.

  “How’ve you been holding up?” she asks.

  “I was just about to cook my first frittata.”

  She snorts.

  “Sounds about right,” she says. “I reorganized my books. Twice. First chronologically, then by color.”

  “Dang,” I tell her. “Wish I’d thought to do that.”

  Mikaela tips her head toward the rest of my house behind me.

  “You want any help with that frittata?”

  “I’d love some,” I say, stepping back and opening the door up a little wider. “Come on in.”

  11.

  IT TURNS OUT WE DON’T even have all the ingredients I’d need to make a proper frittata, so I fix a couple bowls of cereal and Mikaela and I have breakfast together.

  “So…,” I say, sloshing my cereal around to get it a little soggy. “I never really got a chance to say—”

  “Don’t,” she stops me.

  And I stop my spoon.

  “Huh?”

  “Apologize,” Mikaela says. “Don’t.”

  “Um,” I say.

  “Listen,” she tells me. “I get it. Why you, you know…”

  “Acted like a total jerk?” I offer.

  “Right. You were confused. You were scared. You were trying to protect your best friend.”

  I nod, because she’s right.

  “Still,” I say, “I’m not sure that means I get to act like a jerk.”

  “I guess not,” she says.

  I let go of my spoon.

  Clear my throat.

  And look Mikaela in the eye.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I doubted you. I thought the idea of aliens being responsible for everything that was going on was… crazy.”

  “And I get that,” Mikaela says. “It’s not exactly an easy thing to wrap your head around.”

  “Yeah, but I could’ve gone about struggling to wrap my head around it in a lot less jerky of a way. And you were right. And if you hadn’t been there with us yesterday? Well…”

  Mikaela grins.

  “You would’ve been on the receiving end of a Klaus fart.”

  “Probably more than one. That was one ticked-off robot.”

  Mikaela laughs.

  I do too.

  And it feels go
od.

  Though I can’t help but also feel a tug of guilt for feeling good when I’ve still got no idea if Dan’s all right. Especially since, at this point, he’s been up there on that spaceship for over twelve hours. What could possibly be taking so long?

  I grab my spoon and scoop up a bite of cereal. But then I set it right back down, because I realize I’ve got one more thing to say to Mikaela.

  “Hey. I’m, uh—I’m glad you’re here, too. For this.” I wave my hand around. Up at the ceiling. Over toward the window above the sink, through which you can see a patch of cloudy sky. “Whatever this is.”

  Mikaela opens her mouth to answer.

  But before she can:

  Knock! Knock! Knock-knock-knock!

  Knock!

  Knock!

  Mikaela grins again, then shoves her chair back and hops to her feet.

  “Let’s go find out.”

  12.

  I SWING OPEN THE DOOR—

  —and let out a long, low groan.

  “Well,” says John Henry Knox. “Good morning to you, too, Kennedy.”

  He leans to the side to see Mikaela.

  “Hello, Mikaela.”

  Then he leans a little bit more to the side, a hopeful look on his face.

  “Dan hasn’t shown yet,” I tell him.

  John Henry Knox stands up straight—and sighs. His shoulders sink on the exhale. He looks like he’s had a long, hard night.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he tells us. “I made a topographic map of my backyard. I taught myself conversational Portuguese. I read four graphic novels. Then I calculated how many chopsticks we’d need in order to build a ladder to the moon. And this morning, I made two batches of croissants. Also a frittata.”

  “A frittata?” I ask.

  “Yes. The key is to use full-fat dairy, and to take the pan out of the oven just before the eggs are completely cooked.”

  I take a good long look at John Henry Knox.

  At the dark bags beneath his tired eyes.

  At the smear of egg yolk stuck to the back of his wrist.

  And even though I know I might regret it, even though it’ll probably only take five minutes for the kid to start to annoy me, I take a step back, open the door a little wider, and tell John Henry Knox, “Come on in.”