by Zach King
“Nope,” Zach lied. “I know you’re busy these days.”
“You have no idea,” she sighed. “Who knew running
for class president would be so time-consuming? But I
have tons of exciting ideas for our school, like adding
class-grown fruits and vegetables to the lunch menu,
or maybe starting a local 4-H club, which could make
Horace Greeley an even cooler and healthier place to get
a good education.” She nodded at Aaron. “Thanks for
the cool campaign video, BTW. It looks great!”
Aaron grinned, proud of his work. “Nothing but the
best for Team Rachel.”
“Not a bad campaign slogan,” she joked. “Although
maybe we should it flip it around to say that our school
deserves the best.”
“Well, you can count on my vote,” Zach said. “I can’t
think of anyone better for the job.”
“And anyone would be better than Tricia Stands,”
Aaron added. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Rachel said. “I know exactly what you
mean.”
Tricia was their school’s
Number One Mean Girl.
A bully in designer skirts,
she had been making
Aaron’s life miserable for
years. Her power and pop-
ularity had taken a tumble after
the Jawzilla video—since Zach, Rachel, and Aaron had
swooped in to rescue her. But Tricia wasn’t one to give
up being top dog for long. Her path to getting back to
being the most popular kid in school was all based on
her being the next class president.
“I want to represent our entire class, make the school
better for everyone,” Rachel continued. “Tricia is just
going to look out for what she likes and for her own
clique of ‘popular’ kids . . . and ignore everybody else.”
“Like my new AV Club?” Aaron asked.
Riding the popularity of Zach’s YouTube videos, Aar-
on had launched the AV Club to help other kids learn
to make awesome online videos. It immediately became
one of the most popular after-school activities, and so,
of course, Tricia Stands hated it.
“Yep,” Rachel said. “The AV Club, the Robotics Club,
the Cosplay Club, the Steampunk Alliance, my proposed
4-H club—they’re all toast if Tricia gets control of the
class budget. Unless you’re into sports or fashion, you’re
out of luck.”
“Well, the good news is that she doesn’t stand a chance
against you,” Zach said. “You’re a lock.”
“Well, I hope you’re right, but I don’t take anything
for granted with Tricia around.”
Zach felt the same way. “Well, don’t forget your other
competition,” he joked to lighten the mood. “Horace
the bulldog.”
Horace was the school’s mascot: a pudgy American
bulldog who spent most of his day snoring (and drool-
ing) in his bed by the trophy case. As a gag, he was offi-
cially running for class president too.
“Right,” Rachel said, playing along. “That’s the can-
didate I really need to worry about.”
She was about to slide into the booth beside Zach when a
booming voice suddenly called out from right behind him.
“Hey, Rachel! Looking good!”
Zach turned around in surprise to see another boy,
about their age, sitting in the booth behind theirs.
“Oh, hey, Hogan!” Rachel replied warmly. “I didn’t
see you there at first.” She turned toward Zach and
Aaron. “Have you guys met Hogan yet? His family just
moved here from Australia—can you believe it?”
“G’day, mates.” Hogan rose to greet Rachel. He was
tall and tanned, with long hair, blue eyes, and a cool
cowboy-style hat. An Aussie accent advertised his roots.
He grinned at Zach and Aaron. “Nice to meet you,
mates.”
“Um, hi,” Zach said, wanting to be friendly. He had
seen Hogan around school but hadn’t really met him
yet. “Welcome to the USA.”
How long was he sitting behind us? Zach wondered.
And how much did he overhear?
“You guys should get to know Hogan,” Rachel said, a
little more enthusiastically than Zach would have liked.
“He grew up in the outback and can break a wild stal-
lion, lasso and tie a hog in less than seven seconds, box
a kangaroo, and do all sorts of awesome stuff!”
“Says the champion alligator wrassler in these parts,”
Hogan said, flashing a brilliant white smile. “You sure
you’re not actually from Down Under?” he teased her.
“Nope, I’m one-hundred-percent All-American,” she
said proudly. “We grow ’em tough here too, you know.”
“Fair dinkum,” he said, grinning.
Zach guessed that was Aussie for “true enough” or
“for sure” or something like that.
“Shake?” Aaron offered. He’d drunk four of the five
milk shakes he’d ordered and was looking, frankly, a bit
green. “I don’t think I can finish another.”
“These your friends?” Hogan asked.
“Sure are,” Rachel said proudly.
“Well, any friends of yours are friends of mine,” he
said, giving Zach a stiff handshake and Aaron a hard pat
on the back. Zach was afraid it was enough to dislodge
whatever Aaron couldn’t quite digest. But Aaron seemed
to swallow back down whatever was trying to come
up. “Your friend Rachel here is quite the all-arounder.
Wrestling gators, doing karate, running for class presi-
dent—that’s what I call a real can-do attitude. Like we
say Down Under, go big or go home.”
Aaron raised an eyebrow. “Er, I don’t think that’s a
specifically Australian saying.”
“Pretty sure it is, mate,” Hogan said confidently.
“Anyway, I gotta run. See you all around school.” He
smirked at Rachel. “Especially you, Gator Girl.”
“Absolutely,” Rachel replied. “See ya, Hogan.”
Zach wanted to barf. When did Rachel and Hogan get
to be such good buddies anyway?
Something about the cocky Australian kid rubbed
Zach the wrong way, but Hogan was new at school, just
like Zach had been not too long ago, so Zach figured he
owed him the benefit of the doubt.
He reached over and grabbed that last milk shake from
Aaron and took a big, healthy sip of it. And while Zach’s
mouth was full of strawberry milk shake, Aaron leaned
over and whispered to Zach, “If I were you, I’d get going
with that drone—ASAP.”
Chapter 3
“Who wants cake?” Mrs. King asked before dumping a
heap of flour, sugar, and raw eggs on the kitchen island
countertop. She twisted the crystal ring on her right
hand—just a quick back-and-forth, like she was adjust-
ing the temperature in the bath—and abracadabra! A
triple-decker birthday cake, complete with rich choco-
late frosting, appeared. It smelled fresh out of the oven,
and Zach’s mouth watered in anticipation.
“
Now all we need are a hundred and seventeen can-
dles,” she said.
The entire King clan, a small army of uncles, aunts, and
cousins, had convened at Great-Grandpa King’s cabin for
his 117th birthday. Great-Grandpa King’s cabin was hid-
den away high in the mountains, overlooking a sparkling
lake. It was remote enough to guarantee plenty of privacy.
And Great-Grandpa King needed his privacy. He was
probably the most powerful magician of the whole fam-
ily, which was saying something. Magic ran in the King
family. Except for Zach, everyone at the party had their
own unique power, but among them only Great-Grandpa
King was immortal. Well, not so much strictly immortal
as just that he had the ability to be however old he wanted
to be. So even though he’d been alive for 117 years, he
looked like a teenager. His magical object was a special
fountain pen, and every year after he blew out the can-
dles for another birthday, he just wrote down the age he
wanted to be, and—presto, change-o—that’s how old he
was. It really was amazing, but then Zach’s whole family
was pretty amazing. Well, everyone, that is, except Zach.
Without his snapbacks, Zach was the only King in genera-
tions not to have powers. But he tried not to let that bother
him as he watched his relatives do their things.
“Hi, everybody!” Gwen popped up on the computer
screen to join the party in virtual reality. “Looks like I
streamed in just in time for dessert.”
Gwen reached out through the screen to grab two
plates of cake off the counter. “Your mom outdid her-
self this year,” she said, handing Zach the smaller of the
two pieces. “If I had her power, I’d weigh seven hundred
pounds. Remember that party where she made giant
fried turkey legs for everyone? OMG—so delicious.”
“Yep. That was the same year that she made that choc-
olate fondue fountain,” Zach added, shaking his head.
“I had a stomachache for days after that.”
The cousins laughed at the memory, and Zach was se-
cretly happy that Gwen hadn’t brought up the last family
party, when Zach had tried to steal the family talent show
by attempting to fly using a couple dozen super-shaken
soda bottles. Mom had been forced to use her powers
to turn a tablecloth into an enormous pillow to soften
Zach’s crash landing so he wouldn’t break his skull.
“Can I ask you for a favor?” Zach had been waiting
all afternoon for Gwen to log on so he could ask for her
help, but now that she was on the screen in front of him,
he found himself tongue-tied. “Next week there’s, like,
this big dance at school. . . . And there’s this girl. . . .
And I really want to impress her. . . . And I had this
idea . . .”
“Just spit it out, cuz. What do you need?”
“Can you download a drone for me?”
“Is that all? No problem. The way you were talking,
I thought you wanted me to download her.” She tapped
quickly on her keyboard and called up a photo of a
drone from a home shopping site. Zach’s cousin Benny
came in just as she slid the image off the screen into real
life. Benny caught the full-size gadget and handed it to
Zach. The remote-controlled quadcopter weighed sever-
al ounces and felt perfectly solid. In theory, it had more
than enough lifting power to deliver a dance invitation
to a certain well-known cowgirl. “Drones are easy. Peo-
ple are hard. You know what happened the last time I
tried to flick a person off the screen?”
“Do I want to know?” Zach asked.
“The thing is, conjured items don’t last long. They fade
away after a few days. Fine for an inanimate thing. Not
so cool when a live person suddenly starts to fade away.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Never again. It’s just too freaky when some-
one starts to pixelate right in front of you. Oh, don’t
worry,” she said, noticing Zach’s gape-mouthed distress,
“he was fine. He just went back to where he’d been—a
little disoriented, maybe, and just in his boxer shorts,
but good as new.”
“So how long do I have with it?” Zach asked, holding
up the drone.
“Hard to say exactly—but figure about twenty-four
hours.”
“Perfect,” Zach said. He’d ask Rachel to the dance to-
morrow, right before school. “You’re a lifesaver.”
She shrugged. “What else is family for?” She glanced
down at her empty plate. “Let’s see if there’s any cake
left.”
“You want this piece?” a new voice piped up. “I’m not
going to finish it anyway.”
Zach’s little sister, Sophie, appeared out of nowhere,
holding a barely touched slice of cake. Her hot-pink
glasses gave her the power to turn invisible at will. Zach
never really knew whether she was around or not. He
sometimes thought that this was just about the worst
possible power a little sister could have.
“Sophie!” he blurted. “How long have you been here?”
“Long enough.” She was two years younger than Zach,
and barely half his height, but she often acted as though
she was the older sibling instead. “Nice drone, bro. Let
me guess. This has something to do with Rachel?”
“Rachel, eh? Is that the girl you’re going to ask to the
dance?” Gwen asked.
Zach blushed in embarrassment.
“You’re asking Rachel to the dance?” Sophie yelped.
“Way to go, big bro.”
“You think he has a chance?” Gwen asked.
“If he plays it cool,” Sophie told her cousin.
“So, none at all,” Gwen cracked. The two girls
laughed. Zach took the teasing in the way it was meant.
He knew they both loved him and would always have
his back, but still, that they doubted him just made him
all the more determined to wow Rachel and take her to
the dance.
Chapter 4
On Monday morning, Zach woke early to make sure he
got to school before Rachel did. He was waiting on the
sidewalk in front of the main entrance when her school
bus pulled up. The drone hovered out of sight, ready
to deliver a handwritten invitation to the dance. Zach
had spent hours writing
and rewriting it until
the note was just
right: friendly but
not too mushy, ca-
sual but not too casual, funny but not too jokey. He’d
triple-checked the spelling, too.
“Make sure you stay in frame,” Aaron yelled over to Zach.
Aaron was on hand to film the Big Moment. Zach
flashed his friend a thumbs-up, but honestly, he wasn’t sure
he really wanted the moment up on social media. But Aar-
on had insisted. Subscriber numbers were slowing down.
They needed something fresh, and Aaron was convinced
that this would be it. “Perfect,” Aaron yelled back after
Zach shimmied over a
step. “Scene one, take one: Ask Ra-
chel to the Dance. Ready when you are,” Aaron said, utter-
ly unconcerned about who else could overhear.
Zach gulped and glanced down at his phone, which
had the drone-control app open. His hands were sweaty.
His stomach churned. He held the device tightly, as if it
might decide to run away at the last moment. Zach was
way too aware of just how many other kids were milling
around in front of the school. One way or another, he
was going to have an audience.
He gulped again as Rachel’s bus pulled up and she
stepped out onto the sidewalk.
This is it, he thought.
Rachel gaped at Hogan in surprise, caught complete-
ly off-guard by both the drone and the invitation. She
wasn’t sure what to say. Stalling, she nodded at the cam-
paign button on his shirt.
“Nice button,” she said. “Does this mean I’ve got your
vote?”
“Count on it.” He flashed a gleaming smile at her. “I
can’t think of anyone else I’d rather vote for . . . or take
to the dance.”
“Good answer,” she admitted. “Both parts.”
“So what do you say?” Hogan asked as his drone hov-
ered overhead. It whirred faintly in the background.
“Shall we give it a whirl?”
Rachel hesitated, awkwardly shifting the bouquet
from one arm to the other. To be honest, she had been
hoping that Zach would ask her to the dance, but if he
wasn’t going to get around to it . . .
Plus, she thought, that was a pretty neat trick with the
drone.
“Sure,” she said. “Why not? Sounds like fun.”
“Aces!” he twanged. “Can’t wait!”
She glanced over at Zach, who was hanging out with
Aaron as usual. They were eyeballing the drone like ev-
eryone else.
Sorry, Zach, she thought. You snooze, you lose.
“You’re not going to let him get away with this, are
you?” Aaron asked Zach, sounding indignant on his
friend’s behalf. “Stealing your idea, I mean.”
Zach stared bleakly at the control app on his phone.