The Nerdy Dozen
Page 17
Welcome home, ManofNeil! Sam sent in a message that flashed across his screen. He smiled.
Can’t play now, he wrote back. C U later?
Neil wandered slowly downstairs, his attention drawn to the family’s mantel. He removed the entries occupying his side and placed Sam’s trilobite there, along with the patch the rescued pilot had given him. He heard a beep in the other room and walked over to play the voice mail message waiting for the Andertols.
“Hi, guys. It’s Mrs. Scott. Tommy said he called already but glad to hear Neil’s friend’s mom was able to come pick him up. I think the other boys really loved having him around, if he’d ever like to—”
“You have no new messages,” said a robot voice as Neil pushed delete with a smirk. For once Neil appreciated Tommy Scott and his dense brother, even though Tommy had clearly only been lying to save himself.
Suddenly Neil heard the sounds of his mom arriving home, the metal planks of the garage door rolling up their smooth metal track. He turned to see Janey swing open the door connecting the garage to the kitchen. She was still wearing her white karate gear, and three yellow-banded medals hung around her neck. In her left hand, she held a trophy shaped like a hand chopping a giant evergreen tree.
“Neil! First place!” she screamed, punching a decorative basket of fake flowers off the stone countertop with her free hand.
“Nice job, Janey!”
He reached out his hand for a high five. Janey looked puzzled, not sure whether this was actual encouragement or if her brother had been replaced by a robot.
“Hi, honey,” said Neil’s mom. She walked through the garage doorway, her arms filled with bags of clothes and the watered-down remnants of an iced coffee. “You have a good weekend at Tommy’s? I was surprised not to get a call from you all weekend. You must’ve been having so much fun!”
“Erh, yeah. Yeah, something like that. It was a really great weekend,” Neil said with a smile.
“That’s great. We’re both starved. Can you order pizza, Neil?” Mrs. Andertol asked, pushing her sunglasses to the top of her head.
“Sure thing,” Neil replied. He went to the cordless phone in the kitchen and began to order. “Hi, delivery, please? Thanks. We’d like an extra-large pizza. Extra pineapple.”
Neil’s mother stopped in her tracks as if she had just heard a criminal confession.
“Neil, are you okay?” she asked, feeling his forehead with the back of her hand while he gave the pizza place their address.
“Never been better!” he said, hanging up the phone. “Have you never had pineapple pizza before, Mom? You really need to expand your horizons. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”
He climbed the stairs two at a time and returned to his room. Sam had signed off, but a new message blinked in its place.
User HarrIsTheBest has sent you a message.
The message consisted of a simple line of text with attachments. Neil—Thanks for your help. Enjoy.
Attached were Feather Duster and the anticipated sequel—Feather Duster 2: Eclectic Bugaboo (Beta). Neil opened the new game and saw the menu screen. Since it wasn’t an official game yet, the wallpaper showed a picture of Harris and Weo. They each sat atop an ostrich, green motion-sensor balls stuck to their birds’ legs, wings, heads, and tails.
Neil selected the game, and the screen flashed to life with the plumage and chortling of an ostrich. A warning message appeared, alerting the user that since this was still in demo-only mode, options for a cartridge with a smellable experience were still unavailable.
As Neil selected his ostrich, which came with a new naming option, the doorbell rang downstairs.
“Whoa, that was quick,” he said, pausing the game before rushing down the steps. He flung open the front door only to hear the squeak of tires. A black SUV was pulling away, turning the corner at the end of his street. Instead of the pizza he was expecting, a white envelope sat on the doorstep. Neil picked it up and examined it closely, running his finger over the logo for NASA printed on the thick white paper. Neil turned it over. TOP SECRET: FOR N. ANDERTOL ONLY was scrawled on the back.
Neil shut the door and raced back upstairs, locking himself in his room before sliding his forefinger through the adhesive closure. The envelope contained an unlabeled black CD and a note. Quickly fumbling with the buttons on his console, Neil popped open the drive and inserted the disc. The screen opened with a rocket, much like a Chameleon, hurtling through black and starry outer space. Swirls of stars and galaxies were bursting out in every direction.
Neil looked down at the note. The writing was in all capital letters, written in fountain pen.
Nice work, Andertol. I wanted to write you personally to say so. We probably wouldn’t be alive without you. You should feel good about that. But now I get a summer with the grandkids . . . babysitting. Go figure. Anyway, thought you should have this. Keep practicing. You never know when we may need you again.
—Major Clancy Shannon Jones.
Neil looked up at the screen and smiled. He grabbed his controller and confidently pressed PLAY.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A huge thank-you to the folks at Alloy and HarperCollins for making this series possible. First, my brilliant editors: Katie McGee, for her encouragement and direction, and Rachel Abrams for her invaluable insight and notes.
Joelle Hobeika, for her incomparable support and ability to tolerate years of ridiculously unprofessional emails. And many thanks to Josh Bank for the opportunity.
I am thoroughly grateful for the unending support I’ve received from my family and friends. I appreciate you all, and promise I will get better at keeping in touch.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JEFF MILLER is a former newspaper delivery boy from Kent, Ohio, and is a top scorer in coffee drinking. The Nerdy Dozen is his first novel.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
CREDITS
Cover art © 2014 by Les McClaine
Cover design by Alison Klapthor
COPYRIGHT
The Nerdy Dozen
Copyright © 2014 by Alloy Entertainment
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Produced by Alloy Entertainment
1700 Broadway, New York, NY 10019
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013951081
ISBN 978-0-06-227262-1
EPUB Edition © APRIL 2014 ISBN 9780062272645
14 15 16 17 18 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
/> New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollins.com