by Marty Chan
On Saturday the first phase of the plan went into action. I pulled Eric’s stolen video game from its secret cookie hiding place and slipped it into my backpack. As I did I noticed, a few feet over, a rye bottle behind packages of unsalted crackers. Dad had moved his hiding place. I made a note to move my hiding spot when I came back. I replaced the cookie package and hid my backpack in the storeroom at the back of the store.
Phase one was easy. Phase two would be much harder. I had to get out of the building. I found dad behind the cash register.
“Dad, can I go out and play?” I asked.
“No, you’re grounded and we’re busy.”
There wasn’t a single customer in the entire store, just like every Saturday morning.
“No one’s here,” I said.
“Then you have plenty of time to mop the floor before the customers come.”
Mom rolled the mop bucket out, using the mop handle as a rudder. “Start behind the meat counter.”
“Mom, can’t I go out for a little while? I’ve been good all week.”
She shook her head. “What your dad say is what you do.”
Mom lied. I was pretty sure that what she said was the golden rule. She only pretended to let dad make the law. I had to convince her that it was a good idea to let me out. I pulled the mop out and swished the wet head under the wooden butcher’s block.
“Mom, there’s so much garbage here. The flies are going to get to it. Do you want me to take it out?”
She nodded. I grabbed two bulging black bags and lugged them to the back of the store. I grabbed my backpack and headed outside, where Trina waited for me.
“Took you long enough,” she said.
“You don’t know my parents.”
“Well, you’d better hurry. Remi’s watching Mr. E’s house. He saw Mr. E drive away. We might not have much time.”
We ran to Mr. E’s house. I had to go slow to keep from banging up the video game in my backpack. We spotted Remi outside the hedge of Mr. E’s red brick Asylum House.
“Was Ida with Mr. E?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Not sure. I saw the car pull away, but there’s been no movement in the yard or the house for an hour. I’m surprised you got out of the store that fast.”
Trina cocked her head and looked at him, puzzled. He knew my parents all too well. I pulled out the video game.
“Okay, we plant the evidence in the yard so Mr. E can find it,” I said. “Then we phone in an anonymous tip. If he’s anything like my dad, once he finds the game, he’ll look for anything else Ida might have taken. Chances are he’ll find your bike.”
Trina nodded. Remi gave the thumbs up.
We headed to the gate. I peeked through the slats. No sign of movement. The coast was clear. Trina pulled open the gate and I slipped into the junkyard. What I saw stopped me in my tracks.
In the middle of the yard, the Ida robot was no longer on top of the table. Gone was her buzz saw hand. Instead both her arms were croquet mallets. Her torso was mounted on what looked like a wagon that had tank-like treads. This robot could do some serious damage.
“Wow!” Remi exclaimed.
“It looks so creepy with Ida’s head on top,” Trina said.
We kept our distance from the robot as we headed to the house.
“Let’s plant the game in a place that’s easy to find, but not out in the open. It has to look like Ida was trying to hide her loot.”
“Under the stairs,” Trina suggested.
“Good idea, Trina,” Remi said. “I was going to say that too. I guess great minds think alike, eh?”
She didn’t answer him. Instead, she knelt in front of the wooden steps and peeked under. She held out her hand to grab the video game from me, but before I could pass it to her, a giant whirring noise filled the air.
Behind us, the Ida robot had come to life and her mallet arms were swinging.
NINETEEN
The robot lurched forward. I pushed Trina and Remi to either side of the porch and backed up the wooden steps. The Ida robot moved to the edge of the steps, while I backed up to the door of the porch. The mallet arms bashed the porch landing, but I was in no danger.
“Get out of the yard,” I yelled at Remi and Trina.
But they weren’t going to leave me. He picked up a pipe; she grabbed a trashcan lid. They advanced on the Ida robot. The machine must have sensed the attack, because it veered backward and spun around to face Trina. She backed up as the robot’s mallet arms clanged against her trashcan-lid shield. Trina slipped on a refrigerator door and lost her balance. The robot surged ahead, its arms swinging away.
“Save Trina,” I ordered Remi as I jumped off the porch.
I scooped up a pipe from the mess on the lawn, just as he ran in front of the Ida Robot and blocked the swinging mallet with his pipe. Trina scrambled to her feet and blocked the other mallet with her silver shield.
I crept behind the robot, hoping to find a weak spot. Remembering the circuit boards in the machine’s body, I speared the pipe at the Ida robot’s back. I hoped to mess up the internal circuits, but my pipe glanced off the armour.
“Get Trina out of there!” I yelled.
“I can take care of myself,” Trina yelled back.
Suddenly, the Ida head spun around and looked right at me with its glowing red eyes. The robot spoke, but the lips did not move in sync.
“Nice try, Marty,” the voice said. It sounded like Ida’s voice coming through the robot’s speaker system. “But I caught you trespassing on my property. You’re criminals.”
The robot’s treads rolled over a green refrigerator door and gained traction on the brown lawn as it herded Remi and Trina toward the fence. I chased after it and speared the robot’s back. The Ida head shook side to side as if it were mocking me. As we got to the edge of the fence, the robot stopped. The arms lowered.
“You did it!” Trina yelled from behind her trashcan lid.
Remi lowered his pipe and gave me a thumbs-up sign. I didn’t know what I did.
“Stupid controller!” yelled Ida from behind. She now stood on the porch, holding a radio controller. She pushed a button and pointed the black box at the robot, which sparked back to life and swung at my friends. They blocked the blows and tried to get out of the path of the rolling robot.
I continued to spear the robot, but I was doing no damage as Ida’s laughter boomed out of the robot’s speaker. I lowered my guard, and the robot body swivelled around to face me. One of the mallet arms came down at my head. I held up my pipe just in the nick of time and had to back up as the robot advanced on me.
Behind the robot, Remi swung at the machine’s head, while Trina scrambled over the junk pile to the far end of the yard. Too late, we realized that this switch in direction was part of a trap. The robot backed me inside a doorless refrigerator and blocked off any escape.
Then the robot started rocking the refrigerator back and forth. I think it was trying to tip the thing over on its front so I’d be trapped inside.
“Get me out of here, Remi!”
“I’m working on it!” my friend screamed back as he swung at the robot. I could barely see him, but every now and then I saw the pipe smack against the robot’s head. One blow knocked its wig to one side and revealed the metal skull underneath. One eye flickered and winked out.
The robot spun around and chased Remi. He tripped over a car engine and lost his pipe. As he tried to scramble back to his feet, I climbed out of the refrigerator, but I couldn’t reach my friend. The Ida robot swung its mallet arms at him.
Clang, clang!
Trina jumped in front of Remi with her trashcan shield and deflected the blows.
“Get up, Remi!” She screamed.
“I can’t. I twisted my ankle,” he said.
“Then crawl!” I shouted.
He scrambled across the junkyard while Trina covered him. The robot advanced. I tried swinging my pipe against its head and I knocked off the wig. The Ida head looked lik
e a cyborg from a horror movie. The one working red eye gleamed at me as the machine rolled at my friends.
The clatter of the wooden mallets against Trina’s shield was so loud I wondered why no neighbours had come to check on the noise. I yelled for help, but I could barely hear my own voice above the clang of the battle.
Finally Remi and Trina had nowhere else to go. They were cornered. The robot blocked off any escape with its swinging mallet arms.
“You’re going to be sorry you ever tried to take me on,” Ida said from the porch.
She pushed another button and the Ida robot inched closer to my friends. Enough was enough. I tossed my pipe at the robot, but it clanged off the metal body and fell uselessly to the ground. I sprinted across the obstacle course of junk toward the human Ida.
“Stay back or else,” she threatened.
Ignoring her threat, I jumped up the stairs two at a time.
“I push this button and the Ida robot runs right over your friends.”
“You’re not hurting anyone.”
I advanced on her. The porch creaked under my steps. In the yard, the robot continued to batter Trina’s shield. The clang of mallets against metal filled the yard.
“You can’t save your girlfriend,” Ida yelled.
“Shut up!” I grabbed the controller.
As Ida and I wrestled for the controller, the robot went out of control. It veered away from Remi and Trina, and then charged at them. The arms spun like a windmill as the robot pivoted around the yard, smashing into the scrap metal, knocking over the refrigerator and then skidding to a stop and moving in a new direction.
Trina helped Remi to his feet and the two of them flattened themselves against the hedge to avoid getting run over.
“Let go!” Ida yelled.
My fingers fumbled over the levers on the controller. My thumb caught against a lever, which must have controlled the robot’s direction, because the metal wrecking machine came straight for the porch. Just as the robot smashed into the porch I pulled Ida out of the way. I could hear wood cracking — the robot busted through the porch’s wooden lattice. I let her have the controller. She tried to back the robot out, but it was wedged under the porch. The treads spun, kicking up dirt and grass, then finally stopped. It was stuck.
“You’ve lost, Ida,” I said. “You might as well give up.”
“You’re not the boss of me,” she said. Then she called across the yard, “Do you really want to help this guy after what he did to you, Remi?”
“Don’t listen to her,” I said.
“He has a crush on Trina,” she said.
Remi hobbled forward. “No, he doesn’t.”
“I have a little scribbler that says different.”
Trina stepped forward. “Marty, you said you told Remi and he was okay about us.”
He looked at her, eyes wide with shock. “Do you like Marty?”
She said nothing, but her silence was as good as a yes.
Ida cackled. “Oh, this is great. I thought it was just a secret crush, but it’s more than that. How do you feel now, Remi?”
She waved the controller in front of me, taunting me. The real Ida was doing more damage than the robot Ida ever could.
“Why didn’t you tell him?” Trina said, scolding me.
“I told you how I felt about her,” Remi said. “You knew I liked her and you still did this — ”
“I can explain.”
Ida laughed. “Poor Remi. After you gave your precious hockey card to Trina in front of everyone in the school. And now you find out she likes your best friend. Ouch.”
“You lied to me,” he accused me.
I walked toward him. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
“You said you told him everything,” Trina said, glaring at me. “You lied to me, too.”
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.
Neither of my friends would even look at me.
“Let’s go, Remi,” Trina said.
She tried to help him out of the yard, but he waved her away.
“I still like you as a friend, Remi,” she said.
He limped away.
“Some friend you are,” Ida said to me, sneering.
Ignoring her taunt, I ran off the porch and intercepted Remi. He wouldn’t look at me, but Trina shot her laser beam glare through my sweaty forehead.
“I was trying to protect you guys,” I said to them both, looking from Trina to Remi, hoping one of them would understand. “It was for your own good.”
“Liar,” Ida said. “You were trying to protect yourself. You’re a selfish jerk.”
“I didn’t want anyone to get hurt,” I yelled back.
She came to the steps. “You didn’t care about anyone other than yourself.”
Remi said nothing. Trina didn’t have to. Ida was saying exactly what they were thinking.
She continued, “You never once thought about them. You kept them in the dark because you thought you knew better. You wouldn’t let them decide anything for themselves. You were so busy trying to protect them from the truth, you hurt them even more. You’re exactly like my dad.”
She was right. I had become just like Mr. E and my dad. Instead of thinking about Remi and Trina first, I thought about me. How could I have done this to my friends?
“Is that what you really think, Ida?” Mr. E said.
I turned around. Our teacher stood at the gate. I don’t know when he showed up, but I guessed he’d heard enough to know that Ida’s speech wasn’t for me; it was for him. On the porch, Ida stared right at her dad. Her eyes looked wet with tears, but she kept her hands at her sides.
Mr. E walked across the yard and examined the damage done by the Ida robot. While most of the scrap metal could be moved, I don’t think Mr. E could overlook the fact that the robot had smashed through the porch.
“My daughter never has friends over,” he said. “Now I can see why.”
Remi looked down. Trina said nothing. I looked up at Mr. E, hoping he was joking. He wasn’t smiling.
Ida yelled, “They broke into the yard! I was trying to defend the house.”
“Why would these kids break into our yard?”
“They stole the video game. They were trying to frame me.” She pointed at the video game by her feet.
Mr. E shushed her with a finger to his lips. He turned to us. “Mr. Chan, I seem to remember my daughter caught you stealing at school. Do you deny that?”
I said nothing.
“And now you’ve dragged your accomplices into this crime,” he said.
Remi and Trina looked up, their eyes wide with fear.
I shook my head. “No, they’re not accomplices, sir. They were trying to save me. They had nothing to do with this.”
I confessed to a crime I didn’t commit so I could save my friends. Remi looked up at me, shocked. Trina shook her head, signalling me to keep quiet.
“I’m the one behind it all,” I said.
“Vandalism and trespassing is serious business, Mr. Chan. I may have to call your parents. Perhaps even the police.”
I looked at Ida. She crossed her arms, holding the controller. She glared back at me. Was she upset I was taking away her credit again, or was she scared of getting in trouble?
“Should we call the police, Ida?” Mr. E asked.
“I don’t care,” she mumbled.
Trina shook her head. “She tried to run us over with the robot. She’s the one who’s started all of this. She stole my bike.”
Mr. E motioned Trina to come closer. “Why do you think my daughter did this, Ms. Brewster?”
“Because she’s a thief,” Remi piped up.
“If she is a thief, does that give you three the right to come into my yard and destroy my equipment?”
No one spoke.
“My Ida robot may not look like much, but it took a lot of time and energy for Ida and me to build this machine.”
“No, no, no! I’m sick of hearing about that stupid ro
bot,” Ida yelled. “We didn’t build it together. You did it by yourself.”
“Don’t take that tone with me, Ida,” Mr. E warned.
“All you care about is your stupid robot. You spend more time with it than with me. The only time you ever spend with me is when it’s time for my tests and shots.”
“I want you to get better.”
“Dad, I have to take these stupid insulin shots for the rest of my life. That’s not getting better. That’s a prison sentence. And playing with robots isn’t going to make me feel better about anything.”
“You used to like robots. You were my budding scientist,” he said.
“I hate robots. I hate science. I hate it all,” Ida yelled. She lifted the controller and flipped one of the levers. The robot roared to life and started to spin its treads against the lawn, kicking up dirt and grass.
“Ida, stop it! What are you doing?”
“I’m driving this stupid thing into traffic and I hope Mrs. Johnson comes by with her Cadillac and runs it over!”
Remi, Trina and I took a few steps back as the Ida robot tore free of the porch. It dragged part of the wooden lattice with it as it backed up.
Hooked to the front of the machine was Trina’s bicycle.
Ida let go of the lever. The robot powered down. Mr. E looked at the bike and then at his daughter. She glared at me for a few seconds.
“Yes, I did it,” she yelled. “You happy, Dad? I’m not Diab-Ida any more. I’m the girl who steals. What do you think of that?! Do you even care?”
She broke down in tears. She dropped the controller and sobbed. Mr. E walked over and hugged his daughter.
“It’s okay, Ida. We’ll work through this.”
Mr. E wasn’t the mad science teacher any more. He looked more like the sad science teacher. If I had done what Ida did, I’m pretty sure my dad would not have hugged me.
Remi nudged me in the ribs and whispered, “Just because you tried to be the hero back there doesn’t mean you’re in the clear for lying to me. You’re playing net for the next seventeen game-seven finals.”
He smiled. My lie wasn’t sharp enough to cut the bonds of our friendship.