How Lunchbox Jones Saved Me From Robots, Traitors, and Missy the Cruel

by Jennifer Brown

  I turned and froze. Lunchbox Jones was still sitting in his seat in the back of the room. I’d forgotten about him. He glared at me, his face stony.

  I wasn’t sure if he’d heard me muttering to myself or not, or if he’d even paid any attention to my speech at all. I wasn’t entirely certain that he wasn’t about to take advantage of our being alone in the industrial tech room together to get his revenge.

  But he didn’t move. He didn’t make fun of me or say anything nasty. I’m not even sure if I ever saw him blink.

  Mustering up all the courage I had, I picked up my backpack, shouldered it, then dipped in a low bow. “Thank you very much,” I said and walked out of the room.

  CHAPTER 21

  PROGRAM NAME: Shifting

  STEP ONE: Robot is lost

  STEP TWO: Robot spins in nauseating circles

  STEP THREE: Robo-hurl

  Of all the things in the world that didn’t make sense, what I did the next day was the one that didn’t make sense the most.

  Things in the World That Didn’t Make Sense:

  1.Platypuses

  2.My brother, Rob, joining the marines

  3.Why “–ough” makes so many different sounds. Rough, bough, thought, though—just pick a sound and go with it, man!

  4.Square pizza boxes for round pizzas

  5.Why I suddenly and inexplicably, without warning, decided to go to the industrial tech room to work on the robot after school on a Tuesday when I could have been home beating level 42 of Alien Onslaught with Randy, guilty conscience–free.

  But that was exactly what I did. I started to have the idea that I might do it right after leaving the meeting the evening before. Everyone might have quit the team and walked out on me, and Lunchbox might have heard me talking to myself, but all in all I felt pretty good about my speech. That good feeling was lingering. And what was more, I kind of believed it a little bit.

  That had never happened to me before. I’d never really even cared whether or not Forest Shade won at something, much less contemplated whether it was possible. But now that I was contemplating, I was a little bit excited. Even though I think Dad’s garage speech had mostly been about me forgiving Rob, he had been right that believing in yourself was a really powerful feeling.

  And so that evening I began to think about maybe staying after on Tuesday to figure out the robotics program. Really figure it out, not just slap some program sequences together that could maim a principal. And by Tuesday morning, I’d made up my mind. I told Dad not to come get me until four. He felt my forehead and asked if I knew what day it was, but once I’d convinced him that I wasn’t sick and I hadn’t hit my head, he agreed.

  In Life Skills class, I asked Mr. Terry if I could mess around with the robot a little after school.

  “I thought you quit,” he said.

  “Not me,” I said. “The rest of the team did, but I’m not ready to give up yet.”

  “Oh,” he said. He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Okay. I’ve got some grading to do after school today, but I don’t see any reason why you can’t stay. I haven’t packed anything up yet. It’s all still in the industrial tech room.”

  “Great! And Mr. Terry?”

  “Huh?”

  “Is it possible for just, um . . . one person . . . to go to the tournament?”

  He scratched the space where his eyebrow had met its unfortunate robotic fate. “Well, I suppose it is,” he said.

  “Great!” I said. “See you this afternoon.”

  After final bell, I sauntered into the industrial tech room, cracking my knuckles in anticipation. I had a lot of work ahead of me, especially if I was doing it all alo—

  Hold up.

  There was already someone at the computer. And it wasn’t Mr. Terry.

  The figure was hunched over, clicking the mouse and pressing buttons. But even with his hunched-over back to me, I would recognize that camouflage jacket anywhere.

  “Lunchbox?” I asked, still standing in the doorway, knuckles mid crack.

  “Go away,” he mumbled.

  Only it sounded like “Go away,” like a normal person would say it, not:

  (with shattering computer monitors and whirring chainsaws and stuff).

  So I didn’t go away. In fact, I walked closer. He glanced over his shoulder at me, clearly not pleased that I’d ignored his command, but he didn’t get up and round house me out of the room, either, so I figured I was still good.

  Instead, he reached over and pulled his lunchbox into his lap, and then went back to work.

  I got closer. He was working in the robotics program. He expertly nabbed a box at the bottom of the screen and moved it up top, then tapped his chin a few times before adjusting some of the settings. He reached to his left and plugged a wire into the robot, then downloaded what he’d just done onto the bot. The bot flashed a few times while the data was transferred, and then Lunchbox unplugged it, picked it up, and went to the table.

  He placed the robot in the home square, his face intense as he bent over and lined it up just so. I’d noticed the ruler-like marks along the edges of the mat before and had no idea what they were there for, but watching Lunchbox mea sure his spot with them, I realized they were meant to line up your robot so your program’s turns and grabs would work at the right spot every time. He adjusted and readjusted, his movements so slight it was almost as if he wasn’t moving at all. He kept looking at a square on the far end of the table. It contained a plastic road sign. If your robot pushed a lever in that square, the sign would rise, and you would get points.

  I inched forward, barely daring to breathe. Satisfied, Lunchbox pushed a button on the robot. Its claws opened and closed and then waited.

  “Ready position,” Lunchbox said, though I wasn’t sure if he was saying it to himself or to me. “One, two, three, go.” He pushed another button on the top of the robot and it sprang into life, its wires and hooks bouncing as it trundled across the table.

  It moved a few inches, turned to correct its course, and then raced full speed ahead toward the square. It was right on target, the claws closing and creating a point that jabbed the lever. The sign went up.

  “Yes!” I yelled, pumping my fist. The robot backed up half an inch and the sign fell. “No!”

  Lunchbox looked crestfallen, but then he walked over to the bot and picked it up. “I can fix that,” he said. Again, it wasn’t really clear if he was talking to me or to himself.

  “It just needs to push a tiny bit farther,” I said, following him to the computer.

  “I know what it needs.” He clicked some buttons on the program.

  “I didn’t know you could do this,” I said.

  He plugged the wire into the robot again and clicked to download. “Neither did I. I’d never tried before. But after your speech, I figured why not try?”

  My mouth flopped open. I followed him as he took the robot back to the table and began the process of lining it up again. “You must be some kind of programming genius or something,” I said. “On my first try, the robot went crazy.”

  He chuckled, his mouth twitching just the tiniest bit toward a smile. “That was pretty funny,” he said.

  “I could have gotten suspended,” I said.

  He glanced up at me. The purple smudges under his eyes were starting to yellow a little. “That would have been even funnier.”

  “Maybe to you,” I muttered.

  But he’d already lined up the robot and reset it to the ready position. “One, two, three, go,” he whispered and pushed the button on the robot’s back. It took off again, doing the same exact thing as it did the last time, only at the end leaning half an inch harder on the lever. The road sign popped up and stayed up, even after the bot backed away.

  I cheered, but as the robot backed away, it knocked into another square, toppling over a stack of plastic bricks. Lunch-box growled.

  He went back to the computer as I restacked the bricks. It was pretty quiet in the industrial t
ech room, just the two of us, and I figured since he was speaking to me, it would be a good time to get something off my chest.

  “Hey, man, I wanted to say I’m sorry. About, you know, the whole door incident.”

  He didn’t respond; just kept clicking.

  “They sure don’t make bathroom doors as heavy as they used to. I mean, what if there was a tornado, am I right?”

  Still nothing.

  “But, yeah, I felt real bad about it. About knocking you down and making you drop your . . . your, um, lunchbox. And your nose. And your . . . um, your eyes. Anyway, I’m sorry.”

  Lunchbox turned in the swivel computer chair and for a second I thought he was going to bawl me out for destroying his face and his lunchbox. But instead he just pointed to the table.

  “You gonna bring the robot over here or what?” he asked.

  CHAPTER 22

  PROGRAM NAME: The Cog Connection

  STEP ONE: Robot runs into bigger, meaner-looking robot

  STEP TWO: Robot pokes and prods

  STEP THREE: Robot is annoying that way

  The next day, we met in the industrial tech room again. Neither of us had mentioned it the day before, but somehow I knew Lunchbox would be there without my asking, and I was betting he knew the same about me.

  In fact, we hadn’t really talked about anything. After I apologized for the door incident, pretty much the only words spoken were “One, two, three, go” and “I can adjust that.” I had mostly watched over his shoulder while he worked, occasionally bringing him the robot or resetting something that had gotten pushed out of place on the table. The whir of the robot’s wheels was the only sound for most of the day. That and the occasional cheer. Which was always me.

  By the end of it, we had perfected only the sign-raising task, but at least that task seemed to work most of the time, so we felt we had done something pretty amazing. Also, most of the jewels that Mikayla had glued on to the robot had gotten knocked off in the process, so all in all we were pretty pleased with our results.

  When I came back the next day, we worked on a different task—one where the robot had to spin a wheel to make a yellow ball end up at the bottom. I told him about finding the picture of my dad in Future Club, but Lunchbox didn’t do much more than grunt at everything I said. I thought he liked the story, though, when I told him that was what had inspired the speech.

  We never got the yellow ball program perfected, but we were close enough that on Thursday, I stayed after school again. Instead of parking myself in the Ultimate Gaming Zone, I was bent over the robotics table, trying to figure out which hash mark to line the robot on in order to get him at the exact spot where his hook would open a latch on a treasure chest in the corner. That task was worth eighty points, so Lunchbox and I were trying really hard to get it.

  “So do you think we should meet again tomorrow?” I asked as we both walked toward the front doors at four o’clock. Dad’s car was already out front, but Lunchbox was walking home as usual.

  “You can do what ever you want to do, but I’m staying after,” Lunchbox said. “I’m gonna get that eighty points.” Which wasn’t exactly an invitation. But he didn’t tell me to cram it, stare at me menacingly, or ignore me completely, so I was going to take it as an invitation.

  So on Friday we met again, although Dad complained that the maws would likely tear up his entire kitchen when he left at four to get me, but I didn’t care. Lunchbox and I were making great progress on the robot, and I was having fun.

  Lunchbox was already there by the time I got to the industrial tech room, clicking around on the computer as always.

  “I think it’s in the rotation,” he said as soon as I laid down my backpack.

  “Can you fix it? Maybe one degree will do it. And I was thinking maybe we could change the attachment a little bit.” It was weird to hear those words coming out of my mouth. They almost made me sound like I knew what I was talking about.

  “I can fix it,” Lunchbox said. He hooked up the robot and downloaded the data, while I gave the table a once-over, making sure everything was in its place.

  He lined up the bot, kicked it into ready mode, then we said the countdown together. He pushed the button and the robot whizzed across the map, heading straight for the treasure chest. It rotated at the last minute, the hook reached out, and the chest flipped open.

  This time we both cheered. I even did a little dance, going, “You da man! Who’s da man? Lunchbox! You da lunchbox! Woot!”

  I got done with my dance to see him looking at me, nonplussed.

  “What?” I said. “I’m just cheering you on.”

  “You’re weird,” he said, heading back to the computer. “It needs to rotate just a tiny bit less. That was too close.”

  I tipped the treasure chest lid closed. “What do you mean I’m weird?” I asked.

  He clicked the mouse a few times. “Did it ever occur to you that my name isn’t actually Lunchbox?” he asked.

  “Not really,” I said. “Everybody calls you Lunchbox.”

  “They call me that because of this,” he said. He reached over and rattled his lunchbox.

  “So?”

  He swiveled to face me. “So, do you want to be called Bathroom Door?”

  Oh. I’d never really thought about it that way before.

  “Well, what’s in that thing?” I asked.

  “My business is what’s in there,” he snapped, turning back to the computer. “Which you are not a part of and never will be. Just bring the robot over here.”

  I took the robot to him and he went through the process again. This time the treasure chest opened perfectly. But neither of us cheered.

  “We can try the yellow ball thing again,” I said somberly. I clicked the treasure chest lid back into place.

  He went back to the computer and started working. I piddled around the table feeling guilty, but also thinking if Lunchbox didn’t like being called Lunchbox, maybe he shouldn’t carry a lunchbox with him everywhere he went. Maybe he should be nicer to people so they don’t think he’s about to smash their faces every second of the day. Maybe he could do a lot of things.

  Suddenly he broke the silence. “Timothy Durgewell,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “Timothy Durgewell,” he repeated. “That’s my name. At home I’m Tim.”

  “Oh,” I said. “You mean your last name isn’t even Jones?”

  He shook his head and laughed. “I have no idea where that came from.”

  “Oh,” I said again, and then, having a sudden need to try out this new name on a guy I’d only ever known as Lunch-box, I said, “Can I ask you a question, Ti-i-im?”

  “I guess,” he said, and when he turned around it was the strangest thing. He looked a whole lot less mean when he had an actual name.

  “Why do you wash up at school every morning? Is it because of the woods?”

  “What woods?”

  “You know, escaped prisoner, raw squirrels, howling at the moon, that kind of thing.”

  “No. I live in a house. With three sisters. They’re all older than me, and one or more of them is always in the bathroom. It’s impossible to use it before school, so I just use the one by the guidance office. Normally I don’t have to share that bathroom with anyone. Until you started coming around, that is.”

  “Oh. That’s it?” I asked.

  “That’s it.”

  “No murderous rampage or hiding from the police.”

  “Nope.”

  “Huh.”

  He turned back to the computer. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  I went back to fiddling with the table. “That’s okay,” I said, and then added, “Tim.” I grinned at him. “Timothy Durgewell. I like it. Tim. Big Tim. Timmy. Tiny Tim. Tim the Titan. Rin Tim Tim.”

  He gave me a look, one side of his lip curled up. “You know what? Never mind. Just keep calling me Lunchbox.”

  CHAPTER 23

  PROGRAM NAME: The Almost Brother


  STEP ONE: Robot races down mat, excited

  STEP TWO: Robot’s batteries fall out on mat

  STEP THREE: Robot conks out midrun

  Even though it had been forever since I played with Randy, I was kind of missing Walter and asked Dad if we could have a sleepover Saturday night. Dad agreed, and since I’d been working so hard on robotics, he decided I could spend all of Saturday doing what I wanted, which meant I could do both.

  I grabbed a bag of chips and headed to the Ultimate Gaming Zone first thing after breakfast.

  Not surprising, Randy was already online. He practically blew out my ear drum when he saw me log on.

  “Luke! Where have you been? I thought maybe your system had died.”

  “Nah, I’ve just been busy,” I said. “What level are we on?”

  “Fifty-six. Slow week.”

  I expected myself to be really bummed that I’d missed so many levels, but surprisingly I wasn’t. I was happy that Randy had gotten us so much farther along, especially since he would be competing at the tournament without me.

  “I have bad news for you, dude,” he said. “Turns out Pluto is a planet after all, and their species is super-tough.”

  “Really? How did you beat them?”

  “Well, their butts are on their heads,” he said. “It’s really hard to look at. But all you had to do was find a stocking cap and they stank themselves out. It was pretty awesome.”

  “Sounds awesome,” I said, but in my mind I was thinking that stinking aliens out with their own butt smell wasn’t quite as awesome as getting the yellow ball challenge with Lunchbox, which we finally did.

  “You took damage,” Randy said. “Your guy has a weak gag reflex. Sorry. Nothing I could do. It was a nasty battle.”