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

by Jennifer Brown

  He yelled it so loud, I almost fell over. He was breathing really hard now, and he paced in small circles in front of his bed, kind of reminding me of a bull. “I lost my lunchbox,” he repeated.

  If my mouth had fallen any farther open, it would have broken my shoe. All this? Because of his silly lunchbox? My smooch-dance arms dropped to my sides. “That’s it?” I asked. “You’ve missed a whole week of school and abandoned your robotics team on the most important week of the season because you lost your lunchbox? What are you, five?”

  He was back to the not-answering thing, which only made me even madder at him.

  “Maybe you can bring a security blanket to school instead,” I jeered. “Maybe you can tie a pacifier to your collar. Maybe your mommy will come burp you at lunchtime. Maybe you can—”

  “It had important things in it, okay?” he shouted, interrupting me. He abruptly stopped pacing and flopped back onto his bed. He covered his sweat-slick forehead with his palm.

  I put my hands on my hips. “What kind of important things? What do you keep in that thing, anyway? What could be so important?”

  “None of your business,” Lunchbox yelled, but the yell kind of tapered off at the end. He took a deep breath, and then, softer. “It had pictures in it.”

  “What kind of pictures? Like, drawings?”

  He rubbed his forehead, clenching his eyes tight. “Photographs, if you must know.”

  “So?”

  “So, they were of my dad, okay?”

  I was in mad mode and having a hard time getting out of it. None of this made sense. “Then ask your dad for some new ones.”

  “I can’t,” he said angrily.

  “Why not?” I said, leaning forward, my hands on my hips. “Where is he? I’ll take pictures of him myself, if it means you’ll be at the tournament.”

  He opened his eyes and leveled them at me. Now they were both red and watery. “My dad died,” he said.

  I slowly sat on the bed next to him. “Oh,” I said, the anger zapped right out of me so quickly I felt weak.

  “He died when I was seven.”

  “Seven,” I repeated. I tried to imagine a seven-year-old Lunchbox Jones and couldn’t do it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “He was, like, my best friend, even though I didn’t get to see him a lot. He used to send me pictures whenever he could, and every time we got one, my mom put it in my lunchbox so it would be like having lunch with my dad. And then one day I came home from school and my mom was crying. And she told me that he died. And the only thing I could think of was that I wouldn’t get any more pictures from my dad. So I took all the pictures he’d ever sent me and put them in my lunchbox and they’ve been there ever since.” He sniffed, though no tears had fallen. “And now they’re gone. All of them. I was so stupid to put them in one place like that.”

  I perched awkwardly on the edge of Lunchbox’s bed, feeling numb and sad and sorry. I’d never met a kid whose dad had died before, and it felt awful. We were both quiet for a long time.

  “How did he die?” I finally asked.

  At first he didn’t answer, and I worried that I’d asked one too many questions, that I’d finally pushed Lunchbox too far. But then he slowly got up and walked over to his dresser. He opened the top drawer and pulled out a wooden box. He lifted the lid and handed the box to me. Inside was lined with blue velvet, and filled with badges and ribbons. I ran my fingers over a gold star attached to a red, white, and blue ribbon. Inside the gold star was a smaller silver star. Lunchbox reached in and flipped the star over. The other side had the words: GALLANTRY IN ACTION. And engraved beneath that, in fancier script: LIONEL C. DURGEWELL.

  “Is that your dad?” I asked.

  Lunchbox nodded, taking the box and putting it back in his drawer. “Army. That’s why I didn’t get to see him much. He was deployed in Afghanistan. He was killed there.”

  I felt like someone was sitting on my chest. It all made sense now—the camouflage jacket, the way the house looked rundown, the silence, the anger. Why didn’t I see it all before? Of course there was something in that lunchbox that was precious to him. Why else would he be carrying it all through middle school?

  He shut the drawer and made his way back to the bed. All of a sudden the air seemed so heavy and quiet. I felt like a jerk for yelling at him, even if I had no way of knowing the real story behind the lunchbox.

  “So I’m sorry I’m letting the team down,” he said. “But do you know why I’m even on the team in the first place?”

  I shook my head. My best working theory was that it had been court-ordered community service for one of his many violent crimes, but in light of all that I now knew about Lunch-box and his dad, it didn’t seem like a good time to float theories.

  “Mrs. Talbott made me,” he said.

  “The guidance counselor? Why?”

  “Because I spend too much time alone and it makes my mom worry, and Mrs. Talbott thinks being on a team will help me get friends.”

  “Mr. Terry made me join because I’m a video game master,” I offered, and then kicked myself for sounding so braggy.

  Lunchbox shrugged. “So that’s why I don’t care about that tournament. I don’t care about robotics. I don’t care about making friends. I already had a friend. A best friend. And he died.”

  “Oh,” I said. Even though I knew why he was saying it, it still stung a little to hear him say that he didn’t care about robotics. It had seemed like he cared all those afternoons when we worked on the bot together. And it stung even more that he’d said he didn’t care about making friends there, either. What was I—chopped cogs? I felt a little like chopped cogs. But I had a dad—an alive-and-well dad—so it didn’t seem so important to argue with him about friendship anymore. “I’m really sorry you lost your lunchbox,” I said.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s not your fault I lost it.”

  “Did you check the lost and found at school?”

  He nodded. “I’ve checked everywhere. I think I might have left it at the mall when my sisters took me there last weekend. But mall security doesn’t have it, either. I asked. It’s just gone. My dad’s gone.”

  “No, he isn’t,” I said. “Just the pictures are.” But I knew what he was saying.

  Because his story was exactly what had me so mad at Rob all these months. Not just that he was going to be joining the marines, leaving, and no longer hanging out in the fort with me, or fending off the maws’ corned beef hash with me.

  It was that he was going to be leaving.

  And, like Lunchbox’s dad, he might never come back.

  CHAPTER 28

  PROGRAM NAME: Tournament Day

  STEP ONE: Robot goes to tournament

  STEP TWO: Robot sees Robot the Cruel

  STEP THREE: Robot prepares white flag

  Robotics tournaments were pretty cool. There were tons of people there, all bustling around in team T-shirts and costumes. One team wore hard hats and yellow construction vests. Another team had wrapped bright pink feather boas around their necks. Teams had shiny crowns and top hats and fake mustaches and pom-poms. There was lots of noise, lots of laughing, lots of shouting . . . and in our booth, lots of arguing.

  “No, no, no! The banner is upside down!” Mikayla cried, waving her arms around.

  The Jacobs peered at the banner and then at each other. It looked like it had been painted with someone’s feet. Mostly because it was covered with bare footprints. “How can you tell?” they asked.

  “The artist knows!” she said. “Just turn it around.”

  Meanwhile, Stuart and I tried to fix the bot. “I think I’ve got it!” I said, fishing in the gyro sensor with a pair of Mom’s tweezers. “Aha!” I pulled out a sunflower seed. Stuart looked sheepish. “Are you kidding me?” I asked.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  I shook the robot. It rattled. I bent back over it with my tweezers.

  We’d gotten our schedule. We would be competing in the
very first round. Which meant we were sunk. There was no time to fix anything.

  “Hey, Luke, want a peppermint?” Walter offered me a striped candy.

  I had recruited Walter for our team, because at least he’d been able to build the bot the first time. But so far all he’d done was wander around admiring the wheels and motors of all the other bots. He even found a dad to talk cars with. The way I saw it, if I couldn’t even get Walter interested in our bot, it was as hopeless as it was ever going to get.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  A guy came through with a megaphone, yelling about the first round starting and teams needing to get to their tables.

  “That’s us, guys!” Mr. Terry said. “Let’s give it our all.” Mr. Terry didn’t have any idea how bad it really was. He still believed we had a chance.

  I stood up with a heavy heart. True to his word, Lunch-box hadn’t shown up. Not that I blamed him, now that I knew why he was so upset. But I guess a part of me kind of hoped that he might have changed his mind.

  “Let’s—” one Jacob said.

  “Do this!” the other finished for him. They bumped bellies.

  Stuart followed them, and then I fell in line. This was it. Ready or not, we were competing.

  We wove our way through the crowd in a single line. Mikayla took the lead, carrying a sign on a stick: FOREST SHADE MIDDLE SCHOOL RALLYING ROBO-RACCOONS.

  “Make way for Rosie!” she kept shouting, and I was too busy feeling doomed to bother to correct her.

  We found our table, and I busied myself with inspecting the tasks to make sure they were all set up correctly. Walter held the robot at the head of the table. A referee stood to one side.

  “Ready, Robo-Raccoons?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

  “Ready, Billybots?” he asked, and my head snapped up.

  There, standing at the head of the table next to us, was Missy the Cruel.

  “Well, well, well,” she said, her braids slithering around her head like snakes. “What luck! We’ve drawn the losers! This is a sure win.” She reached over and high-fived a steely-looking girl next to her without even looking. “I see your robot is just as much of a joke as usual.”

  “It’s not a joke,” I said. I glanced at our robot. Mikayla had put a frilly flowered dress on it, a spring poked out the side, and one eyeball was dangling by a cord. It was definitely a joke.

  “You know you’re not going to win, right? We’re going to smash your team to bits and spit out the pieces.”

  I opened my mouth to say something ugly back to her. But then I remembered the things she’d said the last time she came to one of our meetings. That her dad had moved out, and that he was a loser just like us and she hated him and he might as well be dead. And I remembered how Lunch-box had left the room after she’d said that, because he knew what it was like to really lose your dad. He knew that was a pain that never went away, no matter how many photographs and memories you hung on to.

  And it was in that moment that I saw Missy the Cruel for who she really was—a scared, sad girl who needed to act tough to keep her feelings from showing. It was in that moment that I felt sorry for Missy and didn’t mind that she was probably going to win, because she had already lost something big, and it was something that I still had.

  I walked over to her side of the table. She backed up a bit, as if I were going to do something awful to her. The girl next to her snatched up their robot and held him protectively to one side. I walked right up in between them and extended my hand.

  “Good luck, Missy,” I said, and maybe she could even see that I meant it, because she gazed at my hand, and then at me for longer than usual, before her eyes went all hard and cocky again.

  She shook my hand hard, too hard. “I don’t need luck,” she said. “Not against you, Loser Luke.”

  Thankfully, robotics rounds are only two minutes long. In that amount of time, our robot managed to get tangled in a ruffle, spin in circles on its side, right itself only to plow backward through three tasks, break an overhead light, and land in the square with the sign task. It made its gargly belching sound and six parts flew off. The Jacobs let out a moan and Stuart hung his head in defeat. Mikayla pressed her palm to her mouth, stifling a cry.

  But just as the last second ticked off the clock, the robot emitted a loud farting sound and a seventh piece zinged out its backside. It ricocheted off the referee’s clipboard, skittered across the table, flipped its way up a ramp, and smacked into a lever. The sign went up, giving us ten points.

  The team cheered like crazy, high-fiving and hugging like we’d just won an Olympics. In some ways, it kind of felt like we had. Even Mr. Terry had tears standing in the corners of his eyes.

  Missy’s team had completed five tasks on the board. They had four hundred points. They had stomped us to bits, just like she’d said they would. Yet we were the ones doing the celebrating. She looked confused and a little bit angry.

  I walked back over to her team and extended my hand again. “Congratulations,” I said. “Good match.”

  This time she stared at my hand as if it were a rattlesnake. She grunted, turned on one heel, and stomped away, her team following behind with matching upturned noses.

  I went back to my team and we all fell into a group hug. Even Walter, who had no idea what was going on. We proudly walked all the way back to our booth, where we celebrated with peppermints for everyone.

  We had lost, but something about sticking with it felt like a victory.

  I only wished Lunchbox had been there to see it.

  CHAPTER 29

  PROGRAM NAME: Celebration

  STEP ONE: Losing robot wins

  STEP TWO: All other robots congratulate him

  STEP THREE: Loudly. Very loudly.

  We mostly stayed in our booth for the rest of the day, planning all the changes we would make next year. And, yes, I was surprised, too, that I wanted to do it again next year. I was only sad that next year Lunchbox would be a freshman and would be at a different school. But Walter was going to officially join us next year, and that would be awesome, too.

  Occasionally, the guy with the megaphone would come through and announce another round, and we would file into the auditorium to watch. Goat Grove was knocked out in round two. Missy growled and tore their team’s banner in half, and then dissolved into tears and had to be taken away.

  But we spent most of the time getting to know one another.

  We watched Mikayla use chopsticks to pick up rice . . . with her toes. Walter threw up a little in his mouth and had to sit by the trash can for half an hour. I probably should have warned him that Mikayla’s foot tricks weren’t always for the faint of heart.

  The Jacobs told us about the space movie they were filming in their spare time. It was called Reentry and, from what I could tell, involved a lot of whisper-screaming in slow motion and flailing of arms and legs to simulate zero gravity.

  Stuart gave everyone a handful of sunflower seeds and we took turns trying to spit the shells into a Dixie cup, which we’d placed in the middle of our circle. Even Mr. Terry gave it a try. It was sort of like Pencil Stick, only downward and using your mouth, so it was no surprise that I was the reigning champ with eleven shells.

  Finally, the guy with the megaphone came through one last time and shouted that the awards ceremony was about to begin. We got up, but before we started heading toward the auditorium, I made everyone stop and huddle while the rest of the crowd filed out.

  “Even though we didn’t win anything,” I said, “I’m still really glad we came.”

  “Me, too,” Mikayla said. “Thanks for not letting us quit.”

  “Yeah,” the Jacobs added.

  “Definitely,” said Stuart.

  “I love you guys,” Walter added. We all stared at him, and then cracked up.

  “On three,” I said. We all put our hands in the middle and counted to three, then shouted, “Robo-Raccoons!” together.

&n
bsp; As if on cue, a noise came from the doorway. In plowed a crowd of people, led by none other than Doris—er, Ricky, our raccoon mascot. It was making crazy googly eyes and marching with pep, a strand of yarn trailing out of the straw purse it had looped over one furry arm.

  Behind the raccoon was Principal McMillan, and then Mom and Dad, along with everyone else’s moms and dads. Mr. Terry’s wife was there, too, and the maws and paws. They were all clapping and cheering, waving signs and doing little dances. We ran to them and dissolved into the crowd with hugs and kisses. Dad ruffled my hair and told me he was proud of me. The maws squeezed my cheeks into pulp. Mom kissed them to take the sting out.

  Behind them stood Rob, looking uncertain.

  He waved at me sheepishly. “Congratulations, li’l bro.”

  I went to him, the noise of the rest of the crowd fading out behind us. “Hey,” I said. “You came.”

  “Of course I came. Why wouldn’t I come?”

  He was right. I had been shutting him out for months, but he’d never shut me out. He’d kept trying to get me to talk to him, to forgive him. He’d given me the ride to Walter’s house. He’d tried to play Fort Invaders with us. He was being Same Old Rob, really. And Same Old Rob would have never missed something like a robotics tournament.

  “We lost our match,” I said. “Missy Farnham beat us.”

  He made a face. “Missy the Cruel who drinks warm drool?” Of course he knew all about Missy the Cruel’s antics. I’d griped about her so many times in the fort, he probably had the glue-eating song memorized. We’d spent a whole afternoon coming up with the “drinks warm drool” thing. I’d forgotten about it. But Rob still remembered, and I couldn’t help but smile. “How’d that happen? Wasn’t she on your team?”

  “She moved to Goat Grove this year,” I said.