Revenge of the EngiNerds

by Jarrett Lerner

  16.

  THAT NIGHT, I HAVE A bunch of dreams.

  Scratch that—I have a bunch of nightmares.

  Every single one of them stars the missing robot.

  In the first, the guy’s right there in my bedroom with me, cramming everything he can into his stomach.

  He goes for my lamp.

  Then for a few of my books.

  After that it’s my wallet, and then my house keys, and then the prickly little cactus that my aunt gave me last year for my birthday and that, even though I haven’t watered the thing once, refuses to die.

  Finally, the bot swings his stomach-flap shut, crushes all my belongings into cubes, spins around, and pokes his butt in my direction.

  I wake up just before he starts firing.

  But not long after that, I find myself neck-deep in the next nightmare.

  In this one, the robot’s outside, charging around town. He eats a skateboard, then a mailbox, and then a bike, growing larger with every additional snack. Within just a handful of seconds, he’s big enough to eat cars. And then whole houses. And then the guy’s swallowing up entire blocks.

  That’s it.

  But this time, I don’t even get a break before the next one.

  Which features a whole group of giant robots. No, no, no—a whole army of them. They rampage around town, reducing everything to rubble with their turd-missiles of terror while satellites—dozens of them—rain down from the sky.

  17.

  MY NIGHTMARES FOLLOW ME TO school and cling to me all morning.

  Worse, I start seeing the robot everywhere I look.

  Not really, obviously.

  Because that would actually be helpful.

  But every time I turn a corner, I catch sight of the sun glinting off a mirror someone’s got in their locker, or spot a kid’s shiny silver backpack, and my brain goes into Panic Mode and I reach for my water bottle.

  Oh yeah. Before I left the house this morning, I stuck a water bottle—a big one, filled to the brim—in my bag. Just in case.

  By the time lunch rolls around, I’m feeling even worse than the guys all looked the day before.

  I’m dejected.

  Exhausted.

  Beyond frazzled.

  And honestly, a part of me wants to head to the nurse’s office instead of the room where the EngiNerds usually meet for lunch. Because I know if I tell him I’m feeling sick, he’ll let me lie down on one of the cots he keeps in the back room. I figure I can snag another forty-five minutes of sleep, or at least just curl up into a ball and avoid things for a bit.

  But before I can decide to run and hide from my problems, I have this sort of epiphany.

  I say “sort of” because what occurs to me—it’s not really earth-shattering. It’s nothing I didn’t already know when I woke up this morning. It’s just that I’m all of a sudden seeing it in a new light, and it’s this:

  We’re the EngiNerds.

  And yes—I know I’m not the biggest fan of the name (or the silly motto). It would even be fair to say that I strongly dislike the name (and also the silly motto).

  But still.

  My friends, the guys behind the name?

  They’re brilliant.

  A few of them might even be full-on geniuses.

  And we’ve never, not ever, faced a problem that we couldn’t solve. Because when we’re not trying to one-up each other, when we’re working together, all of us on the same team, there isn’t a single thing we can’t accomplish. I mean, we once launched a soda bottle six hundred feet up into the air using nothing but a baked potato and a can of hairspray. And a few of us once saved our town and possibly our state and arguably even a large chunk of our country from a horde of endlessly hungry, dangerously flatulent robots.

  So I don’t go down to the nurse’s office.

  I head to the room where I know the rest of the EngiNerds will be.

  On my way there, I get all my thoughts in order. I outline a speech so good that as soon as the guys hear it, they’re going to want to skip their afternoon classes and go robot-hunting with me right there and then.

  “Gentlemen,” I say as I step into the room, my hands up over my head to get everyone’s attention. “I—”

  But that’s as far as I get.

  Because that’s when I see her.

  Mikaela.

  She’s standing at the front of the room with a grin on her lips and a roller suitcase at her side.

  “Gentlemen and lady,” she corrects me.

  18.

  FOR A MINUTE, ALL I can do is stand there in the doorway and glare at Mikaela.

  Because what is she doing here?

  I thought I’d made it pretty clear that the EngiNerds weren’t interested in any of her “extraterrestrial activity” nonsense.

  But obviously, the girl’s a little dense.

  I guess I’ll just have to make things even clearer for her.

  So I stomp right up to her.

  I get in her face.

  “You come straight from the airport?” I say, jerking my chin at her suitcase.

  She doesn’t look at me, despite the fact that my face is about six inches from hers.

  She doesn’t answer my question, either.

  What she does is say, “Don’t do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Attempt to engage me in a battle of wits.”

  “Why’s that?” I ask. “You don’t think I have any wit?”

  “No,” she says, finally looking me in the eye. “In fact, I sincerely hope you do. It’d be nice if you had something of value, since you’re clearly so deficient in the brain department.”

  My blood starts boiling. Seriously. I can hear the bubbles bobbing around and bursting in my veins.

  “Look,” I tell Mikaela, “I’ll break this down for you, nice and simple. There aren’t any aliens. Not in our town. Not anywhere. Which is why none of us”—I swing an arm out toward the rest of the guys—“want to sit around talking about them like there are. So, I’m gonna give you a chance, right now, before you humiliate yourself in front of all my friends, to get yourself and your silly little suitcase out of here.”

  Mikaela’s grinning again.

  Which, let me tell you, is absolutely maddening.

  But then she loses the grin and puts on an exaggerated pout, pretending like my words have really hurt her—and this, believe it or not, is somehow even more infuriating.

  “You mean you don’t even want to see what’s inside my silly little suitcase first?” she says.

  “Not even a little bit,” I tell her, doing my best to stay strong.

  “Anyone else?” she calls out over my head.

  It’s loud enough for the handful of EngiNerds who haven’t already noticed us to look over. The rest of them have been watching me and Mikaela ever since I stepped into the room.

  “No?” she asks again, taking a step to the side so she can see the guys’ faces. “I’ve got this big ol’ suitcase, and there could be anything inside of it—anything at all. And you’re saying I should just leave? Without even opening it up first? Without even giving you a peek?”

  A few of the guys shrug.

  Some of the others do some mumbling.

  And that’s good enough for Mikaela.

  Before I can stop her, she’s laying her suitcase down flat on the floor and unzipping the zippers. She pulls it open a second later, and sitting inside is literally the one thing that us EngiNerds can’t resist—it’s kryptonite for our kind of nerdiness.

  Gadgets.

  That’s what Mikaela has in her suitcase.

  Lots and lots of gadgets.

  My heart sinks.

  We’re done for.

  19.

  JOHN HENRY KNOX IS THE first to make his way over to Mikaela’s suitcase. Staring down into it, he says, “May I?”

  It’s probably the politest thing that’s ever come out of the kid’s mouth, and hearing it gives me the shivers.

  Mi
kaela holds a hand out to the gadgets heaped in her suitcase. “Dig in.”

  John Henry Knox doesn’t hesitate. He moves aside something that looks like a stethoscope crossed with a hamster wheel, then something that looks like a meat thermometer with a spool of copper wire attached to it. After which he pulls out a large, incredibly complicated-looking object. It looks like a bunch of telescopes that have somehow been knotted together, and then decorated with more dials and levers and buttons and meters and knobs than any gadget—even this one—could possibly need.

  “Is this what I think it is?” asks John Henry Knox.

  “If you think it’s a Gibson-Head 46X Multi-Scope,” Mikaela says, “then yes.”

  John Henry Knox gasps. And the way he’s gazing at the gadget, I’m expecting drool to start dribbling down his chin any second.

  “I didn’t even know they made a 46X . . . ,” he says in a voice hushed with awe.

  While John Henry Knox is busy falling in love with the multi-scope thingy, Mikaela gathers a bunch of other gadgets up in her arms and goes around the room passing them out to the guys. And as soon as they get those sleek, shiny pieces of metal into their hands, as soon as they have some dials to spin and some buttons to press, their faces light up.

  Mikaela has just earned herself a permanent place in the guys’ good graces.

  She comes back to me last, still standing up front by her suitcase. And she’s got one more gadget with her. It’s a long, thin cylinder with a round, scooped dish on one side, sort of like an extra-large lollipop that’s been dipped in lead.

  Mikaela holds the thing out like she wants me to take it.

  “What’s that supposed to be?” I ask her.

  She twists the gadget’s handle in her fingertips so the dish part spins around and around, turning into a silvery blur.

  “It’s a data-eater,” she says. “When you turn it on, it scans for zones of denser-than-normal data output. If it finds something, it vibrates.” She lifts it up. “Like if you were standing next to a supercomputer—this bad boy would buzz like a hive of bees on sugar highs.”

  “A data-eater.”

  I say it like it’s ridiculous, even though it sounds kind of awesome, and I can’t help but think of all the things I could do with it.

  “Name one time that’s ever come in handy.”

  “Why stop at one?” Mikaela says. “I can give you five. I can give you twenty-five.”

  I give her a glare, then turn to face the rest of the room.

  “Okay,” I say, loud enough to penetrate the distracted fog that the gadgets have thrust the guys into. “Thanks for stopping by, Mikaela, but show-and-tell time’s over. We’ve got some more important matters to attend to.”

  The guys look from me to Mikaela, and then back at their gadgets.

  “Let’s go,” I say, clapping a couple of times to get them moving.

  But nobody does.

  “Guys,” I try again. “Come on.”

  And now none of them will even look at me.

  John Henry Knox is marveling at the multi-scope.

  Jerry’s watching his reflection slip and slide over a small, polished sphere.

  Amir’s got a headset over his eyes.

  Max and Alan are kneeling on the floor in front of a bunch of tubes and valves and sockets and sleeves.

  Even Dan—he’s completely captivated by a sleek silver tablet and its brightly glowing screen.

  Mikaela shoves the data-eater into my hand while I’m not paying attention, then zips up her now-empty suitcase and rolls it out into the middle of the room.

  “You guys can hang onto these for a bit,” she says about the gadgets. “And if you want to talk about what’s been going on around here lately, if you want to help me figure out how all the strange stuff that’s been happening is connected—if you want to be among the first Earthlings to ever make contact with extraterrestrial life . . .” She grins. “Well, just come and find me.”

  With that, she turns around and leaves.

  “We won’t!” I call after her.

  She doesn’t seem to hear me.

  But it doesn’t really matter.

  I’m not even sure what I said is true.

  20.

  GETTING THE GUYS TO SET aside their shiny new gadgets and pay attention to me for so much as half a second proves to be an impossible task.

  Not even Dan will listen to me.

  He pretends to—but I can tell he’s actually focused on the flickering screen of the tablet he’s still clutching.

  Finally, I give up.

  There are still fifteen minutes left in the lunch period, but I don’t stick around for them.

  I just leave.

  And then, at the end of the day, I really don’t stop by my locker.

  There’s no point.

  I know none of the guys will be there waiting for me, ready to spend their afternoon slogging around town in search of the missing robot. And even if they were, I wouldn’t want to see them. I’m serious. Let them have their fancy gadgets. Let them hang out with kooky girls and talk about aliens. I’ll be better off on my own.

  So when the last bell of the day rings, I leave class, head down the hall, and walk right out of the school’s front doors.

  But I don’t make it much farther than that.

  “KEN! WAIT UP!”

  21.

  OKAY, OKAY.

  So maybe I lied a little bit back there.

  Maybe it bummed me out more than I let on that none of the guys were willing to help me out anymore.

  Maybe I really did wish they were all crowded around my locker, waiting for me to lay out a game plan and lead them into the afternoon.

  And so, in the fraction of a second it takes me to turn around and see who rushed out of school behind me, shouting my name, my hopes soar. I decide it’s Dan, and that he’s here to apologize, and to tell me that he knows I’m mostly obsessing over this missing bot because I don’t want it to come back to bite him in his backside and—

  It’s Edsley.

  My hopes crash, burst into flame, and then explode in a giant fireball.

  And then a sinkhole spontaneously forms on the exact spot where my hopes crashed, and the poor things plunge even lower, all the way down to the molten-hot center of the earth, where they’re instantly incinerated into nothingness.

  “I was waiting for you,” Edsley pants once he catches up to me, “at your locker. We going to find this bot, or what?”

  I shake my head.

  “No, Mike,” I say, feeling even worse than I did two minutes ago. “I’m done. If no one else cares, then why should I? Why should I be driving myself nuts over this bot if no one else will even lift a finger to help me? Not even Dan.”

  Edsley frowns at me.

  He looks genuinely confused.

  “Ken . . . ,” he says. “You’re not giving up, are you?”

  I clench my jaw and turn my head. I can’t look him in the eye.

  “We’re EngiNerds, Ken,” Edsley says. “We don’t give up. We don’t back down. When the going gets tough, we just get tougher. Maybe some of the other guys have forgotten that. But you and me—let’s remind them. Let’s show them how it’s done.”

  Edsley’s right, of course.

  His pep talk is pretty much the same as the one I’d been planning on giving the guys at lunch.

  And though I’m the only one there to hear it . . . it works.

  It lifts my spirits.

  Not as high as they could be.

  But high enough for me to be persuaded.

  “Okay,” I tell Edsley. “Let’s do this.”

  “Let’s,” he says, grinning and nodding his head. “And then,” he adds, “when we’re done, let’s go celebrate with a pizza and some fries that maybe you’ll pay for as a way of thanking me for my continued efforts.”

  I turn around and start off again.

  “Fine,” Edsley says, hurrying after me. “I’ll buy the fries if you get the pizza.
Ken? Ken! Do we have a deal?”

  22.

  “OW!” I SHOUT.

  It’s Kitty, doing his darnedest to yank my arm off again.

  I wanted to leave him at home, seeing as he made it so difficult to get anything done the day before. But my mom had a friend over, and her friend was getting grossed out listening to Kitty mop up the kitchen floor with his tongue. Yes—the kitchen floor. Because in addition to rocks and dirty socks, the dog’s got a thing for linoleum.

  Speaking of dirty socks—Kitty’s right back at it, same as yesterday. Edsley and I avoid Things & Stuff as best we can, but labradoodles must have some sort of big, nasty Dumpster detection system built into their brains, because as soon as we get within half a mile of the place, Kitty starts tugging me toward it.

  And tugging me hard.

  “Kitty!” I say, trying to sound as authoritative as I can while I struggle to hang on to his leash. “Kitty, stop.”

  It doesn’t work.

  If anything, it makes Kitty tug me toward Things & Stuff even harder.

  Then all of a sudden Edsley gasps.

  “Oh man!” he cries, rushing a few feet past the dog and jabbing a finger toward the other end of the street. “Right there!”

  I think he’s doing what Dan did yesterday: the Ol’ Make Him Look.

  And it’s working.

  Kitty’s whipping his head around, curious to see what Edsley’s so excited about.

  “Do it again,” I say.

  “No,” Edsley says. “Ken. I’m serious. Look.”

  I look down the street in the direction he’s pointing.

  I don’t see anything out of the ordinary.

  Definitely no walking, talking, butt-blasting bot.

  But Edsley must’ve seen the thing.

  Because the next thing I know, he’s charging down the street.

  “HURRY, KEN!” he calls back to me. “IT’S GONNA GET AWAY!”

  23.

  EDSLEY BOLTS DOWN THE STREET.

  I hurry after him. . . .

  But only make it six feet.

  Which is the length of Kitty’s leash.