Revenge of the EngiNerds

by Jarrett Lerner

  The pooch isn’t budging.

  Apparently he doesn’t believe there’s anything worth his while in the direction Edsley ran off.

  The dog still wants to go to Things & Stuff.

  “Kitty!” I shriek. “Come on! The robot! Edsley finally found the robot!”

  Kitty throws his head back and gives a single, firm bark.

  It’s the canine equivalent of a toddler stomping their foot, which usually happens right before they throw a full-on tantrum.

  I look for Edsley.

  He’s already made it around the corner and out of sight.

  But faintly, in the distance, I can hear him.

  “GRAB IT!” he’s shouting. “IT’S MINE!”

  “Kitty!” I cry, yanking at his leash again, and this time really leaning into it.

  The dog plants his paws and growls.

  “All right,” I say. “You wanna do it the hard way?”

  I rush at Kitty and, before he can slip away, scoop him up into my arms.

  He squirms, trying to free himself.

  But I hold him tight and hurry to catch up with Edsley.

  No way am I letting Kitty get in the way of me finally finding this bot.

  24.

  I DON’T KNOW IF YOU’VE ever tried to go for a run while carrying an angry labradoodle, but let me tell you—it’s not easy.

  Kitty weighs ninety-three pounds.

  He’d slow me down considerably even if he wasn’t pawing me in the face, yapping in my ear, and doing everything else he can do to get me to stop taking him farther and farther away from Things & Stuff and his beloved big, nasty Dumpster.

  By the time I get to the first corner that Edsley disappeared around, the kid has already disappeared around the next.

  I pause and listen.

  I can’t hear Edsley, but I do hear a car horn honking.

  And then someone else—an adult—shouting.

  I head toward the commotion, first up one street and then down another, Kitty fighting me every step of the way.

  25.

  “MIKE!” I CALL OUT, AT last spotting Edsley in the distance.

  He spins around and starts running toward me.

  He doesn’t have his missing robot with him.

  But that’s fine, I tell myself.

  Because maybe he already doused the guy in water.

  Maybe I couldn’t hear the SQUAH-POOM! because it happened while Kitty was yapping in my ear.

  When Edsley gets a bit closer, I see that he’s waving something over his head.

  A little piece of paper, it looks like.

  It’s green.

  And crinkled.

  “Check it out,” he says once he reaches me. “I thought it was a fifty. A five’s still pretty sweet, though.”

  He means a five-dollar bill.

  That’s what he’s holding.

  “I had to run into traffic to get it,” he tells me, “and this old dude got super mad. But whatever. Free money!”

  I look down at the five-dollar bill.

  Then up at Edsley.

  “Mike . . . ,” I say—very, very slowly. “Is this what you were chasing after the whole time?”

  He looks confused.

  “Yeah, man,” he says. “What did you think I—”

  His mouth drops open into a big O.

  “Oh dude. Did you think I found the robot?”

  I set Kitty down on the sidewalk and pull him toward home.

  “Ken!” Edsley calls out. “Where are you going, man?”

  “Bye, Mike,” I call back.

  “Don’t leave!”

  I lift a hand.

  Give him a wave.

  “We can put the cash toward the pizza!” he says.

  I don’t answer.

  Edsley keeps calling after me.

  But eventually, I make it out of earshot.

  26.

  ON THE WAY HOME, I guess because I don’t feel bad enough already, I dig Mikaela’s data-eater out of my backpack.

  Kitty sees it, comes closer for a sniff—and immediately loses interest.

  That’s more or less how I feel about it too.

  I probably should’ve flushed the thing down the toilet right after lunch, or at least tossed it in the trash.

  I look around the street for a garbage can, thinking I’ll do just that, but don’t find one before I make it home.

  Stepping into the house, I unclip Kitty from his leash and hear:

  “What’s that?”

  I look up and see Mom standing there at the kitchen counter. She’s got a stack of mail in front of her, but her eyes are fixed on the data-eater I’ve still got in my hand.

  “Oh, ah—”

  I shove the gadget into my pocket.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  Mom lifts an eyebrow, and for a second, I’m pretty sure she’s going to do some prying.

  But she fights off the urge, goes back to the mail, and then just tells me to make sure I get all my homework done before six o’clock, since that’s when we have to leave.

  “Leave?”

  “For dinner,” she tells me.

  “What dinner?”

  Mom drops the catalog she’s holding. She narrows her eyes at me, like she’s trying to figure out if I’m messing with her.

  “The dinner,” she finally says, “that I told you about a hundred times. At the Lins’. With the Knoxes.”

  I must make a face.

  “What is it?” Mom says.

  But what am I supposed to tell her?

  That there’s a farting robot on the loose and no one but me seems to care about finding it?

  Or that some kooky, alien-obsessed girl is trying to steal all my friends?

  Or that those friends—Jerry and John Henry Knox included—seem totally cool with being stolen away by her?

  No, no, and no.

  So I just say, “Nothing.”

  Again.

  I don’t stick around to see if Mom buys it.

  I just hurry off to my room.

  27.

  I DON’T ACTUALLY GET ANY homework done that afternoon.

  No, I spend the hour or so I’ve got before my parents and I have to leave for Jerry’s trying to figure out how I can get out of going.

  I could say I’m sick. . . .

  But that might have some unwanted repercussions, like being made to gargle salt water or go to bed super early.

  It’s almost June, so I could say I’ve got a big end-of-the-year project I need to start working on. . . .

  But then my mom and dad would ask a bunch of questions about the project, and check in on my progress, and want to see the final product, and I’m not sure it’s worth doing all of that extra, unnecessary work just to get out of spending a couple of hours with Jerry and John Henry Knox.

  And that’s when I start to convince myself that maybe it won’t be so bad.

  Sure, things have been a bit strained among us lately.

  And lunch that day was, in a word, terrible.

  But for all I know, the guys had their fun with Mikaela’s fancy gadgets and then gave them back to her at the end of the day. And maybe they then took that opportunity to explain to Mikaela what I’d been trying to tell her all along—that the EngiNerds’ nerdiness doesn’t extend outside the realm of reality, that we don’t believe in aliens. Maybe a night of hanging out—just me, Jerry, and John Henry Knox—is what we need to set things straight and get us all back on the right track.

  So when six o’clock rolls around, I get in the car and head to the Lins’ house with my parents, actually feeling sort of hopeful about the evening I’ve got ahead of me. And when we arrive, I do what I normally do whenever I go to Jerry’s: I kick off my shoes, say hi to his mom and dad and little brother, and then head right up to his bedroom.

  But there, things stop being normal.

  I don’t go in, grab a magazine or a game controller, and plop down on one of Jerry’s beanbags.

  I stop shor
t in the doorway.

  Because Jerry and John Henry Knox are at Jerry’s desk—and on top of it are a whole bunch of Ms. The-Truth-Is-Out-There’s gadgets.

  One of them is the multi-scope that John Henry Knox got all gaga over at lunch.

  Jerry, meanwhile, is fiddling with something that looks like a flashlight. But not just any old ordinary flashlight. The thing’s got all these extra knobs and buttons along the shaft. It looks like the sort of contraption a superhero might carry around—a flashlight that doubles as a grappling hook or folds out into a scooter.

  It’s Jerry who finally notices me standing in the doorway.

  “Oh, um . . . hey,” he says.

  John Henry Knox is too focused on the multi-scope to even look up.

  Jerry spends a minute ping-ponging his eyes back and forth from me to the gadgets. Then he rolls open one of his desk drawers and, reaching inside, pulls out a pair of small, brown, familiar-looking cartons.

  “Chocolate milk?” he says, holding a carton out to me.

  It’s a peace offering.

  Jerry’s way of acknowledging the awkwardness between us, but also asking a fairly profound question:

  If we can’t sit down and enjoy a carton of chocolate milk together, then what has the world come to?

  28.

  I HEAD INTO JERRY’S ROOM and take a seat.

  I also take the carton of chocolate milk he offered me.

  I stab the straw through the foil top and suck up a sip, careful not to look like I’m enjoying the beverage too much. I don’t want the guys to read it as me approving of whatever they’re doing with Mikaela’s gadgets.

  Frustratingly, though, I can’t figure out just what that is.

  It’s clear they’re working toward something, that they’ve got a goal.

  But all I can tell is that it seems to involve fastening Jerry’s flashlight to John Henry Knox’s multi-scope.

  They’re using dental floss to do the fastening. I can smell the minty scent coming off the thin, slightly sticky thread.

  Working together, they finally get the flashlight fixed in place.

  And then Jerry’s on his feet, racing over to his window and sliding it up.

  John Henry Knox is right on his heels, carrying the fastened-together gadgets with a mix of apprehension and excitement.

  Jerry helps position the gadgets on the windowsill, after which John Henry Knox begins to crank the knobs and spin the dials of the multi-scope. He pauses now and again to let Jerry press a button on his flashlight, and then gets right back to cranking and spinning.

  This goes on long enough for me to see that each button on Jerry’s flashlight corresponds to a different color. Press this one, and the gadget sends a shaft of orange light shooting up into the sky. Press that one, and out comes a bright beam of purple.

  Orange.

  Purple.

  Blue.

  Green.

  Purple again.

  Back to orange.

  Then Jerry and John Henry Knox wait.

  They just sit there for a minute, peering up into the cloudless sky.

  After which they do it all over again.

  Orange, purple, blue, green, purple, orange.

  I watch them do the whole thing five times in a row, still trying to figure out what they’re up to.

  But I can’t.

  So finally, I ask.

  It’s John Henry Knox who says, “We’re attempting to make contact.”

  I still don’t get it.

  “Contact? With who?”

  He answers with a totally straight face:

  “The aliens.”

  29.

  MAKE CONTACT?

  With aliens?

  Are they joking?

  I look around, half expecting some of the other EngiNerds to pop out of Jerry’s closet and tell me this is all some gag.

  But instead, lying there on Jerry’s desk among the rest of Mikaela’s gadgets, I see a piece of paper with From the Desk of M. Harrington printed at the top. Beneath the header are some sketches and instructions. I recognize the multi-scope. And the flashlight. And then I find the color sequence, orange—purple—blue—green—purple—orange, written out in what must be Mikaela’s handwriting, after which she added, pause—repeat as necessary.

  “Guys,” I say, turning back to Jerry and John Henry Knox, “come on. I know this girl’s got some cool toys and all”—I flick my fingers at the gadgets—“but please tell me she doesn’t have you actually believing all this stuff about aliens.”

  Jerry shrugs.

  “Honestly? I’m not sure what I think anymore.”

  John Henry Knox clears his throat.

  “Here’s what I think,” he says, and because the kid is incapable of giving a simple, straightforward answer, he launches into a full-on lecture. “The universe is extraordinarily vast, and every second it’s growing even vaster. Our knowledge of it is extremely limited. Say, for instance, that Jerry’s bedroom here is the universe.”

  Jerry looks around his bedroom, and after a second, so do I.

  John Henry Knox, meanwhile, leans over and plucks a single fiber out of the carpet. Sitting back up, he lifts the bit of string into the light, but it’s so tiny, I can still barely see it.

  “In the Jerry’s-bedroom-as-the-universe analogy,” John Henry Knox goes on, “this nearly nonexistent strand of thread would be our galaxy, the Milky Way. And our solar system? Our center-of-everything sun, our planet and its neighbors, the asteroid belt and all the comets flying about? It would be but a single atom of dust clinging to this nearly nonexistent strand of thread.”

  John Henry Knox looks at me meaningfully.

  “Do you have a point?” I ask him. “Or are you just trying to destroy Jerry’s carpet?”

  He flicks the thread to the floor.

  “My point is that there’s so, so, so very much we don’t know. So, so, so very much we haven’t seen.” He gestures around Jerry’s room. “To make a definitive statement about something you have absolutely zero knowledge of—well, it’s foolish. It’s beyond foolish. It’s downright absurd!”

  It takes me a second to gather my thoughts.

  My head feels all fuzzy.

  It’s hard to fit infinity into your brain.

  It’s hard, and even a little bit scary, to conceive of the whole wide world as being just a part of a speck of dust on a single, itty-bitty piece of string.

  “Okay,” I finally say. “Okay, fine. But that doesn’t mean you have to waste your time trying to make contact. There are better things you could be doing. Like, oh, I don’t know—helping your friend find the last of the farting robots that’s still on the loose and is causing all sorts of craziness in your town so that said farting robot doesn’t figuratively and/or literally bite us all in the backside.”

  “I suppose it’s a matter of opinion just what constitutes a waste of time,” says John Henry Knox.

  I eye him.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He looks at me like I’m an idiot. Which isn’t unusual, but is particularly annoying at the moment.

  “The definition of insanity—” he begins.

  “I know, I know,” I tell him. “But that doesn’t change the fact that this bot’s still out there, still—”

  “We’re ninety-eight percent certain that none of the ‘craziness’ you mentioned was caused by Edsley’s missing robot,” John Henry Knox interrupts. And once he’s sure I’m not going to re-interrupt him, he adds, “We’re also ninety-nine percent certain that the bot, even if he’s still operational, no longer poses a threat to the community.”

  “Who’s we?” I ask.

  “All of us,” says John Henry Knox. “Me, Jerry, Dan, Max, Amir, Simon, Alan, Chris, Rob. And Mikaela, of course. She showed us what she’s been working on after school today. She’s linked all the strange happenings in town—the blackout, the satellite, the Food-Plus—to a series of strikingly similar weather patterns. We ended up tell
ing her about the bot, and she helped us run some scenarios and crunch some numbers. Which is how we came to be nearly certain that there’s no reason to be wasting our time looking for it. Which is why we’re now working on this.”

  With that, John Henry Knox returns his attention to the gadgets on the windowsill. It’s like he’s decided that talking to me any further is a waste of time too.

  I sit there for a moment, shell-shocked, then get to my feet and make a beeline for the door.

  “Ken—” Jerry says.

  But there’s nothing more I need to hear.

  I storm down the hall and into the bathroom, where I pace back and forth from the toilet to the sink, my blood pumping harder with every trip.

  I can’t believe my friends have all gone from levelheaded to loony in the space of a single afternoon.

  And I can’t believe Mikaela.

  She wheeled her stupid little roller suitcase into my life like the Trojan Horse, unpacking all her fancy gadgets and then tearing my world apart.

  30.

  I FAKE SICK.

  It’s lame, I know.

  But I don’t know what else to do.

  All I know is that I can’t spend the rest of the night hanging out with Jerry and John Henry Knox, trying to make contact.

  So after fuming in the bathroom for a bit, I head downstairs.

  I slump my shoulders, sag my lips, and do everything else I can to make myself look as pitiful as possible.

  It works.

  I don’t even have to say a thing.

  I just shuffle into the living room, which is where my mom and dad are hanging out with Jerry’s and John Henry Knox’s parents. As soon as Mrs. Lin sees me she says, “Ken? Is everything okay?”

  My dad’s on his feet a beat later.

  “You look sick,” he says. “Do you feel sick?”

  He presses the back of his hand to my forehead, then turns to my mom.

  “He feels warm.”

  I’m not surprised.

  But I know it’s not an actual fever that’s got me all heated up.

  It’s a feverish rage.

  Mom and Dad don’t need to know that, though.

  So I keep my mouth shut, and stand aside while they apologize to Jerry’s and John Henry Knox’s parents about having to miss dinner and take me home.