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“Just pretend he’s your brother” is what my mom says.

  “I don’t have a brother.”

  “You do now.”

  Can you believe this? I can’t.

  As for the robot? I don’t think he’s really going to blend in with the other kids in my class except, maybe, on Halloween.

  He’s already wearing his costume.

  “Good morning, Samuel,” E says when we’re out the front door and on our way up the block to the bus stop. “Lovely weather for matriculating.”

  “Huh?”

  “To matriculate. To enroll or be enrolled in an institution of learning, especially a college or university.”

  I duck my head and hope nobody can tell it’s me walking beside Robo-nerd.

  “We’re not going to college,” I mumble. “It’s just school.”

  “Excellent. Fabulous. Peachy.”

  I guess Mom is still working on E’s word search program. I can hear all sorts of things whirring as the big bulky thing kind of glides up the sidewalk. The robot chugs his arms back and forth like he’s cross-country skiing up the concrete in super-slow motion. Without skis.

  I notice that E is lugging an even bigger backpack than I am.

  Maybe that’s where he keeps his spare batteries.

  According to my mother—whose name is Elizabeth—the robot’s name, E, stands for Egghead, which is what a lot of people call my mom, Professor Elizabeth Hayes, PhD, because she’s so super smart (except when she does super-dumb stuff like making me take a talking robot to school for anything besides show-and-tell).

  My dad, Noah Rodriguez, says the name E stands for Einstein Jr. because the robot is such a genius. Ha! Would a genius go to school without wearing underpants? I don’t think so.

  My sister, Maddie, thinks E is a perfect name all by itself and stands for nothing except E.

  I kind of like Maddie’s idea. Even though Maddie doesn’t go to school, she’s so smart it’s almost impossible to fight or argue with her about anything. Trust me. I’ve tried.

  But the more time I spend with E, the more I think I know what his name really means: ERROR!

  “Remember, Samuel,” E says when we reach the bus stop, “always wait for the school bus on the sidewalk. Do not stand, run, or play in the street.”

  A lot of my friends from the neighborhood are already at the corner. Most of them are gawking at the clunky machine with the glowing blue eyeballs that’s following behind me like an obedient Saint Bernard.

  “What’s with the bright blue eyeballs?” I mumble. “Are those like freeze-ray guns?”

  “Let’s form a straight line, children, away from the street,” E chirps. And get this—E can smile. And blink. (But you can hear the mini-motors clicking and purring inside his head when he does.)

  “I make these suggestions,” E continues, “in an attempt to enhance your school-bus-boarding safety.”

  Everybody stops gawking at E and starts staring at me.

  None of the kids are smiling. Or blinking.

  E is definitely the biggest ERROR my mother has ever made—worse than the time she designed a litter-box-cleaning robot that flung clumps of kitty poop all over the house.

  “What is that thing?” asks Jackson Rehder, one of the kids who ride the bus with me every morning.

  “Another one of my mother’s ridiculous robots,” I say, giving E the stink eye.

  “What’s his name?”

  “E. For Error. Just like in baseball.”

  “I’m sorry, Samuel,” says E. “You are mistaken. You are imparting incorrect information. Your statement is fallacious.”

  Great. Now the stupid robot wants to argue with me? Unbelievable.

  Stick around. This should be fun.

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  WELCOME

  DEDICATION

  1. I AM STAINLEZZ STEEL

  2. THE REAL ME

  3. WELCOME TO UMS

  4. MY TINY PROBLEM

  5. AMBUSHED!

  6. CLEANING UP THE STREETS

  7. STRAIGHT TO THE TOP

  8. THE SUGAR SHACK

  9. TROUBLEMAKER FOR LIFE

  10. NO-GOOD, LOW-DOWN DIRTY DOG

  11. YAKKETY-YAK… WHAT?

  12. LIFE ON THE D-SQUAD

  13. GET READY FOR DR. YETTY

  14. A TIGHT SPOT

  15. DID SOMEONE SAY “STEEL”?

  16. NOT NOW, RAY-RAY!

  17. DR. YETTY’S REALLY BIG, REALLY TERRIBLE IDEA

  18. LESSON #1

  19. NOT GETTING IT

  20. RAY-RAY, PREEMIE, QUAASHIE, VANESSA, AND… ME?

  21. FIVE ON THE RUN

  22. ACTION!

  23. STEEL VS. STEAL

  24. EGYPT IS IN AFRICA

  25. LESSON #2

  26. “A” IS FOR IDIOTS

  27. CLIMB TO THE BOTTOM

  28. ALL WET

  29. NEVER THOUGHT I’D SEE THE DAY

  30. MEETING THE KING

  31. SWEATIN’ WITH THE BIG DOGS

  32. ONE THING OR ANOTHER

  33. BACK AT THE LAB…

  34. STARFISH

  35. CHICKENS WITH FINGERS!

  36. MY NEW REP

  37. AIN’T NO FUTURE IN YOUR FRONTIN’

  38. G-MA GOES OFF

  39. SOME KIND OF MISTAKE

  40. DOUBLE TROUBLE

  41. YOU TOO?

  42. WHAT’S UP WITH THAT?

  43. RAY-RAY VS. DR. Y.

  44. RAY-RAY’S CRIB

  45. BOOKS ARE FOR EVERYONE

  46. THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH (ABOUT MY DAD)

  47. PUBLIC ENEMY #1

  48. CRAY-CRAY COMES THROUGH

  49. ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

  50. SPLAT!

  51. I HATE HOSPITALS!

  52. FULL STEAM AHEAD

  53. MARCH ISN’T JUST A MONTH OF THE YEAR

  54. HERE GOES NOTHING

  55. TIME TO COME CLEAN

  56. FACE-OFF

  57. YOU NEVER KNOW

  58. ANYBODY HOME?

  59. HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

  60. CHESS, ANYONE?

  61. THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BOOKS BY JAMES PATTERSON FOR YOUNG READERS

  A SNEAK PEEK OF HOUSE OF ROBOTS

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by James Patterson

  Illustrations by Cory Thomas

  Excerpt from House of Robots © 2014 by James Patterson

  Illustrations in excerpt from House of Robots by Juliana Neufeld

  Cover art by Cory Thomas

  Cover design by Liz Casal

  Cover © 2015 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Middle School® is a trademark of JBP Business, LLC.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  lb-kids.com

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  First ebook edition: March 2015

  ISBN 978-0-316-40596-6

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