House of Robots Read online

  “Studying with Tootles isn’t as much fun as going to a real school would be, I guess,” says Maddie. “But I love learning. I sometimes think my brain is the healthiest part of my whole body.”

  At Maddie’s home school, there is no recess. No book fair. No choir or band. No running around in the grass like a crazy person whenever the weather’s nice outside.

  That makes me feel kind of sad, even if Maddie says, “It’s no big whoop,” like she always does.

  An air-filter machine runs in Maddie’s room, 24/7/365. The Breakfastinator is set up in her room, too, because everything about the automatic food dispenser is totally sterile and hypoallergenic.

  I can pretty much go in her room anytime I want (after knocking first), but I still have to use hand sanitizer. That’s why there are Purell pumps mounted on just about every wall. Did you know that washing your hands is the best way to stop the spread of germs? If you lived at my house, you would.

  I don’t have to wear a disposable mask when I visit Maddie (unless I’m sick with something), which makes it a whole lot easier to eat breakfast with her. Most visitors have to “mask up” like bandits before they can enter Maddie’s room.

  Maddie, of course, usually turns the masks into some kind of funny joke because she knows everybody feels weird the second they slip one on.

  She always makes sure everybody else feels great—even when she doesn’t.

  Like I said, my little sister is pretty incredible.

  Hey, the doorbell’s ringing!

  Actually, it’s not a bell—it’s another one of Mom’s robots, Dingaling the doorman. Dingaling’s eyes are motion detectors. The outdoor android automatically rings a bell and shouts like Paul Revere whenever somebody shows up on our front porch.

  I’m guessing it’s Harry Hunter Hudson, or as I sometimes call him, “Triple H,” or just “Trip.”

  Since he’s here, this is probably a good time to tell you about Trip, my second-best friend in the whole wide world.

  Okay, I’m not trying to be mean or anything, but here’s the best way for me to describe Trip: Think of the kid who’s the clumsiest klutz, the biggest butterfingers, or the most bumbling fumbler in your whole school.

  Now think about the kid who says all the wrong things at all the wrong times, day in and day out. The guy who makes fart jokes. In church.

  Now think about the kid who wears goofy clothes, carries a goofy backpack, and walks around in unbelievably goofy socks and shoes.

  With me so far?

  Okay. Combine all that with the kid who brings PB-and-banana sandwiches to school for lunch every day. We’re talking Monday through Friday without a break. And make sure you picture those peanut butter sandwiches wrapped in wax paper and bouncing around inside a dented-up Snoopy lunch box.

  Now make him extremely annoying.

  That’s Harry Hunter Hudson, Triple H, Trip. All of the above.

  Now, having an annoying and extremely odd best friend—or even a second-best friend—like Trip doesn’t exactly make me super popular at school.

  Fine. I don’t care.

  Well, I do. A little.

  But, hey—I’m loyal to Trip. We are (and always will be) second-best friends forever. That’s our deal and we’re sticking to it. We’ve been second-besties basically ever since we were both in diapers, back when Trip was just Harry Hunter Hudson. And, yes, he was annoying even then.

  Trip just wouldn’t be Trip if he didn’t drive everybody (including me) nuts.

  I guess I’m telling you about Trip so you’ll understand why I was so freaked out when Mom made me go to school with E.

  See, Trip and I already have something of a reputation for being, well…different.

  At least that’s what the kids who, for whatever reason, get to decide who’s cool and who isn’t think about Trip and me. The two of us have permanent seats at the losers’ table in the cafeteria.

  To prove my point, let me bring you up to speed on the Trip-and-Sammy highlights reel.

  For openers, that kid Cooper Elliot, the one who calls me “Dweebiac,” has been picking on Trip and me since as long as either one of us can remember.

  In fact, back in second grade Cooper Elliot made both of us cry in front of the whole entire school—not to mention everybody’s parents and grandparents.

  Here’s another blast from the past: Remember how I told you that Trip always says the wrong thing at the wrong time? Well, once when we were in third grade, Mrs. Reyes, the principal, finally picked Trip and me to do the morning announcements.

  Did you notice how I said “once”?

  After I listed the lunch menu (corn dogs, potato spudsters, yogurt, and string cheese), Trip leaned into the microphone and said, “Please join us for a moment of silence and medication.”

  I think he was supposed to say “meditation,” but Mrs. Reyes took Trip’s advice and popped a few aspirin the second we were done. I’m pretty sure we gave her a splitting headache.

  During lunch, Trip is mocked on a daily basis for his peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches.

  He also annoys anyone within ten feet of our table because he has this loud, open-mouthed, tongue-smacking way of eating his sandwiches because all that peanut butter kind of glues the bread and banana bits to the roof of his mouth.

  Totally unacceptable.

  So as you can see, I really don’t need my “bro-bot’s” help to make me unpopular at school.

  Trip and I are doing a fine job all on our own.

  My point is that Trip likes to hang out with Maddie as much as I do. He has to wear a disposable mask when he goes in her room, though. The mask is actually a bonus in Trip’s case. It cuts down on his peanut-butter-and-banana breath.

  McFetch, the germ-free robo-pooch, is mostly Maddie’s dog. He keeps her company while Trip and I are at school during the day. I think Maddie’s tutor robot is afraid of McFetch—if it’s possible for robots to feel fear. McFetch likes to sniff and snort at Tootles’s roller-skate-style feet. Maybe they smell like bacon.

  Mr. Moppenshine is also a frequent visitor to Maddie’s room. He keeps every surface super sanitized and brings Maddie her dinner every night.

  He also restocks the sterile serving tubes on the Breakfastinator.

  Mr. Moppenshine even organizes everything in the refrigerator by height and tosses out any fruit, vegetables, or yogurt the second they hit their expiration date.

  Sure, all of Mr. Moppenshine’s cleaning and tidying saves me from having to do those chores myself. But even so, in my humble opinion, he is, by far, the most annoying robot my mom ever created.

  Well, before Error showed up, anyway.

  I really am all over the place, aren’t I? Shoulda made a better outline.

  Okay, let’s talk about my dad, Noah Rodriguez. Don’t forget, he was big on Mom’s screwy idea to build me a robotic brother, so you guys need to understand a little bit more about him to see why he doesn’t always make the most, shall we say, “mature” decisions in the world.

  My father lives a double life. Yep. You heard it here first. You see, my dad is also Sasha Nee, the world-famous manga artist who created the supercool series Hot and Sour Ninja Robots.

  Dad’s graphic novels are ridiculously awesome and…

  Wait a minute!

  Where’s my mom?

  Time-out in our story.

  Seriously.

  WHERE IS MY MOM?

  Okay, I know exactly where my mother is and what she’s doing. I just lost track a bit.

  And—I’m still being honest here—I don’t like it. Not one bit.

  She’s out in her workshop.

  Yep—the door is locked. The shades are all down.

  “I know what you’re doing in there!” I shout, pounding on the door with both fists.

  No answer.

  “Mom? That robot is an accident waiting to happen. The next time, Error could burn down the whole school. Maybe he should just stay home and help Mr. Moppenshine scrub toilets.”


  Finally, the door creaks open.

  “Mom, please—what’s the point of this experiment, anyway? What exactly are you trying to prove?”

  “I’m sorry, Sammy. I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it might not work.”

  “So?”

  “If E fails, the consequences will be devastating.”

  “What? You’ll lose your job?”

  “No, hon. Something worse. But…if it works…” Her eyes sparkle like she just swallowed a whole string of twinkle lights. “If E can successfully function at your school and move up, advance through the grades—”

  “No! Please! I don’t want to be a dweebiac in high school and college, too!”

  “Sammy? You’re standing in the way of progress. Change is a good thing. It’s also inevitable. It’s going to happen whether you want it to or not.”

  Inevitable.

  A very good word to describe my future as a total dweebiac.

  By the way, inevitable is just one of my mother’s favorite words.

  She has a lot. Here’s a quick list:

  1. PERSEVERANCE

  2. DETERMINATION

  3. SPUNK

  4. STICK-TO-ITIVENESS

  5. DEDICATION

  6. DOGGEDNESS

  7. TENACITY

  8. SOPAIPILLA

  Notice how most of her favorite words mean the same thing? Yep. My mother will keep going, working on whatever needs to be fixed, doing whatever needs to be done—no matter what kind of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement she may face.

  No way was she giving up on E.

  As for word number eight, sopaipilla, she likes to eat those on special occasions or to celebrate robot breakthroughs. Sopaipillas are, basically, Mexican doughnuts. They’re chewy and soft, like Krispy Kremes, but soaked with honey. Dad brings them home sometimes, especially if it’s someone’s birthday.

  Standing there outside her workshop, knowing my mother is inside tinkering with E the Annoy-a-tron, I want to scream a few of my favorite words:

  1. WHOA!

  2. STOP!

  3. KNOCK IT OFF!

  4. GIMME A BREAK, MOM!

  5. PUH-LEEZE?

  But I don’t.

  Because I know she won’t listen. She’ll keep on repairing E’s fried circuits and reprogramming those “one or two or maybe four” minor miscalculations she made the first time around.

  Why?

  Because my mother has perseverance, determination, doggedness, and dedication—not to mention spunk, stick-to-itiveness, tenacity, and a whole bunch of other words that all mean the same thing: She won’t quit working on a problem until she solves it.

  So I slump back to my bedroom realizing the horrible truth.

  One day soon, my mother will make me take E to school again.

  It’s inevitable.

  Monday comes and I head back to school.

  Thankfully, E isn’t coming with me. Despite all her stick-to-itiveness, Mom didn’t “get ’im done!”

  But she is skipping school and letting a substitute teacher handle all her classes at Notre Dame just so she can spend the day (and night) in her workshop tinkering with E. I think a lot of the other robots around our house are nervous. Mom keeps eyeballing them for spare parts.

  It seems E has become my mother’s number one priority. Well, except for Maddie. It’s almost as if, in my mother’s mind, the hunk of junk really is a member of our family.

  “But what if she fixes it?” says Trip during gym class.

  “She will,” I say. “There’s no if, and, or but about it.”

  Trip snort-giggles. “You said ‘butt’!”

  Sometimes I can’t believe Trip is actually the same age as me. “Trip?”

  “Yeah, Sammy?”

  “How come you always sound like you have asthma when you laugh?”

  “Because I laugh backward. Eeh-eeh-eeh. See?”

  “Hey, Dweebiacs,” shouts Cooper Elliot. “You’re dead meat.”

  Yep. We’re playing dodgeball today, and Coach Stringer is off giving Andy Reinhertz a fitness test. That means Cooper is free to tease and harass Trip and me all he wants.

  Of course Trip and I were the very last ones chosen when the two captains were picking sides. Poor Jacob Brown—Cooper made him take both of us.

  At my school, we usually play dodgeball on the outdoor basketball court. Six very hard, rubber-coated foam balls are lined up on the center line. We have to stay behind the out-of-bounds line underneath the basket until the ref shouts “Go!”

  Since Coach Stringer isn’t around, Cooper appoints himself substitute PE teacher and temporary dodgeball referee.

  “Go!” he shouts (after he takes a two-step running head start).

  This is what they call the “opening rush.” We’re supposed to race across to the center line, grab three balls, and start pummeling the guys on Cooper’s team while dodging the three balls they’re hurling at us.

  Did I mention that I run pretty slowly?

  Or that Trip runs even slower?

  We don’t even make it to the center line before Cooper Elliot and his teammates bean us both.

  I go down hard when Cooper’s ball socks me in the gut.

  I almost lose my Cap’n Crunch.

  With Trip and me out in the first seconds, our team doesn’t stand a chance. We lose the game just like we do every time we play dodgeball.

  I guess it could’ve been worse.

  I guess E could’ve been there.

  But tonight, things do get worse.

  Way worse.

  Maddie is sick again.

  This happens, I’d say, three or four times a year. And it’s unbelievably scary each and every time.

  Tonight, it’s a respiratory problem. Maddie is having a lot of trouble breathing. She also has a temperature “spiking at one hundred and five degrees,” according to my mom, who abandoned E the instant Dad texted her in her workshop.

  We’re waiting for the ambulance, and I guess I look as freaked out as I feel, because Maddie just smiles and says, “No biggie, Sam. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”

  She says it very softly because she can’t afford to waste a lot of the oxygen when she’s having so much trouble breathing.

  I take her hand and try to smile back. “Whatever you say, sis.”

  “How…school…?”

  “Don’t talk, okay? Just breathe. I’ll tell you everything that happened today.”

  She inhales a shallow breath. I can tell it hurts her to do it.

  I start talking a mile a minute.

  “Okay, today during gym we were playing dodgeball. Trip and I were on the same team, of course, and you should’ve seen Cooper Elliot’s face when I nailed him before he even made it to the center line. Yep. I creamed him. BOOM! POW! Knocked him on his butt. After class, Coach Stringer—he’s the gym teacher—was telling everybody that he had never seen a dodgeball thrown that hard. He even clocked me with a radar gun. Said I had a ninety-mile-per-hour fastball. I told him I wasn’t even trying. I sidearmed the thing.”

  “Really?” Maddie asks with a grin.

  “No. But one day it’ll really happen. You’ll see.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “Me neither.”

  Luckily, we don’t have to wait very long for the ambulance.

  They come here so often, they know how to find our house.

  Hey, Dave. Hey, Dylan.”

  Yep. Maddie knows most of the paramedics from St. Joe’s. Like I said, they come to our house a lot.

  The hospital guys won’t let me ride in the ambulance with Maddie, which I sort of understand.

  But Mom and Dad won’t let me go with them, either.

  “Guard the fort, Sammy,” says Dad.

  “B-b-but—”

  “Mrs. Stein is on her way,” says Mom.

  I’d give them both a look—one of my really squinty ones—if I didn’t know they already h
ad enough to deal with.

  Mrs. Stein is our neighbor. She comes over sometimes to “babysit” me even though I haven’t been a baby for, like, eight or nine years.

  “It’s just a term,” my mother says whenever I remind her that I’m not an infant.

  Anyway, Mrs. Stein is okay. I mean, I like her. Plus, having her babysit me is way better than dealing with Nanny Nano, this rattletrap child-care contraption Mom invented back when I was maybe three. Nanny Nano thought everything I did was dangerous. She made me cut my hot dogs with a plastic spoon and go to bed wearing a bicycle helmet.

  But come on—I’m way too old for any kind of babysitter. Human or robotic.

  Besides, I want to be at St. Joseph’s hospital with my sister, Maddie.

  Of course nobody cares what I want.

  Not tonight.

  Not ever.

  One of my mom’s favorite lectures—and there are a ton of ’em, trust me—is all about how kids (that means ME!) can’t possibly understand all the decisions that adults have to make “for the good of their children!”

  “Everything we do, every decision we make, we do for you and Maddie.”

  That means we have to trust our moms and dads to know and do what’s best for us.

  Even if, for instance, they tell you to take a robot to school or stay home from the hospital when your sister is really sick and you really want to be there with her.

  We can’t ask questions—at least, not more than a couple.

  Three is the absolute limit. Once I tried to go for four and got shot down, big-time.

  Tonight, of course, I only got to ask one: “Can I go with you guys?”

  You already know the answer.

  “No!”

  That’s why I’m sitting here at home. Totally scared about Maddie and her fever and how hard it was for her to breathe and whatever’s going to happen next!