House of Robots Read online

  Then again, maybe he does. Maybe he’s like Pinocchio.

  See, E started out as a kind of puppet, but somehow, magically he turned into a real boy. Well, that’s how it seems when I see him with all those little kids hanging off his arms and legs. They’re laughing and squealing so much, pretty soon E starts laughing, too. Just like a human would do.

  Make that most humans.

  I almost forgot that Cooper Elliot still goes to Creekside. I got a little too comfortable while he was suspended, I guess.

  And Cooper doesn’t like to hear little kids laughing. Not when they’re laughing at him. Which is what a lot more have been doing ever since E came to school.

  And, of course, Cooper blames me for bringing E to school and getting him suspended on account of that slingshot stunt. So I try to avoid the big blowhard as much as possible when he comes back.

  Well, one day I can’t.

  And it almost gets ugly. Really, really, really ugly.

  Trip and I are hanging out on the playground during recess. We’re sitting on a pair of swings, just shooting the breeze. There’s another Notre Dame game this weekend, and we’re thinking about asking Dad to let E go with us.

  “That would be so awesome,” says Trip, swinging high and then jumping off. “Maybe your mom could build him a special set of shoulder pads and he could play!”

  “I think that might be against the NCAA rules. E’s not a college student. He goes to school with us.”

  “So? Those Rock’em Sock’em Robots get to box all the time, and I bet neither one of ’em ever made it past the first grade.”

  “Just like you two babies, playing on the swings.”

  Guess who just snuck up behind us? Yep. Your enemy and mine, Cooper Elliot.

  He shoves me hard. I go higher than I’ve ever been on a swing. Remember my little heights-related phobia? Well, it’s kicking in now, in full force. I feel like I might just vomit.

  “What’s the matter, Sammy?” Cooper sneers. “Scared of heights?”

  “No! You just have to let me down. Right now, please. Really, as soon as possible! For very important reasons!”

  “Stop pushing him,” shouts Trip.

  “Or what, peanut-butter breath?” says Cooper. “You going to spit another banana at me?”

  “N-n-no…”

  “Ha! You two aren’t so brave without your big, strong ro-butt buddy, are you?”

  Behind me, I hear Cooper huffing and puffing as he shoves me harder and higher.

  I also hear familiar ZHURR-WHIRR, ZHURR-WHIRR sounds.

  “Well,” I say, “now that you mention it—”

  “Shut up, Samuel Hayes-Rodriguez. By the way, what kind of name is that? Hayes-Rodriguez. Sounds like a disease.”

  “You are incorrect, Cooper Elliot,” chirps E. “It is what is commonly referred to as a hyphenated, or double, surname, combining both of the family names of a child’s parents.”

  Yep. That’s what I was trying to tell Cooper.

  While he was busy behind me, E snuck up behind him.

  Cooper stops shoving me.

  And gets really, really quiet.

  I drag my feet on the ground, slow down, and hop out of the swing.

  E? He just stands there. Doesn’t say a word.

  Behind him, parked at the curb, guess what I see? Yep. The black SUV with the dark-tinted windows and the ND vanity plate AA999. Yes, E told me the creepmobile was nothing to worry about, but still…

  My focus goes back to E and Cooper. Because E just propped both hands on his hips. With a SKLURK, SHIF, SHLIK, he tilts his head to the proper angle for staring down at Cooper.

  “Where the heck did you come from?” the bully sputters.

  E does not respond.

  “He was operating in stealth mode,” says Trip. “I think he learned it from X-14.”

  “He’s kind of like a ninja,” I add. “One second he isn’t there, the next he is.”

  “It’s almost as if he’s invisible even though you can see him,” says Trip.

  “Funny,” says Cooper, even though he’s frowning.

  He makes an ugly face at E.

  Well, uglier than usual.

  “Somebody needs to pull your plug, you computerized clodhopper.”

  “If somebody tries,” I say, “he might be in for the shock of his life.”

  Trip laughs. “Oh, snap!”

  “Be careful, smart-mouths,” Cooper snorts at us. “I’m not done with either of you!”

  Then he starts walking away. Backward.

  “You won’t always have your robot friend to protect you.”

  E’s eyeballs lock on Cooper when he says that.

  “Of course they will,” says E. “I will always be available to provide protection for my brother, Sammy, and his second-best friend forever, Harry Hunter Hudson. By the way, perhaps I failed to mention it when first we met, but my bright blue eyeballs double as freeze-ray guns.”

  Cooper Elliot’s own eyeballs nearly pop out of his skull. He turns tail and runs back into the school building.

  “Do you really have freezer beams in your eyeballs?” Trip asks when Cooper is gone.

  “No. It is just something I heard Sammy say, back when we first met. I thought it might be a wise and strategic move to repeat it.”

  So have I mentioned that I like E a whole lot better than I used to?

  Well, I guess I should. Because I definitely do!

  The second I get home, I tell Mom and Maddie about what happened on the playground with Cooper Elliot.

  “E was amazing, Mom. He really is like a big brother!”

  “What’d he do?” asks Maddie.

  “He stood up for me! Trip, too. Wouldn’t let Cooper push us around!” I start to imitate E’s sort-of-high-pitched voice. “ ‘I will always be available to provide protection for my brother and his second-best friend forever, Harry Hunter Hudson.’”

  “He said all that?”

  “Yep. Then he kind of glared at Cooper and made a joke about his eyes really being freeze-ray guns.”

  Maddie laughed. “E tells jokes?”

  “Well, I taught him a few.”

  “Good for you, Sammy,” says Mom. “I was hoping you would help E adjust to school life. His artificial intelligence is engineered to learn and grow.”

  “Well, he’s doing way better, Mom. He’s not so stiff. Uses a lot less robot words. Doesn’t try to show off by being the smartest kid in the class all the time.”

  “Because you helped him.”

  I shrug. “I guess.”

  Then guess what happens? Yep. My mom kisses me. But don’t tell anybody, okay? Nobody actually saw it, except Maddie, and that doesn’t really count because she’s my sister and Mom is her mother, too. You know what I mean.

  “You did a good job with E, Mom,” I say. “That bot is totally awesome.”

  Mom and Maddie exchange these private little smiles they do sometimes.

  “You should go tell E how you feel,” suggests Maddie.

  “An excellent idea,” says Mom.

  “I dunno,” I say. “I think E already knows I don’t hate him as much as I used to.”

  “Still, Sammy,” says Mom, “I’m sure he’d love to hear you say you actually like him.”

  “Okay. I’ll tell him. But can I do it later? ’Cause right now, I’m starving.”

  “I bet you are,” says Maddie. “Standing up to bullies is hard work.”

  “Yep,” I say, taking a deep breath and kind of thumping my chest a little. “It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.”

  We all have a great dinner prepared by Mr. Moppenshine. In the dining room! Like I said, Maddie’s doing really well these days. I guess we all are.

  After dinner and homework, I decide to look in on E, who is recharging himself over in Mom’s workshop.

  “Thank you, E,” I whisper softly. I don’t want to wake him up. This is probably a weird thing to say, but he looks unbelievably happy. Especial
ly for a robot.

  I’m feeling pretty happy, too.

  The next morning, the alarm goes off, I wolf down breakfast with Maddie, we chat about everything, I grab my backpack, and E and I swing by Trip’s house on our bikes so the three of us can race to school because we’re “two-point-five minutes behind schedule” (according to E). It doesn’t help that when we get to the bike rack we’re mobbed by a bunch of kids who’ve all heard how the three of us stood up to Cooper Elliot.

  In other words, I’m so super busy I never remember to tell E that I actually like him. I never let him know that he sort of feels like the big brother I sometimes secretly wish I had.

  Kind of a mistake.

  Because, right after school, E is late coming back to the bike rack.

  That might not sound like that big of a deal, but being late for anything is extremely unusual for E since he has that built-in internal clock that syncs with the atomic clock out in Colorado, so he always knows exactly what time it is, down to the nearest yoctosecond, which, according to Mom, is equal to one septillionth of a normal second.

  But E’s so popular, I’m not totally surprised he’s running late. He could be helping the janitor change lightbulbs again. Without a ladder. Or giving some little kids a pony ride on his shoulders.

  So I wait.

  For fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. Worried, I go back inside the school to look for E.

  I find the janitor. He hasn’t seen E.

  The hallways are completely empty. So no pony rides.

  I even check out the cafeteria, because sometimes E volunteers to help Mrs. Norby Rook, the head cafeteria lady, restock her shelves. Especially the heavy cans.

  “I haven’t seen him, hon,” she tells me. “Not since lunch, when, like always, he didn’t eat.”

  Now I’m actually starting to freak out slightly. I even check all the bathrooms, even though E never uses one unless he needs to tighten a bolt or something—then he might need the mirrors.

  I look everywhere.

  And I mean everywhere.

  E is nowhere to be found. And nobody has seen him.

  So I call Mom. She gets to school about one minute later.

  Principal Reyes comes out to join us at the bike rack, where we all sort of stare silently at E’s custom-built bike for maybe fifteen seconds.

  Then Mom and Mrs. Reyes figure it out: Somebody stole E.

  “They kidnapped him!” says Mrs. Reyes.

  “No,” says Mom. “They robo-napped him!”

  Maddie and I have dinner together that night. She’s totally bummed. Truth be told, I’m feeling pretty bummed, too.

  “Who would kidnap E?” she wonders out loud.

  “I dunno,” I say with a shrug. “I guess a robot like that is worth a ton of money. Maybe some mobsters grabbed E and they’re holding him for ransom.”

  “Wouldn’t they have called?” says Maddie. “I mean, if they want ransom money, don’t they sort of have to ask for it?”

  She’s right, of course. It’s been several hours since E disappeared, and nobody’s called Mom to demand money or anything else in exchange for E.

  Maddie and I aren’t the only ones in the house feeling down about E’s robo-napping. I’m not sure how this works (or even if it’s possible), but all the other robots seem sad and gloomy. Mr. Moppenshine looks more like Mr. Mope and Whine. Jimi, the electric-guitar-bot, won’t play anything except the blues. Drone Malone is feeling too low to fly.

  I miss E, too. Turns out he was a darn good robot.

  The best one Mom ever built.

  That night it hits me: the black SUV!

  The creepy car that was always tailing E and me. Maybe that SUV was from a rival robot company. Greedy people who wanted to steal all of Mom’s hard work and E’s secrets. Maybe some big-bucks Robotics Corp., Incorporated, scientists nabbed E at school, stuffed him into the back of that SUV, then drove him to their secret lab hidden inside a volcano somewhere so they could prod and probe E’s circuits and copy his incredible moves.

  This could be a case of what they call high-tech espionage.

  In my school notebook, I jot down the license plate information I remember E telling me: “Indiana. Notre Dame vanity plates. AA999.”

  I’m about to crawl into bed and try to go to sleep (which I don’t think is going to happen anytime soon, no matter how hard I try), when Mr. Moppenshine comes to my room with Hayseed.

  “If there is anything we can do to help you and the municipal authorities locate and retrieve E, please do not hesitate to ask,” says Moppenshine. “And please, pick up your socks.”

  “Whoever done did this,” adds Hayseed, “why, they’s meaner than a skillet full of rattlesnakes.”

  Now a bunch of other bots crowd into my bedroom. McFetch, Four, Scrubmarine, Blitzen, Drone Malone. They’re all volunteering to do whatever they can to help bring E home.

  “Look,” I say, “I’ll let you guys know if there’s any way you can help.”

  “Good,” says Mr. Moppenshine. “After all, Sammy, E is our brother, too!”

  And then I have an idea.

  “Drone Malone? Are you fit to fly?”

  “Roger, wilco! Time for a traffic report?”

  I shake my head. “Nope. You just need to find one car. A black SUV.”

  I show the hover-bot the license plate information. A thin green line stutters across the page. The drone is laser scanning the data, inputting it into his tracking device.

  And without saying another word, Drone Malone flies through my window—which, thankfully, Mr. Moppenshine threw open about two seconds before the drone’s nose cone would’ve cracked the glass.

  When I go back to school after E’s mysterious disappearance, Cooper Elliot jumps in my face with a vengeance.

  I guess he’s been thinking about his suspension, because I think he wants to suspend me.

  From someplace high.

  By my shoelaces.

  Or my underwear.

  “I can’t decide which one I would enjoy more,” he sniggers when no teachers are around to hear him sniggering. “Giving you a wedgie off a backboard in the gym or running you, upside down, up the flagpole.”

  “How about neither?” I say. “Can I vote for neither?”

  “Nope. Not unless you have a five-hundred-pound robot with laser-beam eyeballs to protect your butt. Oh, wait. You don’t. E isn’t just tardy today, he’s officially absent.”

  “Step aside, Cooper. We need to be in class. Mrs. Kunkel is probably taking attendance.”

  “So? You won’t be in her class for long.”

  “Oh, really? Says who?”

  “Me. Just wait, Dweebiac. I’m going to make your life at Creekside so miserable, you’re going to beg your mommy to homeschool you like she homeschools your stupid little sister!”

  Okay. That does it. I’ve had enough.

  I sort of surprise myself by going nose to nose with the big jerk. I make sure my posture is ramrod stiff—just like E would have done. And then I let Cooper have it.

  “You know what, Cooper? I don’t need E to be my bodyguard. I can protect myself.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Says who?”

  “Me.”

  And then, E-style, I just stare at him. Hard. I do not blink. I do not breathe. I become Robo-boy.

  Amazingly, this seems to confuse Cooper.

  And you know what he does? He walks away.

  This might be the number one reason I miss E at school: He was an excellent teacher.

  Too bad the next day at school is even worse.

  Cooper Elliot is still leaving me alone. All I have to do to scare him off is stand still, bug out my eyes, and stare at him, hard. He must think Mom equipped me with deadly ray-gun contact lenses or something.

  But here’s what makes the day so awful: Cooper and his crew are totally harassing Trip instead. They make fun of his mismatched clothes and socks. They splash water down the front of
his jeans when he’s in the boys’ room so everybody will think he peed his pants. During gym class, when Coach Stringer isn’t looking, they turn dodgeball into murder ball.

  It gets worse during lunch.

  We’re back to just the two of us sitting together in the cafeteria.

  I think some of our new friends want to sit with us, but they’re afraid of what might happen to them if they do. Especially after they see Cooper Elliot come over and cover Trip’s whole sandwich with his gigantic hand.

  “You know what’s better than a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich?” Cooper sneers at Trip because, once again, there aren’t any teachers around to hear him sneer.

  “Um, a F-f-fluffernutter?” Trip stammers.

  “Nope. A mashed peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich.”

  He leans down hard and squishes Trip’s lunch into a mushy mess that’s flatter than that guy Stanley.

  “Heh-heh-heh,” Cooper chuckles.

  “Heh-heh-heh,” chuckle all his cronies. Then they waltz away.

  Trip looks over at me, almost hurt, as if I did something wrong.

  “What?” I ask uncomfortably, which I know is a stupid question.

  “Couldn’t you have said something to help out? Or use your new robo-boy powers or something? Why’d you just sit there?”

  “Um, I dunno.” I shrug and look away. I guess it’s a lot harder to stand up for someone else, without E around to back me up, than I realized.

  Trip doesn’t eat his sandwich. He just stares at it. It’s flatter than a pancake after a steamroller rumbles over it.

  We’ve both pretty much lost our appetites anyway.

  I’m sorry about all this,” I finally tell Trip when we’re safely back in Mrs. Kunkel’s classroom, where Cooper Elliot has to at least pretend that he isn’t a total juvenile delinquent.