by Nancy Krulik
Copyright © 2016 by Nancy Krulik and Amanda Burwasser
Illustrations copyright © 2016 Mike Moran
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available on file.
Cover illustration by Mike Moran
Cover design by Georgia Morrissey
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-5107-1019-1
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1024-5
Printed in the United States of America
Interior Design by Joshua Barnaby
For my parents, Gladys and Steve Krulik, higher branches on our family tree
—NK
For my grandparents, Herman and Lillian Burwasser
—AB
For Kristin
—MM
CONTENTS
1. Bran-Tastic
2. Butt Kicks Butt
3. Smash!
4. Slime Time!
5. Something Smells Fishy
6. Atomic Flush
7. Stinky-buggy-tonsil-toenail-itis
8. Poor Wombats
9. Do the Wombat Watusi
10. Come Clean
There’s a Soccer Ball on the Ceiling!
1.
Bran-Tastic
“Mom!” I shouted. “Where are the Sugar-Blasted Bubblegum Crispies?”
“We’re all out of Bubblegum Crispies,” Mom called back from her lab in the garage. “Just pour yourself a bowl of my Fun-with-Fiber Flakes.”
“Fiber is healthy for humans,” my cousin, Java, said. He was sitting at the kitchen table, speed-clipping coupons for my mom.
Fiber Flakes might be healthy. But they tasted like soggy cardboard. Not that Java would know. Java doesn’t eat breakfast.
Java doesn’t eat at all.
He doesn’t need to. He’s an android.
My mom is a scientist. She likes to build things. So she built me a robot cousin.
His name is Jacob Alexander Victor Applebaum.
I just call him Java.
Sometimes it’s cool having a robot by my side. But other times it can be a real pain.
The hardest part about having Java in the family is I can’t tell anyone he isn’t human. That’s because he’s part of my mom’s secret project: Project Droid.
But keeping Java’s secret isn’t easy. Especially because he doesn’t always act like a normal kid.
“I hate Fiber Flakes,” I called to Mom. “Isn’t there anything sweet I can have for breakfast?”
“Add some dried fruit,” she suggested.
“Dried fruit makes me have to go to the bathroom,” I argued.
“Logan, I’m busy,” my mother called from the lab. “Just add some dates and nuts to your cereal and eat.”
Suddenly Java leaped up from his seat.
“I can do it!” he shouted. He picked up the scissors he’d been using to clip the coupons and began cutting up the calendar on the wall.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“Getting dates for your cereal,” Java said. “Here’s November 17.” He dropped the calendar dates into my cereal bowl.
That’s what I mean about Java not acting like a normal kid.
I looked down at the paper in my bowl. “I’ll have toast,” I said.
Just then, Mom walked into the kitchen. At least I think it was my mom. It was hard to tell under the helmet and safety glasses.
“Better hurry,” Mom said. She dropped her tool kit on the counter. “You two will be late for your soccer game.”
Huh?
“What do you mean, you two?” I asked Mom nervously.
“Didn’t I tell you?” Mom asked. “I signed Java up to be on your soccer team. You boys are going to play together every Sunday. I think it will be good for Java.”
“Soccer is good exercise for humans,” Java pointed out.
“But you’re not human!” I shouted at him.
“Logan, be nice,” my mother scolded.
“It’s just that he’s always around,” I said. “He lives here. He’s in my class. And now he’s going to be on my soccer team.”
“Exactly,” my mom said cheerfully. “I think you’re doing a great job teaching him how to be human.”
I frowned. Mom just didn’t get it.
“I don’t have time to teach Java all about soccer,” I told her. “I’m the team’s top scorer. When I’m on the field I have to focus on the game.”
Of course, I didn’t say that I’d scored only one goal. Or that my goal was against the Lemon-Yellow Lemurs, a team that stunk almost as badly as we did.
“You don’t need to teach Java about anything,” Mom said. “I programmed all the rules of soccer into his hard drive.”
“What if something goes wrong?” I asked her. “You remember the mess he made at the science fair? And this time you won’t be there to fix him!”
Saturdays were Mom’s only day to clean up her lab. So she never was able to make it to my soccer games.
But that was okay with me.
The last time Mom came to a game was really embarrassing. She called me her Little Bunny Hug and pinched my cheek in front of the other kids on the team.
Top scorers didn’t have nicknames like Little Bunny Hug.
“Nothing will go wrong this time,” Mom promised. “There are no giant magnets on a soccer field, like at the science fair. There won’t be anything to upset his wiring. He’ll act like any other kid.”
I looked over at my android cousin. He was pulling little pieces of metal from my mother’s tool kit and dropping them into the bowl in front of him.
“Look. Now I am adding some nuts to the cereal,” he said proudly. “I am adding bolts, too.”
I rolled my eyes. Java, act like any other kid? Somehow I doubted it.
2.
Butt Kicks Butt
“Those Red Polar Bears are really kicking our butts,” I told my friend, Stanley, as we watched the Polar Bears’ center forward kick another goal into our net.
“The score is only three to nothing,” Stanley said. “We can still catch up. You could score a goal for us. After all, you’re our team’s top scorer.”
Team’s top scorer. I loved the sound of that.
But the truth was, the fact that I had scored a goal in a game a few weeks ago wasn’t helping us now.
“We’re already near the end of the second half,” I told Stanley. “We’re gonna be shut ou
t. And the Silverspoon twins will never let us live it down.”
The Silverspoon twins were both on the Red Polar Bears. The Red Polar Bears had kicked our Purple Wombat butts the last time we’d played them. And it looked like they were about to do it again.
It wasn’t like the Red Polar Bears were league champs or anything. They just didn’t stink as badly we did.
I looked across the field. Jerry Silverspoon was standing in the Polar Bear goal scratching his rear. He had nothing else to do.
No Purple Wombat had gotten close to scoring a goal all day.
“Hey, look!” Stanley shouted excitedly. He pointed to something fluttering off to the side of the field. “There’s a buff-bellied hummingbird!”
Bonk! Suddenly the soccer ball bashed Stanley in the back of the head. His glasses flew off. He fell face-first into the mud.
Smash. Sherry Silverspoon stepped on Stanley’s glasses with her cleats.
“Whoops,” she said with an evil grin. “How clumsy of me.”
“I can’t see,” Stanley said.
“Time out!” our coach called to the ref.
I helped my friend to his feet and started walking him over to the bench.
“You’re out for the game,” Coach Baloney told Stanley. “Java, you go in for him.”
Oh no. Those were the last words I wanted to hear.
But Java sure seemed happy. He jogged proudly onto the field and took Stanley’s defense position.
I wasn’t sure what soccer skills Mom had programmed into his hard drive. Someone was going to have to teach him how to play.
“Okay, Java,” I told my cousin. “Just watch me. I’ll show you how this team’s top scorer plays.”
The ref blew his whistle. Sherry Silverspoon kicked the soccer ball high in the air. It was heading straight for our goalie, Nadine.
Uh-oh. I thought. Here comes goal number four.
Java turned around and faced Nadine.
He leaped in the air.
What was he doing?
“Keep your eye on the ball, Java!” I shouted.
Slam!
I heard the soccer ball whack Java in the butt.
Then I watched the ball soar across the field—right over the heads of all the Red Polar Bears.
Oomf!
The ball slammed Jerry Silverspoon in the stomach.
It knocked him to the ground.
And rolled right into the net.
“GOOOOAAAAALLLL!” the referee shouted.
All the Purple Wombats started cheering. “Java! Java! Java!”
But I wasn’t cheering. I was too worried.
No human butt could do something like that.
Surely someone had noticed.
I looked around.
No one on my team seemed to care how Java had butt-butted the ball so hard. They were just happy that he had.
The Red Polar Bears were too shocked that we had scored against them to worry about how it had happened. They just wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again.
Now the Red Polar Bears were really ready to kick our rear ends. They got back in position for the kick-off.
So did we.
The Red Polar Bears’ center forward kicked the ball. He sent it soaring across the field.
The Polar Bears raced toward our goal, ready to kick the ball right past our goalie.
Which is exactly what would have happened—if we didn’t have Java.
The next thing we knew, Java was on his tiptoes, twirling around and around in a circle. Just watching him made me dizzy.
But droids don’t get dizzy. Droids get busy.
Java sprung up into the air like an antelope. He did a flying ballerina split over the heads of the Red Polar Bears.
Nobody moved. We all just stood there, staring up at him.
Java landed neatly on the tips of his toes. He kicked the ball back clear across the field and right into the Red Polar Bear net.
“GOOOOAAAAALLLL!” the referee shouted.
All over the field, jaws dropped. Java had done it again.
Oh man. I was never going to get Java off the team now. I was going to be stuck playing soccer with him every single weekend for the rest of my life.
Or at least until it snowed. Soccer was over by then.
“Time out!” the Red Polar Bear coach shouted.
I guess he wanted a minute to figure out how his team could possibly have given up two goals in a row to the Wombats.
I dragged my feet to the bench to get a drink of water.
Stanley came running over. “Your cousin is the coolest!” he said.
“He just got lucky,” I answered.
“Awesome job!” Stanley called over to Java.
“Thank you, Logan’s friend Stanley,” Java replied.
Stanley laughed.
Java looked in my direction. I turned away and walked over to the water cooler. Stanley followed me. “Why are you giving your cousin the cold shoulder?” he asked.
I opened my mouth to say something. But before I could answer, Java shouted, “I can do it!”
He grabbed the giant cooler filled with ice water and dumped it right onto my left shoulder.
“Ugh!” I screamed. “What did you do that for?”
Java smiled. “See? I can give you a cold shoulder, too,” he said proudly.
I heard the Silverspoon twins laughing from across the field. But I didn’t think it was funny.
Not one little bit.
3.
Smash!
“We are the Wombats! The winning Purple Wombats!” my teammates cheered as they carried Java on their shoulders, parading him around the pizza parlor.
“Winning Wombats!” Stanley said. “There are two words I never thought I’d hear together. It doesn’t look like the Silverspoon twins ever thought they’d hear them either.”
I looked across the restaurant. The Silverspoons were at a table with the rest of the Red Polar Bears. They did not look happy.
Probably because the Red Polar Bears had just lost the game 67 to 3—to us.
The ref had tried to end the game early. But the Silverspoon twins refused to give up.
So Java just kept on scoring.
In fact, Java had scored all sixty-seven of our Wombat goals. No one had ever run so fast or kicked so hard in the history of kid soccer.
Java was our team’s high scorer now.
He was a hero. The star of our team.
He was our team. And everyone wanted to be around him.
I had always looked forward to soccer. I liked being the team’s high scorer—even if it was on a team that lost all the time. I liked being out on the field with my friends.
But now I had to share my friends with Java. I’d never had to share anything before. It felt like my whole life was split in two.
“Java, Java, he’s our man! He kicked those Bears right in the can!” cheered all the Purple Wombats.
Well, almost all the Purple Wombats. I wasn’t in a cheering mood.
Stanley looked over at me. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “Aren’t you happy we won?”
Before I could answer, the waiter came by with a pitcher of lemonade in his hand.
“Just half a cup please,” I told him.
As the waiter began to pour, Java shouted out, “I can do it!”
He lifted his hand and karate-chopped my glass right in half.
Lemonade spilled everywhere.
I was a sticky, gooey, yellow mess. It looked like I had peed in my pants.
“Cool!” Nadine told Java. “You must be a black belt in karate.”
I groaned.
“Java! Java! He’s our man! He broke that glass down with his hand!” the team cheered.
“You’re so lucky to have Java for a cousin,” Stanley told me. “He’s like a superhero!”
A superhero? Not exactly. More like a giant, electronic, glass-smashing pain in the neck.
And who needed one of those?
&nb
sp; 4.
Slime Time!
“Hey Java! Are you ready for today’s match against the Blue Chimpanzees?” Nadine asked the following Sunday, as my cousin and I walked onto the soccer field.
“I’m ready,” I told Nadine. “Maybe I can score another goal today. Like I did that time against the Lemon-Yellow Lemurs. Remember?”
Nadine shrugged.
“Sure,” she said, without even looking at me.
I didn’t get it. Didn’t anybody remember when I was the team’s top scorer? It had only been a couple of weeks ago!
“You will all be ready, after you have chewed and swallowed my tasty snack,” Java said. “It has lots of protein. My database says protein gives you energy for athletics.”
“Your database?” Nadine asked.
Uh-oh.
“That’s just Java’s silly way of saying his brain,” I said quickly.
Boy, sometimes Java could make it really hard to keep his secret.
“Oh,” Nadine said with a giggle. “You’re so funny, Java.”
Oh brother.
“Come on, Purple Wombats,” Java shouted, “try my snack!”
The whole team came running over. Java was their hero. They would do anything he said.
Java started handing sandwiches out to the team. “I made them myself,” he said.
“Cool,” Stanley said. He took a bite and made a face. “This tastes funny.”
“What type of sandwich is this?” Nadine asked as she chewed. “It’s kind of slimy.”
“It’s peanut butter and jellyfish,” Java answered proudly.
“Peanut butter and jelly what?” I asked, spitting the bite of sandwich out of my mouth.
“Jellyfish,” Java repeated. “According to my research, peanut butter and jelly is a favorite snack for humans.”
“Grape jelly,” I told him. “Raspberry jelly. Strawberry jelly. Not jellyfish. That’s just gross.”
“But fish helps you think better,” Java said. “My database lists fish protein as—”
Bleeeccchhhhh!
Suddenly, Tom, one of our defensive players, began to puke.
Bleeeccchhhh!
Then Lexi, one of our midfielders, bent over. She started throwing up, too.
