Team BFF--Race to the Finish! #2

by Stacia Deutsch

  Sophia: hey

  I wanted to tell them all at once, so I waited for the others.

  Lucy and Leila finally logged in. Now we were just waiting for Erin.

  Lucy: so, i have an idea for the algorithm

  I knew that once we started talking about our robot plans, it’d be hard to change the topic.

  Sophia: can we wait for erin? i have something to tell u guys

  Lucy: what? is this what you were acting so weird about today????

  Sophia: i

  I’d only typed one letter when the ding on the chat announced that Erin had arrived.

  Sophia: we have a problem

  Erin: is this about whatever happened at lunch?

  Sophia: kind of. i

  Knock knock

  “Sweetie?” I heard my mom say outside my door.

  I stopped typing and looked away from the computer for a second. “Come in!” It wasn’t good timing, but I knew Mom would be mad at me if I didn’t let her in.

  Sophia: hold on, moms here

  My mom came over and kissed my cheek. “Hi, honey. I got your text. So we have a little problem, huh?”

  “What’s your definition of ‘little’?” I said, crossing my arms across my chest. My mom was looking around my room at the mess of papers and clothes. Normally I kept my room superclean, but I’d been too distracted this week.

  “Can I . . . sit down?” Mom asked, waving vaguely toward my bed.

  I nodded and got up to clear a spot.

  “Sometimes, honey,” Mom said, sitting back on the bed and crossing her legs, “we all have to make hard decisions.”

  “I know.” I glanced over at my computer quickly.

  Lucy: sophia? you back yet?

  Mom gave me a sympathetic look. “I know you were looking forward to the hackathon, honey, but Dad and I really need you here on Saturday.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I didn’t want to be a brat about it, but it was starting to feel like I didn’t matter at all. “But I told you about the hackathon.” It was a done deal now, so it wouldn’t make a difference, but I couldn’t help telling my mom how I felt. “I know you’re busy, and I get that Dad has a work thing, but couldn’t you get how important this is to me?” I said. “Why do I always have to fill in for everyone?” I added. Against my will, my eyes were filling with tears. I hated crying—especially in front of people.

  My mom looked shocked. “Honey. That’s not how it is at all. We—”

  “No, that’s exactly how it is!” I cried without thinking. “I’m working really hard at school, and football, and coding club, but none of that even matters, because the minute you have something to do, it means I have to stop everything to help you. I’m so sick of it!” Now I was really crying.

  My mom sat quietly for a moment. She looked a little shocked at my outburst. “Do you want a tissue?” she asked finally. I nodded, and she went over to the tissue box on my dresser to get me one.

  “I think I need the whole box,” I said, blowing loudly.

  She managed to give me a small smile, but her eyes were creased with concern. “Sweetie, I’m really sorry about all this. I know you have a lot of responsibility around here as the oldest sibling, and Dad and I really, truly appreciate how much you help out at home.” She took a deep breath. “If—if we made you feel like your plans didn’t matter, I’m sorry. That’s not how we think or how we feel. I guess sometimes grown-ups get caught up in things and might not see things from their kids’ point of view.”

  “You can say that again,” I muttered.

  My mom reached out and wrapped her arms around me tightly. “I didn’t realize you were so upset about this. I wish I could change things, but we’re really in a bind.”

  “I know, it’s just . . . ,” I choked out. “I really wanted to go to the hackathon. Coding club is, like, the only place where I have my own . . . my own group,” I said, realizing how much I cared about my “permanent group.” “And everyone from the club’s going to be there . . .” I stopped short of telling her about Sammy. “And I haven’t even been able to tell my friends yet, and now they’re going to be disqualified, all because of ME!” More tears slid down my face.

  “Disqualified?” Mom echoed. She looked confused.

  “Yeah, those are the rules if someone cancels.” I took a gulp of air. “And we passed the deadline to make changes.”

  “Oh, honey,” my mom said, rubbing my back. “I wish I could help fix this. But why didn’t you tell your friends sooner?”

  “I tried!” I cried. The truth was, I hadn’t wanted to tell them because I thought I could handle it on my own. And clearly I was wrong.

  My computer kept dinging. My friends were probably wondering where I was.

  My mom looked at me. “Sweetie, I do feel bad about all this. I think your friends will understand, though. They know you have responsibilities at home, too—we all do.”

  “Maybe,” I said, sniffling. “But it affects them, too.” Thinking about my friends made me feel guilty all over again about letting them down. I decided I had to give it one more try. I looked up at my mom pleadingly. “Can’t we get a babysitter, just this one time?” I knew finding one would be a challenge, but I couldn’t help bringing it up.

  “You know how Dad and I feel about babysitters after Becky,” she said, wrinkling her nose like she was smelling something rotten. Then she looked down at her knees. “Especially with Lola not handling new situations so well.” She gave me a look. “Plus, we’re not in a position to spend the extra money right now—you know that, Sophia.”

  I could feel tears welling up again. I tried to hold them back, but they started slipping down my cheeks.

  “Oh, honey,” my mom said. “Don’t cry.”

  “I’m not crying!” I burst out as I sobbed.

  I could tell Mom was thinking things through. “Although . . . there’s a family that moved into that white house with the blue shutters on Lucy’s street that has a teenage daughter. I’ve met her and her mom a couple times when I was walking with Rosie. The daughter’s name is Monica. She seemed really nice.”

  Monica. My mom had just thrown me a life preserver, and I grabbed it with all my might. “Let’s ask Dad if we can have Monica babysit!” I said excitedly. I felt a glimmer of hope that Mom was even considering this.

  Mom stood up. “Let me talk to him and see if we can work something out.”

  I put my hands on my heart. “Really?”

  “I’m not making any promises.” Mom pointed at my computer screen. “And you should tell your friends what’s going on. It’s always best to be honest, Sophia. You should give your friends a little more credit. They might just surprise you.”

  Down the hall, Pearl shouted, “Mooooooooommmmm!”

  “Coming!” My mom sighed as she walked out.

  After my mom left, I got back on my computer.

  Sophia: hey i’m back

  Erin: finally! so what’s the problem?

  Mom was right, I should be honest with my friends. But what was the point of worrying them if we could get Monica to babysit?

  Sophia: we need to do our pseudocode

  Lucy: umm . . . duh

  Maya: that was the big problem???

  Sophia: yeah

  Sophia: ok i started a shared doc

  We chatted about how to make our robot and ended up with this:

  The Rockin’ Robots Pseudocode

  We start with a rover base with four wheels and an attached motherboard. The motherboard has four slots for plug-in modules. Our first plug-in is a large arm that swings freely. Our second module is plug-in speakers, which will start playing automatically.

  Next will be a button. We will write code so that if the robot hits a wall and activates the button, the robot will turn left and left again, until it is not facing the wall and can con
tinue through the maze.

  The last part is a ball. The arm will push it along like it’s playing soccer. The robot will move through the maze entirely on its own with our program.

  Sophia: done. this is awesome.

  Leila: epic!

  I was proud of our robot plan. It was amazing to think of how much we’d learned since our first coding club meeting! As we all logged off, I thought, Now all I have to do is make sure Dad and Mom agree that:

  a. we can get a babysitter

  b. Monica is able to babysit, and

  c. my friends don’t get disqualified and hate me forever.

  Otherwise the only epic thing was going to be my epic fail.

  Chapter Seven

  On Fridays, sixth-graders had study hall in the morning, so Lucy, Leila, and I were planning to work on the algorithm part of our robot plan.

  The study hall room had big tables with chairs instead of the individual desks we had in our regular classrooms. Lucy was already sitting at one of them when I arrived.

  “Hey, Lu,” I said, pulling up a chair next to her.

  “Hey, Soph,” she said. She had green studs that matched her green zip-up hoodie. “TGIF!”

  “Totally,” I said, heaving a sigh. It had been a long week.

  We’d just started looking through the hackathon binder when Leila arrived. She seemed kind of out of breath.

  “Sorry I’m late, guys,” she huffed, pulling up a chair.

  I moved my books to make room for her. “Everything okay?” I asked.

  Leila sighed. “Ugh, my little brother,” she said, shaking crumbs off her sleeve. “My parents asked me to help get him ready for school this morning, and he decided his new favorite art supply was toothpaste.”

  I winced. “Yeesh.”

  Lucy turned to me. “Didn’t Pearl do that once?”

  I snorted. “If you’re referring to the Great Peanut Butter Incident, then yes.” That was so long ago, I could almost laugh at it. Almost.

  “Just let me know if I have any in my eyebrows still,” Leila said, gesturing to her forehead. “My whole face feels minty fresh.”

  “No, you’re good,” I said, inspecting her. “Trust me, I know how annoying little kids can be. After the hackathon, I swear we should build a sibling-taming robot.”

  “The Babysitter 3000!” Leila suggested.

  “We just have to find a material that’s toothpaste and peanut butter proof,” Lucy added, and we all chuckled.

  “Speaking of which, how is our robot coming along?” Leila asked.

  “Lucy and I were just looking at the different modules,” I said. “The robot needs to move forward and turn when it senses the walls, right?”

  “Right.” Leila jotted something down and showed it to us. “If it hits a wall and activates the button we’ll put on the front of it, we can code it so that it’ll turn again and again until it’s not touching the wall and can move through the maze.”

  “Like this?” Lucy stood up to imitate the robot. A few people gave her strange looks, but she didn’t care.

  Across the room, I heard Bradley and Sammy laughing. We’d been so focused on our robot plan that I hadn’t even noticed Sammy until now. But after what Tyson had told me at football practice, I didn’t feel quite as nervous around him. Besides, Sammy probably just liked me as a friend.

  Sammy had gotten up and was hitting the wall, just like Lucy. I realized they must be prepping for the hackathon, too. It looked like they didn’t just have the same idea as us—they were going to code it similarly, too. I wondered what their big surprise was going to be.

  But by the end of study hall, Leila, Lucy, and I got so engrossed in our modules that I didn’t even notice what Sammy and his team were doing.

  The football team’s game was away, and Tyson and I had the night off. When I got home after school, I opened the front door, expecting to see Abuela and my sisters in the kitchen. But no one was there.

  I hung up my jacket. “Hello?” I called out.

  “Upstairs!” Dad’s voice rang out.

  “Dad! You’re home early,” I said, running upstairs to his bedroom. I gave him a hug. “Where is everyone?” He was throwing clothes into a small black suitcase, a semi-panicked look on his normally calm face.

  “Mom and Abuela are with the girls. Mom said she’d bring home pizza when they got back.”

  “Sounds good—I’m starving.” I plopped down on the bed. “What are you doing?” His dresser drawers were open, and there were clothes hanging from them.

  “There’s been a change of plans. I need to go to the conference tonight. I was asked to attend the opening banquet, so I’m leaving in . . .” He glanced at the clock by the bed. “Ten minutes.”

  “And you’re not freaking out?” I asked, only half-kidding. My dad was the type to schedule dental appointments a year in advance.

  “Not yet,” he said, yanking some shirts off hangers, sending the hangers clattering to the floor. He shot me a glance. “Okay, maybe just a slight freak-out.”

  “Here,” I said, grabbing the shirts and folding them into neat piles. “Let me help.”

  “Thanks, honey.” He threw ties onto the bed and looked around haphazardly. “With all of us gone tomorrow, I’m going to need you to take care of some chores.”

  I stopped folding. Chores? Tomorrow?

  “Wait, Dad—Mom talked to you about Monica, right?” I’d assumed it was taken care of, but now I was getting worried.

  “Monica? No,” he said, tossing two more ties onto the bed. “Which one do you like better?”

  I pointed to the one with red and gray stripes, but I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. “Mom said she was going to talk to you last night. Did you guys not talk?”

  He stuffed some socks into his suitcase. “No, I got home late.” He looked around the room. “Grab my shoes, will you?” He pointed to his black loafers near his dresser.

  I picked them up and tossed them like footballs one by one to my dad. He caught them easily. “Mom said she’d talk to you about having Monica babysit tomorrow so I could go to the hackathon.”

  “Well, she didn’t mention it to me,” he said, putting his shoes in a pocket of the suitcase. He started going through papers on his dresser. “Listen, honey, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. We’re all going to be away, and I told you I need you to look after your sisters.”

  I couldn’t believe this was happening. “But, Dad, Mom said she would tell you—if I back out now, my whole team will get disqualified.” I could feel the blood starting to whoosh into my ears. I walked up to his dresser to get his attention. “And we already have a name and everything—the Rockin’ Robots. We even made our T-shirts!”

  He stopped what he was doing to look at me. “Well, honey, I don’t know what to say. You should have told your friends sooner that you couldn’t go. You’ve known for a few days already.”

  My heart started thumping—but not for the same reasons it recently had. I couldn’t bear the thought of letting my team down. “But Mom and I talked! She was going to ask Monica!” I didn’t like to sound like I was whining, but this was definitely a getting-the-short-end-of-the-stick moment.

  “Who’s Monica?” my dad said, only half listening to me. “Where’s my belt?” he mumbled, rummaging through his closet.

  “Monica’s Lucy’s new neighbor. Mom was going to see if she could babysit.” I saw his belt draped over a chair and handed it to him. Stay calm, I told myself, taking a deep, steadying breath. Screaming at people usually didn’t make them do what you wanted them to do.

  “Thanks, hon.” He set the belt and a jacket in his suitcase and turned to me. “Soph, I know how much you want to go to the hackathon, and I do feel bad about this. But I don’t know who Monica is, I’m about to leave on a trip, and I just can’t deal with all thi
s right now—it’s too last-minute.” He looked around the room again. “Can you grab me some paper? There should be paper, over there on the nightstand. I need to give you a list of the chores that need to get done tomorrow. I was going to do a lot of this myself, and now I won’t have time.”

  I’d heard his tone before, and I knew it was going to be impossible to change his mind. Unless . . .

  “Dad, if I get the chores done by tomorrow before the hackathon, Monica can babysit, and I pay her with my allowance, can I go?”

  Dad sighed and ran his hand though his hair. I could tell I was wearing him down. “Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll talk to Mom about this Monica. But you don’t have to pay for a babysitter, honey. We can do that.”

  I clapped my hands and squealed. He pointed at me. “And I’ll consider it only if the chores are done.”

  I couldn’t find paper on his nightstand, so I took out my phone. “I’ll film you.” I held up the phone and pressed record. “Tell me what you want me to get done before I go to the hackathon.”

  “Okay—run the dishwasher, fold the laundry that’s in the dryer, and put in the new load that’s next to the machine. And put it all away when it’s done.”

  “Got it.” I nodded, still filming. “Anything else?”

  “Vacuum the living room, help the girls put away their toys, and please convince Pearl to let you wash her leotard . . .”

  I was beginning to get worried that my plan wasn’t such a good plan, after all. This was sounding like a lot of chores, even for someone as organized as me.

  My dad was still rattling off tasks. “Water the plants, help Lola feed her fish . . .” When my dad paused, my finger hovered over the stop button. I hoped he was done.

  “You’re excellent at managing things,” he said. “So have your sisters help you. Maybe you can make it into one of those games you play with them.” He gave me a sly smile. “Though maybe let them win once in a while.”

  I stopped the recording and set down my phone. I could handle pretty much anything, but this was a super long list. There was no way I could do all that before the hackathon, even if I started tonight. And although I’d worn my dad down about Monica, I knew he wouldn’t relent on this. A deal was a deal, and he wasn’t one to bend the rules.