by Hasbro
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.
HASBRO and its logo, TRANSFORMERS and all related characters are trademarks of Hasbro and are used with permission. © 2018 Hasbro. All Rights Reserved. © 2018 Paramount Pictures Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Trademarks, design patents and copyrights are used with the approval of the owner, Volkswagen AG.
Cover design by Ching Chan.
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Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
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Visit us at LBYR.com
First Edition: November 2018
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.
Library of Congress Control Number 2018946189
ISBNs: 978-0-316-41919-2 (pbk.), 978-0-316-41917-8 (ebook)
E3-20181027-JV-PC
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
Photos
Prologue
1982
Sparks sprayed out from robot B-127’s damaged joints, and fluids poured from the wounds in his bulky, armored body as he stumbled through a cluster of trees. He’d been on the run for days, and he didn’t have to consult his built-in health monitors to know he was close to complete power loss. His wounds were the result of his escape from a group of humans, members of a secret military organization, and also from a battle with another robot. The humans, including a man named Agent Burns, assumed that he was just a machine, and they seemed determined to destroy him. But he was much more than simply a machine.
B-127 was an Autobot—a peacekeeping soldier from the planet Cybertron, and an ally of Optimus Prime, the Autobots’ towering leader. B-127 didn’t know where Optimus Prime or the other Autobots were. The robot who had attacked him was a Decepticon, a sworn enemy of the Autobots, and it wouldn’t be the only time they would come to Earth. They would keep coming until B-127 was captured. Both Autobots and Decepticons were capable of scanning Earth vehicles, then altering and rearranging their own bodies to assume the disguise of whatever vehicle they came across. But like all Autobots, B-127 needed precious green energy called Energon to help him change his form, and also to stay powered. He didn’t have much Energon left.
B-127 gasped, producing a grinding noise in his upper chest. He had been wounded and left unable to speak. B-127 wondered how much farther he could walk.
He staggered past the trees and arrived at an empty campsite. He’d seen a sign for a town named Brighton Falls, but he wasn’t sure where he was. He could hear people nearby, laughing and splashing in water. He tried to peer beyond the surrounding trees, and he thought he saw a lake. His vision blurred, and he collapsed, falling to his knees before landing hard against the ground. He could feel the last of his energy about to drain off when his automated survival system kicked in to shut down his remaining power.
He stopped hearing the swimmers, and then his vision began to fade. The last thing he saw was the swimmers’ beat-up car parked at the edge of a dirt road.
The car was a yellow 1967 Volkswagen Beetle.
Agent Burns considered himself a man of action, someone who got results and got the job done, no matter how difficult. But he had failed in his task. B-127 was out there somewhere, still a potential threat.
As Burns sat in a secret bunker, brooding on the danger humanity had been in ever since those blasted Cybertronians had arrived, he started to plan. He would keep his home world safe. He would hunt down B-127 and, if necessary, destroy the robot before it could destroy Earth.…
Chapter 1
1987
When her digital alarm clock’s radio clicked on at eight AM on Saturday, the day before her eighteenth birthday, Charlie Watson was in no mood to wake up or get out of bed. And it didn’t improve when the disc jockey predicted scorching heat for her hometown, Brighton Falls, California. Then the disc jockey started playing Madonna’s latest hit single, “Who’s That Girl.”
“Shut up,” Charlie muttered into her pillow. With her eyes still closed, she reached out and tried to hit the clock’s snooze button. She missed three times before she knocked the clock off her night table. When the radio went silent, she hoped she’d broken it permanently.
She opened her eyes and climbed out of bed. She wore a T. rex T-shirt, boxers, and mismatched socks. Posters of David Bowie, Roxy Music, Adam Ant, and The Smiths decorated the walls of her messy bedroom. The only evidence of any effort to tidy up was a shoebox filled with her medals and trophies from her school’s swim team. As she made her way to the bathroom, she brushed her fingers over a framed photo of herself, a few years younger, sitting with her father on the hood of a red 1959 Chevrolet Corvette. Her father had bought the Corvette as a restoration project, but it remained unfinished and still took up space in the two-car garage attached to Charlie’s house.
After brushing her teeth and putting on some torn shorts and a shirt that she’d worn a few days earlier but hadn’t bothered to wash, she grabbed the shoebox and went downstairs to the kitchen. Her mother, Sally, was washing dishes, and her stepfather, Ron, was drying. Sally was a nurse and was wearing scrubs. Sally and Ron giggled about something, and then they kissed. Gross, Charlie thought. She moved past them and dumped the shoebox and its contents into the garbage can.
Sally turned, looked at the garbage can, and said, “What are you—are those your diving trophies?”
Charlie shrugged. “They were taking up too much space in my room.”
Sally lifted her gaze to meet Charlie’s eyes. “You’re gonna regret doing that someday. Just like you’re gonna regret that mess you call your haircut.”
Ignoring her mother, Charlie noticed the family dog, Conan, sniffing at the bottom of the garbage can. Then she noticed Conan’s empty food bowl. “Did you guys feed Conan, or were you just gonna let him starve?”
“You’re welcome to feed him yourself,” Sally said, “and help out a little around here.” She handed a bag of dog food to Charlie.
As Charlie poured food into the dog’s bowl, she said, “You know how I could be an even bigger help? If I had a car, I could run errands, do stuff you don’t want to do. Really contribute.”
Sally sighed. “Charlie—”
“And whaddaya know,” Charlie said, “it’s my birthday tomorrow. Perfect timing for a large cash gift. Five hundred bucks and I can finally finish the Corvette.”
Sally sighed again. “Charlie, we’ve been over this. We’re not in a position t
o throw gobs of money at a car we’re not sure will ever even start. We just… We can’t.”
Before Charlie could protest, someone behind her said, “Hiiiii -yah!” She turned to see her twelve-year-old brother, Otis, enter the kitchen. He was wearing his martial arts uniform, a white gi with a yellow belt around the waist.
“Ah, Otis-san!” Ron said.
“Hiiiii -yah!” Otis said again. His hands launched out and chopped at the air in front of his stepfather.
Playing along, Ron fell back and said, “Oh no, he got me!”
Otis laughed. “Master Larry told me I’m the fastest one ever to get a yellow belt.”
Sally beamed at Otis and said, “You look so grown up in that karate suit. My baby boy is becoming a man.” Then she glanced at the kitchen clock and said, “Oh shoot. I’m gonna be late.” She turned to Charlie. “Could you drop your brother at karate on your way to work?”
“I could if I had a car.”
“Just let him follow you on your bike so nobody abducts him.”
“Abducts him?” Charlie said. “You just said he’s a grown man now.”
Otis said, “If anyone tries anything, I’ll rupture their spleen!” Next to the front door, Otis had propped up his skateboard. He grabbed it and said, “Come on, Charlie, let’s go!”
Charlie groaned and followed Otis out of the house, which was at the end of a cul-de-sac that bordered a grassy marsh and had an ocean view from the backyard. They went to the driveway, where Charlie had parked her late-model moped. Despite her efforts to restore and tune the moped’s engine, she couldn’t get it to go faster than fifteen miles per hour. As she climbed onto the moped, Otis tied an old jump rope to the back of its frame. He tugged the rope to make sure it was secure and hopped onto his skateboard. Charlie started the ignition and took off at a crawl, pulling Otis along on his skateboard. Charlie kept her gaze forward, not looking at any of her neighbors’ houses—if she was lucky, she could avoid eye contact with anyone. Towing her brother always made her beyond embarrassed.
Winding over back roads, they eventually arrived on Main Street, which was lined with trees, food markets, home-supply stores, restaurants, and other small businesses. They passed a woman sweeping the stoop outside her frozen-yogurt shop. She smiled and waved at them. Otis must have recognized her. He waved back with one hand as he held tight to the jump rope with the other. He smiled and said, “Morning, Mrs. Calloway. Beautiful weather this morning, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Calloway nodded and laughed. As the moped putt-putted past her shop, Charlie glanced back at her brother and said, “You’re such a suck-up, Otis.”
“I’m charming,” Otis said. “And I get a discount yogurt now. You should take notes.”
Children wearing white gis with cloth belts were on the sidewalk, waiting to enter Master Larry’s karate dojo, which had Japanese words painted on its facade of large windows. As Charlie and Otis approached the dojo, Otis let go of the rope and angled for the sidewalk, where the other children saw him coming. He jumped and stomped on the tail end of the skateboard, flipping it into the air and catching it as he landed on the curb. Charlie heard Otis’s friends laugh and cheer at his stunt as she rode on, dragging the jump rope along the street.
She arrived at Brighton Falls Boardwalk, an old amusement park with a wood-framed roller coaster and a stretch of arcade stalls and eateries that extended past a public beach. She worked at Hot Dog on a Stick, which was housed in a small shack that sold exactly what its name advertised. As she pulled up behind the shack, her boss, Craig, was opening up the shop. She knew Craig was twenty-two years old because he’d felt compelled to mention it at least three times that she could recall in the past week. Seeing Charlie, he tapped his watch and said, “You’re seven minutes late.”
“It’s nine in the morning, Craig. I don’t really think there’s a whole bunch of people craving wieners at this hour.”
But just then, an impatient man bellied up to the hot dog kiosk and said, “Hello? I’ve been waiting!”
Craig shot a stern look at Charlie. Charlie exhaled as if she were letting out steam. She couldn’t begin to imagine how managing a hot dog stand on the Boardwalk could give anyone such an incredible power trip.
She let Craig take care of the customer while she went into the shack and changed into her work uniform. As an employee and representative of Hot Dog on a Stick, she was required to wear a hideous multicolored shirt and hat with matching shorts. She didn’t need a mirror to know she looked like a clown from a third-rate circus. And she didn’t need a fortune-teller to know that her day probably wouldn’t get any better.
Of course, then her day got much worse.
Chapter 2
It was almost noon, and Hot Dog on a Stick was bustling with hungry customers. Charlie scrambled behind the counter to keep up with orders as she churned a pump to make lemonade. She glanced at the customers and then, beyond them, saw a group of teenagers, mostly seniors from her high school, hanging out next to a parking lot, trying to look tough. Most of them wore acid-washed denim, tight pastel T-shirts, and flamboyant hairstyles that suggested they were also trying hard to look like a cast of extras for a pop-music video. At the center of the group was Tripp Summers, a tall, handsome boy with chiseled features and an easy smile. A cluster of girls that Charlie had aptly nicknamed the Pretty Mean Girls surrounded him. The prettiest—and meanest—of the bunch was the leader, Tina Lark, who drove a convertible BMW and never failed to mention that her family was loaded. Tina was eating a corn dog while she leaned in close to Tripp.
When Charlie was finally able to take a quick break, she spotted her friends Liz and Brenda, who worked at the corn dog stand, and waved them over. Liz and Brenda looked entranced as they stared at the Pretty Mean Girls. Liz said, “I gotta get some of those sock things. What do they call them? Leg warmers?”
Brenda nodded. “They look so cool on everyone.”
“So cool,” Liz said. “Who even thought of them?”
“A crazy person,” Charlie said. She flicked her fingers and pointed from her upper thigh to her ankle. “If from here to here is the only part of you that’s cold, something is wrong with you. It means you have a disease.”
Liz and Brenda looked at each other. Liz cleared her throat, looked at Charlie, and said, “Oh, hey, um… We wanted to talk to you about something. We know your birthday’s tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Charlie said, “I was thinking we could just do something low-key. Get a burger. Count the days till we graduate. Are you cool to drive, Bren?”
Brenda looked at Liz and said, “Oh, uh…”
“What?” Charlie said. “What’s wrong?”
Brenda looked at the ground. “No, it’s just… I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
Charlie shifted her gaze from one girl to the other. “What do you mean?”
Brenda’s face went red. She glanced at Liz for help. Facing Charlie, Liz said, “Look, we haven’t known how to tell you this, but… You’ve just, like, changed a lot.”
Charlie felt stunned and confused. “What?”
“You know…” Liz gestured with her fingers at Charlie. “The hair, the clothes. And you’re just like…” Liz widened her eyes and frowned, trying to look depressed. “All the time.”
Charlie leveled her gaze at Liz. “So what are you saying? You don’t want to hang out with me ’cause I’m not whistlin’ ‘Dixie’ every second?”
“No,” Brenda said, “it’s just, you haven’t really been yourself since… you know.”
“Since my dad died? No kidding, I haven’t been myself.”
Brenda sighed. “I’m sorry. We’re really sorry.”
Liz said, “We just don’t feel like we’re, like, a match anymore. It’s not personal, it’s just—”
Charlie was done listening. She grabbed a tray of food and brushed past Liz and Brenda so she could deliver the food to her customers, and she tried to concentrate on her job and ignore everything else. She knew th
at was the only way she could get through the next minute without bursting into tears.
As she carried the tray, a sixteen-year-old boy named Guillermo Gutierrez, also known as Memo, stepped away from the churro stand that was his place of employment for the summer. He tried to sound casual as he walked up to Charlie and said, “Hey, we’ve never met. I actually moved next door to y—”
“Sorry,” Charlie snapped, “I can’t. Sorry.” She kept moving.
“Yep. Nope. Okay,” Memo said as he turned around and walked back to the churro stand. When he returned, there was a police cruiser driving along the Boardwalk.
Sheriff Lock, a lean man with a strong jaw, was behind the wheel. He began to slow down as he approached the area where the high schoolers were gathered.
Seeing the sheriff, Tripp Summers said, “Let’s get out of here.” The teens started to move off, separating and drifting back to their cars in the parking lot. As Tripp turned quickly toward his red 1977 Camaro, he collided with Charlie, who was carrying the tray of hot dogs and lemonade.
Charlie never saw Tripp coming. Her tray and everything on it went flying. In an instant, lemonade, ketchup, mustard, and relish were splattered all over Tripp’s T-shirt. Tripp looked down at his shirt, his mouth agape.
Charlie was mortified. “I’m so sorry,” she said. She got down on her knees and scrambled to gather the fallen hot dogs, buns, and emptied cups back onto the tray.
Tina Lark and the rest of her Pretty Mean Girls gang moved in. Looking down at Charlie, Tina sang in a childlike voice, “Somebody’s getting fired.” Then she glanced at her friends, gestured to Charlie’s uniform, and said, “If I had to wear that, I would pray to be fired.”
Charlie tried to ignore Tina. She looked at Tripp and said, “I’m really sorry.”
Tripp grinned. “It’s all right.” He pulled off his soaked, messy shirt. A few of the Pretty Mean Girls sighed as they gazed at him. Tripp turned and started walking toward his car.
