by Hasbro
Charlie pushed her moped up onto the grass beside the curb. As Charlie walked back to the driver’s side of the car, Sally said, “You gave me a heart attack. I thought I was being carjacked! I’m taking Conan to the vet.”
“I know,” Charlie said. “Otis told me. And I… I want to go with you.”
“What?”
Charlie looked to the back seat. “I… I’m worried about Conan. He’s my dog, too.” She looked back at her mother. “I should be there!”
Sally pursed her lips. “You really want to go to the vet with me?”
“What, I can’t love my dog? Sue me for having a big heart. Get out; I’ll drive.”
“Charlie—”
Charlie opened the driver’s door and gestured for her mother to move. Flustered, Sally got out of the car. She went around it and got into the front passenger seat while Charlie settled in behind the wheel. Sally said, “You weren’t wearing your helmet, by the way.”
After the vet took care of Conan and patched him up, Charlie drove Sally and Conan back home. Charlie kept the Beetle’s engine running while Sally carried Conan into the house. “Love you, Conan!” Charlie said as she blew a kiss to the dog.
Sally looked at Charlie. Charlie knew her mother was suspicious—Charlie had never been overly fond of Conan before. Charlie waited for Sally to shut the front door, then said, “All right, Bee, we need to go over a few things.”
The Beetle responded with a clanking noise, and then they drove off. They traveled to the outskirts of Brighton Falls and then onto a series of back roads. They turned onto a dirt lane bordered by tall trees with sunlight shafting down through the leaves. Charlie thought Bumblebee’s engine sounded better, almost as if it were producing happy noises.
They arrived at a secluded beach cove and came to a stop. Large rocks bordered the sandy parking area. Charlie got out of the Beetle, walked across the sand, and looked around to make sure that she and Bumblebee were alone. Turning back to the car, she said, “Okay, all clear.”
Bumblebee changed so rapidly from a car into a robot that he accidentally kicked up sand, which showered down on Charlie. Charlie’s mouth fell open with surprise, and she immediately regretted it. As she spat out sand and began brushing more sand off her head and shoulders, she said, “I’m rethinking the beach.”
Seeing that Charlie’s hair was still covered with sand, and looking eager to help, Bumblebee reached out to push his large metal fingertips through her hair. Unfortunately, he only managed to tangle her hair more.
Charlie tried to block his fingers and said, “I’m good, I’m good.”
Ever helpful, Bumblebee wrapped one hand around Charlie and picked her up, lifting her off the ground so he could try shaking the sand off her. Charlie gasped and said, “This is really becoming overkill.”
Bumblebee put her back down. As Charlie brushed off the remaining sand, she said, “Look, this is serious, Bee. Humans aren’t cool about things they don’t understand. If they find you, they’ll probably lock you up in a lab and cut you into little pieces. The only person you can show yourself around is me. Okay?”
Bumblebee nodded.
“So let’s practice. Are you ready?”
Bumblebee nodded again. Charlie took a few steps back to give him some room. “Okay,” she said. “If you see anyone besides me, what do you do?”
Apparently very eager to demonstrate he understood Charlie, Bumblebee jumped as he shifted and clicked his robot body back into the form of the Beetle. He landed in the sand and bounced on his tires.
“Good, perfect,” Charlie said, stepping back again to put some more distance between her and the Beetle. “Okay, you can change back now.”
Again, the Beetle’s parts slid back and returned Bumblebee to robot form.
“That was good,” Charlie said, “now if we—” She glanced over her shoulder, as if she were gazing past the rocks that surrounded the parking area, and then she said in a loud whisper, “Oh no, someone’s here. Hide!” She darted behind a rock and ducked down behind it.
Bumblebee looked at a nearby rock, then mimicked Charlie’s action. He jumped over the rock and crouched on the other side of it.
Charlie stood up, looked at the rock that Bumblebee had selected, and then looked at Bumblebee. She could see him clearly. The rock was only a few feet high and did not even begin to hide Bumblebee’s massive body. Charlie put her hands on her hips and said, “Seriously?”
Apparently realizing his mistake, Bumblebee immediately changed back into Beetle form.
“Too late,” Charlie said, “you’re already dead.”
The Beetle’s parts shifted and slid back until Bumblebee again appeared before Charlie as a robot. He hung his head low and shook it, looking more than a little ashamed.
“It’s okay,” Charlie said as she walked toward him. “That’s why we’re practicing. You’ll get the hang of it.” She reached up and patted his head. Bumblebee’s eyes glowed brighter, and Charlie was pretty sure he was smiling.
Charlie smiled, too. She hadn’t felt so happy in years.
She heard a distant noise, the sound of a car’s engine, and then she realized the noise was getting louder.
Without hesitation, Bumblebee changed back into a car. Charlie got behind the wheel and made a mental note to pick up her abandoned moped on the way home. She started the engine, and they drove off, leaving the beach. As they traveled back up the dirt road, they saw a green sport-utility vehicle coming from the opposite direction. As the SUV passed by, Charlie glanced at its occupants and guessed they were a family heading for the beach.
She began to wonder how long she could keep Bumblebee a secret. She was certain that if others learned about him, they would try to take him away from her, and maybe even destroy him. She promised herself she wouldn’t let that happen.
Chapter 6
The next day, the only thing Charlie wanted to do was enjoy more time with Bumblebee. Remembering their experience at the beach, and how long it had taken her to wash the sand out of her hair, she decided they should go to a different isolated area. With Bumblebee in his Beetle form, they drove again to the outskirts of Brighton Falls, but this time their destination was a forest.
Charlie didn’t see any people or parked cars on the dirt road that wrapped around the edge of the forest, so she brought the Beetle to a stop. She got out, taking her backpack with her. She listened and looked both ways to make sure no one was coming, and then she motioned that it was okay for Bumblebee to come out.
The Beetle’s parts slid and peeled back until Bumblebee had changed to his robot body. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other before he rose to his full height.
Charlie led Bumblebee away from the road and onto an old trail overgrown with weeds and flowers and surrounded by tall trees. Sunlight filtered down through the upper branches and across the forest floor. The trail extended for almost a hundred feet before it became lost beneath the thick weeds. Charlie and Bumblebee pressed on until they arrived at a clearing.
Charlie said, “I figured you’d want to go someplace where you could stretch out. It must be lousy to be cooped up in a VW all day, right?”
Bumblebee came to a stop on a grassy mound, tilted his head back, and gazed at the sky. Charlie looked at him and noticed how the sunlight beamed off his metal form. She thought he looked spectacular, but then she realized she could more clearly see the many dents, scars, and corroded areas of his body. She reached up to touch a jagged gash above his right leg. “What in the world happened to you?”
Bumblebee looked at her.
“Is there anyone who can help you? Do you have a family?”
Bumblebee cocked his head.
“You know, like a group of people you live with? Mom, dad, siblings? You all love one another? Or drive one another crazy so you can’t wait to get away and start a whole new life?”
Bumblebee lowered his head, and Charlie wondered if he’d understood anything she’d said. Then she noticed a broke
n section on his chest. Bumblebee adjusted his gaze to look down at the same section and emitted a sad buzz.
Charlie pointed to his chest and said, “You want me to try to fix it?”
Bumblebee looked at Charlie. She sensed that he was concerned. She said, “I’ll be gentle.”
Bumblebee nodded. Charlie guided him to stand beside a tree stump, and she climbed up onto it so she could be closer to his chest. She used her pocketknife’s screwdriver to remove his chest plate. Pulling the plate away, she saw that it concealed high-tech machinery, which also appeared damaged.
“Whoa,” Charlie said as she inspected Bumblebee’s technological components, an intricate mess of cogs, wires, and lights. Although she had hoped she could fix him, she wasn’t sure where to begin.
Bumblebee looked down at his innards and emitted another sad buzz. As Charlie continued to examine his mangled bits and pieces, she reached into her backpack and pulled out a can of soda. She cracked it open and took a deep swallow. Then she noticed Bumblebee was watching her with interest. She said, “Is drinking something you can do?” She pulled another soda from her backpack. “Want one?”
Bumblebee took the unopened can. Curious, he began shaking it.
Charlie said, “I wouldn’t do—”
Bumblebee cracked the can open, and it exploded with a shower of fizzing liquid. It was still fizzing as he tilted his head back and poured it onto his face. Soda streamed down his metal cheeks and neck and onto his chest. Something in his body made a hissing noise.
“Okay, big guy,” Charlie said, “no more of that. I should’ve seen that coming.” She took his can and then pulled out a rag from her backpack. As she used the rag to wipe him down, her finger hit an object that felt as if it was partially lodged in his chest cavity. “What’s this? Hold still, okay?”
Bumblebee held still. Charlie worked her fingers into his chest, feeling her way around the object. She touched something that felt like a switch. As she pressed it, she said, “I think maybe this part is—”
Bumblebee’s eyes went vacant, his back arched, and his arms flexed out toward his sides. Startled, Charlie dropped her backpack and jumped off the tree stump. She took a few steps away from Bumblebee. Even though he wasn’t moving, she thought his upright, rigid stance made him look more imposing and, admittedly, way more frightening.
A light flipped on in Bumblebee’s chest, and his upper torso began humming with energy. The light projected a multicolored beam in front of his chest, and the beam shifted and weaved into something that resembled a three-dimensional shape, a holographic image of a tall red-and-dark-blue robot. He appeared to be a creature like Bumblebee. As Charlie stared at the hologram, a voice boomed out from deep within Bumblebee’s body, and Charlie realized the voice belonged to the hologram.
“B-127,” the hologram said, “I have received your distress signal. I fear the Decepticons may have intercepted it. Stay safe, soldier. Protect the people of Earth until—”
The hologram froze in midair at the same instant the voice cut out. Bumblebee’s eyes focused on the hologram, and he blinked at it. He raised his hand and tried to touch the image of the red-and-blue robot, but the hologram flickered and disappeared. Bumblebee looked sad as he stared at the empty space in the air.
Charlie crept forward. “Are you okay?”
Bumblebee turned away from her and looked up at the sky again.
“Who was that?”
Bumblebee looked back at Charlie.
“Is he… is he your family, Bee?”
Bumblebee lowered his gaze and looked at the grass and the nearby tree stump. Charlie could see that he was thinking, but she couldn’t tell if he was confused or troubled. She said, “What’s a Decepticon?”
Bumblebee looked at the trees at the edge of the forest, as if he were searching for something. Without warning, his radio began hissing loud static. He reached down to tune it, searching the frequencies for a clear signal, but each channel was garbled.
“I know, it’s broken,” Charlie said. “It doesn’t work.”
Bumblebee kept trying. He turned the radio’s knobs slowly, first clockwise and then counterclockwise, but only managed to find more static.
“I can get you a new one,” Charlie said. “You want me to get you a new radio that works?”
Bumblebee responded with a nod, but he didn’t look very hopeful.
Then it hit her. Charlie could kick herself—she had a perfectly fine radio back at the garage! They could skip Uncle Hank’s—and any Bumblebee-related questions or mishaps like they’d almost had with her mom—and go straight home. She picked up her backpack. As Bumblebee followed her back to the road, she was thinking about the tools she might use to hook him up with a new radio. Could she help him get his voice back? She had no idea, but she knew she had to try.
Chapter 7
Inside the garage, Charlie was in the Corvette, removing its stereo system, while Bumblebee sat in front of the TV, which was playing The Breakfast Club. Charlie had watched the movie enough times to know it was almost over. She also knew her mother and Ron had retired for the evening, and she was pretty sure Otis had gone to bed, too, but she still took the precaution of locking the garage’s main door. She listened and checked the doors every few minutes to confirm they remained locked.
The Corvette’s original radio had been a Wonder Bar, equipped with a selector-bar electronic automatic tuner, the first of its kind, which tuned in listenable stations. But a previous owner had removed the Wonder Bar, and then Charlie had helped her father install a new stereo system with a radio and audiocassette player. As she undid the work she and her dad had done on the Corvette’s stereo, she said, “Okay, almost done.” She looked over at Bumblebee and noticed he was staring at the TV. On the screen, the actor was raising his fist in the air, and then his image froze.
“No way,” Charlie said. “You’re actually watching the movie?”
Bumblebee responded by raising his own large fist into the air. Charlie laughed. “You can pop in another video if you want.”
Even though Bumblebee’s fingers were large, Charlie had noticed that he could manipulate them carefully and also handle delicate objects. So when he tapped a button to eject The Breakfast Club from the VCR, and then removed the videocassette and placed it on a stack of others, Charlie was more amused than surprised.
While Charlie kept tinkering with the car radio, Bumblebee thumbed through the stack of videocassettes. The stack included a Vietnam War movie, a horror movie, and a romantic drama, but Bumblebee noticed a cassette with a paper label taped to it. On the label, someone had written, CHARLIE DIVING REGIONALS.
Bumblebee inserted that cassette into the VCR. A moment later, the TV screen displayed an image of a young girl wearing a swimsuit and cap, standing on a diving board above a swimming pool. The camera moved closer to the girl’s face—it was Charlie, but a few years younger.
The camera pulled back. Bumblebee watched as young Charlie took a deep breath before she leaped and bounced away from the diving board. She executed a double somersault before plunging into the water.
“Nice!” said a man’s voice from off camera. “Thatta girl! You’re doing great.”
Hearing her father’s voice from across the room, Charlie almost dropped the stereo component. She turned and looked at the TV screen and saw her younger self in the pool, smiling as she surfaced, waving to the camera.
“Not that one!” Charlie said as she moved fast for the VCR. “Where’d you find that?!” Still clutching the Corvette’s stereo, she stopped the video and ejected it. When she looked at Bumblebee, she saw he was cowering away from her like a scolded puppy. “Sorry, I just… I’m done with this, so…” She placed the cassette on a nearby shelf.
Bumblebee looked downcast. Charlie wished she could say something to make him feel better, and then she realized she was still holding the stereo system that she’d pulled from the Corvette. She moved close to Bumblebee’s chest, found his broken radio just be
low his metal rib cage, and popped it out of its socket. Then she placed the new stereo system into his chest, connected it to his wires, and said, “All right, let’s see if we’ve got something.”
She turned on the radio. It lit up. She heard a faint noise, and then the sound grew louder and became music. Charlie recognized the song, “Take On Me” by a-ha.
“Ha!” Charlie said. “Yessss!”
Bumblebee began to sway a little, moving with the music.
“Ah,” Charlie said, “you like that, huh?”
Bumblebee answered with a buzzing noise and then swiveled his hips.
Charlie laughed. “You got some moves!” She turned to a box of music cassette tapes and dug through it until she found the one by The Smiths. “Oh, you’re gonna dig this,” she said as she pushed the cassette into the player in Bumblebee’s chest.
A mournful song began playing. Bumblebee listened to it for a few seconds, then ejected the cassette from his chest with such force that it shot across the garage like a missile and smashed into the far wall.
“Okay,” Charlie said, “maybe not a Smiths fan.” She grabbed a cassette for a hard rock band from the box. “Try this.” She popped the cassette into Bumblebee’s chest.
The cassette hadn’t even started to play when Bumblebee shot it across the garage.
“Okay, not that, either,” Charlie said. As she rummaged through the box of cassettes, Bumblebee looked around the garage and noticed a group of boxy objects resting on a shelf. The objects were part of an old stereo system that included a record turntable with a transparent plastic cover, a receiver, and a pair of large speakers. All were covered by a fine layer of dust. Looking to the shelf below the stereo system, Bumblebee saw a neatly organized collection of record albums in cardboard sleeves. He started reaching for the records when Charlie yelled, “Don’t touch those!”
