by Hasbro
Bumblebee cringed, and Charlie felt terrible for having shouted at him again. She moved closer to him, pointed to the record albums, and said, “They belonged to my dad.”
Bumblebee cocked his head.
“They’re records. You put them on that thing.” Charlie pointed to the record player that rested between the two speakers.
Bumblebee leaned in to study the record player’s circular turntable. He examined the thin, articulated arm that extended beside the turntable. He touched the arm and then lifted it up and down. Moving one finger beneath the arm’s end, he found a sharp point, the tone arm’s diamond stylus. He poked at the machine, trying to figure out how it worked.
Charlie could tell Bumblebee was fascinated by the record player. “All right,” she said, “we’ll listen to this one. Okay? So you can see how it works.” She selected an album by Sam Cooke, removed the vinyl disc from its sleeve, and placed it on the turntable. She pressed a switch. The turntable began rotating, and then she moved the tone arm so its stylus rested against the disc’s outer edge. Music began playing from two speakers, and then Bumblebee heard a man’s voice singing.
Bumblebee was soon mesmerized by the sound of the music and Cooke’s voice. Charlie could see his entire body relax, and then he began swaying again, feeling the music.
“Ah, you finally approve,” Charlie said. She looked at the album cover. “Good taste. This was my dad’s favorite, too. That’s him, there.” She pointed to a Polaroid photo of her father that was thumbtacked above the workbench.
Bumblebee glanced at the photo, then looked around the garage. He cocked his head as he lowered his gaze to Charlie, and she realized he was wondering where her father was. She said, “Oh, he’s not here.”
Bumblebee cocked his head again.
“We don’t need to talk about it.”
Bumblebee didn’t respond to that. He started to survey the garage’s interior again, but then Charlie said, “He passed away a few years ago. Heart attack.”
Charlie couldn’t tell if Bumblebee understood, but something in his eyes conveyed that he was sympathetic. She gestured to the rusted-out Corvette. “See that car? He loved it. We used to work on it together every weekend. It was gonna be mine one day.”
Bumblebee looked at the Corvette and the pieces of its engine scattered around.
“I really wanted to finish it,” Charlie said, “just hear it start up, you know? Be able to say, Hey, Dad, we did it. We finally did it.” She felt tears welling up in her eyes. “I don’t know. It’s dumb.”
Bumblebee moved closer. He reached out and patted her head, his touch so gentle that she almost didn’t feel it. They’d reached an unspoken agreement: Bumblebee understood that Charlie wanted to take care of him, and she suspected that he wanted to take care of her, too.
After leaving his job at the churro stand, Memo rode his bicycle home. As he skidded to a stop in his driveway, he glanced at the house where the girl next door lived. He noticed lights on in the garage, and also odd, muffled noises. Curious, he popped his kickstand and walked closer to the garage.
He heard footsteps and turned to see a neighbor, an older man that Memo didn’t know by name, walking his dog. Fearing that the man might mistake him for a prowler, Memo turned his attention to a nearby bush and said, “This plant is nice, what is this?”
The man shook his head, said, “I don’t know anything about plants,” and kept walking, taking his dog with him.
Memo let out a long exhale. Then he heard more noises from the garage. It sounded like fragmented bursts of music and voices. He wondered if someone was playing with a radio, whipping through random stations. He wondered why anyone would do that. Interesting. Very interesting.
Inside the garage, Charlie watched with amazement as the tone-control knob and the manual tuning knob on Bumblebee’s new radio rotated on their own. As the knobs turned, the station selector bar shifted back and forth, and Bumblebee’s speakers released a stream of garbled noise.
“I know there are a lot of choices, man,” Charlie said, “but you gotta pick a station.”
Bumblebee continued to scan every frequency he could find and kept blasting bits of music until Charlie couldn’t stand it anymore. She reached for the tuning knob and tried to lock in one station, but Bumblebee gently swatted her away.
“Sorry,” Charlie said. “Didn’t mean to get handsy.”
The radio’s knobs continued rotating back and forth. Charlie wondered if Bumblebee was searching for one station in particular. She leaned in closer to the radio and said, “What are you trying to—?”
Charlie heard a loud gasp from behind her and then a loud clatter. She spun around and saw a teenage boy with frizzy black hair standing in the garage’s side doorway. The boy’s mouth hung open, and he’d just accidentally knocked over a bunch of garden shovels.
Charlie realized she’d left the garage’s side door open and felt like kicking herself. She also vaguely recognized the boy.…
Bumblebee saw the boy, too. Charlie hoped Bumblebee would remember what she’d told him about strangers, about changing into car form. But because the boy had seen him, she wasn’t sure what he should do. She sensed Bumblebee was just as flustered as he stepped away from her to give himself more space, then changed into a car as fast as he could.
The boy locked his wide-eyed gaze on the yellow Beetle. He began stammering, but clearly he was so frightened that the words wouldn’t come out. Charlie moved in front of him and said, “Just please don’t scream, okay?”
The boy’s jaw began shaking. He looked as if he actually was about to scream, so Charlie clamped her hand over his mouth. The boy’s entire body began trembling instead, so Charlie removed her hand from his face. “Sit down,” she said. “Breathe.”
Still shaking, the boy sat down on an overturned bucket. He looked as if he was going to be ill. He stammered out, “Was that… did I… what the—?”
“First of all, hi,” Charlie said, trying her best to sound calm. “I’m Charlie.” She extended her hand to him.
Dazed, the boy looked at her hand for a moment, then took it, shook it, and said, “Memo.”
“Nice to meet you.”
Memo’s eyes flicked to the Beetle and then back to Charlie. “Pleasure’s all mine,” he said, but his fear was evident in his voice.
“Look,” Charlie said, “I know what you just saw is a little crazy. I can explain it. Well, I can’t explain it, but here’s the deal. If you tell anyone… I will run you over with my car.”
Memo whimpered and said, “Really?”
“No, not really,” Charlie said. “I just need nobody else to know. All right?”
Memo nodded.
“You promise?”
Memo nodded again.
“You can come out, Bumblebee.”
Memo gasped as the Beetle changed back into a robot. Bumblebee looked at Memo and took a step back, apparently uncertain of how to behave around a new person.
“Wow,” Memo said. “It’s… wow. What is it?”
“Not it,” Charlie said. “He. Don’t worry, he won’t hurt you.”
“Wow,” Memo said again. “Before tonight, I was having the most boring summer.”
Chapter 8
It was the day after Charlie installed the radio into Bumblebee, and Bumblebee was still in the garage, still turning the knobs on his radio and scanning one station after another. Charlie remained baffled about what he was trying to accomplish, but she could tell from the way he kept studying the radio that it was somehow very important to him.
She heard a knock at the garage’s side door. She was expecting Memo, so she went to the door and opened it. Memo walked in, looked at Bumblebee, and then looked back at Charlie and said, “Okay, I’ve been up all night, figuring it out, and I’ve got it. I know exactly what he is.”
“Really?” Charlie said, surprised. She looked at Bumblebee, who had also heard Memo and was now looking at the boy with interest. “Okay, Memo, tell us.�
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But Memo looked unsure if Bumblebee should hear what he had to say. He pulled Charlie aside and whispered, “All right. He… he’s a sentient robot from an alien planet full of other sentient robots, and there are good ones and bad ones, and they fight and have wars, and they change into cars when they need a disguise.”
Charlie nodded, urging Memo to continue.
“What he is,” Memo said, “is a GoBot.”
“A GoBot?” Charlie said. “Like the kids’ toy? No, he’s not a GoBot.”
Memo reached into his back pocket and pulled out a rolled-up comic book. He unrolled it and showed the illustrated cover to Charlie. The title was GoBot Adventures.
“Look at this,” Memo said, pointing to a robot on the cover. “Doesn’t that look like him?”
Charlie studied the illustration, then looked at Bumblebee and said, “Not exactly.”
“Close, though, right?”
Bumblebee shuffled on his feet. Charlie looked again at the comic book. “Ehh.”
“I’m telling you, that’s what he is.” Memo noticed Bumblebee tinkering with the radio’s knobs and said, “What’s he doing? Going up and down the dial like that?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie said, “but he’s been doing it all night.”
“He’s trying to get a message to his people!” Memo said with conviction. He moved closer to Bumblebee, gazed into his eyes, and said, “GoBot phone home?”
Bumblebee jerked his head back and gave Memo a sidelong glance, as if Memo had just said something crazy. Then Charlie heard the muffled voices of her mother and Otis coming from inside the house. Worried they might try walking into the garage, she looked at Memo and said, “Come on, let’s get him out of here.”
In an instant, Bumblebee transformed back into a car. Memo hopped into the passenger seat, and Charlie opened the garage door and started the engine. Leaving the cul-de-sac, they kept to the back roads of Brighton Falls until they arrived on a road that took them along the ocean shore. As they traveled, Bumblebee continued adjusting the radio’s control knobs, scanning through stations, and Charlie tried to bring Memo up to speed. It was a tougher task than she thought.
Memo said, “So tell me everything about this hologram you saw.”
“It looked like him,” Charlie said as she tapped the Beetle’s dashboard, “but red and blue, and it had a deep voice and said something like, Stay safe, soldier. Protect the people of Earth.”
“Really?” Memo looked out the window as they passed a row of beach houses, and looked nervous. He looked back at Charlie. “What… what if there’s gonna be an invasion? There’s gotta be somebody we can call. Is Area 51 in the phone book?”
“No, we can’t tell anyone,” Charlie said. “We can never tell anyone. It’s just you and me. That’s it. Forever.”
“Sure,” Memo agreed. “Okay. You and me.” He looked thoughtful as he watched the road ahead. Turning to Charlie, he said, “Then maybe we should just… you know… go somewhere for a while. Where we can be alone. The two of us.”
The Beetle’s engine made a coughing, grinding noise that sounded like an objection. Memo tapped the Beetle’s dashboard and said, “I mean, the three of us.”
As if in response, the Beetle’s speakers blared out the voice of Olivia Newton-John, who sang, “Physical. Let’s get into physical. Let me hear your body talk.”
Hearing the song, Charlie cracked up. She assumed Bumblebee had accidentally played the song, but she couldn’t help laughing—it seemed as if he was making fun of Memo with his song selection. “Well played, Bee,” Charlie said.
Charlie and Memo stared at the radio, then looked at each other. Charlie returned her gaze to the radio and said, “Whoa, wait. Is that why you’re always messing with the dial, Bee? Are you teaching yourself to talk?”
Bumblebee readjusted the dial to play the lyrics from a song by the Four Seasons. “Walk like a man, talk like a man.”
“No freaking way,” Memo said.
“Bee, you’re a genius,” Charlie said. “An actual genius!”
They were heading for Markham Point, a long stretch of beach with high, rocky cliffs. As they rounded a bend, they found a bunch of cars parked beside the road, and then they saw several more cars parked at odd angles in the road, blocking their way. As Charlie slowed the Beetle to a stop, she said, “Oh, come on. Really?”
And then she recognized some of the parked cars. They belonged to the Pretty Mean Girls from high school. And then she remembered that her former friends Brenda and Liz had mentioned Tina Lark’s bonfire party and realized that’s why so many kids had gathered at the beach. Perfect.
Memo rolled down his window. He waved to a small crowd of teens who were standing in the road in front of the Beetle, and he tried to sound polite as he said, “Excuse me, we need to get through.”
Everyone ignored him. Charlie leaned on the horn. The party crowd responded by yelling at her to stop honking.
Memo looked at Charlie. “We need to go ask someone to move.” He quickly opened his door and got out.
Charlie brushed her fingers along the edge of the radio and said, “Bee, I promise we’ll be right back, okay? Don’t do anything crazy.” She got out of the Beetle and started walking toward the people and cars blocking the road. She’d taken only a few steps when she walked right into two girls who were so overdressed, in outfits that included leg warmers, that she almost didn’t recognize them. But then she did. “Brenda? Liz?”
“Oh… hey,” Liz said, turning to face Charlie.
Charlie said, “What are you doing here?”
Brenda glanced at Liz. Liz shrugged and said, “Tina invited us.”
“Tina Lark?” Charlie shook her head. “Why would she do that? She hates you guys. She hates all of us.”
Liz shrugged again. “I guess she changed her—”
“We give her free corn dogs,” Brenda said.
Liz shot Brenda an angry look. Brenda bit her lower lip and looked at the ground.
Stunned, Charlie said, “You give her free corn dogs so she’ll be friends with you?”
Liz said, “It’s not that big of a—”
“Hot dog girls!” shouted a guy as he broke away from the crowd. He threw his arms around Brenda and Liz. Then the guy jumped away and began a silly dance, mimicking the movements of a lemonade churner.
Annoyed with the guy, Liz said, “Come on, let’s go, Brenda.”
As Liz and Brenda walked off, Charlie saw Memo standing beside the Beetle. She went over to him and saw that he was looking at another group of teens, which had gathered at the edge of one cliff. Memo said, “What are they doing?”
Leaning against the side of the Beetle, Charlie scanned the group just as one guy was pulling off his shirt. She said, “Is that Tripp Summers?” And then the guy turned around. He was indeed Tripp Summers, and he was stripping down to his boxers.
Tripp leaned out to look over the cliff’s edge. Someone said, “Don’t do it, dude. You’re crazy.”
Tripp said, “Ah, it’s not that big of a jump.”
Someone else shouted, “Hey, Tripp’s gonna wreck himself! Everyone come watch!”
As the crowd moved up closer to Tripp, he grinned at his audience and said, “Doesn’t anyone want to go with me?”
“You’re on your own, man,” said another partygoer.
“Anybody?” Tripp said. “Come on, people, live a little! Isn’t there anyone else with the guts to jump off this thing?” He looked around.
Charlie was still leaning against the Beetle when Bumblebee flexed and opened the door behind her, pushing her forward. She stumbled toward the crowd near Tripp.
Tripp saw her and said, “Ah-ha! One brave volunteer!”
Charlie realized Tripp was addressing her and didn’t understand why until she glanced back and saw the Beetle’s door swing shut. Facing Tripp, she said, “No, I didn’t mean to—”
The Beetle’s radio blared, “You got the touch. You got the power. Yeah!”<
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Tripp squinted at Charlie and said, “Hey, wait a minute. I know you.”
Charlie assumed that he remembered her as the girl who spilled lemonade all over him. She said, “Yeah, I’m sorry about that, I—”
“You were on the dive team with my little sister. I saw you win state a couple of years ago.”
“Oh,” Charlie said. “Uh…”
Tripp beamed. “Girls and boys, we’ve got a champion high diver here. This just got a lot more interesting!”
The crowd cheered. Tina Lark rolled her eyes with distaste.
Facing Charlie, Tripp said, “Don’t worry. I won’t make you go first.” Then he moved fast and took a running leap off the edge. Instead of diving, he clasped his knees to his chest and executed a sloppy cannonball, hitting the water with a big splash.
The crowd hooted and hollered at Tripp. His head popped up from the water, and he shouted, “Oh wow, that’s cold!” He looked at Charlie. “You better not back out!”
Charlie looked around. Everyone was staring at her, waiting for her to follow Tripp into the ocean. She glanced down at the water and saw Tripp bobbing and waving to her. Someone started chanting, “Dive, dive, dive,” and then the entire crowd took on the chant. They chanted louder and louder.
Charlie closed her eyes. From out of nowhere, she thought she heard her father’s voice say, Thatta girl. Her eyes snapped open. Had she imagined her father’s voice? Had Bumblebee somehow recorded it from the videotape and played it back on his radio? She didn’t know. But she did know she wasn’t going to dive.
She walked away from the edge. The crowd began to boo. She returned to the Beetle, where Memo was waiting for her. Memo said, “You okay?”
“Let’s just go.”
Before they could climb back into the Beetle, Tina and her girlfriends swarmed around them. Tina moved up close to Charlie and said, “Where’re you going, sweetie? What happened out there?” She gestured to the diving spot on the cliff. “That was your big moment to look cool.”
Memo scowled at Tina and said, “Move out of the way. We’re leaving.”
