by Hasbro
Tina looked at Memo as if he were an insignificant thing. “Who’s that?” she said. “Is that the churro guy? Where’s your hairnet, dude?”
“In the garbage, Einstein,” Memo said. “You throw them away after each use.” Then he looked at Charlie and said, “That was a weird comeback, and I regret it.”
Facing Tina, Charlie said, “Just get out of the way, okay?”
Tina looked at Charlie’s messy hair. “Nice haircut. What’s it called? Let me guess: Cry for help?”
The Beetle’s parts began to shift. Charlie appreciated that Bumblebee was probably hoping to protect her from Tina and the other girls, but she placed her hand on his hood to calm him down.
Tina and her friends ripped into Charlie and Memo, taunting them about their clothes and how they looked. Charlie and Memo got into the Beetle, but the girls continued standing in front of them. Charlie shouted, “Move! Please!” The girls didn’t budge.
Bumblebee apparently couldn’t stand the mean girls anymore. He activated his horn, blasting it at them. But the horn took Charlie and Memo by surprise, too, causing them to jump in their seats. Charlie looked at the button for the horn on the steering wheel, then she looked at Memo and said, “That’s not me. I’m not doing that.”
Bumblebee floored the accelerator, and the Beetle leaped forward.
Charlie said, “Bee, no, no, no!”
The group of girls in front of the car screamed and shrieked and jumped out of the way. The Beetle raced off past them. Memo glanced back through the Beetle’s rear window as the girls were flipping out, yelling and pointing at the departing car. Memo shrugged and said, “That’s what happens when you annoy a GoBot.” He looked at Charlie. “You all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“They’re idiots,” Memo said. As they drove on and away from the beach, heading back into town, Charlie was still annoyed and rattled by her encounter with Tina. Picking up on that, Memo said, “I know what would make you feel better.”
Charlie shot him a quick look. “Oh?”
“Revenge.”
“No,” Charlie said, “I don’t want revenge.”
“I do. What about you, Bee?”
From his radio, Bumblebee responded with James Brown singing, “Revenge! The big payback! Woo!”
“Two against one,” Memo said with a sly smile. They were approaching a shopping plaza with a supermarket. He pointed to the plaza and said, “Come on; I got an idea.”
In a shadowy bunker, Shatter and Dropkick were executing their own plan. B-127 was not only known by the humans, but their pitiful military was looking for him. It didn’t matter to the sinister robots why. Shatter suggested an alliance with the leader of the organization, a man called Burns, after calming Dropkick’s shortsighted lust for violence. Using the resources of “friends” would make their search significantly easier, and if it was easier to concoct a story about B-127’s capacity for global annihilation for some pathetic humans, so be it. When they located and cornered their prey, nothing, not even their temporary allies, would stop them from getting what they wanted.
Chapter 9
Charlie and Memo waited until dark to drive the Beetle over to Tina Lark’s neighborhood. They couldn’t help but notice that the houses were much larger and more expensive than those in the area where they lived, and most of them had expansive lawns with ornamental shrubs. They parked around the corner from Tina’s house, on a street bordered by tall hedges and without streetlights. Charlie and Memo climbed out of the Beetle, taking the packages of toilet paper and bagged cartons of eggs that they’d bought at the supermarket. Bumblebee waited for them to step away before he shifted into robot form.
They moved as quietly as they could, staying on the grassy stretches along the edge of the street so Bumblebee’s metal feet would make little noise. They came to a stop in front of Tina’s enormous house and saw Tina’s car, with its roof up, parked in the driveway. Looking at the convertible, Charlie had second thoughts about the eggs she was carrying. She said, “I think there’s a rule about doing this after the age of twelve.”
“There’s a bigger rule,” Memo said, “called don’t bottle your anger. Let’s show Bee what to do.” Memo ripped open a shrink-wrapped pack of twenty-four rolls of toilet paper and handed a roll to Charlie.
“See this, Bee?” Charlie said, holding up a roll. “It’s toilet paper. It’s for when you—” Charlie tried to think of how she might explain the purpose of the rolls of paper to Bumblebee but decided she wasn’t up for the challenge. “Never mind. Just take a roll.”
Bumblebee reached out and gently plucked the roll from Charlie’s hand. He held the roll between one large metal thumb and forefinger and crushed it.
“No, no, no,” Charlie said, “you throw it. Like this.” She grabbed another roll, brought her arm back, then tossed the roll high into the air so it unfurled across the branches of a tree next to Tina’s driveway.
Bumblebee observed Charlie’s action and nodded. Then he picked up the pack that held the remaining rolls and threw the entire thing so hard that it sailed over Tina’s house and vanished into the night sky. Apparently pleased with how well he had thrown the pack, Bumblebee pumped up his chest and beamed at Charlie.
Charlie was not so impressed. Before she could comment, Memo held up a carton of eggs, looked at Bumblebee, and said, “How about you be the egg man?” He pointed to Tina’s convertible and said, “Here, that’s your bull’s-eye.”
Memo demonstrated by hurling an egg at the parked car. The egg smacked and splatted across the windshield.
Charlie removed an egg from the carton and held it out for Bumblebee. As he reached for it, Charlie said, “You gotta be really careful with these. They’re super—”
Bumblebee’s fingers crushed the egg, and its gooey contents dripped down from his fingertips.
“—fragile,” Charlie said. “That’s okay.” She handed him another egg.
Bumblebee tried to be more careful, but he broke the second egg, too. Frustrated, he took the entire carton from Charlie and carried it up the driveway. He stopped beside the convertible and loomed over it. He held the carton above the car’s soft roof, squeezed his fingers closed, and crushed the carton. Sticky gobs of yolks and albumen oozed from his fist and dripped onto the roof.
Charlie laughed and said, “That works, too.”
Pleased that he’d made Charlie laugh, Bumblebee looked eager to do some more damage to the convertible. So he raised one foot and smashed it down on the car, crushing it against the driveway, and then he brought his foot down on it again and again.
Charlie gasped. “What are you doing?!”
Bumblebee looked at the remains of the convertible, which he had reduced to an unrecognizable wreck, then he looked at Charlie. Seeing her astonished expression, he looked as if he wondered if he had done something wrong. As he stepped away from the wreck, the convertible’s alarm began wailing. A moment later, a light came on in a window of Tina’s house.
“Hide!” Charlie said.
Memo grabbed Charlie’s arm and pulled her behind a bush. Bumblebee looked for a bush that was large enough for him to hide behind but couldn’t find anything. He reached down to the wrecked BMW, grabbed it, flipped it onto its side, and then crouched behind it with his hands covering his head.
Charlie saw Bumblebee and rolled her eyes with disbelief. Memo said, “We gotta get out of here!”
Charlie and Memo ducked down and ran toward Bumblebee. He jumped away from the wreckage, letting it fall and crash against the driveway as he tumbled, shifted, and changed into Beetle form. He opened the front doors, Charlie and Memo jumped in, and they raced away from Tina’s house as fast as they could.
Sheriff Lock sat in his parked police cruiser and tried hard not to be bored. It was a quiet night in Brighton Falls, so quiet that Lock held his radar gun outside the car’s window and pretended to shoot it as if it were a ray gun. The police dispatcher, Lucy, had told him that she’d heard about a
beach party at Markham Point and that he should keep his eyes peeled for teenagers leaving that area. But after sitting in his cruiser for over an hour and seeing only a few cars go by, and each one going at or under the speed limit, he radioed in and said, “Lucy, this is stupid. There’s no one—”
A loud engine roared from behind Sheriff Lock’s cruiser, and then a yellow Beetle flashed past him. The noise so completely startled Lock that he dropped his radar gun, which registered the Beetle’s speed at seventy miles per hour. He fumbled with the ignition, stomped on the accelerator, and took off in pursuit.
Charlie looked in the Beetle’s rearview mirror and saw red and blue lights flashing. Memo must have seen the lights, too, because he said, “Uh-oh.”
Charlie could imagine how her mother would react if she got a speeding ticket, and she knew her mother would be even more outraged if the police discovered that Charlie was somehow involved with the destruction of Tina Lark’s convertible. But she knew what she’d done was wrong, and she also knew better than to try to run from the cops. She tapped the brake, and the Beetle started to slow down.
But Bumblebee must have seen the red and blue lights on the vehicle behind him, and his instincts must have told him that meant trouble, the kind he should avoid. He ignored Charlie’s foot on the brake pedal and accelerated down the road, away from any potential danger.
Surprised, Charlie said, “What are you doing, Bee?”
Bumblebee increased speed, racing faster over the dark road.
Charlie shouted, “What are you doing?!”
The road narrowed, and Bumblebee began navigating a series of sharp curves that snaked along and above the coastal cliffs. Fifty feet below the road, waves crashed against the rocky shore. Charlie and Memo clutched at their seat belts as the Beetle wrapped around a corner.
Bumblebee came up on an old, slow-moving pickup truck. He slowed down, but the police cruiser was still behind him and catching up. As the pickup approached a hairpin bend, Bumblebee accelerated again and shot past the pickup, just barely avoiding it. He hit the shoulder and sprayed gravel before fishtailing, sending his back tires over the cliff’s edge. Charlie and Memo screamed.
The Beetle’s left side wobbled over a sheer drop. Charlie and Memo were still screaming as Bumblebee deployed an arm from his undercarriage to stabilize himself and keep him on the road. He gunned his engine, scooted all four tires back onto the road, and raced forward, heading for the dark mouth of a tunnel.
Charlie glanced back and saw the police cruiser had managed to get around the slow pickup. The cruiser was gaining on them as Bumblebee sped into the tunnel. Looking ahead, Charlie noticed they were in the straightaway for the Pico Tunnel, a tubular passage with curved walls that wrapped up into a long, curved ceiling.
With its siren blaring, the cruiser sped into the tunnel and began to move up alongside the Beetle. As the cruiser approached, Bumblebee rapidly lowered his front seats, dropping Charlie and Memo so they disappeared from view below the windows.
As Sheriff Lock drew up beside the Beetle, he definitely noticed that no one was seated behind its steering wheel. Bumblebee barely made out his panicked voice: “What in the—?!” Lock said, and grabbed his radio. “Lucy, we’ve got a Code… We’ve got a yellow car driving itself through the Pico Tunnel!”
Obviously believing the Beetle was out of control and it was up to him to stop it, Lock rammed his cruiser into the Beetle’s side, forcing it up sideways against the tunnel’s curved wall. Sparks flew as the Beetle connected with concrete and the cruiser.
Bumblebee angled his tires to grab the wall and allowed the cruiser to push him higher until all his tires were off the road and on the wall. The cruiser accelerated and moved up past the Beetle. As the cruiser raced ahead of him in the tunnel, Bumblebee accelerated, too, gripping the wall as he used his momentum to carry him higher. Still traveling on the wall, he adjusted his form as he pushed off the wall, launching himself up and over the cruiser. In midair, and at seventy miles an hour, Bumblebee half shifted his form into a robot, taking care to protect Charlie and Memo. He flipped and landed on the cruiser’s hood, his foot smashing the front of the vehicle.
Sheriff Lock shouted as he saw a yellow-and-black robot crash down on the front of his cruiser. The cruiser jounced, and as Lock swerved to a stop, Bumblebee waved as he drove out of sight.
Back on the road, Bumblebee shifted into Beetle mode and increased speed again. When he shot out of the tunnel, he was traveling at 120 miles per hour. He approached a curve and decelerated to the speed limit, then he adjusted the front seats, lifting them so Charlie and Memo were upright again. They looked out through the windshield at the road ahead. Memo said, “Are we alive? We’re alive, right?”
“I think so,” Charlie said, gasping.
“I didn’t see grandparents or a white light,” Memo said, “but I’m still not totally positive we’re not dead.”
Charlie pushed her hair out of her face. “I think we’re okay.”
“Okay, cool. Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Where’s the nearest place that sells pants, and can we go there?”
Charlie laughed. Memo shook his head, and then he began laughing, too.
Sheriff Lock felt dazed and dumbfounded as he drove his damaged cruiser at a slow crawl through the tunnel. When he finally exited and came to a stop, he was still wondering about what he’d just witnessed. He looked around. The Beetle was gone, and the robot was nowhere in sight.
He knew he would have a difficult time describing what had happened in the tunnel, but he was certain the Beetle wasn’t an ordinary car. He’d seen it change with his own eyes. He was sure of that.
His radio squawked, and then he heard Lucy say, “Update on the vehicle, sir?”
“Uh…” Lock said, still shaken, “the vehicle… the vehicle… turned into a robot and drove away on the ceiling going about one-twenty.”
The radio was silent for a few seconds, and then Lucy said, “License plate number?”
Bumblebee maintained the speed limit for the rest of the night and delivered Charlie and Memo to their cul-de-sac without drawing any more attention to himself. After dropping off Memo in front of his house, Bumblebee remained in Beetle mode as Charlie parked him in her garage.
Charlie patted the Beetle’s hood.
Bumblebee flashed the Beetle’s parking lights.
G’night, Bee, Charlie thought before she left the garage. Entering the kitchen, she almost tripped over Otis’s skateboard. As she picked up the skateboard and propped it up next to the door, she looked around the kitchen and then at the living room. Everything looked so familiar and boring. Her mother and Ron had talked about redecorating the house eventually, but Charlie couldn’t imagine how new furniture and appliances would change her opinion of the place. And if they ever did get around to redecorating, she hoped she and Bumblebee would be long gone from Brighton Falls by then.
But as she got into bed, and she thought about Tina Lark’s ruined car and the escape from the police cruiser, she began to realize that keeping Bumblebee, and keeping him a secret, was a bigger challenge than she’d imagined. A little bit of boring before she got out of town might go a long way.
Yeah, right.
As Charlie worried about Bumblebee and tried to sleep, Bumblebee’s worst nightmare was coming true in another state. A shadowy organization had finally made contact with other Cybertronians. The Decepticons had acquired a dangerous new ally.
Chapter 10
It was early morning at Charlie’s house. Ron had left for work, and Sally and Otis were in the kitchen, finishing breakfast. Otis was wearing his karate uniform. The toaster on the counter popped up something black. Charlie swept through the kitchen, grabbed her extra-crispy breakfast, and went out the door to the garage.
She found the Beetle resting next to the unfinished Corvette. She moved beside the Beetle and patted the hood. “I gotta go to work, okay? You’re gonna stay here.”<
br />
Bumblebee opened the driver’s door, inviting Charlie to climb in.
“No,” Charlie said firmly. “After last night, you’re grounded, buddy.”
The Beetle emitted a sad mechanical noise.
“Look, you’ve gotta stay in the garage now. After what happened, I’m pretty sure the cops are gonna be looking for you. And no offense, but you don’t exactly blend in.” Charlie closed the driver’s door and planted a kiss on the Beetle’s roof. She gestured to the nearby TV and VCR to give Bumblebee permission to dig in and said, “I’ll be back soon. I promise.”
Charlie climbed onto her moped, scooted out of the garage, and rode away, heading for her job at the hot dog stand.
Several minutes later, Sally and Otis were in the station wagon, on the way to drop Otis off at karate. They had no idea that they’d also left Conan in the company of a living robot disguised as a Volkswagen Beetle.
Still in Beetle mode, Bumblebee was watching a movie on the TV in the garage when he heard a noise from the door that connected to Charlie’s house. He directed his gaze to the bottom of the door, where a plastic flap opened. Then Conan pushed his way through the flap and into the garage.
Conan walked over to the Beetle. He sniffed at one of the Beetle’s front tires and then started whining. He was still whining as he walked away, heading back the way he’d entered. He pushed his head against the plastic flap and vanished into the house.
Intrigued, Bumblebee changed into robot form and crawled across the garage floor so he could examine the mysterious plastic flap. He pushed it open and peered through. He saw Conan on the other side, looking back at him. Conan whined again. Looking beyond Conan, Bumblebee could make out a small area of the kitchen.
Conan walked away, leaving Bumblebee’s view. Bumblebee strained against the small opening in the door, trying to see more and find the dog. He felt a mechanism shift in his head and was surprised when a retractable visor clicked down over his face. He was even more surprised when the visor broke up his vision into dozens of hexagonal cells, increasing his range of vision and enabling him to see more of the house’s interior.
