How Lunchbox Jones Saved Me From Robots, Traitors, and Missy the Cruel

by Jennifer Brown

  Until I heard the breathing, of course.

  It was a whistle-y kind of nose breathing, heavy and slow, like when you feed cows carrots through a fence and they stick their snouts out at you. And it was sort of menacing. Like if you were facing it, your eyelashes would blow back against your face and your cheeks would smile on their own. And it would smell like onions and danger.

  I didn’t have to look to know that the breathing was Lunchbox Jones.

  My fingers froze on the mouse. I couldn’t get them to move. Why was it my body parts refused to cooperate whenever I was around that kid?

  “Hey, Lunchbox, what’s up? You want to give it a go? Here you are, buddy! Best of luck, old chap,” I said, getting up and offering him the computer chair. Oh, wait. No, that was what I would have said had my legs not gone numb and slightly warm, making me relatively sure I might have actually peed myself or maybe died. No, no, what I actually said was nothing whatsoever. I just pretended I had no idea a titan was looking over my shoulder and breathing his titan breath onto my skinny little neck.

  Mr. Terry came back just as I was getting the feeling back in my fingers.

  “How are we doing?” he asked. Clearly he wasn’t looking around, or he would have seen that we weren’t really doing much of anything at all related to robotics. Though one of the Jacobs had managed to nail the other Jacob’s shirt to a workbench, which was somewhat impressive. “Got some programming done, Luke?” He came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. I no longer felt the livestock breath on me. “Yes, yes, looks impressive,” Mr. Terry said.

  I beamed. “Really?”

  “Sure, why not. Should we give it a try?”

  “On the robot?” I asked.

  “Yes, of course on the robot.” He picked up the robot and, before I could do anything to argue, hooked it to the computer and downloaded my program. “Maybe we should get Principal McMillan down here to see this,” he said.

  “Maybe we should try it out first,” I suggested, but he was already on the classroom phone, calling the principal’s office.

  He talked for a few seconds, during which time nobody else in the room seemed to notice or care what was going on, and then hung up.

  “As luck would have it, he’s still in the building,” Mr. Terry said. “He’ll get to see the inaugural run of his new winning robot.” He held the robot in the air above his head. “Come on, I’ll show you how to line this up.” I followed him to the table, where he placed the robot in a square in the corner. “This is home,” he said. “The only time you can touch your robot is when it’s in its home. Otherwise, you lose points. Understand?”

  “I think so,” I said. “But that program . . .”

  “Okay, so which task did you program it to perform? The wall knock-down here? The obstacle course crawl over here?”

  I’d had no idea I was supposed to be programming it to perform specific tasks. I’d thought I was just programming it to do . . . stuff. “The, um. . . the thing with the, um. . . the helicopter pad,” I bluffed.

  Mr. Terry frowned at the map. “I don’t see a helicopter pad,” he said. Why had I been so specific? I should have gone with “square.” Everything on the board looked like a square. “Oh, you must mean this part over here, with the multicolored cross? I can see how that might look like a helicopter pad. Okay.” He cleared his throat, then said in a loud voice, “The skipping rope obstacle under way! Prepare for amazement!”

  He leaned over the bot and pressed a few buttons on top. It didn’t do anything. He glanced up at me. “Ready?”

  “Probably not,” I said.

  “Here we go.” He pressed another button on top and the robot whirred into life. Its mandible (that’s what I’d started thinking of the grippers as) opened and closed, twice, and its back tires inched forward and back within the home square, as if it were readying itself to take off.

  Principal McMillan walked in just as it got going, and to my amazement, it actually did get going. Everyone stopped what they were doing and watched as the robot inched its way out of the home square and onto the board. It went straight to the center of the board and then stopped.

  The entire team let out a groan. Even Jacob, who was still wrestling to get his shirt unstuck from the workbench.

  “Is that all?” Principal McMillan asked, looking puzzled. “I expected it to have a little more . . . movement.”

  “I don’t know what I—” I started, but Mr. Terry, bent so far over the table his forehead was nearly on top of it, waved his hand to shush me.

  “Give it a second, give it a second.”

  I was still skeptical, but I gave it a second. And, sure enough, the robot started to move again. It looped then stopped, looped then stopped, looped then stopped. It shuddered on its back tires.

  “There it goes, there it goes,” Mr. Terry said, leaning even closer. “Any minute now it’s going to—”

  As if the robot could read his mind, it suddenly shot forward at lightning speed right at Mr. Terry’s forehead, the tire treads taking a swatch of Mr. Terry’s eyebrow with it.

  “Yikes!” Mr. Terry yelled, falling backward into the desk behind him.

  The robot kept going, launching right over the edge of the table and slamming into Principal McMillan’s belt buckle.

  “Oof!” Principal McMillan doubled over and fell sideways on the floor.

  The robot bounced onto the floor, righted itself, drove over Principal McMillan’s chest, shearing off the edge of his necktie, and then took aim at Mikayla. She shrieked and ran out of the room. The robot took off again, anyway, zipping between the Jacobs, ripping the stuck shirt and knocking them both onto their backsides. It zoomed past Stuart, a sprinkling of old sunflower seeds falling out of its motor, which Stuart promptly picked up and stuffed into his mouth.

  It zinged around the room a few more times, knocking over the sixth graders’ bookshelf projects, crashing into a stack of Plexiglas, and setting off the sanders. I watched it, wincing and flinching every so often, from behind the safety of the computer table. Somehow I’d managed to program it to destroy the entire room except where I was standing. Which, admittedly, was going to look a little fishy.

  Finally, the robot raced over to where Lunchbox Jones was standing. Lunchbox stopped it with his foot. He reached down and picked it up, its wheels revving and spinning until he pushed a few buttons to turn it off.

  He set the robot back onto the table and walked out of the room.

  Slowly, the Jacobs, Mr. Terry, and Principal McMillan pulled themselves off the floor, and Mikayla crept back into the room like a scared deer.

  “This is the success you’ve spent your bud get on?” Principal McMillan said. The point of his tie fell off and landed in the skipping-rope square.

  Mr. Terry shrugged, looking very quizzical with the piece of his eyebrow missing. “We have some kinks to work out.”

  “I should say so,” Principal McMillan said. A rhinestone was stuck to his cheek. He straightened what was left of his tie, rearranged his belt buckle, and limped out of the room.

  Mr. Terry rubbed his bald eyebrow space for a long time after the principal had gone. He walked over to the table and picked up the robot. He was careful about it, as if he were handling a dangerous animal. “I suppose we should go ahead and call it a day,” he said. “Let’s meet again on Wednesday. We probably have some catching up to do. Grab a flier on your way out. It’s all about the tournament.”

  I felt like I should say something. I’m sorry, maybe. Or Don’t worry, Mr. Terry, it will come out all right. Or even, Hey, eyebrows grow back! But in the moment it seemed like the best thing to do would be to just leave him alone.

  We all silently grabbed our backpacks and jackets and fliers and headed for the door.

  Mikayla and I got to the door at the same time.

  She shook her head at me pathetically.

  “I told you it was a large,” she said.

  CHAPTER 14

  PROGRAM NAME: Disap
pointment

  STEP ONE: Robot zaps alien robots

  STEP TWO: Alien robots slip away from robot’s zapper

  STEP THREE: Robot slumps under tournament table and pouts

  So now I was down to only Tuesdays and Thursdays for playing Alien Onslaught with Randy. After the huge disaster that was my attempt at programming, I begged Dad to let me drop out of the team.

  “Nope,” he said. “You committed and they need you.” Dad was always all about “living up to commitments” and “fulfilling your obligations” and all kinds of annoying stuff that was supposed to be about making me a better person.

  “I had to make Walter build it, and my program almost killed the principal,” I argued. “Plus, nobody ever said anything about Wednesdays. I need my Wednesdays, Dad!”

  But Dad was adamant; I was staying on the team.

  On Tuesday, when I finally got to log on, Randy was already at level 32, which meant I’d missed the four-eyed alien and the part where you get to rescue baby aliens and put them back in their nests. Both things I had been really looking forward to.

  “You should have seen the alien babies,” Randy said. “They were really cute. They had these giant lips on their foreheads and their antenna stalks were on their tails. I got to change one’s diaper.”

  “That sounds epic,” I said. But I was glum about it.

  “Sorry you missed it, man. After we beat the game, we can go back and do it again.”

  “Sure,” I said. “That’s cool. No big deal.” But it was. It was totally a big deal. Every gamer knew it stunk to play a level for the first time alongside someone who’d already beaten that level before. It wouldn’t ever be the same.

  We played for a while, and Randy kept trying to cheer me up by making crude noises into the headset every time he captured an alien.

  “Did you hear it? I scared the poo right out of him,” he said each and every time, and followed it with peals of laughter that made one of my eyes close involuntarily.

  I chuckled along as best I could, because I hated for a guy to feel like his best efforts at disgusting hilarity were wasted, but I wasn’t feeling it, which only made me madder. It was one of my only two days to play with Randy, and I couldn’t get into it.

  But then, just as we reached level 35, Dad called me in to clean my stuff off the kitchen table and get ready for dinner.

  “Okay, man, see ya,” Randy said and then sucked in a gasp of air. “Dude, I almost forgot to tell you!”

  “Luke? Did you hear me?” Dad called from the kitchen.

  “I gotta go, Randy.”

  “No, you’re going to want to hear this first, I promise you,” he said.

  “Luke?”

  “Just a second, Dad!” I called. “What is it?” I asked into the headset. “Hurry.”

  “You won’t believe it,” Randy said. “There’s going to be an Alien Onslaught tournament. A real, live gamers tournament. In person and everything.”

  “Really?” I jumped up.

  “Yeah. Look it up online. It’s in some events center and they’re going to have big screens set up and you can register and win all kinds of prizes. It looks completely awesome. And you want to know the best part?”

  “Luke? Right! Now!” Dad was getting mad.

  “One more second, Dad!” I called. This was too important to worry about getting in trouble now. Randy was just getting to the best part. “What?” I asked Randy.

  “It’s in Kansas City, and my mom said she’d take me. I’m coming to your city, man. We could register together in the team event.”

  “No way!” I yelled. I imagined Randy’s eye closing involuntarily at the sound of my voice. But I couldn’t help it. He was right—this was big.

  “Do you think you can come?” he asked. “My mom said she’d talk to your mom and everything.”

  “Yes, I am so there. I’ll get them to agree to it, what ever it takes. When is it?”

  “Luke, I’m not going to ask you again! If you want to play your video game on Thursday, you need to get off it right now.”

  “It’s November twelfth. That’s a Saturday,” Randy said. “We’ll talk about it on Thursday, okay?”

  “Definitely,” I said. “We are going to win so many prizes.”

  I disconnected and hurriedly put away my Ultimate Gaming Zone. All I could think about was playing Alien Onslaught with Randy in person. We would beat the whole game. We would win the grand prize. Maybe the grand prize was a free copy of Alien Onslaught 2. Or maybe we’d get to meet the game’s creators. Or maybe we’d win a real, live alien.

  And to our winners-ers-ers goes the grand prize-ize-ize. A four-eyed alien-en-en named Chuck-uck-uck! Luke Abbott and Randy Whateveryournameis, please come claim your prize-ize-ize and be sure to send us all postcards-ards-ards when you visit Chuck’s home planet-anet-anet.

  The joy! The epicness! The amazingness!

  “The table is not going to clean itself,” Dad intoned from the kitchen.

  I rushed into the kitchen, my cheeks already hurting from smiling. I gathered my school things together.

  “Hey, Dad, guess what? There’s an Alien Onslaught tournament on November twelfth and Randy is going to be there and his mom said she’d talk to you well actually she said she’d talk to Mom but probably it will be you like usual and we can win stuff and maybe I can even win a real live alien because why not and it’s in Kansas City and nothing ever comes to Kansas City and we would totally be the best team there I just know it and can I go?”

  “Whoa, sport, let’s just worry about dinner right now, okay? It’s getting cold.”

  “But this is really important,” I said.

  “And we’ll talk about it over dinner. Just go put your things away. Mom will be home any minute and we’ll eat. And then we’ll talk about your alien sports thing.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s not a sport. It’s a game,” I mumbled.

  But he was willing to talk about it, so I didn’t want to push my luck too much. I took my things to my room. I tossed my jacket onto my bed and set my backpack in my desk chair.

  And that’s when I saw it.

  The robotics flier that I’d laid there yesterday.

  The one all about the robotics tournament. The mandatory robotics tournament that the whole team had to go to.

  The one that was going to be held on November 12.

  CHAPTER 15

  PROGRAM NAME: The Comfort Zone

  STEP ONE: Robot is down in the dumps

  STEP TWO: Robot Mommy comes to rescue

  STEP THREE: Robot drowns its cogs in ice cream

  I’d never been the biggest fan of peas, but that night at dinner I must have pushed them around on my plate even more than usual, because Dad kept asking if I felt okay, and Mom kept putting her hand on my forehead. And every time I told them I was fine, they did that Eyeball Morse Code thing that parents do, where they make certain stare-and-eyebrow-movements at each other, having whole conversations that nobody hears out loud.

  They didn’t appreciate Alien Onslaught, so they couldn’t possibly understand why the November 12 robotics tournament would be such a big deal, so why even bother trying to make them understand?

  Even worse, halfway through dinner, Rob showed up, completely destroying what would have been left of my appetite.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said, scooting into his chair, directly across from mine. “Some of the guys decided to stay after to work out in the weight room.”

  “Good idea,” Dad said, scooping peas into his mouth. “Getting into shape before you go.”

  Mom made an encouraging noise, but when I looked at her I noticed that her smile was spread thin across her face, like a pencil line, and she didn’t seem too thrilled about having to swallow her mouthful of peas. Not that I could blame her. I didn’t want to swallow mine, either.

  “Some of the guys were saying I should go ahead and shave my head now,” Rob went on, forking food into his mouth like this conversation was n
othing. Like he didn’t notice that he was sitting right across from me, even though I had made it perfectly clear that I didn’t want to sit in the same room with him again, ever.

  “Shave it already?” Mom practically barked, but then she wiped her mouth with the corner of a napkin and smiled. “How come?” she asked, much more gently.

  Rob ran his hand through his hair. I hoped he’d get food stuck in it. Really sticky, smelly food that would rot into a pile of gray slime, and then everyone would call him Slimy. Maybe, just maybe, I could hate the idea of him going off to boot camp a tiny bit less if I knew he was having to answer to the name Private Slimy a hundred times a day. “Just to get used to it, I guess,” he said.

  “But winter’s coming,” Mom said. “Won’t your—I don’t know, your scalp—get cold?”

  “Not if I wear hats,” Rob said.

  “Exactly. You’ll wear hats,” Dad agreed. “Hats are made for cold scalps.”

  Though it was a weird thing to say, nobody could exactly argue with his point.

  Dad looked up at Mom, grinning and chewing, thrilled to have solved the problem. Mom grinned back, but then she laid her fork across her plate and didn’t eat anything else.

  Dad and Rob kept talking about hats and haircuts and military bases and stuff, but I mostly tuned them out. Sometimes Dad seemed more excited about Rob going than Rob did. Sometimes I wondered if Dad wished he were going into the marines, too. Mostly, I couldn’t understand why these kinds of conversations didn’t make him feel nauseous and jittery. Maybe there was something wrong with me. Maybe this was a really exciting thing, and I was crazy for being mad.

  They’d finished eating and were carrying their plates to the sink, still talking, when Mom reached over and put her hand on top of mine.

  “Want to go get ice cream for dessert?” she asked. “Just me and you?”

  I didn’t feel like dessert, but I wasn’t the kind of guy who would ever turn down ice cream. Plus, going to get ice cream meant getting away from Rob, so I was all in.

  At first, Mom was really quiet, her mouth staying in that pencil line shape most of the way to the ice cream shop. I was enjoying the silence. I was maybe even beginning to think I was in the mood for ice cream after all, and had begun assembling my sundae in my head. Contrary to popular belief, ice cream sundaes were not something one simply goes and buys. Sundae assembly was a science.