In Over Their Heads

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  This time he turned the steering wheel to the right as he pressed his foot down. The van was more responsive than he expected—it shot past the edge of the gravel parking lot and into the grass before Jackson jerked the steering wheel in the other direction. He narrowly missed swinging into the ditch.

  Is driving one of those things where you mostly have to learn by doing it, rather than being told about it? he wondered. Or maybe if I could just tap into the robot network, all that extra knowledge would help me along. . . .

  He didn’t think he should try to access the robot network now. He darted a glance back at Dad, flat on the seat. Had Dad shut himself down to avoid being linked to the robot network?

  Jackson couldn’t think about that now. He went back to peering out the windshield and concentrating on making his driving steadier and less jerky. It would probably be good if he could get the hang of steering now, before he got out on the road. In the parking lot it was okay to drive at a speed he himself could outrun, but he couldn’t creep along at five miles per hour all the way back to the nature preserve. He was just glad there didn’t seem to be anyone out and about to watch him. At least not anyone he could see.

  Surely this is such a small town I’ll be out of it in no time at all, he told himself. It’s windy and cold—it’s not like anybody’s going to be sitting out on their porches waving at whoever goes by. And then the highway’s likely to be totally deserted, all the way back to the nature preserve. . . . This isn’t that hard.

  Jackson inched out of the parking lot. To his relief, he could remember the way back to the nature preserve—the pattern of turns and the distances in between—from before, when Dad was driving, while Jackson was huddled under the blanket. The route wasn’t complicated, and after a few blocks of crawling along, he saw signs that said TO I-65. A few more turns and he faced the entrance ramp to the freeway.

  You’ll really have to go fast now, he told himself. There’s a minimum speed on the highway—you could be stopped by the cops if you’re going too slow. . . .

  The traffic signal ahead of him changed, and he hit the accelerator. It felt like he was going a million miles an hour. The wind slammed against the side of the van—maybe he would even tip over.

  But when he dropped his gaze to the speedometer for an instant, he saw that he was only going thirty-five.

  Faster, faster, faster, he told himself, squealing his tires as he swerved from the ramp onto the highway itself. It was good there was no other traffic, because he slipped back and forth between the right and left lanes before he managed to pull the van onto a reasonably straight path.

  No way you’re going to tip over, he tried to comfort himself. This van probably weighs a couple tons. The wind would have to hit it at an incredible speed to actually flip the van. Maybe . . . let’s see . . . carry the one . . . two hundred miles an hour?

  The wind could not possibly be going two hundred miles an hour. Although it was strangely strong. Surely Jackson could do a better job of controlling the van if there weren’t so much wind.

  Just another twenty-five minutes of this, he told himself. It’s a straight shot. No surprises.

  That was when he saw the black-and-gold car parked in the median.

  Is that . . . highway patrol? he thought, his heart beating faster. Or, well, what substituted for his heart.

  No need to panic, he told himself. Unless the cops get a good look at my face, there’s no reason for them to suspect I’m driving without a license. There’s no reason for them to stop me and check. I’m not doing anything wrong—except that thing about driving without a license. . . .

  Jackson’s enhanced vision meant that he noticed the partially hidden highway patrol car a full five minutes before he was going to pass it. Jackson spent those five minutes telling himself, Don’t do anything wrong. Don’t do anything wrong. Don’t do anything wrong. . . . He gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles ached. He didn’t let the wheels of the van deviate at all from their straight path ahead.

  Just as he closed in on the spot where the highway patrol car was hidden, Jackson turned his head to the right, as if to check his side-view mirror or glance at trees bending in the wind. Actually, he was making sure the cops wouldn’t see his too-young face. But it threw him a little off-balance, and the highway jogged ever so slightly to the left just past the cop car. So he couldn’t just keep going straight. He had to turn a little.

  Not too much, not too much, he told himself. He went too far, and the van started to veer into the other lane. He jerked the steering wheel back to the right, but he overcorrected. One tire hit the line of bumps at the side of the highway, and the grating sound seemed loud enough to wake the dead—or at least Jackson’s father.

  No, no, no, Jackson thought.

  He managed to hold on to the steering wheel. The highway went back to being totally straight, nothing but one continuous hundred-eighty-degree angle.

  That wasn’t so bad, Jackson thought. The cops probably didn’t even notice. . . .

  He dared to glance at the rearview mirror. The highway patrol car had its turn signal on. It pulled out onto the highway, into the lane right behind Jackson.

  Yes, but it doesn’t have a siren or lights on, Jackson told himself. It’s just a coincidence that it’s driving behind me. . . .

  Jackson didn’t think it was a coincidence.

  He slowed down a little. Maybe the cop car would pass him.

  It didn’t.

  Jackson sped up, until he was going an entire mile per hour over the speed limit.

  The cop car sped up too.

  Okay, just don’t make any mistakes, he told himself.

  He started sweating, and his ears rang the way they sometimes did right before he blacked out.

  Can’t do that, he told himself. No shorting out. Not now.

  Ahead of him there was a little hill. The cop car followed Jackson at a very precise distance of six car lengths. That meant that once Jackson’s van crested the hill, he would have at least a moment or two when the cops couldn’t see him.

  Could I pull into the woods then? Jackson wondered. Could I hide the van completely in just that amount of time, if I were going fast enough?

  No, he’d crash into the trees, and the cops would stop and ask for his license for sure.

  That is, if Jackson even survived the crash.

  Fat globules of sweat ran down his face and into his eyes. He flicked them away, making the van swerve again. In the rearview mirror, he saw the cop in the driver’s seat lift her arm a little uncertainly, as if she was thinking about pulling him over but hadn’t quite decided yet. The cop sitting beside her said something, but Jackson couldn’t let himself watch long enough to read lips.

  He could not keep driving in front of these cops. He was bound to make some mistake that would make them too suspicious not to stop him. After all, he had only fifteen minutes of driving experience—how could he not make mistakes?

  He reached the top of the hill and immediately began peering around at everything on the downhill slope. Just past the hill’s crest, a gravel lane connected his side of the highway with the lanes going the opposite way. There wasn’t even time to calculate if it was safe—or possible—but he swung his wheel as sharply as he could to the left, aiming for that lane.

  The van shivered and shook. One side of his tires missed the gravel lane entirely and smashed into the grass. Jackson swerved, struggling to hang on to the steering wheel. He jerked it even more to the left and slammed his foot on the brake.

  Even with Jackson’s robotically precise sense of time, it felt like an eternity passed before the van came to a jerky stop. He was half on and half off the berm of the other side of the highway, facing perpendicular to the road. A wide trench of exposed dirt lay behind him where his tires had torn up the grass.

  Before he even took time for a deep breath, Jackson made himself look for the cop car. It was past the gravel lane connecting the two sides of the highway, and there was
no way the cop car would drive over the grass and risk tearing up even more.

  They’re robots, Jackson told himself. They won’t violate a rule like that.

  Based on how evenly spaced the gravel connectors had been elsewhere along the highway, the next closest one was probably five miles away. So Jackson probably had at least four or five minutes before the cops returned to interrogate him—and undoubtedly arrest him too.

  That is, unless there was another cop car close by that the first cops could send after him. He couldn’t count on having much time at all.

  Shaking, Jackson looked both ways for traffic—there was nothing coming, in either direction—and then he drove on across the lanes ahead of him. He came to an abrupt stop in the ditch on the opposite side of the highway.

  “Okay, Dad, why didn’t you also download instructions into my brain for BEST WAYS TO CARRY AN UNCONSCIOUS MAN?” he muttered.

  He undid his seat belt and slid out of his seat—which was hard to do when his legs were shaking every bit as hard as the rest of his body. He bent over Dad and pulled his father’s body toward the van’s sliding door. He opened it and jumped out.

  And then he wrapped the shopping bag full of electronic supplies around one of his wrists, eased his father’s body out of the van, and half carried, half dragged Dad toward the woods.

  Not the woods closest to the van. He aimed for the ones that he could reach only by crossing four lanes of highway and a grassy median and another ditch—the woods on the completely opposite side of the road.

  SEVENTEEN

  Nick

  Eryn is going to be so mad at me, Nick thought, even as he peered at Ava’s soft smile and the glow of relief in her eyes over the partnership they’d just formed.

  He didn’t think Eryn would automatically oppose working with Ava—or Jackson, for that matter. Not exactly. It was just that Eryn always made such a big deal about how closely she and Nick were linked, how they had that twin bond that meant they could practically read each other’s minds.

  They were pretty good at finishing each other’s sentences.

  So when it came to something like keeping the papers secret—which was, oh, only the biggest dilemma the two of them had ever faced—he knew she would have liked to be consulted.

  Actually, what she usually likes is to make up her own mind and then have me agree that she’s right, Nick thought with a sigh.

  He imagined telling Eryn, Hey, I had to make a snap decision and you weren’t there! There wasn’t time to consult you! You were the one who said it was best for me to go after Ava by myself!

  Nope, wouldn’t work. None of that would keep her from being mad.

  Ava’s smile turned a little tentative. Maybe she was responding to his sigh. Or the grimace that had started spreading over his face.

  “So, want to go back to that shed, before the parents come after us?” she asked, sounding as if that was the last thing she wanted.

  “It would be a good strategy,” Nick said with an apologetic shrug. “Gives you an edge, that you’re returning voluntarily.”

  Usually it was Eryn who thought more about ways to outsmart their parents. He felt a little bit like he was channeling her ideas.

  Which made him feel even more disloyal.

  “I guess,” Ava said, with a helpless shrug. “Got any ideas for how I can keep from joining their network when we go back? About what excuse I can use?”

  “You can’t mention the papers,” Nick said, panic rising inside him. He really didn’t want to have Eryn mad at him plus Mom, Dad, and probably even Brenda. And Michael, when he got back.

  The adults would be mad, wouldn’t they?

  “Of course I won’t say anything about the papers,” Ava said, sounding offended that he’d suggest such a thing. “I need something that sounds calm and rational, and makes them feel calm and rational, too. . . .”

  Nick snapped his fingers.

  “I’ve got it!” he said. “Listen, just let me do the talking—you’ll be fine.”

  Eryn would have insisted on knowing his plan, but Ava nodded trustingly.

  “Okay,” she said, shrugging again. “Let’s go.”

  They trudged back uphill toward the shed. Nick couldn’t understand—he’d felt like he was struggling against the wind the whole way down to the cave, and now that he was going back up he still felt like it was pushing him backward.

  That did not mean that he couldn’t win, no matter what he did. It couldn’t.

  It just means . . . Lida Mae was right, he thought. There is an awful storm blowing in.

  They shoved their way back into the shed.

  “Ava—” Brenda began.

  Nick held up his hand to stop her.

  “Please,” he said. “Let me explain for Ava. I told her I could do it calmly and rationally, and you would all understand.”

  That would help, wouldn’t it? To appeal to the adults’ sense that they were all so compassionate and understanding? The perfect parents they were programmed to be?

  He turned to his own mother.

  “Mom, you’re a middle school psychologist,” he said. “This should be easy for you. Think about everything you know about the mind of a typical adolescent human.” He flicked his gaze toward Brenda and Dad, too. “I don’t really understand how this works, but I guess the two of you can ‘remember’ everything Mom knows about adolescent psychology too. You’re entirely clued in.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Brenda started to say. “But that doesn’t matter, because Ava isn’t a—”

  Nick made the stop! signal with his hand again.

  “Think about it,” he said. “You guys designed Ava to fool people into thinking she’s human. And now you’re upset with her because you succeeded too well? Ava is a robot, yes, but she’s not the same kind of robot as you adults. Even though she’s not human, she’s more like a real human than you all are—a real human kid. She wants independence and privacy and . . . and self-actualization, just like any other twelve-year-old.”

  Nick was really proud of himself for pulling out that term, “self-actualization.” He wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, but Mom talked about it all the time. He figured it had to be important.

  Eryn grinned at him, as if she thoroughly enjoyed his performance. It made Nick feel a little guilty again, and he forgot what he’d planned to say next.

  “And, uh, you don’t want to hurt Ava’s, uh . . . ,” he tried, hoping the thought would come back to him soon.

  “Oh, I see,” Mom said, nodding slowly. “Are you saying that the very idea of joining a robot network created such a strong cognitive dissonance for Ava that she descended into the tumultuous, tempestuous behavior of a typical adolescent human female?”

  Nick was pretty good at imitating Mom sometimes, but there was no way that crazy sentence would have come out of his mouth.

  Eryn’s eyes danced.

  “I think that was what he was about to say,” she agreed. She was standing behind the grown-ups, so she risked giving Nick a private smirk before grabbing Mom’s shoulder and telling her, “Mom! I’m surprised at you! Why didn’t you figure out Ava would get, uh, cognitive dissonance?”

  Oh, yeah, Nick thought, his stomach giving a guilty twist. Eryn’s loving this.

  Would that make things better or worse when she found out what Nick and Ava had really talked about in the cave?

  “Oh, Ava, please stop looking so apologetic,” Brenda burst out. Nick realized that the whole time he’d been talking, Ava had kept her eyes downcast, demurely peering at the ground. “We get it! We understand! This isn’t your fault! We were wrong even to think about looping you in to the robot network.”

  Ava looked up.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, tears glistening in her eyes.

  Nick was pretty sure they were supposed to indicate joy or relief, not sorrow.

  Thank you, Ava mouthed again, facing him.

  Crisis over, Nick thought. Or at least one of them. I wish I
knew how to solve all the others. . . .

  Just then there was thumping at the door behind Nick. Brenda flew toward the door before he could react.

  “Jackson? Michael?” she called hopefully.

  “Sorry, no. It’s me again,” a girl’s voice responded, even as the door creaked back, and Lida Mae poked her freckled face into the narrow opening.

  Oh no. Oh no, Nick thought, exchanging horrified glances with first Eryn, than Ava. How much of that conversation had Lida Mae heard? Had she heard Brenda say “robot network”?

  Had she heard Nick say, “Ava is a robot, yes, but she’s not the same kind of robot as all of you?”

  EIGHTEEN

  Eryn

  Was it possible to get emotional whiplash?

  If so, Eryn had it.

  First she’d had to hold in laughter over how Nick totally took down the grown-ups, using some of Mom’s own crazy psychology terms. Personally, Eryn had no idea why Ava cared so much about the stupid robot network. (Unless . . . was Nick maybe telling the truth? Was Ava that much like a human kid, that she didn’t want her parents to know what she was thinking?)

  Then Eryn got kind of mad at Ava. Why was she letting Nick do all the talking? Why did she just stare at the ground, as meek as could be, instead of standing up for herself?

  If Ava wants to fool people into thinking she’s actually human, she’s got to do better than that, Eryn thought. Grow a spine! Or . . . at least . . . have one implanted.

  Then suddenly Lida Mae was there, and Eryn had to worry about what she’d heard.

  If Lida Mae really had heard them talking about robots—if she even knew what robots were—wouldn’t she mention it right away?

  Lida Mae’s eyes darted about anxiously. But when she spoke, all she said was “The storm’s starting up faster than I expected. You’uns need to head into the cave now.”

  Eryn let out a silent sigh of relief. But she saw identical worried expressions settle on all the adults’ faces.

  “We can’t go anywhere until my husband and stepson get back,” Mom said. “They won’t know where to find us.”