EngiNerds by Jarrett Lerner

Author:Jarrett Lerner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin

32.

IF GRANDPA DIDN’T GIVE ME the robot, then who did?

I don’t have a clue, and that gives me the creeps.

As soon as Dad stops the car in the driveway, I hop out and race inside and up to my room to make sure Greeeg’s still under my bed.

I try to, at least. But Mom’s standing there at the bottom of the stairs with her arms spread out from one banister to the other.

“Two things,” she says.

I stand there and listen, but first heave a sigh to let her know that I’m kind of in a major rush.

Mom hears it, obviously, but still takes her sweet time.

Her first thing is that she and Dad are going to be gone for the rest of the day. They’re going to a wedding or something, and she wants to know if I’ll be all right on my own.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “Sure.”

The second thing Mom says is that I got a phone call while I was out—and when she says it, a big warm wave of relief sweeps over me.

“From who?” I ask her, even though I don’t need to. I know who it is.

Dan, of course.

For one thing, nobody else ever calls me. And for another, it’s been almost twenty-four hours since we’ve talked. That just doesn’t happen. And no stupid argument about John Henry Knox and his dumb ideas should keep us from talking for that long. Not even the fact that Dan has been lying to me for the past two years about all that time he was supposedly spending watching The League of Ladybugs should do that—though, yeah, I do expect a decent explanation about it. But more important, I need to talk to him. To my best friend. I need to talk to him about Greeeg—bad.

When Mom doesn’t answer me, I try again:

“Mom.”

She rolls her eyes. Says:

“Why don’t you check the message pad, Ken?”

That’s the little pad of paper Mom keeps beside the phone. She’s been trying for years to get me and my dad into the habit of using it.

I heave a second sigh, then head to the kitchen to read the piece of paper. I reach for the phone at the same time, and even start thumbing in Dan’s number.

But when my eyes actually start dragging across the words Mom wrote, I stop.

Because it’s not Dan’s name I’m seeing.

The pad says:

John Henry Knox.

I actually gasp.

And Mom, having now given me enough time to use her beloved message pad, steps into the kitchen behind me and says:

“He told me to tell you that he got one too. He didn’t say what one was, just that you’d understand.”

A few seconds pass.

Then a few more.

I can practically feel the color draining from my face.

“Ken?” Mom says. “Ken. Did you eat one of Grandpa’s burritos? Are you going to be sick?”

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