2015 Young Explorer's Adventure Guide Page 23
“Yes! I mean, no! I mean….Cody closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair so his face pointed at the ceiling. That’s it, he thought. I’m an idiot, she’s gonna expel me and I’ll probably go to jail. My dad’s gonna have a heart attack and ground me till I’m thirty. If I’m not still in jail.
“Why?” she repeated. “I can’t figure out what would make you do something so incredibly stupid. Explain it to me.”
“I just... I wanted Mr. Hong to come back.” Cody sat back up and looked straight at her, wanting her to get it. “He’s a great teacher, and it’s not his fault Johnson’s got it in for him and grabbed on this dumb excuse to go after him. It’s not his fault and I wanted to fix it.”
“How do you know it wasn’t his fault?”
“Because I smelled gas too, so did a bunch of other kids. So did Ms. Dennison yesterday morning, and Ms. Anza. I was watching them and I could tell they smelled something. It wasn’t just Mr. Hong imagining stuff.”
“Yes, and it’s strange that no one smelled anything before or after fourth period – the class you’re in.”
“Maybe nobody asked them, or maybe they didn’t notice.”
Ms. Brown raised both eyebrows in what was obviously fake surprise. “Really? How likely is it that anyone would not notice a gas leak? The stuff stinks for a reason.”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”
“Exactly. You weren’t there.” She glanced down at an open file on her desk, then back up at him. “You don’t have a registered talent, do you Cody? That’s unusual for someone your age.”
He put on a defensive expression and a slightly aggressive tone and said, “I could still get something. Some kids don’t get anything till they’re nineteen or even twenty. I have time.”
“Unless you already have a talent and just haven’t told anyone.”
“That would be stupid. Why would I want everyone snarking at me about being neutered if I had a talent?”
“That’s a very good question. The only answer I can think of is that you have a talent that would get you even more grief than not having one at all.”
“That’d suck,” Cody said in a flat voice.
“I imagine it must. It’s still not an excuse for almost blowing up a building, though.”
“I didn’t!”
“I saw you, Cody. I’m really interested to hear why one of my better students would go suddenly crazy and pull a stupid stunt like this. If you’re just going to keep denying it, though, that’s fine; I was only curious. I wanted to know why this happened, in case there was something I could do to prevent it in the future. If not, then I’ll just call the police and let them handle it from here.” She picked up the phone and started dialing a number.
“Wait.” He closed his eyes and slumped back in his chair. “All right, hang on.”
“So? I’m waiting, Cody, but not for very long.”
“It’s just... it’s dumb.”
“That’s a given. I still want the specifics.”
Cody looked away, with his eyes unfocused because all he could see was every dumb thing he’d done since this mess started. He said, “We had a midterm on Friday in Mr. Hong’s class. I didn’t study, and I was afraid I’d fail.” He told about how Tonya was always sniffing the gas for the burners, and how that’d given him an idea. He was practically whispering when he told about what he’d done and how he’d done it, because it was still the stupidest, most useless talent anyone ever had anywhere. When he told Ms. Brown, he knew it was going to get out. That actually made him cringe more than the threat of being punished for busting the gas pipe.
“I just wanted more time, you know? I know it was dumb, but I was desperate and it seemed like a good idea right then. But I couldn’t let Mr. Hong get fired because of me, so I had to fix it. Just making people smell gas in my period wasn’t enough, they still didn’t do anything. It had to be real so everyone would think Mr. Hong had been right all along. I didn’t think about someone sneaking in with a cigarette or something until way later and it was too late.” He sat up, looked at Ms. Brown again and added, “And I know you didn’t get there until more than an hour after. You couldn’t have seen me.”
Ms. Brown sighed and rubbed her face with one hand, like she was tired. She finally said, “I don’t suppose it ever occurs to you kids to get your schoolwork out of the way before you go screw around?”
The answer to that one was obvious, so Cody didn’t say anything.
He was wondering about something, though. She had gotten over to Mr. Hong’s room too late to see anything with her talent. But she’d said she saw him, more than once. Ms. Brown wasn’t the kind to right-out lie, even to a kid, just to set a cheap trap. Mr. Johnson, sure, but not Ms. Brown.
What if she had seen him?
“You can see more than an hour back.” His tone was accusing, and he was kind of ticked off. That was cheating!
“I didn’t need to see more than an hour back,” she said, perfectly calm. “I just had to make you think I did.”
“But then how’d you know to pull it on me? You didn’t try it on every kid in school just hoping to get someone to jump.”
“You were seen going through the office.”
Cody snorted. “By who? The secretary was on the phone and didn’t twitch when I walked in, and she had her back to me and didn’t twitch when I left. There wasn’t anyone else.”
They stared at each other, neither saying anything. Cody knew it was all down to how serious Ms. Brown thought it was, and whether she was willing to have her secret spilled.
She finally sighed and glared at him. “All right, this is what we’re going to do. You had a momentary attack of idiocy, motivated by your desire to fix a problem you caused a teacher. You went about it completely wrong. You are never, ever going to do anything like this again. If you so much as get a detention for tardiness between now and the day you graduate, I’ll expel your butt. You are going to go talk to Ms. Lalande in the science prep room and volunteer to help her for an hour every day after school – cooking agar, stocking lab kits, whatever she needs. You can do that until you graduate, too.”
Cody opened his mouth to protest, just out of reflex, until she added, “I know you want to get into med school. Experience working in the prep room can’t hurt. It’s not all washing glassware; you got good grades in chemistry last semester, so Mr. Hong will probably be willing to tell Ms. Lalande that you know a mole isn’t just an animal that digs up gardens. Prove yourself, and she’ll probably give you some more interesting things to do.”
Huh. That didn’t sound too bad. Better than jail, right? “Okay.” He nodded.
“Good. I won’t tell Mr. Hong or Ms. Lalande why you’re there; they can assume you’ve become suddenly industrious and eager for additional experience.”
Cody nodded again. That was good. He’d hate to have Mr. Hong knowing what an idiot he’d been. He felt his shoulders hunching up a little just at the thought.
“And one final side deal,” she added. “You don’t tell anyone about your theory that I can see more than an hour into the past, and I won’t give anyone any reason to start calling you Stinky. Deal?”
Cody nodded again, a lot more vigorously that time. “Deal. Definitely a deal.”
“I’m serious, Cody. No one else knows except a couple of faculty members. If even a hint starts spreading about it, I’ll know it came from you and all our deals are off.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Good. You can go, then. And I’ll expect to hear that Ms. Lalande has a new assistant by the end of tomorrow.”
Cody repeated, “Yes, Ma’am.”
He walked to the science building prep room to see if he could catch Ms. Lalande before she left for the day. Having Mr. Hong back would be awesome. And Cody wasn’t in jail. That was awesome squared. And nobody, except Ms. Brown, knew about his stinky talent – awesome cubed.
The Care and Feeding of Your Pet Robot
Phoebe North
/> Phoebe North lives in upstate New York with her husband, her daughter, and her cat. She is the author of Starglass and Starbreak, a science fiction duology from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. Find her online at www.phoebenorth.com
Taki woke up when the light came in all orangey through the shutters. Her room was hot and wet. Condensation collected on the peeveesee sheets Ma had used to patch the ceiling. Once, before Ma had done that but after the storms wrecked the roof, dust rained in like falling stars. Now the yellow plastic bowed, pregnant with the weight of sand. The afternoon’s heat was on, and Taki had overslept. That was her first clue that her implant was malfunctioning.
Taki ambled up from her cot, her legs bare and sweaty under her shorts, and aimed a swift kick at Ellay Tu. Toe contacted metal. Wheels wheeled back. But it took a moment before the voice chirruped in her mind.
(This, of course, was clue #2.)
Ellay Tu’s gears groaned. On other mornings, Taki liked to think the robot yawned like a kitten might, but only in the cool and early mornings when Taki herself was in a better mood. Now, not nearly. Not even when she felt the buzz of her robot’s voice.
Taki gave her head a shake and headed for the kitchen. She ignored the whirl of wheels behind her, the sing-song voice of the machine that trailed behind.
Taki frowned, scratched herself. She didn’t see what was so good about it. Ma was at the sink rinsing off the dishes. She didn’t seem to think it was much good either.
“Up so late?” Ma asked, speaking over her slender shoulder to her daughter. There was annoyance in Ma’s voice, a thin sort of urgency. “You have a match today.”
“My implant’s on the fritz,” Taki said. She gave Ellay Tu a glance. The bot had fallen silent. This was clue #3. Usually, it wouldn’t give her a moment’s peace during meals. Taki reached inside the icebox, fished a can of juice out of the lukewarm water. Ellay Tu offered Taki a can opener, but she ignored it, popping the top off against the edge of the counter instead. “I’ll need to visit the tinker.”
“Again?” Ma was elbow-deep in the water recycled from last week’s shower, but she stopped, running a damp wrist over her brow. “You know we can’t afford it.”
“Ma—!” Taki began. Ellay Tu proffered a handkerchief, preparing itself, Taki guessed, for a tantrum. But Taki was thirteen now, too old for hysterics. She shot Ellay Tu a vicious glare.
“Really, Taki,” Ma went on. Ma was good at ignoring the drama between her daughter and the robot. But then, she’d had plenty of practice over the last five years. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the credits you two bring in. In fact, we’d be starved without them.”
Ma let out a high, weird laugh. Taki fought the urge to roll her eyes. That wasn’t the half of it, after all. Ma made some scratch doing the neighbors’ mending, but not nearly enough. She left school young, she often said, when she was pregnant with Taki. Never wanted to be anything more than a mother. Back then, she could afford the luxury of it. But now. . .
Still, Ma went on. “I just bought you that new pair of boots. And the modulator you spent all summer whining for.”
“I needed the modulator,” Taki said. “Or else Ellay’s specs would have kept me out of the arena.”
“We can’t afford it. You’ll have to find it at the scrap yard,” Ma said, just like that, like she’d decided. She turned back toward the sink, facing Taki with her back. Taki felt her hands ball into fists, felt the words she knew she should never say.
“We can owe them.”
Ma didn’t even bother looking at her daughter. She shook her head real sad.
“Oh, Taki—”
Taki pushed her weight past the table. Her hip hit the top, rattling the dishes. The squeal of Ellay Tu’s wheels followed her from the kitchen.
“I know, I know!” she shouted down the hall. Her lip curled as she mimicked her mother’s voice. “Better to be poor than to owe anybody nothing.”
“Anything,” Ma replied. Taki slammed the front door shut, imprisoning her mother’s voice behind it.
“Whatever!”
…………………………
After the two of them wriggled in through a hole in the clapboard fencing, Ellay Tu stood watch. Not well, though. The worthless thing just waited for a minute when a pair of mongrels snarled up to them.
“You good-for-nothing bot,” Taki called, looking down from the pile of garbage she’d half-scaled. “Do something.”
Finally the bot got rolling, its wheels working back and forth, its grabbers sparking. The scrap yard mutts bowed, jumped back. Taki squinted, trying to urge the bot to close its grabbers. But Ellay Tu just couldn’t catch them, no matter how hard Taki tried to will it so.
The bot swiveled its sensors back toward Taki. She could almost swear its viewer narrowed, like the machine was trying hard to understand. An artifact of the malfunction – it shouldn’t have been this hard. Ellay Tu finally charged forward, snapped the pincers shut. The big dog’s ear was caught within the robot’s grip. The dog yelped, twisted, broke free. It wasn’t until the three of them scampered back behind one of the towers of old tires that Taki at long last set to work.
She scrambled up over the rusted frame of an ancient automobile. Her robot began to follow before hitting a hubcap, then wheeling back.
A teevee tube. An old kazoo. A handheld generator that she thought she might be able to sell until she saw the circuitry was fried. She tossed it to the side. That’s when she spotted it, sticking out of the heating element of an ancient toaster.
A mobo. Old. Ess-eye-ess by the looksee. The board was cracked, but the chips looked good. And the teepeeyou especially, which was what Taki needed. She bit down against the fingers of her glove and pulled it off, then ran the edge of her dirty nail along the chip’s seam. This would be her third processor in as many years. And secondhand, to boot. She wondered whose head it had once been lodged in. Worse, she wondered what Da would have said.
Would have been ashamed, most likely.
She’d gotten into botting on account of him. She’d been six, older than most, but it took that long to convince him to let her give it a whack. He’d wanted a boy, you see, to bot with him. You always saw them down at the arena, men and sons together. But not daughters.
Sure, there were girls. But they were always older, sometimes women, even. They squatted on the edge of the pit, their eyes clouded as they urged their robots forward. But they never talked, and def not to a rangy brat like Taki. So she’d felt special when her Da finally let her sit beside him during his matches; better, even, when he let her walk right in and fetch his bot when it was over.
He’d had an Ellay Wun. Shiny red with a green display. Ma had long ago sold it for scrap. But before that, when her Da finally took her down to the tinker to buy her bot, there’d been no wondering. Ellay Tu had always been the bot for her.
Da held her hand through the first operation. She couldn’t feel anything, of course. They numbed the skin, and then, when they went in deep, there was no feeling. She’d been scared, sure. Six. Just a kid. When you’re little it’s weird to have someone muck about your head. But Da had got her through it.
Thinking about it, Taki reached up and touched her hairline. It had been four months since she’d last been yanked open. Her black hair had finally grown long enough to mask the panel. And of course, there was no telling that the thing would even work.
Ellay Tu looked at her. Da would have scolded her to hear it. “They’re just machines,” is what he always said, when she’d put on a pout over one of his bot’s damages. And Da was smart. He knew this stuff. Back in the day, it had been what the company paid him for, after all. But right now? Her robot looked downright mopey.
“Yeah, I mean you,” Taki shouted, as she shoved the chip into her pocket.
…………………………
“Tell her not to move,” Wallace said, as he leaned in close with the scalpel.
As usual, he spoke to his apprentice, Bronner, and not to Taki. It had been like that for a while now. When Taki was a little one, the old man was all crinkly-eyed smiles and warm bear hugs. But since last year, when she turned thirteen, he’d drawn away. He touched her careful now, like he was scared he’d break her. Even had his pren shave her head for him.
“Don’t move,” Bronner said, and he flashed a view of his crooked teeth at her. It’s not like she had much choice. She was already strapped in tight to the table. Worse, she couldn’t feel a thing above her ears. Even her eyes were stuck forward, fixed to Bronner’s ugly mug. She could hear Ellay Tu wheeling around with one of the spares, an old Are Seven they’d rebuilt from scratch. But she couldn’t cast her gaze over to see if her bot was winning.
“Every time I bring the scalpel over,” Wallace said, dropping it on the tray with a clatter, “she flinches back.”
Bronner was looking over his broad shoulder at something Taki couldn’t see. “It’s because her bot’s upset.”