Willful Machines (12 page)

I turned toward the front of the school and followed the walkway to a heavy gate, also locked. (School policy prohibited students from nosing around down here.) Out came my tools. I had that lock open even faster than the last one.

I passed through the gate and emerged from under the building. The walkways continued along either side of the canal out here, but I took a side staircase up to ground level. When I'd almost reached the top, I dropped to a crouch. “Turn off your light,” I hissed at my puck. I'd glimpsed the other half of my detail—the agent who patrolled the school grounds—prowling across the lawn up ahead. It didn't look like he'd noticed me, though. I pulled out a glass jar with a dozen or so mothlike Creatures fluttering around inside. Swarmbots, I called them. I unscrewed the lid. They poured out and vanished into the darkness. Meanwhile, the Secret Service agent disappeared around the corner of the building.

I jumped up and dashed along the front of the school. Up above, the clouds had cleared for a second straight night—unheard of at Inverness Prep. An almost-full moon flung pale light across the school's gruesome facade. Near the tree where I'd picked up Nevermore this morning, I stopped and sent Nico a message:
Open your window and look down. But don't make any noise.

Nico leaned out his window a few seconds later. The scene looked just like the one my puck had projected on my wall last night, with the light from his room streaming past him and catching in his curly hair. Except now he had his clothes on. Even so, I liked this better than last night, because this time I was seeing it for real.

He beckoned his puck outside and said something to it. My puck's small screen displayed the message:
Wherefore art thou?

His mind had obviously gone to the same sappy Shakespearean place mine had yesterday. I waved, and he spotted me. I took out my climbing harness and looped it around my robot's Barbie head. “Rapunzel, I want you to climb to that third-story window, the fifth one from the left, and set yourself up on the sill.”

“Okay!”

When she'd reached him, my puck lit up again:
She's cute, but I was actually hoping to spend time with YOU.

She's not your date
, I messaged back.
She's your means of egress. Have you by any chance gone rock climbing before?

By then, Rapunzel had fastened herself to his window, and Nico had taken the harness in his hands.

Yes! This is genius! I'll be down in a sec.

And that was literally how long it took. He threw his legs over the sill, swung himself around, and rappelled down the wall in three graceful bounds. Somehow it didn't surprise me.

“Did you make her yourself?” he asked, unfastening his harness. “She's amazing!”

I nodded, a blush heating my face. Something else I liked about Nico: It wasn't just that he was cool. He made me feel cool too.

My robot had climbed back down the wall by then. “Rapunzel, hide in those bushes,” I told her, “and wait for us there.”

“Happy to!” she chirped before burrowing headfirst into the leaves.

“So,” Nico said. “You've got me. What are you going to do with me?” He wore a bright yellow windbreaker, tattered jeans, and flip-flops. The flip-flops threw me a little. Did people wear flip-flops on dates? On the other hand, his shock of curly hair looked extra glossy, like he'd put styling stuff in it.

“I have something I want to show you,” I said. “Sort of a secret. But it's a hike to get there.” I nodded at the flip-flops. “Will you be okay in those?”

“Back at home, I wear them everywhere. Lead on.”

I guided Nico along the front of the school and down the stairs to the walkway by the rushing water. We followed the
canal upstream. The walls on either side were about six feet high, which gave us some cover as we crossed the school's vast front lawn. At the edge of the grounds, the river passed through a tunnel that ran under the front gate and the highway beyond. The walkways continued into the tunnel, but iron gates blocked students from going any farther. I took out my tools one more time, and also the jar, which I handed to Nico.

“Hold this.” Then, to my puck, “Call back the Swarmbots.”

I went to work on the lock.

“No way!” Nico tapped the side of the glass container as it filled with my tiny Creatures. “What are they for?”

“Have you noticed all the security cameras roaming around inside the school? There are cameras outside, too, and I didn't want them to see us. These things home in on the sound the cameras' rotors make, and then they crowd around the cameras' lenses so they can't see anything.”

“Clever.”

The gate swung open. Nico peered into the dark tunnel beyond.

“You're just full of surprises, aren't you?”

I couldn't tell if he meant that in a good way. “I'm not a serial killer,” I blurted.

“Excuse me?”

Wrong thing to say, the underdeveloped section of my brain that monitored social interactions informed me. I tried to smile, but it probably made me look even creepier. “I just
meant you don't have to worry. I'm not going to try anything funny, I swear.”

He crossed his arms. “Really? That's disappointing.” He motioned at the gate with his chin. “After you.”

The darkness of the tunnel enfolded us, and we told our pucks to turn on their lights. Every once in a while I'd glance back at Nico, and he'd grin. I imagined his gaze on my back, on my butt maybe. Did I really have a nice butt, like Bex had said? We emerged from the tunnel on the far side of the highway, where the canal became a natural river. The night felt brisk—not as cold as it could sometimes get in October, but not flip-flop weather, either. Nico didn't seem to mind. We climbed to the top of the riverbank, where a trail ran alongside the river into the forest.

Nico pulled up next to me as we hiked up the trail. “So you pick locks and make robots. Is there anything you can't do?”

“Yeah. Pretty much everything else.” On impulse, I drew Gremlin from my pocket. He scampered up to my shoulder and tugged twice on my ear. “But when it comes to anything mechanical, I'm your guy.”

“You made that one, too?”

“No. But he's my favorite. I've had him since I was little. His name's Gremlin.”

“What does he do?”

“You know those little mascots the heroes in Disney cartoons always have, the ones that mostly just sit on the hero's
shoulder and look cute and occasionally get into mischief? That's what he does. He can also obey a few simple commands. I usually make him bring me my socks in the morning. Here, take a look.” I lifted Gremlin from my shoulder and dropped him into Nico's hands.

“He's soft.”

“Sometimes I rub his coat for luck.”

“In that case.” Nico gave Gremlin's orange fur a vigorous rub.

The forest grew thicker around us. The trees blocked out much of the moonlight, but our pucks continued to light our way. I thought of that line of Shakespeare Nico had recited in front of Dad yesterday. I'd looked it up, and it came from
A Midsummer Night's Dream
, a play that took place in an enchanted wood and featured a fairy servant named Puck. I'd always assumed pucks had gotten their name because of their round, flat shape, but it turned out the name also referred to the character from the play. I could see why now, as I watched our pucks bob over our heads like actual woodland spirits.

An owl hooted, and Gremlin, startled, sprang from Nico's hands back to my arm.

“Sorry,” I said. “He likes to stay near me. Or I guess I should say he was programmed to stay near me.”

Gremlin ran up to my shoulder and tugged on my ear again.

“Why does he keep doing that?” Nico asked.

“What?”

“Pulling on your ear.”

“Oh.” I plucked Gremlin from my shoulder. “He was programmed to do that, too.”

“Why?”

“It's sort of embarrassing. Are you sure you want to hear this?”

“If it's embarrassing, then definitely.”

Out of habit, I glanced around, as if someone else might be listening even way out here. “When I was about six, my dad was elected to Congress and my mom got her job at the lab in Bethesda, so the whole family moved to DC. I was a shy kid. Transferring to a brand-new school halfway through the school year had me completely terrified. On my first day my mom walked me into the classroom, gave me a kiss, and told me she loved me. Not such a weird thing for a mother to do, but for some reason the other kids teased me about it all day. Probably they could see how scared I was, so they must've decided I'd be an easy target.”

“Did you have glasses and cute ears back then, too?”

“Oh, yes. That probably didn't help either. When my mom picked me up that afternoon, I told her she was never allowed to kiss me or tell me she loved me in public again. So she tapped her chin and thought about it. I remember she always did that when she was thinking. Tapped her chin. ‘Okay, I won't,' she said. ‘How about this, kiddo: from now on, whenever I say
good-bye to you in front of other people, I'll just tug on your ear, and you'll know that means I love you.'

“And that was what she did from then on. It sort of became our thing. For my eighth birthday, she gave me Gremlin. She'd made him herself. ‘So now,' she said, ‘even when I'm not with you, you'll feel him tug on your ear, and you'll know what it means.' Then she died a year later, so I guess Gremlin makes me think of her.” Nico didn't say anything. I glanced at him. “Am I being a downer? Tell the truth. I think I may have a tendency to do that.”

“Not at all. I was just wondering how someone like your mom ended up with someone like your dad. I hope that's not rude of me to say. But maybe he was different back then. Not so antirobot and pro-stay-at-home-mom.”

“He wasn't
that
different. But Headmaster Stroud was my mom's father, and he'd been best friends with my dad's father. I'm sure he had a hand in getting my mom and dad together.”

“So it was like an arranged marriage?”

“Well. Not exactly.”

The truth was, unlike just about every other person on the planet, Mom had never had a problem standing up to Stroud. She hadn't even let him enroll her at Inverness, and she certainly hadn't taken his wishes into account when she'd chosen her career path. Maybe Stroud had pushed her toward Dad at first, but in the end, she must've really fallen in love with him.

Still, Mom and Dad had always seemed like a mismatched
pair. For instance, he went to church every week, but she never did. They'd trade off Sundays: one week Dad would bring me to services with him, and the next, Mom and I would have what she called Appreciation Days, where we'd go on a hike or visit a science museum or do experiments in her little lab in the garage. The whole arrangement was odd—like shared spiritual custody.

Once, on one of those Sundays, I asked Mom, “How come you don't go to church?”

She shrugged. “I had enough of that when I was a kid.”

“Is it because you don't think there's a God?”

“I suppose that depends on what you mean by ‘God,' ” she answered, tapping her chin. “Do I think there's a God like in the Bible? No. I'm a scientist. I value hard evidence, and all the hard evidence argues against it.”

“And heaven? Do you believe in that?”

“Same answer, kiddo.” It didn't seem to bother her, though.

But I didn't tell Nico any of that. Instead, I stowed Gremlin in my hoodie and said, “What about you?”

“What
about
me?”

“I don't know, everything. You've met my dad, you've heard about my mom. Tell me about
your
family.”

“There isn't a whole lot to tell.”

“I don't believe that for a second. Come on, what's your life story?” I stepped over an exposed tree root. “Or maybe you prefer being a man of mystery.”

He waggled his eyebrows at me mysteriously.

For a while the trail had slanted gently upward. Now it curved to the left, still following the river, and another path, steeper and more rugged, cut off to the right. I guided Nico that way.

“I grew up in Santiago,” Nico said. “The Medinas have lived there for generations. My great-great-grandfather founded one of the most successful investment banks in Chile.”

“And you were sent to Inverness Prep to get a top-notch education so you can go back home and take over the family business?”

“Something like that. My dad had been trying to get me into Inverness for years, but it's practically impossible if you're not a legacy. Then a few weeks ago, out of the blue, I got a last-minute admission. I guess my dad had finally found the right person on the board to bribe. So here I am. But I can tell you right now, I'm not going to be a banker.”

“Oh, yeah? What are you going to do then? Because if you're considering a career as a food critic, you might want to work on that palate of yours. I hate to break it to you, but the food here really does suck.”

Nico laughed. All our hiking had turned his cheeks reddish gold. I could see it even in the low light from our pucks. He'd been right about his flip-flops, though: so far he hadn't stumbled once.

“Or do you want to be an actor?” I asked.

“Nah.” He held up a low-hanging branch, and I ducked under it.

“Seriously, what do you want to do?”

He shrugged. “I don't know, Lee. I just want to live. Like really live. Make every second count, you know?”

“Okay. Admirable, but vague. Not that I have a better answer to that question.”

The trees had thinned by then. The trail had grown even rockier. A chain-link fence, warped and rusted with age, appeared in front of us, with barbed wire draped across the top and a battered yellow sign that read,
DANGER! NO TRESPASSING!
Behind that loomed the mountain, blue in the moonlight, its blunt peak wedging itself into the starry sky.