Willful Machines (9 page)

“Did you hear about the new message from Charlotte?” I asked him now.

“Yeah, pretty heavy, huh? Don't worry, though. Her days are numbered. I can feel it.”

“I hope so. Listen, can I ask a favor? I need Bex's help with a
robotics project back in my room. Would you help me smuggle her in?”

His glassy eyes focused a little, taking on a conspiratorial gleam. Another thing I liked about Ray: unlike Trumbull, he didn't mind bending rules every once in a while. “A robotics project, huh? You're sure you two aren't planning on getting up to any funny business?”

“I'm sure,” I said, wondering if he actually thought that was a possibility. The Walking Walk-In part of me hoped he did.

I called over Bex, who, as I'd expected, loved the idea of flouting official Inverness Prep policy. The three of us headed up the main staircase to the third floor landing, where the corridors leading to the boys' and girls' wings diverged. Ray, hamming it up, trotted ahead, pressed himself flat against the wall, and peeked around the corner. He held out a hand for us to stay still.

“Act casual,” he whispered.

Bex and I fell into a fake conversation. A security camera glided out of the boys' wing and across the landing, its small blue light blinking. It paused to check us out before moving on. When it had disappeared down the opposite corridor, Ray motioned us over.

“That thing's going to come back this way in approximately twenty-one seconds.” He checked the boys' corridor again. “All clear,” he whispered. “Let's do this.” He took off down the hall, Bex and I hurrying behind him. He already had my bedroom
door open by the time we got there. “Go! Go! Go!” We piled through. “Behave yourselves, kids,” he said before closing the door behind us.

“That was exhilarating,” Bex said, still panting. “And now I finally get to see your room.” She made a slow turn, taking in the lack of decor. “It's very tidy. Like the bedroom of a serial killer.”

“Thanks. I think.”

She clapped her hands together. “Okay, what's the plan?”

“This.” I pulled Nevermore's chest shut and stood her up on my desk.

“Your bird robot.” Bex scratched the back of her neck. “And that thing figures into your plan how?”

“I told you, I need to find out more about Nico, so I'll know if I can trust him. This girl's going to help me check him out. He should be done with rehearsal by now.”

Her eyes went huge. “You mean you're going to use it to spy on him?”

“You told me I should do something. So I'm doing something.”

“I thought you meant something
romantic
, like making a stupid video in which you lip-sync to a really sappy song and then tell Nico how much you like him. This is just creepy. And unethical. And also sort of perverted.” She glanced around my room again, as if she'd begun to take her serial killer comment more seriously.

I pointed at my door. “Stroud has cameras all over the school.”

“God knows
that
doesn't make it right. And anyway, he doesn't put cameras
inside people's rooms
.”

“That we know of, at least. Bex, don't try to tell me you wouldn't use one of these things if you thought it might get you a story.”

She folded her arms. “I wouldn't,” she said, overenunciating. “That's exactly why journalists have codes of ethical conduct.”

“Fine. If that's how you feel about it, you don't have to stay. Wake up, Nevermore.”

The robot shuddered and gave her wings a few flaps. Bex stood near the door, her arms still folded, her mouth squirming. “How do you even know which room he's in?”

“There's only one empty room in the junior boys' section. It's a single, like mine, but overlooking the front yard. I'm going to try that one first.”

At a command from me, my puck turned sideways and projected an image on the wall above my desk: my own bedroom, as seen through the raven's eyes. I gestured to the right. Nevermore's head turned one way. I gestured to the left. It turned the other way.

“What are you hoping to find out, Lee?”

“Who he is,” I said. “Who he
really
is.”

I opened my window. The rain had stopped, but floating particles of water still filled the air. They blew inside, beading
my skin and eyelashes. I set the bird on the windowsill and reached into my blazer to rub Gremlin's furry back for luck. Then I gave Nevermore a push. “Get going, birdie.”

She toppled through the window, spread her wings with a sharp snap, and shot up through the narrow courtyard into the night. Letting her fly on autopilot for a while, I sat down at my desk, and Bex sank onto my bed and watched my puck's projection over my shoulder. Through Nevermore's eyes, we saw the dark sky, too cloudy for stars, the mountain, the forest, the river cutting its way through the trees. Then, as the robot circled back, the school tilted into view—small now, with its enormous lawn stretching out in front of it and the river charging in a straight line down the lawn's center until it disappeared beneath the building.

“Come back, Nevermore,” I said.

The bird obeyed, following the same straight line as the river. Ahead, the school grew larger and larger, its towers and terraces, its arches and buttresses, its narrow glowing windows.

“Go to the window outside room three thirty-seven.”

Nevermore banked to one side. I'd included a map of the building in her database, so she knew where to go. One of the big trees on the lawn stood right in front of the window. That would make things easier.

“Now land in that tree next to the window.”

Landing was one of the trickiest maneuvers to program. I
crossed my fingers. The tree came at us, fast. Bex grabbed my shoulder and squealed.

The breakneck forward movement stopped. Something bobbed up and down in front of us. At first I thought Nevermore was looking at her own reflection in the window, but then I realized she'd come beak to beak with one of the stone ravens perched on the eaves. The bobbing subsided as the branch Nevermore had landed on settled. The stone raven glared at us. Bex let out a nervous giggle.

“Move to the right,” I commanded.

A window appeared. I studied the room beyond.

“Well,” Bex said, “if that room wasn't occupied before, it sure is now.”

It looked like a tidal wave had hit it. Potato chip bags and chewing gum wrappers and squashed, half-empty plastic Coke bottles littered the desk. The sheets lay strewn across the bed and sagged onto the floor, where heaps of clothes covered every inch of space.

“Maybe I have the wrong room,” I said. “He just got here today. How would he have had time to make it that messy?”

The bedroom door swung open, and we jumped. Nico walked in, his blazer off, a towel slung over his shoulder, a toothbrush and toothpaste in his hand.

“I guess that answers that,” she said.

The toothbrush and toothpaste he dropped on his nightstand; the towel he wiped once over his face and dumped on
the floor. He kicked off his shoes and wandered over to a full-length mirror propped against a wall. He inspected his face, his fingers pushing at his smooth skin.

“This is so wrong,” Bex groaned. She still hadn't released my shoulder. “I'm in agony right now.”

I knew what she meant. My heart had picked up speed. So had my breathing. It felt a lot like watching him do a handstand: excruciating and riveting at the same time. I willed him not to pick his nose or check out his private parts in the mirror or do any of those other things we all do, but only when we think no one else can see. I didn't look away, though. Not for a second.

Anyway, he didn't pick his nose. Instead, he loosened his tie and studied the knot.

“He's still not sure how to tie that thing,” I murmured.

He lifted the tie over his head, the knot still in it, and tossed it over the back of his chair.

“And he's not even going to bother learning,” Bex said with approval.

Now Nico stopped and studied something in his palm. He smiled. Not his usual blinding grin; just a small, thoughtful upturn of his lips. Pushing a few bottles and wrappers to the side, he placed the object in the center of his desk.

Bex leaned past me. “What's that?”

I brushed my hand to the left. Nevermore's head turned toward the desk. I motioned for her eyes to zoom in on the object, even though I already thought I knew what it was. That
warm feeling spread through my chest again. “His tiepin,” I said.

“He must be thinking about you.”

“Maybe. It doesn't necessarily—”

“What's he doing now?” She got up from my bed and crouched behind my chair, her face right next to mine.

“I thought you didn't approve of this whole spying thing.”

Instead of a clever retort, she opted for a punch to the arm. I made Nevermore turn her head to the right. Nico had wandered to the other side of the room.

Bex leaned closer. She'd practically crawled into the chair with me. “I can't tell—”

“I think he's—”

We gasped: he pulled off his shirt, revealing a perfectly proportioned, perfectly muscled, perfectly perfect torso.

“Wow,” Bex said. “I didn't think it was actually possible for human beings to look like that. I thought it was a myth invented by photo editors.”

I dragged my fingers over my scalp. “He's totally out of my league, isn't he? Tell the truth.”

“Not at all. His weirdness brings him back down to your level.”

I balled up a fist to return Bex's punch, but then I stopped: Nico's hands had gone to his fly. He unbuttoned.

“Okay, that's enough,” Bex said. “Time to turn the camera away, young man.”

He unzipped.

“Come on, you have to leave
some
mystery, don't you?”

I raised my hand to make a gesture but then couldn't move.

“I'm serious, Lee!”

Just as Nico's pants started to drop, my hand swiped to the left, and Nevermore averted her eyes.

“So have we watched enough of the Nico Show yet?” Bex asked. “With a room that messy, he couldn't possibly be a spy
or
a mentally imbalanced stalker. Are you ready to grow up and ask him out?”

I could still see Nico's shadow as he stepped out of his pants and kicked them to the side. On his messy desk, his puck rested on its charging station. I straightened my glasses. Almost before I'd decided to, I said to my puck, “Send Nico a message: ‘How would you like to hang out tomorrow night?' ”

The words appeared on my wall, superimposed over the image of Nico's room, along with:
Send?

“Say yes, Lee. Say yes.”

“Yes,” I blurted.

Bex grabbed my shoulders and shook them so hard my teeth rattled. “Way to go, Walk-In! This is a long overdue but nevertheless commendable step forward.”

Back in Nico's room, his puck lit up. Its slender rotors deployed. It leaped into the air and blazed my message across his wall. A few feet to the right, Nico's shadow stopped moving.

“What's he doing?” Bex said. “Turn Nevermore's head. I want to see the look on his face.”

“But he's naked, remember?”

“This is different. Come on, Lee, let's watch what he does.”

Meanwhile, Nico still hadn't moved. My message hung there next to his shadow. The question blared in my brain again: Had he read the stories about me on the Supernet yet? About what a messed-up head case I was? Bex made a noise of impatience, grabbed my wrist, and pulled my hand to the right. Nevermore's head turned. Nico reappeared—wearing boxer briefs, fortunately. “Get off me!” I jerked my hand away from her.

Responding to my movement, Nevermore leaped forward and smashed into the window. Nico turned, eyes wide. A split second later, he vanished. The image on my wall whirled like a crazy kaleidoscope. Then stillness.

“Oops,” Bex said.

Nevermore lay on her back, gazing at a peaceful view of black tree branches and dark blue night sky. I'd recoiled into my chair, my hands in a ball at my chest so they wouldn't do any more damage. Cautiously, I moved one hand to the right. The building came into view. Far above, a window on the third floor had opened. I gestured for Nevermore's eyes to zoom in. Nico leaned out the window. He looked around, then down at the ground. Straight at us.

“Can he see us?” Bex asked in a small voice. “I mean, can he see Nevermore?”

“I doubt it. It's too dark.”

Nico looked away again, but he didn't leave the window. He propped his elbows on the sill and gazed at the sky. The clouds had cleared enough for some actual stars to appear—a rarity at Inverness Prep. They glittered through the bare tree branches.

“I think we're okay, then,” Bex said. “He probably just assumes a bird hit his window. A real bird, that is. He doesn't look too concerned, does he?”

He didn't. He looked beautiful. The gold light from his room glinted in the loose coils of his hair, so it almost looked like he was glowing. I thought of another line from a Shakespeare play—
Romeo and Juliet
, the only other Shakespeare play I'd read, and only because we'd studied it in English the year before. Romeo looked up at Juliet standing in her window at night, and he said, “What light through yonder window breaks?” Then something about her being the sun. That was how Nico looked just then. He had that small, thoughtful smile again. He turned and said something to his puck. A message appeared on my wall, superimposed over his image:
By my troth, gentle lord, naught would more delight my heart.

I turned to Bex, my heart jumping. “Does that mean yes?”