The Cliffs, page 7
But until then, he was going to have some good food at the Girards’ house and hang out with his friends. He was going to put Julius out of his mind and enjoy the rest of his free time that day. He deserved it.
Just like Julius deserved what was happening to him.
* * *
Reed loved his dad, and he knew his dad did everything he could to give Reed and Alexa a good home, but his dad was, well, his dad. He knew nothing about what a good home was. He couldn’t cook. He couldn’t clean. He thought “decoration” was a calendar with fish photos on it and a few sport teams’ schedules. When Reed was home, he never really felt at home, not like he did here at the Girard house.
Reed sprawled on a thick, soft gray rug in front of a stone hearth. A low-burning fire sputtered on the grate. Thales, exhausted from a rousing game of chase-the-tennis-ball, was now stretched out on the cool tiles of the nearby entryway, adding his satisfied snores to the flames’ staccato popping. The sounds were both rhythmic and soothing.
Reed’s belly was full of spicy chicken wings, jalapeno poppers, potato skins, homemade potpie, and chocolate cookies. He was so relaxed he wished he could take a nap.
“You kids have everything you need before I head to my class?” Mrs. Girard asked. She stood in the archway between the family room and the entryway, tugging on a floppy yellow rain hat.
Reed turned and looked over his shoulder, out through the French doors to the Girards’ heavily treed backyard. Yep. It was raining, a steady but light spring rain. The drops looked shiny and pink in the twilight. Reed craned his neck to see the Western horizon. He liked looking at the sun when it was getting ready to slide into nighttime. Tonight, the sun was a fuzzy bright orange tinged with purple.
He looked back at Mrs. Girard. “Thanks for the snacks and for dinner, too.”
Mrs. Girard smiled and tucked her shoulder-length dark hair under the rain hat. She shrugged her short, plump body into her slicker, and said, “You’re welcome, as always, Reed. We love having you here.” She snapped her slicker closed and looked at her own kids, who were all oblivious of her impending departure.
Shelly, reclining on an overstuffed navy-blue sofa, had her nose buried in the same thick history book she’d been reading on the bus. Pickle sat cross-legged in his dad’s blue tweed recliner, bending so low over his own book it looked like he was trying to dive into it. Reed couldn’t see what Pickle was reading. The third Girard kid, six-year-old Ory, had been playing a video game, but now he was picking up the remote for Pickle’s robot skeleton.
“Kids!” Mrs. Girard yelled.
All three of her children looked up.
Mrs. Girard shook her head and smiled. “I’m leaving. You kids behave. And, Pickle, ice that nose again in an hour or so.”
“Huh?” Pickle said.
Mrs. Girard shook her head.
“I’ll remind him,” Reed said.
Pickle’s nose was looking much better. Predictably, Mrs. Girard had matter-of-factly treated Pickle’s nose the second they got home. Examining it, she’d declared it “bruised, not broken,” and she’d cleaned it up, applied some kind of herbal cream, and then given Pickle an ice pack to balance on his face. Pickle resisted that because he couldn’t eat or read with the pack on his nose. But he didn’t have to leave it on for long. Soon, he was eating snacks along with everyone else. And he declared the double chocolate cookies Mrs. Girard brought out after dinner “healing cookies” because his nose stopped hurting after he ate them.
Now, after studying her beaky son for a second, Mrs. Girard looked at Reed. “What would we do without you, Reed?” Mrs. Girard smiled at him and then turned her back to her kids. “Bye, kids.”
“Love you, Mom,” Shelly said.
“Bye,” Pickle and Ory said in unison.
“Thanks again, Mrs. Girard. Bye,” Reed said.
“Bye, all,” Mrs. Girard said. “Come on, Thales.”
Thales was already on his feet, standing next to Mrs. Girard’s legs. His tail whipped so fast it was slapping her in the thigh. Mrs. Girard’s class was his class, too. He was learning to be a therapy dog.
Mrs. Girard, though not the source of her children’s brilliance, was no brain slouch. She went to all sorts of classes. She seemed to have a lot of interests, and she always joined in the conversations when her kids were babbling on about their homework or projects. But the Girard brains came mostly from Mr. Girard. He was a retired electrical engineer who now did consulting for big companies. He traveled a lot, and he was gone now, but when he was here, he was a hands-on dad. He was cool.
Shelly and Pickle had returned to their books before the front door shut behind Mrs. Girard. Ory pressed a button on the remote control, and Pickle’s robot skeleton stood up and slid forward a few inches. Ory’s eyes lit up.
Ory was a conglomeration of his siblings, which made him not as cute as Shelly but much cuter than Pickle. His face still round and a little pudgy, Ory had Shelly’s large eyes and long lashes and full mouth. And he had his brother’s nose. On Ory, the big nose was more amusing than ugly. He looked a little like a baby bird. Six-year-olds could rock a look like that. Ory wouldn’t have to worry about looks for a while.
Ory bent over the remote, so intent on it, he nearly touched it with his long nose. The little robot skeleton scooted forward some more. Ory laughed.
Reed glanced at Pickle. Pickle either didn’t know his brother was playing with his project or he didn’t care. Probably if Ory damaged the thing in any way, Pickle could easily fix it.
Reed looked at his own pathetic project. He was supposed to be working on it. And he had been, sort of, off and on all afternoon. He hadn’t made much progress, though.
Reed had chosen an electric motor as his actuator because his dad knew how to build a motor and was excited to help him. That part of the project, along with connecting the battery-powered motor to the exoskeleton’s circuitry, had gone okay. The problem Reed had now was with the skeleton’s structure. As always, he couldn’t visualize how to construct the form. Every time he attached a new metal component to the skeleton, he ended up with something that stuck out at an unnatural angle. And when he turned it to make it fit, the joint didn’t work properly. Right now, his exoskeleton looked mangled and backward. This wasn’t good.
Reed sighed and gazed around the cozy room. Even though the Girard family room was big and had high ceilings, it was warm and inviting, kind of like a cocoon. Filled with comfortable soft furniture, a couple tables, multiple shelves stuffed with books and games, colorful art, a tidy play area for Ory, a big microfiber-covered bed for Thales, the fireplace, and a huge TV for movie night and video games, the room was perfect for hanging out. It wasn’t so bad for doing homework, either. You might as well be comfortable while you were doing something you didn’t want to do.
The week before, the family room got an addition that intrigued Reed. It was a miniature house, a replica of the Girard home. Standing about three feet tall and stretching four feet wide, the house required the removal of one ottoman from the room. But otherwise, it fit in just fine. Mr. Girard built the house for Shelly, and she was decorating it to look exactly like the family’s real house.
“Do you want me to help you with that?” Pickle asked.
“Huh?” Reed looked over at his friend.
Pickle marked his book, which Reed could now see was on advanced engineering mathematics. “You sighed,” Pickle said, “and your exoskeleton looks like it’s being built by a blind man without opposable thumbs. I wondered if you wanted some help.”
Reed threw a gear at Pickle. Pickle didn’t mean to be mean … he was just brilliant in his own, matter-of-fact kind of way. That was why he was okay to hang out with even though he was super smart. Pickle never made Reed feel dumb, even when he made a comment like that one. Reed knew Pickle wasn’t making fun of him. Pickle was just making an observation. “I’ll muddle through, thank you.”
“You might try angling the joints so the left and right limbs move in the same, or at least similar, ways … unless you’re building an alien exoskeleton.”
“Thank you, Mr. Obvious,” Reed said. He made a face. “Maybe I am building an alien exoskeleton.”
“Cool.” Pickle shrugged and returned to his book.
Shelly looked up from hers. “What?”
Reed laughed. “My exoskeleton is an alien.”
Shelly rolled her eyes and returned to reading.
Ory laughed. Reed turned to see if the kid was laughing at Reed. He wasn’t. He was fully focused on the robot’s remote.
Pickle’s robotic skeleton plowed into the hearth with a loud crunch. Pickle didn’t look up from his book. Ory backed up the seven-inch skeleton and started spinning it in a circle.
Reed began to reconsider Pickle’s offer. He was pretty sure Pickle had built his little robotic skeleton in a day. Maybe he could help Reed salvage his project.
Seriously, look at the thing move, Reed thought. He shook his head at the little robotic skeleton as it whipped in tight circles.
He sucked in his breath and sat up. How could he have forgotten what happened in class today?
Well, to be fair, a lot had happened since class. The confrontation with Julius, along with Reed’s resulting uncharacteristic burst of nerve, had pretty much acted like a brain wipe of the rest of the day. All Reed could think about was Julius locked in his exoskeleton.
But now he remembered! Julius had been complaining that Pickle’s remote was affecting Julius’s exoskeleton.
And Julius was now locked into that metal frame, his body inextricably linked with its structure and therefore inextricably linked with its movement. What if it had crashed into something the way Pickle’s robot had just crashed into the hearth? What if it was spinning in circles right now?
“Hey, Pickle?” Reed kept his gaze on the gyrating mini metal skeleton.
“Huh?” Pickle looked up at Reed.
“That thing”—Reed pointed at the remote in Ory’s small hands—“doesn’t have much of a range, right?”
Pickle sniffed. “It’s a pretty great range, actually. I designed the remote to function through walls. That’s why I combined IR and RF.”
“So, if it was controlling, um, something, outside the house, how far would its range be?” Reed asked.
Pickle frowned. “You mean if the skeleton was outside and Ory was inside?”
Reed nodded. “Yeah.”
Sure, that’s what he meant. He didn’t mean if the remote was controlling Julius’s exoskeleton? No, he didn’t mean that at all.
Pickle tilted his head and thought about it. “It might reach to a few feet outside the house. Maybe. Honestly, I’ve never checked. It probably doesn’t reach beyond the house. The outer walls would be thicker than the inside walls. More interference.”
“Oh,” Reed said, attempting to sound uninterested, even though he had asked the question. “Okay.”
Reed tugged at his T-shirt, which was sticking to his suddenly sweaty skin. He suppressed a sigh of relief.
Pickle leaned forward. “Why’d you ask?”
Ory now had the robotic skeleton racing through the room in dizzying serpentine routes around furniture. Reed tried not to imagine Julius zipping around the robotics classroom in a similar fashion. If he was doing in his suit what Pickle’s robot was doing here, Julius would be bashed into walls and furniture. He’d be, at the least, badly bruised. More likely, he’d have broken bones.
Oh man, Reed thought, I might be truly torturing Julius!
“Reed?”
Reed looked at Pickle. He was suddenly elated that his friend’s genius didn’t extend to reading minds. And he was also glad that Pickle also sucked at deciphering facial expressions, body language, and other social cues. Reed was sure his deliberately blank face wasn’t as effective as he wanted it to be. He was trying for innocent, but he had a feeling he looked like Thales did when the dog stole a cookie and was trying to pretend he didn’t.
“Oh, I was just curious,” Reed said. “It’s impressive. That’s all.”
Pickle raised a thick black eyebrow. “Okay.”
Pickle might not have been able to read interpersonal visual cues, but his brain was like an audio recorder. He remembered everything he’d ever read or heard. He was now going through that database and contrasting everything Reed had ever said to him before today with what Reed had just said.
Reed had never before told Pickle that something he’d done was impressive. He was so used to Pickle outperforming everyone around him that praising Pickle for doing something well was sort of like praising him for breathing. Pickle definitely found Reed’s last comment strange.
Pickle opened his mouth as if he was going to ask a question, but Ory saved Reed. He plowed Pickle’s exoskeleton into the side of Shelly’s miniature house.
The metal hit the wood siding with a thud, and Shelly sat up on the sofa. She stuck a bookmark in her book, clearly ready to confront her little brother. Before she could do or say anything, though, Ory backed up the robotic skeleton and ran it forward again. He giggled and repeated the action, bumping the little robot into the miniature house over and over.
Shelly jumped up. “Hey! Ory, stop it!”
“He’s not going to hurt it,” Pickle said. “Let him play with it.”
“I’m not worried about your robot,” Shelly said. “He’s going to hurt my house. He’s going to mess up my project.” Shelly started toward Ory, who giggled and darted away from her. Shelly chased Ory, but he easily stayed ahead of her. He continued to play with the remote at the same time, so the little robot kept butting at the house.
“Ory, you little twerp,” Shelly said, “I’m going to break our sibling vinculum if you don’t cut that out.”
Vinculum was one of the daily words from the previous week. It meant “bond.” That one stuck in Reed’s head because he thought, when Shelly defined the word, that he’d like a deeper vinculum with her.
“Ory! If you ruin my project …”
“What project?” Reed asked. He didn’t care. He was trying to distract himself from thoughts about Julius, who, if he was being controlled by Pickle’s remote, was probably being slammed into a wall in the classroom right now.
Or what if he was being slammed into something sharp, like one of Ms. Billings’s robotic arms? Could Julius get impaled?
“It’s a project for psychology class, about family dynamics,” Shelly said, panting and lunging for her little brother.
“Seriously, Shel, it’s okay,” Pickle said. “The robot isn’t going to hurt the house. It doesn’t have any sharp edges.” Pickle set aside his book and scrambled out of his dad’s chair. He went over to where his robot was attacking the house over and over. Leaning forward and pointing at the tiny rough pieces of overlapping wood that looked like the gray shingled siding on the real house, he said, “See? Not a scratch.”
Shelly stopped pursuing Ory. She came back to the miniature house, knelt down, and examined it. “Oh.” She shrugged and returned to the sofa. “Okay.” She picked up her book and presumably returned to medieval torture.
Torture.
What if Julius was being tortured right now? He had to be battered pretty badly if he’d been forced to do everything Pickle’s robot was doing.
Pickle sat down on the floor in front of Shelly’s house. He reached out and snatched up his robot. “Ory, desist for a second.”
Ory shoved out his lower lip. “But, I wanna … ,” he began to whine.
“I’m not going to take it away from you,” Pickle assured his brother. “I’m going to make it more fun.” Pickle held up his metal skeleton, which was still whirring in an effort to respond to the remote’s commands.
Ory’s lower lip returned to its normal position. He stopped playing with the remote, and his face brightened. “Yeah? What’re you going to do?” He came over and sat down next to Pickle.
“I’ve got something cool to show you,” Pickle said. “It’s something else you can do with this.”
Pickle put down the robot. He nudged Ory. “So, watch this,” Pickle whispered. Pickle flipped a switch on the little robot.
“Now, try it,” Pickle said to Ory.
Ory grinned and pushed a button on the remote. The robot stood on its blockish head.
“What’d you just do?” Reed asked Pickle.
“Oh, I just turned off the joint constraints. So now, my robot can go against logical joint directions, too. Like yours, only on purpose.”
Ory gleefully pushed buttons and toggled the joystick on the remote, and the little robot flipped off its head and turned into a metal contortionist. It started crawling across the floor like an octopus, its joints warping into impossible pretzel-like shapes. Looking at once like it was turning itself inside out and like it was expanding and contracting the way a beating heart did, the robot became so fluid it resembled a snake.
Ory directed the robot into the entry area, and it clicked and clacked over the slate as it undulated across the floor. Reed stared at it, his throat constricting.
In his head, instead of the sound of the robot’s metal limbs contacting the hard floor, Reed could hear the snaps and pops of breaking bones … Julius’s breaking bones. The sounds were in his head, weren’t they? He was imagining it and not hearing it, right?
No, of course he wasn’t hearing it. How could he hear it? Pickle said the remote’s range wouldn’t reach much beyond the Girards’ house, and even if it was happening, Reed wouldn’t be able to hear it. His ears weren’t superhuman. They were miles from the school. If his mind was telling him he could hear Julius’s bones break, his mind was lying.
Reed’s fears were so stupid. He couldn’t believe his mind was coming up with this stuff. It was asinine. There was no way Pickle’s remote could have any impact on Julius’s framework. Therefore, it was having no impact on Julius.
So why did Reed feel so rotten? Why was his stomach in his throat? Why did he feel like he might throw up all the great food he’d eaten?
Did he intuitively know something? Was his intuition right and his logic wrong?
