Seventh Grade vs. the Galaxy Read online

  “No idea.”

  “Come on. Your dad’s, like, a super genius. All that awesome stuff he’s always building around your housing pod? Remember the hourglass?” (An alarm clock that sprayed sand in your face if you hit snooze too many times.) “And his rocket flip-flops!” (Those were basically exactly what they sounded like.) “And his science experiments in class were the best! You know that! What if he . . . did something to your ring? Made it better. And what if, when he was doing . . . those things to the ship, he did something in the engine room that can help us? Something nobody found out about?”

  Now I’m annoyed. My dad is my business, not his. And if he had some super-secret plan to protect the 118 from a random attack that no one saw coming, he’s had plenty of chances to tell me.

  “No,” I say. “Just no. Drop it.”

  Ari tilts his head and presses a hand onto the floor to push himself up.

  “Well, we should at least tell Principal Lochner about the texts, right? Let the teachers check things out?”

  “No,” I say again, pulling Ari back down. “We’re not doing that either.”

  I may not be my dad’s biggest fan right now. (That’s Ari, apparently.) But I don’t want to get him in any more trouble either. I just want the Graham family to have nothing to do with this particular crisis.

  Ari looks at the kids scattered around the room and then up at the teachers huddled nervously in a corner. “Listen, I know you’re mad at your dad, but we’re in danger, and I don’t think the teachers know what to do. And your dad might. So . . .” He pauses and bites his lip like he always does when he’s extra nervous. “. . . if you don’t want to check out the engine room, fine. I’ll do it myself.”

  I want to scream at him. I clench my fists tight and feel my fingernails digging into my palms.

  “This isn’t some video game where you can swoop in and save everyone,” I snap. “This is real life. And you’re not actually a brave person in real life. You know that, right?”

  The old me would never have said something like that to my best friend. But the old me left the ship with my dad. So instead of apologizing, I pray for Ari to say something mean back to me and even us out. He doesn’t, though. Ari just has to be the better person, which only makes me madder.

  “Yeah,” he says quietly. “I know. But I’m going—with or without you.”

  “And what if something goes wrong?” I ask. I’m starting to feel panicky now. “Or what if Principal Lochner decides to evacuate the ship and you’re down in the engine room all alone?”

  But I know it’s no use. I can see it in his eyes. Now he has something to prove.

  “I guess I’ll have to take that chance,” he answers, his voice cracking. “I’ll see you later.”

  This is unreal. Ari is siding with my dad over me. I don’t know who I’m angriest at. My dad, for making this mess? Ari, for pressuring me to do something I absolutely don’t want to do? Or me, for reacting to Ari in the one way that guarantees there’s no turning back?

  I glare at him as I turn my ring back on and reply to my dad’s last text: “Ugh, fine. Going.”

  “But if we blow up the ship,” I say to Ari, “I’m telling Principal Lochner that this was your idea.”

  5

  Sneaking out of the cafeteria is easier than I thought it would be. The blinking red emergency lights are the perfect cover. Between each pulse, the room is totally dark. When the lights are on, Ari and I are perfectly still, frozen in place. But when the lights are off, we crab-scuttle along the cold floor toward the exit. Three seconds off—scuttle, scuttle, scuttle—one second on—freeze—three seconds off—scuttle, scuttle, scuttle—one second on—freeze. The ship’s creaking even masks the whoosh of the doors when they open for Ari, and again when they open for me.

  But in the hallway, even the emergency lights aren’t working. So when the door closes behind me, there’s nothing to light our way.

  “Oh man,” I groan, seeing an excuse to scrap this whole thing. “How are we going to get anywhere? Maybe we should go back before it’s too late.”

  I tap my fingers together but the glow from the ring’s holograms doesn’t do much good.

  “I have an idea,” Ari says. “But please, please don’t tell.”

  I listen as he shuffles around in the dark. And while I can’t see anything, it sounds like Ari is writing something with his Pencil, although I don’t know why that would help.

  On the outside, a Pencil looks like a pencil. But on the inside, the Portable Electronic Nanomanufacturing Carbon Imitation Lightscribe is a 3D-nanoprinter—a tiny, portable factory. I was so excited to get my first one in fifth grade that I even remember the instructions that were printed on the box:

  Congratulations on purchasing a new Pencil™! Even if you’ve never used a portable nanofactory before, the Pencil™ is by far the easiest (and most fun!) to learn. Over eleven billion happy customers can’t be wrong!

  On any surface, or even in midair, use your Pencil™ to mimic writing one of our hundreds of preprogrammed words or, if you’re a pro, a string of computer code.

  Click twice, and the Pencil™ immediately dispenses our invisible-to-the-eye nanorobots that quickly assemble themselves into the item requested.

  Feel free to use your item(s) for as long as you want! Unlike our competitors, Pencil™ creations don’t automatically disintegrate or deteriorate.

  Click your Pencil™ three times (when within twenty feet of an item) and the item will dissolve and the robots will return to the Pencil™.

  Remember, each Pencil™ contains a limited number of nanorobots. So don’t forget to triple-click from time to time!

  “Oh great,” I say into the blackness. “A glue stick’s gonna help us find the engine room.”

  Because there’s something else Pencils and pencils have in common: they’re super boring. Unlike the expensive ones sold in stores, school Pencils make only basic school supplies. They understand words like “scissors” and “protractor” just fine. But that’s it. No custom programming. They can’t even process the simplest strings of computer code. You can’t make a ring or a T-shirt or a water gun. Nothing. On the day I got my Pencil, I tried making a skateboard and, abracadabra, out came a plastic ruler. Metric.

  “Well?” I ask after a minute. “What are you doing?”

  “Give me a few more seconds.”

  I can’t believe I’m going along with this. Standing in the dark is giving me time to reconsider. I should go back into the cafeteria. Ari can fend for himself.

  “Got it,” he says.

  I hear the familiar double-click and know that millions of invisible nanorobots are forming themselves into what Ari told his Pencil to create. In seconds, the corridor is flooded with light as two small, luminous rectangles—each about the size of my hand and almost entirely flat—hover in the air in front of our faces.

  “Whoa,” says someone from right behind me. “Awesome.”

  Ari and I spin around to see Becka watching us.

  “I . . . uh . . . we . . . what?”

  That’s usually about the best Ari can muster when Becka’s close.

  “What’re you doing here, Becka?” I ask.

  “I saw you sneak out and I followed you. I can’t resist a good sneak-out.”

  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Becka’s been a master at cutting class for as long as I’ve known her. She once pretended to have “the flu” but was actually hanging out with Diana inside one of the hangar bay shuttles, setting up a secret slumber party they threw for Diana’s friends.

  “This is none of your business,” I say, looking to Ari for some backup. He just gulps like a frog.

  “Did you make these, Ari?” Becka asks, pointing to the two sheets of light hanging in the air.

  Ari says something that sounds more like “yak” than “yes.”

  “So cool,” Becka whispers.

  “Grab one,” Ari tells her eagerly, taking his own and slapping it to his fo
rehead like a headlamp. “It’s a sticker, see? Tim’s flashlight gave me the idea.”

  She follows his instructions.

  “But what about me?” I ask.

  “You snooze, you lose,” Becka says.

  “Ha ha. Good one!” Ari says. It’s so awkward that I cringe.

  Becka doesn’t seem to notice. “How’d you make these?”

  Ari shrugs likes he’s trying to be modest, but the gesture is so overdone that he looks like a turtle bobbing in and out of its shell. “I figured out how to hack my Pencil a couple months ago,” he explains. “I’ve been working on it for a while.”

  “That is so cool,” Becka says again, touching her hand to her forehead. “Do you know what we could do with hacked Pencils? Eighth grade is going to be awesome.”

  Becka doesn’t seem to realize that she’s turned a terrifying, possibly deadly attack into maybe the greatest moment of Ari’s life. His eyes go glassy as, I assume, he replays the word “we” over and over again in his mind. I want to tell Becka to go away. But Ari would never forgive me if I did. Also, there’s something else bothering me more.

  “You didn’t tell me that you hacked your Pencil,” I say.

  Ari shoots me a pained look. “You’re terrible at keeping secrets.”

  My heart sinks. He has a point. I knew he hadn’t forgiven me for that incident a couple months ago.

  “So is this the only reason you two came out here?” Becka asks. “To practice making flashlights?”

  I’m about to say yes, in the hope that she goes back to the cafeteria and leaves us alone. But Ari’s too quick for me. “No,” he says in a rush. “We snuck out of the cafeteria to go down to the engine room because Jack got text messages from his dad telling him to go there and we’re not telling the teachers and we don’t really know what we’re doing and it could be really dangerous but we’re leaving now if you want to come or whatever.”

  Becka breaks into a grin, her green eyes sparkling mischievously from the light on her forehead. “Got it,” she says, as if secretly wandering to a totally off-limits part of the ship is perfectly natural. “After you.”

  Ugh.

  The layout of the 118 is simple. The hangar bay, crew’s quarters, and engineering are on the lower deck. The school—with the gym, cafeteria, dorms, and classrooms—is on the main level, framed by a rectangular hallway on all sides. The command bridge is up front, also on the main level, and the engine room is somewhere way in the back. We’ve never been inside, but it’s labeled on the “Fire Escape Plan” posters all around the ship.

  So we walk between rows of lockers—past the science lab and the nurse’s office—heading toward the nearest hatch-like door at the back starboard corner of the hallway. A warning is painted onto the walls surrounding the door: “Unauthorized Entry by Students and Teachers is Strictly Prohibited.”

  I turn the wheel on the hatch’s surface, picturing my dad doing the same thing earlier in the year. The door—which they should probably start locking?—swings open with a clang. The lights are still working in this part of the ship, so Ari clicks his Pencil three times and the lamps on his and Becka’s foreheads dissolve.

  “So cool,” Becka says for the millionth time.

  We step over a ridge in the floor and walk through the hatch. The ship is sparser over here. No posters or projects on the walls. No bulletin boards. And as we jog down the long pathway, the rumbling of the engines gets louder and louder. And for half a minute, except for the clanking of our shoes against the floor, the rumbling is all we can hear—until our momentum is broken by a sharp, high-pitched howl.

  We cover our ears, but it doesn’t work. Weirdly, it doesn’t muffle the sound at all. I know what it’s like when someone speaks through the ship’s speakers or when the ship’s obnoxious computer makes an announcement. This is completely different. This feels like the noise is being beamed directly into my mind. And after a few seconds, the piercing sound is replaced by a deep, robotic voice that gives me the chills and makes the hair on my arms stand up straight.

  “QUARANTINE IN FIVE MINUTES,” the voice announces.

  “What’s that?” Becka demands.

  “Must be whoever attacked us,” Ari says. “I guess it’s good that they’re finally communicating . . .”

  “No,” Becka clarifies, “I meant, what’s a quarantine?”

  “It’s like when you’re sick,” I explain, because I’m a vocabulary genius (or because my mom’s a doctor), “and you need to be kept away from other people so you don’t infect anyone else.”

  “What he said,” Ari confirms, clearly annoyed that I answered Becka before him.

  “Are we sick?” Becka asks. She puts a hand on her cheeks and looks over at Ari. “I can’t tell if I have a fever. Can you feel my forehead?”

  I spoke too soon. This is the greatest moment of Ari’s life. He’s so stunned by her request that, instead of feeling her forehead gently, he accidentally slaps her in the nose.

  “Oh no,” he mumbles. “I’m so sorry.”

  But Becka just shrugs and says, “That’s one way to do it, I guess.”

  “We’re not sick,” I tell them. “But I guess someone thinks we’re sick? And that we need to be quarantined?”

  “But if they’re doctors,” Ari says, regaining control over his brain, “why were they attacking us a few minutes ago?”

  “QUARANTINE IN FOUR MINUTES.”

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Becka says.

  Me too. Something is after us—something that doesn’t sound friendly. But mad scientist or not, my dad seems to know what to do.

  “Then let’s run faster,” I say.

  6

  The closer we get, the warmer the corridor becomes—until we’re right up against the hatch that leads into the engine room (which is easy to identify because it says “Engine Room”) and the air around us feels like Mercury in July.

  I put my hands on the wheel and instantly pull back.

  “Ow!” I yelp, blowing on my palms. “So hot.”

  The sweat from my hands sizzles and evaporates off the wheel.

  Becka turns to Ari. “Can’t you use the Pencil to make a glove or something?”

  Ari thinks for a second but shakes his head, disappointed in himself. “I think it’ll take me too long to write out the code.”

  “Wait a minute,” I say. “You can make high-powered forehead lamp stickers in, like, thirty seconds. But it’ll take you too long to make a glove?”

  “Uh, yeah,” says Ari like this is obvious. “Synthesizing the fibers of the cloth would—”

  “No worries,” Becka cuts him off. “We’ll open the door together. That way, it’ll be easier and quicker to open, and we won’t burn ourselves as badly as we would if any of us opened it alone. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Ari responds instantly.

  “Okay,” I say a beat later. “Whatever.”

  Becka nods, spits, and rubs her hands together.

  I stare at her. “That’s so gross.”

  “So?” She shrugs.

  We hold our fingers inches from the wheel and count—“One! Two! Three!”—and together, we grab hold, turn, and swing the hatch wide open. The room on the other side hisses with a release of pressure, and my face burns as a puff of hot steam shoots out into the corridor behind us. But Becka was right: my hands only hurt a little.

  And I’m only panicking a little.

  “Wow,” Ari says, as we step inside.

  “Yeah,” Becka agrees.

  I’m still worried that we’re making a mistake. My second thoughts are having second thoughts. But I’ve never seen a fusion propulsion engine up close before. This place is way more interesting than any other part of the 118.

  The room is shaped like a giant glass doughnut suspended in the middle of a large metal box. The doughnut is only attached to the ship by the door we just came through. Beneath our feet, there’s a walkway made of rusty steel. Through the glass all around us, we
can see the heart of the ship, with engine parts moving and rattling, up and out in at least four stories in every direction. Huge tube-shaped machines, the ones causing all the noise and vibrations, are sliding up and down alongside the outer walls. One of the tubes, on the far left side of the room, is crushed and bent inward, moving out of rhythm with the others and carving a hole little-by-little into the adjacent wall. And directly ahead of us—in what I can only describe as the doughnut hole—there’s a bright blue light pulsing like a giant laser. It shoots up from the bottom of the engine room, into the roof above, and out of sight—to power the ship’s Hall thrusters, I assume.

  “QUARANTINE IN THREE MINUTES.”

  We’re running out of time, so I lift my left hand and open my fingers wide, in that way that gets the ring to listen closely.

  “Text my dad,” I tell it.

  The ring glows green, acknowledging my instructions.

  “We’re here,” I say. “In the engine room. Now what?”

  I take my right hand and touch it to the bottom of my left, then brush it over my open palm—toward the tips of my fingers—like I’m wiping away dirt. That motion sends the message. The ring glows green again, to tell me that it was successfully delivered to my dad on Ganymede.

  Me, Ari, and Becka stare at my hand for a few seconds, hoping that my dad will text us back right away. Which of course he doesn’t. Because why would he start making things easy now?

  “Um, okay,” Ari stutters. “We can probably figure this out ourselves, right? There’s got to be a control panel around here somewhere.”

  But while there are computers and machines lining the walls of the outer engine room—the metal box—the inner doughnut just looks like one solid piece of glass. There isn’t a single panel or button. I run around in a circle, trying to see if any part of the smooth surface looks different.

  “Hey, Ship,” Becka tries, “you there?”

  No answer, which isn’t surprising. The 118’s AI isn’t supposed to respond to kids, just teachers and crewmembers.