It's Alive! It's Alive! Read online

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  SLAPPY HERE, EVERYONE.

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  SLAPPY HERE, EVERYONE.

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  SLAPPY HERE, EVERYONE …

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  EPILOGUE FROM SLAPPY

  SNEAK PEEK!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  COPYRIGHT

  Welcome to SlappyWorld.

  Yes, it’s Slappy’s world—You’re only screaming in it! Hahahaha!

  Does everyone think I’m as wonderful as I know I am? I only wish I had two mouths. Then I could kiss myself! Hahaha!

  But I don’t like to brag. It gets in the way of me telling you how awesome I am.

  Everyone loves Slappy. Even the termites inside my head think I’m delicious! Hahahaha.

  Some people think I got to be a big movie star because of my looks. And guess what—they’re right! Hahahaha!

  But I play well with others. I like to share. I like to share scary stories that will make you scream!

  Like this one. It’s about a girl named Livvy Jones and her friend Gates. They’re on the Robotics Team at school. They have fun building a robot—until the robot goes rogue. It starts to act in dangerous ways, ways that Livvy and Gates can’t control.

  Can a robot come to life on its own?

  The answer may surprise you.

  Go ahead. Start reading. I call this story It’s Alive! It’s Alive!

  It’s another one of my frightening tales from SlappyWorld.

  “I dreamed our robot came alive and went berserk,” I told Gates Warwas. We were walking home from school, and of course, we were talking about Robotics. Because we are obsessed.

  A yellow school bus rolled by, and some kids shouted at us from the windows. I waved at them, but I didn’t bother to see who they were. I was busy telling Gates about my dream.

  My name is Livvy Jones. I’m twelve, and I have very real, very exciting dreams, and in the morning, I remember every single one of them. I think it’s good to tell people your dreams because they can help you figure out what they mean.

  So I told Gates my dream. “The robot ran away, and I chased after it. But it was too fast for me. It ran to a big parking lot and it began picking up cars. It lifted them high in the air, then smashed them to the pavement.”

  Gates had a thoughtful look on his face. Of course, he always has a thoughtful look on his face. That’s Gates’s thing. He’s quiet and he’s thoughtful. His dark eyes gazed straight ahead, and he kept nodding thoughtfully as he listened to me.

  “The robot smashed one car after another. It was a very noisy dream,” I said. “I think all the crashing and smashing is what woke me. I sat straight up in bed and I was shaking. The dream was so real.”

  We crossed the street. Gates continued to look thoughtful.

  “So? What do you think it means?” I said.

  He scratched his head. He has curly black hair that pops straight up. He can’t keep it down. It’s like it’s alive.

  We turned and cut through the Murphys’ backyard. They probably wouldn’t like our shortcut through their yard every afternoon, but they’re never home. My house is three houses down.

  “I think it means that we shouldn’t have made our robot look so human,” Gates said finally.

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “Everyone else is building robots that look like machines,” he continued. “But we built ours to look like a girl. And I think maybe that’s what is freaking you out. We built a girl. It’s too real.”

  “But I love Francine,” I said.

  Gates rolled his eyes. “We can’t call a robot Francine. No way.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you can’t. You just can’t have a robot named Francine.”

  I gave him a playful shove. “She is my idea and I get to name her.”

  “No way, Livvy,” Gates whined. “Francine. Francine the Robot. It’s too … embarrassing.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “I’m going to talk to Coach Teague about it. Seriously.”

  Harrison Teague is the coach of our Robotics Team. He is a good guy. And he keeps us psyched. He’s keeping us pumped up and eager to beat Swanson Academy in the Springdale Robotics Meet this year. Swanson Academy is where all the rich kids go. They’re our rival, our enemy school. In football, in basketball—in everything.

  Teague doesn’t know that much about Robotics. He admits it himself. I mean, he’s the girls’ basketball coach, and the school gave him the Robotics Team to coach in his spare time. They sort of forced it on him.

  I stopped outside my family’s garage. I lowered my backpack to the driveway. “Listen, Gates, we can’t argue about the robot’s name now. We are so close to finishing her. We just have a few tweaks to make on the programming. This is no time to fight.”

  He shrugged. “You’re right. I think she’s ready for us to test some of her skills this afternoon.” He pumped a fist above his head. “This is exciting, Livvy.”

  It was exciting. Gates and I had been building the robot in my garage for months. Programming her memory module took weeks and weeks.

  And now we were finally about to see what she could do.

  My family has a white-shingled, two-car garage. But my parents never put their cars in it. They always park them in the driveway. That gave Gates and me the perfect workshop to build Francine.

  I bent down and grabbed the door on the left. Gates helped me and we both pushed the door up.

  “Let’s see what we have here,” Gates said, rubbing his hands together like a mad scientist in a horror movie. “How is our little experiment?”

  We both stopped. We both stared. We both uttered startled cries.

  “The robot …” I murmured. “She’s GONE!”

  What was the first thing I thought of?

  My dream, of course.

  Once again, I saw the robot running down the street. Picking up cars. Smashing them on the pavement.

  Is that what happened here? Did my dream come true? Did Francine run away?

  Of course not.

  She couldn’t walk quickly or very far. And she definitely wasn’t programmed to open the garage door and then close it again.

  Gates and I stood in the center of the garage, staring at the spot where the robot should have been.

  “Have we been robbed?” Gates said finally. His voice came out tiny and a little bit shaky.

  I opened my mouth to reply, but stopped when I heard laughter.

  “Whoa.” I spun around to the open door.

  Gates sighed. “I recognize that laugh.”

  So did I.

  We both dove out of the garage—and saw Chaz Fremont on the patio. He stood there laughing his hee-haw donkey laugh with one arm around Francine.

  Yes. He had Francine.

  He had been hiding behind the garage, waiting for us. Waiting to give Gates and me a little scare. Because Chaz loves to torture us and torment us and tease us and bully us and give us a hard time.

  He’s not our favorite dude.

  Also, I have to mention this—Chaz doesn’t go to Springdale Middle School like Gates and me. He goes to Swanson Academy.

 
And I have to tell you one more thing about Chaz, who has short, spiky red hair and freckles on his big round face, and tiny blue eyes that look like bird eyes, and is big and hulky and works out a lot. He’s the captain of the Swanson Academy Robotics Team, which beats us at the meet every year. Because Chaz is a genius robot builder.

  I don’t like him, but I have to say that to be fair.

  “What are you doing with Francine?” I demanded.

  Chaz’s mouth dropped open. “Francine? You can’t call a robot Francine. I think you should call it Livvy Two, because it looks just like you, except a lot cuter. Haha.”

  “You’re not funny,” I said. “Give us back our robot.”

  “Sure. You can have it.” He slid his arm off Francine’s shoulders and took a few steps back. “I was just pulling your chain. I forgot you don’t have a sense of humor.”

  “You’re about as funny as pig vomit,” Gates said.

  “Oh, good one,” Chaz replied. “Did you just make that up?”

  Gates blushed. He blushes easily, and Chaz always knows how to make him blush.

  Gates and I lifted our robot off the patio stones and began carrying her into the garage. She weighed a ton. We used molded sheet metal for the body. And the computer that held all the memory modules was also heavy.

  Chaz followed us, cracking his knuckles in front of him as he walked, one of his gross habits. “What does it do?” he asked. “Wave bye-bye? Or was that too hard for you to program?”

  “Why would we tell you?” I shot back. “You’re the enemy, remember?”

  “I’m the frenemy,” Chaz said. “Remember? Robotics is all about cooperatition.”

  That’s a word some Robotics coach made up somewhere. A combination of cooperation and competition. It means we cooperate and compete at the same time. “Robotics is the most friendly competition.” That’s what Coach Teague keeps reminding us all the time.

  Chaz picked up a pair of hedge clippers from a shelf and pretended to cut Francine’s head off. “Your robot is so totally old-school,” he said. “Like an old sci-fi movie.”

  “Old-school enough to beat your robot,” Gates told him.

  “I don’t think so,” Chaz replied. “At Swanson, we’re all building sports robots this year. I built a basketball robot. It can toss up three-point shots on any court without missing a single one.”

  He pretended to fire off a jump shot. “How can you beat that? No one can. They should just cancel the contest and give me the trophy today.”

  “At least you don’t brag a lot,” Gates said.

  And then I burst out and told Chaz what our robot could do. I don’t know why I did it. It was supposed to be a secret. But since he was standing there bragging about his robot, I decided I should brag about Francine.

  “On the Springdale team, we’re all building construction robots,” I said. “We programmed Francine to construct an omelet.”

  Chaz laughed. “Haha. Does she also lay the eggs?”

  “Want to try her?” I said. “We’ll show you what she can do. She’s a genius with her hands. You won’t be laughing. You’ll be home programming your robot to clap for ours.”

  Gates patted me on the shoulder. “Nice one, Livvy. But we haven’t really finished her yet, remember?”

  “Show me something,” Chaz insisted. “Go ahead. Show me what she can do. I bet she can’t even crack an egg.”

  “Of course she can crack an egg,” I said. “She can crack a dozen eggs perfectly.” I should have just shut up. But Chaz always puts me in a state.

  And that’s how we ended up with Francine in the kitchen. No one was home. My mom was still at work at her science lab. I pulled out a large bowl and filled it with eggs from the fridge.

  We carried the bowl to the table. Gates activated the robot and the remote control. Then we attached the metal squeezer hands onto the robot’s arms.

  Chaz hee-hawed. “No way, dudes. No way this robot will pick up an egg and crack it, then pick up another egg and crack it. You don’t have the skills. We’re talking major fail here.”

  “We’re talking major victory over you,” I said. I nodded to Gates. He flicked the power switch and pushed some buttons on the remote to get Francine moving.

  The robot lowered her head, then raised it. That was the signal that she was powered up and ready. The three of us huddled around it, our eyes on the robot hand as the arm slowly slid up. Then slowly lowered itself.

  The squeezer claw moved in and out, as if practicing. The arm moved slowly down … slowly …

  … and the robot claw grabbed Chaz’s hand and clamped shut on it hard.

  “Hey—!” He let out a startled cry. “Get it off me!”

  I saw the metal prongs of the hand tighten, pressing into Chaz’s skin.

  “Owwwwww!” A howl of pain escaped his throat. “Owwwww. My hand! My hand! It’s breaking my hand!”

  I turned to Gates. “We have to stop it!”

  Gates’s eyes were bulging. His mouth hung open. Frozen in horror, we both watched as the metal prongs dug deeper into Chaz’s hand.

  Chaz let out another scream of pain. And then I shuddered and shut my eyes—when I heard a loud, sick CRRRAAAAAACK.

  I took a deep breath. Then I grabbed the robot’s claw with my right hand and Chaz’s hand with my left. He was howling like a hurt dog, his eyes shut tight.

  I gave a sharp tug and Francine’s prongs opened. Chaz pulled away and staggered toward the wall, waving his hurt hand above his head. Bright red blood trickled onto the kitchen floor.

  “Is it broken?” I cried. “Is it?”

  Chaz was panting, doing a dance of pain, still waving the hand. I saw his fingers move. “Not … broken,” he choked out. “Just a deep cut.”

  Gates disappeared into the hall. A few seconds later, he returned carrying bandages. We wrapped Chaz’s hand up tightly. Actually, it wasn’t a bad cut. The prongs that punctured the skin were small.

  Holding his arm, Chaz backed away from us. He narrowed his eyes and scowled at us both. “You did this deliberately,” he muttered.

  “No way,” I said.

  “We didn’t program Francine to squeeze anyone’s hand,” Gates added.

  “Yes you did,” Chaz said, rubbing his bad hand with his good one. “I know you did.”

  “You’ve got to believe us—” I started.

  But to my surprise, Francine suddenly began to move. She tossed back her head, her mouth slid open. And she let out a noise that sounded a lot like laughter.

  “Urk! Urk! Urk!”

  “She’s laughing at me!” Chaz screamed. “What is your problem? You two idiots programmed this ugly thing to laugh at me!”

  “No. I swear—!” I started. “We didn’t.”

  Gates raised his right hand. “I swear. We never did. We don’t know how to do that, Chaz.”

  “Urk! Urk! Urk!”

  The robot uttered its metallic laugh again.

  Chaz headed to the kitchen door. His face was red. His whole face was twisted in anger. He waved a finger at us. “I’ll get you back.”

  I started after him. “Chaz—listen. You’ve got to believe us. I’m so sorry about your hand. And—”

  “Urk! Urk! Urk!”

  Chaz’s face darkened to purple. “I’ll get even,” he said through clenched teeth. “Don’t worry. I know how.”

  He spun away and darted outside. Gates and I watched him run down the driveway, holding his bandaged hand.

  We were silent for a long moment. Both of us thinking hard. Then I turned to Gates. “We didn’t program Francine to do any of that. What’s going on?”

  Gates ran his fingers through his curly black hair. It bounced under his touch and popped up in all directions. His hair really does look as if it’s alive.

  He had a thoughtful gaze as he stared at me with those dark eyes. “I don’t get it,” he said finally.

  Not a very helpful answer.

  “Let’s try the egg thing again,” I said. />
  He lowered his eyes to the bowl of eggs. “Are you serious?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Maybe Francine is warmed up now. Maybe this time it will work.”

  “She just squeezed Chaz’s hand like it was a tomato,” Gates said. “I don’t think—”

  “We spent weeks programming the egg skill. It’s got to work. Francine just didn’t like Chaz,” I joked.

  Gates laughed. “Okay. Let’s try it. But don’t put your hand too close to her.”

  I turned Francine toward the kitchen counter and slid the bowl of eggs in front of her. I checked to make sure the squeezer hand with its long prongs was on tightly.

  “Go ahead. Activate her,” Gates said. He took a few steps back. Coward.

  Before I could push the ON button, Mrs. Bernard walked into the kitchen. She blinked a few times. “You brought that machine into the house? What are you doing with those eggs?”

  Mrs. Bernard is our housekeeper and babysitter. She’s pretty old, about sixty, I think. She has short white curls on her head. Twinkly blue eyes. Her face is always pink, as if she’s excited. She’s very sweet and hardworking and kind, but I’ve never seen her smile.

  She wears little square eyeglasses, which are always sliding down her nose. She’s shorter than Gates and me, and we’re only twelve. She wears white blouses buttoned to the neck and dark gray skirts that come down to her ankles.

  “We’re doing an experiment,” I told her.

  She frowned and shook her head. “I just cleaned the kitchen. I don’t need any mess from that machine.”

  “It isn’t a machine. It’s a robot,” Gates said. “We built it for our Robotics Team.”

  She sniffed. “Shouldn’t you be doing your homework instead?”

  “We won’t make a mess. I promise,” I said. “You can watch, too, Mrs. B.”

  “Francine is going to crack the eggs,” Gates said. “One at a time.”

  Mrs. Bernard frowned again. “You built this machine to replace me?”

  I laughed. “She can be your kitchen helper when you need to crack eggs.”

  She crossed her arms in front of her. “This I’ve got to see. And you promise—?”

  “No mess,” I said.

  I threw the switch. The robot began to vibrate. She nodded her head, the signal that she was ready.