Chapter Seven

On Fridays, sixth-graders had study hall in the morning, so Lucy, Leila, and I were planning to work on the algorithm part of our robot plan.

The study hall room had big tables with chairs instead of the individual desks we had in our regular classrooms. Lucy was already sitting at one of them when I arrived.

“Hey, Lu,” I said, pulling up a chair next to her.

“Hey, Soph,” she said. She had green studs that matched her green zip-up hoodie. “TGIF!”

“Totally,” I said, heaving a sigh. It had been a long week.

We’d just started looking through the hackathon binder when Leila arrived. She seemed kind of out of breath.

“Sorry I’m late, guys,” she huffed, pulling up a chair.

I moved my books to make room for her. “Everything okay?” I asked.

Leila sighed. “Ugh, my little brother,” she said, shaking crumbs off her sleeve. “My parents asked me to help get him ready for school this morning, and he decided his new favorite art supply was toothpaste.”

I winced. “Yeesh.”

Lucy turned to me. “Didn’t Pearl do that once?”

I snorted. “If you’re referring to the Great Peanut Butter Incident, then yes.” That was so long ago, I could almost laugh at it. Almost.

“Just let me know if I have any in my eyebrows still,” Leila said, gesturing to her forehead. “My whole face feels minty fresh.”

“No, you’re good,” I said, inspecting her. “Trust me, I know how annoying little kids can be. After the hackathon, I swear we should build a sibling-taming robot.”

“The Babysitter 3000!” Leila suggested.

“We just have to find a material that’s toothpaste and peanut butter proof,” Lucy added, and we all chuckled.

“Speaking of which, how is our robot coming along?” Leila asked.

“Lucy and I were just looking at the different modules,” I said. “The robot needs to move forward and turn when it senses the walls, right?”

“Right.” Leila jotted something down and showed it to us. “If it hits a wall and activates the button we’ll put on the front of it, we can code it so that it’ll turn again and again until it’s not touching the wall and can move through the maze.”

“Like this?” Lucy stood up to imitate the robot. A few people gave her strange looks, but she didn’t care.

Across the room, I heard Bradley and Sammy laughing. We’d been so focused on our robot plan that I hadn’t even noticed Sammy until now. But after what Tyson had told me at football practice, I didn’t feel quite as nervous around him. Besides, Sammy probably just liked me as a friend.

Sammy had gotten up and was hitting the wall, just like Lucy. I realized they must be prepping for the hackathon, too. It looked like they didn’t just have the same idea as us—they were going to code it similarly, too. I wondered what their big surprise was going to be.

But by the end of study hall, Leila, Lucy, and I got so engrossed in our modules that I didn’t even notice what Sammy and his team were doing.

The football team’s game was away, and Tyson and I had the night off. When I got home after school, I opened the front door, expecting to see Abuela and my sisters in the kitchen. But no one was there.

I hung up my jacket. “Hello?” I called out.

“Upstairs!” Dad’s voice rang out.

“Dad! You’re home early,” I said, running upstairs to his bedroom. I gave him a hug. “Where is everyone?” He was throwing clothes into a small black suitcase, a semi-panicked look on his normally calm face.

“Mom and Abuela are with the girls. Mom said she’d bring home pizza when they got back.”

“Sounds good—I’m starving.” I plopped down on the bed. “What are you doing?” His dresser drawers were open, and there were clothes hanging from them.

“There’s been a change of plans. I need to go to the conference tonight. I was asked to attend the opening banquet, so I’m leaving in . . .” He glanced at the clock by the bed. “Ten minutes.”

“And you’re not freaking out?” I asked, only half-kidding. My dad was the type to schedule dental appointments a year in advance.

“Not yet,” he said, yanking some shirts off hangers, sending the hangers clattering to the floor. He shot me a glance. “Okay, maybe just a slight freak-out.”

“Here,” I said, grabbing the shirts and folding them into neat piles. “Let me help.”

“Thanks, honey.” He threw ties onto the bed and looked around haphazardly. “With all of us gone tomorrow, I’m going to need you to take care of some chores.”

I stopped folding. Chores? Tomorrow?

“Wait, Dad—Mom talked to you about Monica, right?” I’d assumed it was taken care of, but now I was getting worried.

“Monica? No,” he said, tossing two more ties onto the bed. “Which one do you like better?”

I pointed to the one with red and gray stripes, but I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. “Mom said she was going to talk to you last night. Did you guys not talk?”

He stuffed some socks into his suitcase. “No, I got home late.” He looked around the room. “Grab my shoes, will you?” He pointed to his black loafers near his dresser.

I picked them up and tossed them like footballs one by one to my dad. He caught them easily. “Mom said she’d talk to you about having Monica babysit tomorrow so I could go to the hackathon.”

“Well, she didn’t mention it to me,” he said, putting his shoes in a pocket of the suitcase. He started going through papers on his dresser. “Listen, honey, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. We’re all going to be away, and I told you I need you to look after your sisters.”

I couldn’t believe this was happening. “But, Dad, Mom said she would tell you—if I back out now, my whole team will get disqualified.” I could feel the blood starting to whoosh into my ears. I walked up to his dresser to get his attention. “And we already have a name and everything—the Rockin’ Robots. We even made our T-shirts!”

He stopped what he was doing to look at me. “Well, honey, I don’t know what to say. You should have told your friends sooner that you couldn’t go. You’ve known for a few days already.”

My heart started thumping—but not for the same reasons it recently had. I couldn’t bear the thought of letting my team down. “But Mom and I talked! She was going to ask Monica!” I didn’t like to sound like I was whining, but this was definitely a getting-the-short-end-of-the-stick moment.

“Who’s Monica?” my dad said, only half listening to me. “Where’s my belt?” he mumbled, rummaging through his closet.

“Monica’s Lucy’s new neighbor. Mom was going to see if she could babysit.” I saw his belt draped over a chair and handed it to him. Stay calm, I told myself, taking a deep, steadying breath. Screaming at people usually didn’t make them do what you wanted them to do.

“Thanks, hon.” He set the belt and a jacket in his suitcase and turned to me. “Soph, I know how much you want to go to the hackathon, and I do feel bad about this. But I don’t know who Monica is, I’m about to leave on a trip, and I just can’t deal with all this right now—it’s too last-minute.” He looked around the room again. “Can you grab me some paper? There should be paper, over there on the nightstand. I need to give you a list of the chores that need to get done tomorrow. I was going to do a lot of this myself, and now I won’t have time.”

I’d heard his tone before, and I knew it was going to be impossible to change his mind. Unless . . .

“Dad, if I get the chores done by tomorrow before the hackathon, Monica can babysit, and I pay her with my allowance, can I go?”

Dad sighed and ran his hand though his hair. I could tell I was wearing him down. “Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll talk to Mom about this Monica. But you don’t have to pay for a babysitter, honey. We can do that.”

I clapped my hands and squealed. He pointed at me. “And I’ll consider it only if the chores are done.”

I couldn’t find paper on his nightstand, so I took out my phone. “I’ll film you.” I held up the phone and pressed record. “Tell me what you want me to get done before I go to the hackathon.”

“Okay—run the dishwasher, fold the laundry that’s in the dryer, and put in the new load that’s next to the machine. And put it all away when it’s done.”

“Got it.” I nodded, still filming. “Anything else?”

“Vacuum the living room, help the girls put away their toys, and please convince Pearl to let you wash her leotard . . .”

I was beginning to get worried that my plan wasn’t such a good plan, after all. This was sounding like a lot of chores, even for someone as organized as me.

My dad was still rattling off tasks. “Water the plants, help Lola feed her fish . . .” When my dad paused, my finger hovered over the stop button. I hoped he was done.

“You’re excellent at managing things,” he said. “So have your sisters help you. Maybe you can make it into one of those games you play with them.” He gave me a sly smile. “Though maybe let them win once in a while.”

I stopped the recording and set down my phone. I could handle pretty much anything, but this was a super long list. There was no way I could do all that before the hackathon, even if I started tonight. And although I’d worn my dad down about Monica, I knew he wouldn’t relent on this. A deal was a deal, and he wasn’t one to bend the rules.

Then it hit me: I was going to have to tell my friends the hackathon was off.