Friendroid Read online

  Tiger father begets tiger son.

  (Chinese proverb)

  * * *

  For Eli Maverick

  In memory of his tiger father, Eric Seagraves.

  And for Emilia. Always.

  DEAR PERSON READING THIS, My name is Danny, and I need your help. First off, I should tell you that this isn’t my story—it’s Eric’s. Well, the name he was given was Eric, but I called him Slick, and he was my best friend. I say was because he died six months ago.

  Before you start reading Slick’s story, I want to tell you about him. I need you to like him, and you probably won’t after reading the first few pages, unless all you care about is the kind of sneakers you wear and how many friends you have on Kudos. I definitely didn’t think much of him when I first got to know him. See, when I met Slick, he was obsessed with brands and being popular. Me—I didn’t care about the brand of anything I wore or owned, not that I had ever had much choice about that.

  But all those things don’t matter when you’re friends. And that’s what we became: friends. Best friends.

  And then he was gone. And when I say gone, I mean he was killed. And the next day, it was like nothing had ever happened.

  But it did happen, and there’s no way I’m letting them get away with it. They think there’s nothing I can do because I’m just a dumb twelve-year-old kid. I guess they forgot that even a dumb twelve-year-old can use a computer.

  So here’s my plan:

  1) Publish Slick’s journal.

  2) The whole world reads it.

  3) The people who killed him spend the rest of their dumb lives rotting in a jail cell.

  That’s basically it. You wouldn’t believe it took me four months to come up with that.

  Anyway, before you start reading Slick’s journal, there are a couple of things I need to tell you:

  One, I’ve taken out some stuff. You’re not missing anything. The first month of Slick’s journal is kind of like reading a dictionary: A duck pond is a pond with ducks in it. That kind of thing. Also, I added some stuff—the parts where it made more sense if I explained what happened. I think it’s obvious which parts are mine and which are Slick’s; I’m the one who doesn’t list every single thing a person is wearing. And I’m funnier. Which isn’t as braggy as it sounds—my mom tells better jokes than Slick, and that’s really saying something.

  Two, and this is kind of important: Slick was a robot.

  Actually he was an android—a robot that looks and sounds like a human being. You’ve probably heard of them, but until the Canny Valley androids were built, the only ones that really looked or sounded like humans were the ones in movies. There are already sixty thousand Canny Valley androids in the world, including Slick’s parents. They’re everywhere. They live around us, acting like normal humans living regular lives, doing normal jobs, and making normal—human—friends. But Slick was special. Slick was the first child android. He didn’t know that, though. He thought he was just a regular kid moving to a new town, because that’s what they’d programmed him to think. And we all thought that too, until a pillow fight changed everything. I’ll get to that later.

  So here it is, Slick’s journal. And after you read it, please tell everyone you know. If enough people find out, then they’ll have to pay for what they did. I know this could get me into trouble, but I have to do something. You’d do the same if it was your best friend, wouldn’t you?

  Okay, I’m done, and now I’d like to introduce you to my best friend, Slick. He was awesome; I’m sorry you didn’t get to meet him.

  Danny

  bool isAngry(Human human)

  {

  if(human.lips.getState() == HUMANLIPSSTATE.TIGHT && human.mouth.getState() == HUMANMOUTHSTATE.CLOSED &&

  human.eyes.getState() == HUMANEYESSTATE.NARROWED &&

  human.eyeBrows.getState() == HUMANEYEBROWSSTATE.LOW)

  {

  return true;

  }

  else

  {

  return false;

  }

  }

  Slick:

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 8

  Today was the day I found out that I had made my first real friend. I was 75 percent certain Harry was my friend before this morning, but it wasn’t until I got an invitation to his birthday party that I knew for certain. When he gave me the invitation, he looked annoyed. At first I thought this might mean that he didn’t really want me to come and that he’d been made to ask me because I was new, but then he apologized for the lame invite. He said his mother had made him give them out so that she could keep track of the numbers coming. That’s when I understood that feeling angry can look a lot like feeling embarrassed.

  I don’t know why it bothered him so much. I like the invitation—it has skateboards all around it. I love skateboarding. At the top it says Let’s Sk8 to Celebrate, and then a list of all the information: date, time, and place. It was very clear, and I could see his mother’s point: It must be hard to organize a party if you don’t know how many people will be coming. I couldn’t see Harry’s problem with it.

  Harry is just one of my friends. I have twenty.

  One is 100 percent confirmed: Harry. See above.

  Two of these are 75 percent confirmed friends: Luke and Tyler. These are the people who invite me to sit at their table at lunch and pick me for their teams, and who I have seen outside of school.

  Three of these are 65 percent confirmed friends: Mateo, Jake, and Theo. These are the people who invite me to sit at their table at lunch and pick me for their teams.

  Fourteen are 50 percent confirmed friends. These are the people that I have had more than two conversations with (not schoolwork related) since I got here.

  I don’t have a best friend. Maybe when I’ve been here longer, I’ll have one, but I think a month is probably not long enough to choose a best friend yet.

  Notes:

  I now have 457 friends on Kudos. I had 320 when I arrived, but I don’t remember any of them. It’s weird how quickly you forget about your old life when it’s gone.

  Of the 137 friends that I’ve made since we moved to Ashland, only eighteen are Real World Friends (RWFs). The rest are Virtual Friends (VFs), which are the same as Real World Friends, except you’ve only met them on the Internet. Most of my new VFs are friends of friends, so they will probably become RWFs at some point.

  Luke: 438,118 Kudos friends. Harry: 640 Kudos friends. Mateo: 509 Kudos friends. Tyler: 383 Kudos friends.

  Luke has the most Kudos friends because he is a singer and has his own video channel (LuckyLuke7). The last song he uploaded, “In Your Dreams,” has 2,004,833 likes.

  Harry said that nobody says “rad” anymore. I will stop saying “rad.”

  Two girls commented on my profile picture today. One said, “Cute!” The other wrote three heart emojis. I replied, “Thank you very much,” as I haven’t met either of them and didn’t know what else to write. They don’t go to my school.

  My profile picture is cool. That’s what Harry said, and the others agreed. It’s of me midair on my Baltic Wave skateboard, and I’m looking straight ahead at the sea. I put it up before we moved to Ashland. I don’t remember who took it.

  Mom and Dad do not have Kudos accounts. This is because they are adults, so they only count their Real World Friends. Mom has thirty-nine RWFs. Five of these are 100 percent confirmed as they have invited her out to do something more than once. Dad has twelve RWFs, but none of these are 100 percent confirmed. Dad said that this is because men make friends in a different way from women and kids.

  Slick:

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9

  I told my parents about Harry’s party this morning before school. Dad said I can’t go. He said I have to be at the fund raiser.

  A fund
raiser is an event that’s held to raise money for a cause.

  I asked my dad what the cause was. “It’s for your sister,” he said, which made no sense at all, as my sister is dead.

  My sister died before we moved here. I don’t really remember her much because she was in the hospital most of my life, but I know what she looked like because there are pictures of her everywhere in our house. People say I look like her, which is a strange thing to say about a girl and a boy. I think they probably mean that she had blond hair and blue eyes like I have. Everyone who sees her picture says how pretty she was. She died a year ago. It was Mom’s idea to hold a fund raiser for the local hospital, even though my sister was never treated there. Mom said it’s the perfect opportunity to meet our new neighbors properly and to do something good for the community. I think it’s more important for me to make new friends, but I can’t drive yet, and children have to do what their parents tell them, so there was no point in arguing. I don’t know how this will affect my friendship with Harry, as this hasn’t happened to me before.

  • • •

  I think Harry is still my friend. I told him that I couldn’t go to his party because my parents were having a fund raiser for my dead sister. His cheeks turned red, and he said, “That’s cool.” Then everyone at the table went silent for a while, and I thought maybe things weren’t cool at all. Sometimes people don’t say how they’re feeling, and I find it confusing. But then Harry told me that he’d asked for a Baltic skateboard for his birthday, and we started talking about that. So I think we must still be friends, because it would be strange to start a conversation with someone you didn’t like anymore.

  Harry asked his parents for the Baltic Flame skateboard. I have the Wave version, which is the same design, just different artwork. They’re both cool. Luke said he’s going to ask for one too for his birthday. His birthday is in December. I wonder if I’ll be invited to his party.

  Notes:

  I changed my profile picture to one I took today. It’s of me, Tyler, Harry, Luke, and Mateo with our arms around each other laughing after football practice. I got Theo to take it with my Hexam R3 as the camera on it has better picture quality than Theo’s. It also comes with over 120 filters to use. I chose the Woodstock filter. Luke and Theo also have Hexams, but the R2, not the R3.

  Slick:

  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13

  Today I spent the day going around the neighborhood with Mom and Dad to give out the flyers for the fund raiser. Dad and Mom already know quite a few of our neighbors as Mom is a member of the gardening club, the book club, and the bridge club, and Dad is a member of the golf club and the bridge club, too.

  They like clubs.

  It took us six hours to deliver eighty-five flyers because we kept getting invited into people’s houses.

  After the fifth glass of lemonade, I said it would be much quicker if we just posted the flyers, but Dad said that speaking to people would make it more likely that they would come.

  Notes:

  People say “please excuse the mess” a lot, even when their house is tidy.

  A lot of people didn’t look happy to see us when they answered the door, even though they hadn’t met us before.

  After we told them that we were raising money in memory of my dead sister, everyone was nice.

  Two people cried.

  The lady at 24 Holland Road opened the door in a towel. Her face turned bright red, and she slammed the door closed without saying anything. We waited, but she never came back, so we put the flyer under the door.

  Harry answered the door at his house wearing a new pair of Slick sneakers. He invited me to his house last week after school, and he didn’t have any Slicks. I know this because his shoes were all lined up on a rack in his room. I told him that he should get a pair of Slicks as they’re really comfortable and you can jump much higher in them (Harry likes to play basketball). I also told him that Brad “Slipstream” Brooks is wearing them in the new Slick ad. And now Harry has a pair. I told him they were awesome, and I said it would be cool if all our group wore Slicks. He agreed.

  I like Harry.

  Slick:

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16

  A delivery driver came to our house today with three boxes—one for Mom, one for Dad, and one for me. Dad’s was the biggest. Dad said the parcels were from Uncle Martin. Uncle Martin works for a magazine in New York City. He gets stuff to review and then sends it to us to keep when he’s finished. I have never met Uncle Martin, even though we lived in New York City too until we moved here. He’s probably always busy with his magazine work.

  My box contained:

  A poster of Justin Peterson. He’s the new linebacker for the Ashland Arrows. The Arrows are my team, so it’s good that we moved here. My grandfather was an Arrows fan and passed it down to my dad and then to me. My grandfather died when I was little, but I have a nice memory of him showing me how to throw a ball. It’s my only memory of him.

  Two pairs of Slicks from the new collection. They’re not available in stores yet. The first pair are green and yellow. The second pair are red and orange.

  Four pairs of Oldean pants, ten Oldean T-shirts, three Oldean jackets, three Oldean sweaters, two Oldean belts, one pair of Oldean sunglasses, six pairs of Oldean socks. I only wear Graves, so I won’t be wearing any of this. But it is very thoughtful of Uncle Martin to send it anyway.

  Slick:

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19

  We went to see Dr. Kilaman after school today. She is my dentist. Mom went in first at seven p.m. Dad went in at seven thirty p.m. I went in at eight p.m. While I waited for Mom and Dad, I played Land X on my phone.

  Land X has over fifteen million active players every day. I only started playing when we moved to Ashland, so I am behind everybody else at school, but I’m catching up. I’m level twenty-one now. My avatar’s name is Baltic_Slick. I picked this name because I like Baltic skateboards and Slick sneakers.

  We visit Dr. Kilaman every Friday, but I am mentioning it today because Dr. Kilaman wasn’t there. Instead, we were seen by Dr. Newmouth. When it was my turn to go in, I asked him if he became a dentist because his name was Newmouth, and he laughed and then stopped and stared at me.

  “Did you just make a joke, Eric?”

  The way he asked the question made me think that I had done something wrong.

  “No.”

  “So you weren’t trying to be funny?”

  “No, I’m sorry if that was rude. It’s just that Dr. Newmouth, is like Dr. New-Mouth. And dentists make people’s mouths like new.”

  “So you were just stating a fact?”

  “Yes.”

  Then Dr. Newmouth smiled and shook his head. “For a moment . . .”

  Then he didn’t say anything else except to ask me to close my eyes. I was asleep after that, so we didn’t talk any more until my appointment was over. He said it had been a real pleasure to meet me at last. I don’t know why he said “at last,” but I didn’t want to ask the wrong question again, so I didn’t say anything about that. Instead, I asked him if he was my new dentist. He said that he was only covering for Dr. Kilaman while she was on vacation and that she would be back next week.

  “Now that’s a name to strike fear in the hearts of patients,” he said, and then he started laughing. I smiled even though I didn’t understand what he meant.

  I found the things that Dr. Newmouth said today confusing. That’s why I’m thinking about them now.

  When we got home, it was ten p.m. We spent the next two hours getting ready for the fund raiser tomorrow. I am going to wear my new Oldean clothes. I hadn’t really looked at them when they arrived yesterday, but now I realize how cool they are. I don’t think I’m going to wear my Graves stuff anymore.

  It’s midnight. I have to go to sleep now.

  DANNY:

  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20

  I met Slick on Saturday, October 20, at the fund raiser for his dead sister. Slick didn’t have a dead sister, or even a live
one, but he didn’t know this at the time, and neither did I.

  Anyway, I wasn’t supposed to go. I was meant to be spending the day with my dad. My cousin Vito calls him “the person who made a biological donation to my existence,” which is kind of a mouthful but way more accurate. I’m supposed to see “Dad” every other weekend, but in the last year he’s only shown up three times, so I wasn’t exactly surprised when Mom called him to see where he was and he told her he wasn’t going to be able to make it. I knew that’s what he was saying because Mom always walks away and starts whispering on the phone when she’s mad at him. After a couple of minutes, she came back and passed the phone to me.

  “Hey, sorry, son. I’m on my way to Kentucky. A friend of mine got a good tip on a horse, and I couldn’t pass it up.”

  My dad likes to gamble on horses. He’s terrible at it. You’d think he’d have figured that out by now.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I’ll make it up to you.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Watch your mouth.” He paused. “How have you been?”

  “Fine. You forgot my birthday.”

  “I did? Shoot . . . I’ll get you whatever you want after my big win.”

  “I won’t hold my breath.”

  I heard something being slammed down hard. I hoped it was his head on a brick wall. “You little . . . ,” he started saying.

  I hung up.

  Mom came over and tried to give me a hug, but I shook her off me and went down to the basement to work on the computer I was building. I felt bad—I know it’s not Mom’s fault that he’s such a loser, but then again, she did choose to have a child with the man, so it kind of is.

  • • •

  Mom said she didn’t want to leave me home alone when I was upset, so she made me come with her to the fund raiser. She wanted to go because it was raising money for Ashland Hospital, which is where she works as a nurse, and because her friend Annie had asked her to go. Annie also works at the hospital. I told Mom that a) I wasn’t upset, and b) I didn’t work at the hospital so there was no need for me to go, but then she gave me one of her looks—the one that means shut your mouth, put your jacket on, and get in the car. Mom has a whole language she can speak with just her face. Vito says it’s a mom thing—apparently they’re all fluent in Face.