Part 3
“The Phillips screwdriver? Is that the pointy one?” Zane asked. He rummaged around in the toolbox on the floor of my garage.
I nodded. “Yeah. The pointy one.” I set the drone engine down beside the frame.
“I can’t find it,” Zane said, turning to me.
I rolled my eyes. I walked over and picked up the Phillips screwdriver. It was right on top. “You know, it’s a good thing you’re funny, Zane. Or else you’d be useless.”
Zane snickered. “Nicest thing you ever said about me.”
I pushed him out of my way. “It wasn’t a compliment. Can you at least read the instructions? Do we install the camera first or the engine first?”
Zane scratched his dark hair. “Where are the instructions?”
“Are you joking? They’re in your shirt pocket,” I said.
He pulled out the instruction sheet and unfolded it. “I can’t read it. It’s upside down,” he said.
He laughed at his own joke.
This drone was taking forever to put together. And it came out of a kit, so it shouldn’t have taken much time at all. But my two helpers—Zane and Winks—weren’t exactly mechanical geniuses. Shoelaces were almost too complicated for them. They both wore Velcro. Seriously.
It was getting dark. The afternoon sun was fading. One of the ceiling lights in the garage was out, and a dark shadow spread over us. I knew Mom would be calling me in for dinner soon.
Zane’s eyes ran down the page of instructions. “Camera comes before motor,” he said. He raised his gaze to me. “Do you really think this is going to work? You’ll be taking pictures from this thing?”
“Video,” I said. “It’s a video camera. It’s going to be totally cool. Let me see the diagram. I’m not sure where the camera gets installed.” I reached for the sheet of paper.
“Is this legal?” Zane asked.
I squinted at him. “Legal? Is what legal?”
“Flying your own drone. Don’t you need a permit or something?”
“You mean like a driver’s license?” I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“If everyone had a drone, there’d be a thousand crashes a day,” Zane said.
“Probably,” I replied. “I don’t know. I didn’t look it up. My uncle Bill sent this to me, so it must be okay.”
“But what if—”
I clapped my hand over Zane’s mouth. “Stop asking questions. You’re not helping me. If you just ask me a bunch of questions, we’ll never be able to fly this thing.”
He tried to bite my hand. I swiped it away and turned from him. I studied the instruction sheet.
“Hey, look. A squirrel,” Zane said. He pointed out the open garage door.
A fat brown squirrel stood on its hind legs on the edge of the driveway. “So what?” I said. “Haven’t you seen a squirrel before?”
Zane’s eyes flashed. “Do you know why a squirrel hides his nuts?”
I groaned. “Zane—you’ve told me that joke a hundred times. And I laughed the first fifty times. Do you think you could give it a rest?”
He laughed. “Maybe I have a new punch line.”
“No. You don’t,” I said. “Even if you do, I don’t want to hear it.”
I studied the drone-parts chart. The brushless motor fit into a motor mount near the back. I dug in the box till I found the parts to the motor mount.
Zane’s phone beeped. He pulled it out and stared at the screen. “A text from Julie.”
“Does she want to come be my helper?” I asked. “She’d be better than you.” I shook my head. “Anyone would be better.”
Zane sighed. He stared thoughtfully at the phone screen. “She’s giving me a hard time,” he murmured. He ran a hand tensely through his dark hair.
I lowered the motor-mount parts to the floor. “About what?”
“About Winks,” Zane said. He kept his eyes on his phone. Like he was embarrassed to face me or something.
I snickered. “What did Winks do? Act like Winks?”
Zane slid the phone into his pocket. “She wants me to talk to him. She wants me to tell him he isn’t being fair to Delia. He has to be honest with her.”
I couldn’t keep the surprise off my face. “Julie wants you to have a serious heart-to-heart with Winks? Isn’t that girls’ stuff?”
Zane didn’t laugh. He sighed again. “Julie thinks Delia is going to get hurt. You know how she is.”
“Yeah. Crazy.”
“Crazy about Winks,” Zane said. “Seriously. She’s so into him, it’s unreal. Like she thinks they’re going to get married or something.”
“She’s only known him a couple of months,” I said.
“That doesn’t matter,” Zane said. “Julie thinks—”
“Winks should stick with Delia,” I told him, “and leave Morgan for you and me.” I laughed, but he didn’t. For a comedian, he was always serious.
“I have to talk to him,” Zane said. “I promised Julie.”
“And tell him what?”
“If he doesn’t care about Delia, he should tell her. You know. Break up with her.”
I shook my head. “Winks will just laugh and probably gut-punch you. He won’t even answer you. That’s the way he rolls. You know that.”
Zane pulled out his phone again. “I’m going to call Winks right now. Julie will just stay in my face till I do it.”
I rolled my eyes again. “I’ll just clean up. Thanks for all your help. I sure get a lot done when you’re around. Maybe you could come tomorrow and we could stare at the instruction sheet again all afternoon.”
“Do you know what they say about sarcasm?” Zane asked.
“No. What do they say?”
“Gee,” he said in a smarmy voice, “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”
“LOL,” I said. “LOL, Zane. Remind me to laugh later.”
I picked up the motor-mount parts and dropped them back into the box. Then I started to shove tools back into the toolbox.
Zane leaned against the garage wall and phoned Winks. I clanked some wrenches together and tried to make a racket so he couldn’t hear well. He deserved it. He didn’t even try to be helpful.
He waved at me to be quiet, but I didn’t stop.
“Listen, Winks, can you hear me?” he shouted into the phone. “Want to hang out tomorrow night? You know. The weekend starts on Thursday, right?”
I heard Winks’s reply. For some reason, Zane had put his phone on speaker. Maybe he thought he could hear better that way.
“I can’t,” Winks told him. “I babysit for my cousin Spencer every Thursday night.”
“Oh, right.” Zane thought for a moment. “Well, maybe I could stop by?”
“Not a good idea,” Winks said. “My aunt and uncle are totally tense people. They won’t want me having guests. It’s like they start shaking if a fly gets into the house.”
“What are you saying, Winks? That I’m like an insect?”
“No. I just mean they don’t like surprises,” Winks replied. “It would freak them out. Seriously.”
“Okay, okay,” Zane said. “Catch you later.” Then he added, “Hey, have you seen Morgan?”
“In my dreams,” Winks replied.
Zane clicked off. He frowned at the phone, then slid it back into his pocket.
“Guess your heart-to-heart will have to wait,” I said.
“How did I get to be the guy, anyway?” Zane grumbled.
“You just are. You’re the dude,” I said. “I know you’ll get Winks straightened out. He’s—”
But my thought was cut short when I saw something in the garage window.
A face. A guy’s face. Staring in. A guy with spiked white-blond hair and weird silvery eyes.
“Hey—!” I shouted.
Zane spun around. He saw the guy, too. Zane uttered a startled cry.
The weird eyes gazed in at us.
Zane and I froze for a moment. I shouted again. “Hey—who are you?”
He stared. Then we both took off. Our sneakers slapped the concrete floor as we bolted out of the garage. Then we spun to the side.
“Hey—come back!” we screamed.
The guy ran full-speed to the back of the yard, leaning forward as he ran, his arms swinging. Zane and I watched him hurtle over the wooden fence.
“Come back! Hey—!”
We were breathing hard as we reached the fence. I hoisted myself up and searched in both directions.
Gone. The guy had vanished.
