UPGRADE: SICKBED COULD GIVE

AN ENEMY GERMS AND VIRUSES AT

WILL, CAUSING THEM TO FALL ILL

WITHIN SECONDS, ALL FROM

A SINGLE COUGH.

Tessa’s father had been arrested and it was her fault. Unlike that morning, when her anger at him was something bitter in her mouth she wanted to spit onto the floor, she felt nothing but despair. She’d gone too far. She just wanted him to lose the election, not wind up in prison. What if he went to jail for the rest of his life? How would she live with herself?

“So are you going to step aside or not?” Funk demanded.

“Huh?” Tessa said, startled by his anger.

The rest of the BULLIES surrounded her.

“You’re not smart enough or tough enough to lead this team!” Snot Rocket shouted. “Plus, your upgrade is L-A-M-E. If anyone should be running this group, it’s me. I have the most experience. I’ve spent the last three years in in-school suspension. I’ve been in twenty fistfights this month, and eighty percent were with teachers.”

“Unfortunately, you didn’t win any of them,” Funk snarled, then turned his rage on Tessa. “I should be in charge. I’m the coolest one under pressure. When that kid was pouring that sticky gunk on me, I didn’t even flinch.”

“Which is why you’re still completely trapped in it,” Loudmouth cried. “A leader has to command respect, and no one can command like me. I don’t want to lead this team, but to be honest, I don’t see any other solution.”

Thor grunted. No one could understand a word he said, but Tessa knew what he meant. He wanted to be in charge, too.

Normally, Tessa would have bristled at a challenge to her dominance. At Sugarland, no one would have dared to get in her face, but after the day’s events she didn’t care anymore. Any one of them could be the leader of this stupid team. “Fine. I quit.”

“Tessa!” Miss Information called when she entered the room. She had her straw boyfriend in her arms and madness in her eyes, and she was waving her finger back and forth in a don’t even think about it gesture.

Tessa had a sudden vision of her future, and it involved tigers with overstuffed bellies licking their greasy chops. At that moment she would’ve been happy to have bugs splattering on her face if it meant she could fly away and escape.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Miss Information continued.

Tessa shook her head. “This isn’t what I signed up for. I didn’t think my dad would be arrested.”

“Really? You pretended to be him and then trashed the home of the most powerful person on the planet. What did you think was going to happen?”

“I just wanted him to lose the election so he would have more time for me.”

“Tessa, that’s what will happen! When you go see him during the prison’s visiting hours, you’ll have his undivided attention. It will be through a Plexiglass window—but he will be all yours.”

“I’m going to turn myself in to the police. I can’t let him be imprisoned for something I did.”

“Oh, honey, you know I can’t let you do that,” her boss said with more than a hint of menace. “You kids are so spoiled these days. I just don’t know what will make you happy. I suppose I have to fix your problem again.”

“Fix it? How? Do you mean break him out of jail?”

Miss Information sighed. “We could, but then you and your family would live like fugitives, sleeping in abandoned buildings and eating rats and discarded banana peels. I’m sure you’d give me the boo-boo face for that, too.”

“Then what are you talking about?”

“We have to make it so that today never happened at all.”

As Tessa searched the room for exits, a copper-skinned woman with eyeglasses and a white lab coat stepped into the command center. She looked exhausted, hungry, and in desperate need of a shower. She trembled when Miss Information turned to her.

“Ma’am, I have some very good news,” she said, her voice squeaking. “We cracked the problem with your latest design. We’re testing it as we speak.”

“See! I told you if you just followed my drawings it would be easy to build,” Miss Information said proudly.

“Ma’am, you drew a picture of an old DeLorean sports car with the words Time Machine at the bottom,” the scientist said.

Miss Information turned to her scarecrow boyfriend. “Isn’t this just grand, darling! It’s the final piece of my master plan. Oh, yes, you’re right. There is a lot of work to do, and not a minute to spare. Well, actually, now that we have a time machine, we have all the minutes we want. But I’m eager to get started.”

She gave the scarecrow a passionate kiss on his painted mouth.

The BULLIES pretended not to notice.

“Where’s my Benjy?” she asked.

The little silver orb floated into the room. “I am here.”

“Benjy, have you studied the footage of our attack on the White House?”

“I have.”

“So you noticed the five children who gave the BULLIES a resounding kick in the pants?”

“I did. I saw the pants-kicking.”

“I want you to find as much information as you can about them and their families, going back several generations.”

“I will start at once,” Benjy said, and zipped out of the room.

“Oh, this is going to be so much fun. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”

“Think of what?” Funk asked.

“Erasing my enemies. I have a feeling it will cure those pesky headaches, too.”

“Can you please tell me what is going on?” Tessa asked.

Miss Information squeezed her arm so tight it hurt. “Tessa, you and the rest of the BULLIES are going to accompany Benjy, Alex, and me into the past, where we will locate the ancestors of the kids who attacked you today. Then we will make sure that our mutual enemies were never born. The world will be mine, and there will be a nice side effect for you—today will have never happened. Without the NERDS, there would be no reason for me to have recruited you, given you superpowers, and taken you to the White House to ruin your dad’s life. All the trouble will vanish in an instant. Plus, since I will be running everything when we get back, your dad will be out of a job. You’ll get everything I promised you, Tessa. Everything! Are you in?”

Miss Information was crazy. But Tessa had just seen impossible things: kids who could fly, snot that exploded, stink that could level a house, and her own malleable face. When Miss Information said she could go back in time, Tessa believed it. Her plan might be the only thing Tessa could do to save her father.

She nodded. “I’m in.”

Miss Information turned to the rest of the team. “Each one of you has a valuable skill. Tessa’s is leadership, and I want her in charge. If you have a problem with that, I have a couple starving tigers I’d like you to meet. Any questions?”

The BULLIES frowned but said nothing.

“Hooray!” she cried. “I’m glad everyone is happy. Let’s go back in time!”

“This is the backup facility for an international spy organization?” Ruby asked, staring up at the sign for Marty Mozzarella’s restaurant. The brightly colored logo was a big, grinning mouse wearing a Rastafarian hat.

“It is,” the principal said.

Ruby was speechless. Marty Mozzarella’s was a restaurant for little kids. The food was a crime against humanity: The pizza tasted like an old man’s slipper dipped in ketchup, the french fries were as soggy as a rag at a car wash, and the chicken fingers might well have been made from the fingers of an actual chicken. Plus, next to the tables, there were fifty decibel-busting video games that shook the air with blinks, bonks, beeps, and blasts.