Stranger Things meets robots in this sweet story about an unlikely friendship between two boys—one human, one android.
Eric Young is an android, but he doesn’t know. He does know that he’s just moved to Ashland, so it’s important to make the right kind of friends—the kind that would be interested in skateboarding and the new Slick sneakers his Uncle Martin sends him.
Danny Lazio doesn’t have any friends, but he doesn’t care. Even if his classmates don’t accept him, he still has Land X, the online role play game that he’s actually really good at. But then Eric takes an interest in Land X, and suddenly Danny thinks he might have found a real friend…if he can figure out the mystery behind Eric’s sudden disappearances and strange lifestyle.
It becomes harder to ignore the weird events that happen only around Eric. But uncovering the secret behind Eric’s identity is an act that might cost them both as powerful forces soon move in around them.
This heartfelt story about friendship and what it means to be human is sure to tug at your soul—or your soul-chip if you’re like Eric.
Praise for FRIENDROID
"A timely parable for this generation of digital natives." ―Kirkus
"Vaughan presents another noteworthy sf middle-grade offering peppered with mystery." ―Booklist
"For middle-grade readers who are ready to fight the power." ―Publishers Weekly
FRIENDROID BY M.M VAUGHAN EXCERPT
Slick: Wednesday, October 31
We left the house at 6:12 p.m. to go trick or treating. I was carrying my Baltic Wave skateboard under one arm and a black bag with a skeleton on it to collect candy in the other. I looked up what a zombie was this morning, and they are only interested in eating human flesh and organs, so I don’t think they’d be carrying skateboards around, or bags to collect candy. But as zombies are not real, I guess nobody can say that they definitely wouldn’t. Even so, I thought other people might think it was weird, but nobody said anything, so maybe they didn’t. Or maybe they were being polite, like how nobody mentioned that Tyler was dressed as an entertainer for little kids parties.
I had never been trick or treating before, but it looked like everybody in Ashland had. Harry’s street was already full of kids when we went out. The younger kids had adults with them. We were old enough to trick or treat without an adult, so we went on our own.
The streets looked very different from how they normally look at night. This is because most people decorate their houses for Halloween with lights, pumpkins, candles, spiderwebs, ghosts, bats, and witches. Some people had put gravestones and dead bodies on their front lawns. Not real ones.
We did not decorate our house. I will tell Mom and Dad to decorate our house next year.
We went to thirty-two houses. Sometimes we had to wait a long time to get to the door as there were so many kids in front of us. Some of the houses ran out of candy. The code for running out of candy is to leave an unlit pumpkin outside your home.
One of the houses had a big basket filled with candy on the front porch. The owners of the house were not there. The basket had a sign saying TAKE ONE. Harry, Luke, and Tyler grabbed handfuls of the candy even though the sign was stuck on the handle of the basket and the words were written in large orange letters, so they couldn’t have missed it.
