Read Online Middle Ground by Katie Kacvinsky - Free Book Online

won’t find you,” Justin said. “Your tracker runs on a wireless signal that I passed on to Scott, and he’ll program it into a train, or a shuttle. It will buy us time to eat and then Matt will help you out from there.”
    Jeremy sat back in his seat, and his eyes passed over all of us. “Who the hell
are
you guys?” he demanded, and I started laughing. I had nearly been arrested
twice.
I should have been scared. I should have at least felt guilty for crashing a cop car. Instead, I was soaring. Rebelling had that effect on me; it was like a drug I was becoming addicted to. I liked the high.
    “I’m Justin Solvi,” Justin told him and grinned over his shoulder.
    Jeremy nodded. “I’ve heard of you. The founder of the DS Dropouts. The Godfather of anti-DS. You have a lot of fans.”
    “I’m not the Godfather,” Justin said. “But there’s definitely a family history.”
    “I’m Maddie Freeman,” I said, and Jeremy did a double take.
    “Wait, Kevin Freeman’s daughter?” he asked. “I thought you looked familiar. My little brother thinks you’re hot. He has a digital poster of you up in his room.”
    “What?” I said. “They have posters of me?”
    Justin nodded. “I’ve seen them,” he told me. “You photograph really well.”
    “By the way, I heard you were supposed to take the night off,” Matt said.
    Justin nodded again and slipped his phone into his jacket pocket. “I was hoping to have a date.”
    “Sorry it didn’t work out,” Matt said.
    Justin looked at me. “You don’t mind, do you, honey?” he asked me with a smile.
    “Not at all, sweetie,” I said, and blew him a kiss.

Chapter Seven
    Matt parked on the roadside in front of the Cliff. The restaurant offered only outdoor seating; the entire deck was covered with a white tent, and underneath, the canopy was dotted with yellow twinkling lights, like a private sky of stars. Heat fans blew warm air around us and we followed the hostess to the back of the balcony. A handful of tables were occupied with nocturnal life—some people in dresses and clubbing clothes and other people casual in shorts and flip-flops. Matt and Jeremy sat on one side of our booth, and I slid in next to Justin. His arm naturally looped around my back, and his fingers played with the zipper on my dress. I did my best to study the menu but I had to force my mind to concentrate on food.
    The Cliff was an appropriate name for the restaurant, since it was built on a rock overhang that had formed during the Big Quake, a massive earthquake that hit Los Angeles in 2037. People still talk about it. Half of the seaside hotels, houses, streets, and freeways slipped into the ocean. It was the largest natural disaster to hit the United States. All of the major highways were ripped up and spat out in the quake, as if the earth had opened its mouth and tried a bite of concrete but didn’t like the taste. Underground subways in California have been banned ever since. Buildings have also changed dramatically since the quake. All the sky-rises (the one I live in included) are built on a layer of rollers, and the buildings themselves are made out of suber, a material that can bend and flex. Engineers declared these buildings indestructible in any natural disaster: floods, earthquakes, fires, and tsunamis. And they were proven right. There have been two substantial earthquakes since ’37, and sky news coverage observed the buildings in all their synthetic glory, waving and gliding easily with the swaying earth, as graceful as dancers on a stage.
    One of the most impressive consequences of the quake was a giant fissure that cracked through the city, beginning at the ocean and snaking its way to East L.A., forming a narrow canyon. Ocean water rushed in to fill the open crevice, which is now called the Hollywood River. Most people avoided the space but a few downtown businesses were gutsy enough to build in the exposed earth.
    Golden lamps surrounded us, and the canyon walls