Read Online Sneak by Evan Angler - Free Book Online

Eddie guessed.
    “A birds’ nest.” Tyler pointed upwards.
    “Wire,” Jo said, squinting up at the branches. “They’re strung up with wire.”
    “That’s right!” Papa told her. “Antennas. The fact is, kids, this ain’t really a farm anymore. It’s a radio station.”
    “A what ?”
    “A Markless radio station! Shortwave. With our equipment,
    we can broadcast all over the globe. They’ve been doing it in the 52
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    country side for years . . . but ours was the first in the New Chicago area.”
    Dane, the one musician of the group, was visibly excited. The
    rest of the Dust just stared.
    “Shortwave?”
    “Radio?”
    Somehow the idea of it didn’t immediately light their imagina-
    tions on fire.
    Papa Hayes laughed deeply. “I’m showing my age, aren’t I?” He
    clapped Blake on the back. “I know, I know, not exactly cutting-edge. But, kids—that’s the whole point. You don’t need tablets to hear a radio broadcast. You don’t need fancy computers or the Internet at all. No power, even! Just a foxhole radio made from junk you can find on the ground. Wire for the antenna and the tuning coil, a clothespin, a rusty razor blade . . . that’s all it would take for you to hear our broadcast anywhere from here to the other end of the city. Get a little fancier, maybe upgrade to a crystal radio or a vintage radio, like the kinds they used to sell in the pre-Unity days, and with the power supply we have on this farm, you’d be able to hear our station halfway across the country.”
    The Dust looked up at the tree.
    “So we can communicate,” Blake said. “Even with no money,
    no shelter, no tech. We can still organize.”
    Papa Hayes nodded. “You kids didn’t need to worry about this
    stuff back on Slog Row. But trust me. It’s worth worrying about now. And with all their fancy equipment and satellites, shortwave is the last place in the radio spectrum DOME would think to listen.”
    “Can I have my own radio program?” Dane asked, thinking
    back to his glory days as lead singer of the Boxing Gloves. “Please?”
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    Papa laughed, and for a moment, it even looked like he might
    have been considering it.
    “Finish your chores,” Mama said. “Then we’ll see.”
    6
    Another lonely day had passed at Spokie Middle. The final bell had rung, and Erin sat alone on the floor against the wall of the Arctic Wing, watching students file past under the slow, pastel rib-bon dance of the aurora borealis. Behind them, simulated icebergs crashed and fell into the sea. Erin studied each splash, imagining the glacier water spraying out of the screens and into the hall, imagining each student drenched and sopping wet and freezing with it, stranded in the real Arctic as lonely and miserable as Erin was now.
    “Oh dear. We mustn’t be sitting in the hallways, please, Erin,”
    Ms. Carrol said.
    Ms. Carrol was the school secretary at Spokie Middle. Erin
    hated her as much as everyone else in this stupid town, but she stood up all the same.
    “Sorry, Ms. Carrol.” She waved, and left school for the day.
    Three times on the walk home, clusters of Spokie Middle stu-
    dents accosted Erin, pressing her for updates on Dane and Logan.
    “Have you heard anything?” they asked.
    “I heard it was your fault Dane got kidnapped.”
    “I heard you’ve been arrested.”
    “I heard your dad works for DOME.”
    “I heard your mom works on Barrier Street.”
    “I heard . . .”
    “I heard . . .”
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    “I heard . . .”
    Finally, Erin swung around, her classmates piling up on top
    of one another as they stopped short in the line that was following on her heels.
    “It was my fault Dane got kidnapped,” she said. “I was arrested the night of his concert. And my dad does work for DOME. I was there the day DOME raided Slog Row; I was there the day Logan
    flunked his Pledge. And I have no idea if