Read Online Swipe by Evan Angler - Free Book Online Page A

suburban New Chicago. The street crawling with Markless, with disease and crime.
    He could not go there. Ever. To walk down Slog Row was to walk with death.
    Whoever this boy was, he had as good as escaped. Logan’s steps slowed to a stop, and he caught his breath with his hands resting on his bent knees. He could follow no farther. Before him now, beyond the several empty lots and across the crumbling, abandoned six-lane expressway of years ago, was the silent and decaying street of so many parental warnings. He could see its panorama all at once, and in the moonlight, it was seething, a corpse lined with maggots.
    What was I thinking? Logan thought. Following even this far?
    And yet something in Logan had come alive. Something in him had flirted with the danger he’d spent so long avoiding, and the danger flirted back.
    But no. That’s crazy . And your parents will be worried sick . So all at once Logan’s nerves dropped out from under him like a trapdoor, and he turned to burst full-sprint down the quiet Spokie avenue from whence he came, not looking back, not catching his breath, not stopping for anything else until he’d reached the safety of his own front door.

FOUR

THE INVITATION
    1
    T HE NEXT DAY AT SCHOOL, LOGAN WAS JUMPY, even for him.
    “You always been this wired?” Dane asked as they filed out of computer science. “Looks like you had about four cups of nanotea this morning.”
    Logan spun around as if Dane had poked him with something burning. “Sleepless night,” he said, without a trace of humor in his voice.
    “Sorry to hear it.” Dane frowned. “Hey, Tom!” he yelled. “Aren’t you Pledging today?”
    “Just finished,” Tom said. He held his wrist up. Its nanoink was so fresh, it sparkled. “First thing this morning. I walked straight here from the Center. Couldn’t wait any longer to show this bad boy off.” He pointed smugly at the Mark.
    “That’s awesome ,” Dane said. “Hey, buy me a soda!”
    “You bullying me for my lunch money, Harold?” Tom asked.
    “Sure am!” Dane laughed, and he pounced on Tom’s arm, wrestling the class president, grabbing at his wrist with fake effort to pull the guy’s hand off. Tom, who had Dane by four inches and at least thirty pounds, stood and waited for the joke to be over while Logan tried not to laugh.
    “Dane Harold, knock it off!” the school secretary said as she hurried past.
    “Sorry, Ms. Carrol.” Dane gave up the act and brushed his hair down.
    Tom turned to Logan with fresh interest. “So, Logan, you coming to auditions after school?” Logan shrugged, the Spokie Middle drama club being the furthest thing from his mind. “ Mark of a Salesman , remember? Be a great chance to meet people if you made the show. Make some friends.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Dane asked.
    “Oh, I just thought . . .” Tom backpedaled. “I mean . . . you know . . .”
    “I’m zonked, anyway,” Logan said. “I think I’d better not.”
    “Well, suit yourself.” Tom clapped him on the shoulder. “You coming to English, Dane?”
    “Yeah,” Dane said, and soon Logan was alone in the hallway.
    He walked to history through the Prairie Wing, where in the virtual window a lion crouched low and followed him the whole way to class.

    School that day was slow, but Logan’s mind couldn’t have stopped racing if he’d begged it to. All those years spent certain he was crazy, exasperating his parents, visiting doctors and refusing prescriptions, answering questions and absorbing doubts and suspicions that were anything but fair . . . all of that, overturned in an instant by one stalking silhouette. He’d been right. This whole time. And he didn’t know what to do about it.
    He hadn’t told his parents. If they’d believed the story of his walk home, it would have been a miracle; more likely it only would have led to a disappointed look and perhaps another doctor’s appointment.
    He would not tell Erin either. Logan was already