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

angry with himself for going on so long about his sister and his fears the night before. Next time he and Erin talked, Logan was determined it would be about how much homework they had, or how the teachers compared to those in Beacon, or where to find the best pizza in town, or which after-school activities they might be interested in joining together.
    “So!” Logan said. “Got any big plans tonight?” By the time economics rolled around, he had practiced this opening line about a hundred times.
    “Huh?” Erin asked. She looked at him as if from a far-off place.
    “Uh . . .” Logan cleared his throat. “I said, ‘Got any big plans tonight?’” He’d rehearsed the words so extensively in his head that when he said them a second time, they came out in exactly the same cadence.
    “It’s Tuesday,” Erin said, brushing him off. “Why would I have plans?”
    Logan was crushed. He couldn’t have guessed that her response was coming from a place of paranoia and guilt.
    Truthfully, Erin did have plans that night. And not only were they big; they were illegal. They would begin with the deliberate theft of classified information, and she couldn’t imagine they’d get any rosier from there.
    “I just . . . thought . . . maybe . . . I mean . . .” Logan struggled to form a complete sentence. He hadn’t prepared for this particular contingency.
    But Erin laughed in a way that was friendly and genuine, and Logan caught his breath and shut up.
    He’s not onto me , Erin thought. He’s just being dorky ol’ Logan .
    “I’ll prob’ly mostly be doing homework,” Erin lied. “Don’t wanna get behind already, being the new girl and all.”
    “That’s smart,” Logan said. “I’ll probably be doing that too. Maybe study for the Pledge some.” He felt himself calming down now. This had been the idea. This was exactly the conversation he’d had in mind.
    “If I finish early, maybe I’ll sneak a movie on my tablet,” Erin continued. She’d heard once that the key to dishonesty was specificity. “Sounds boring, I know.”
    “That doesn’t sound boring.”
    “Oh, it will be.” Erin laughed. “It’d just be some romantic comedy.”
    “I like romantic comedies,” Logan said.
    Erin laughed again, more nervously now. “Yeah, but . . . like . . . this’ll be a really awful one, though.”
    “How bad could it — ”
    “Bad,” she insisted. There was much too much to be done before her father got off work tonight for Logan to get any ideas about following her home again.
    But Logan wasn’t inviting himself over. He was simply making the small talk he had been so determined to make. And throughout the lesson, each time he’d lean over to whisper a joke, or to pretend to need clarification on a point the teacher had made, Logan forgot a little more completely about the stress he was under and the danger he was in.
    In all of it, Logan never once mentioned the stalker on his walk home from Erin’s the night before.
    And Erin never once mentioned her unfolding plans to moonlight as an unlicensed spy.
    2
    By the time Dane called that night, Logan had already finished four full sweeps of his house. He had already checked all the locks twice, he had already determined his bedroom unfit for sitting, and he was already sandwiched safely between his parents on the living room couch.
    Providing the calm company Logan needed while he distracted himself with Pledge prep, Dad watched the television frame on low volume, and Mom sat upright, though she might have been asleep. Meanwhile Logan curled up nose-deep in his tablet computer, skimming Pedia articles on the Unity for the hundredth time and by now practically memorizing their words.
    He’d just finished reading twice the five-part article about the history leading up to the Total War, and he could have recited by heart the precise ways that rising temperatures had led to extinctions, crop failure, famine . . . how hurricanes and earthquakes and floods had