Read Online Viral Nation by Shaunta Grimes - Free Book Online Page A

would be a replay of primary school. Besides, if she was expected within the hour, then she was supposed to go without her brother, who still had three more hours of work.
    In the end she decided it would be best to have all the information before she talked to West. And to follow the rules. Anyway, she was annoyed with her brother and embarrassed that it never even crossed her mind to question his test scores. She needed time to figure this all out before she talked to him.
    The one thing she did know was that whoever Langston Bennett was, he’d better let her keep her dog with her. Her father gave Mango to her when she was eleven. He’d been trained at the prison. It helped for the detainees to have worthwhile work, her father said. It gave them a purpose and helped them remember how to be good citizens.
    She wasn’t going to do this without her dog.
    Mango stopped when Clover did, at the front door to the Waverly-Stead building. Doors weren’t exactly Clover’s thing. Especially if she didn’t know what was on the other side. She closed her eyes and steeled herself against the possibility that it would be loud in there, or that it might smell bad. Or have the same flickering, garish overhead lights as the primary school building.
    Thousands of people worked for the Company. If a lot of them were on the other side of this door, it was going to be bad. Very bad. Clover already felt the crush of them like a tightness in her chest that kept her lungs from fully expanding.
    She pushed the door open, slowly, and inhaled when she saw a softly lit room with a very tall ceiling. Two women and a man sat together in plush chairs off to one side of the cavernous lobby, talking quietly to each other. Otherwise, the only sounds as she entered were her leather-soled shoes and Mango’s toes clicking on the marble floor as they approached the big receptionist desk.
    The receptionist was maybe as old as West and had dark hair with a bleached streak in the front. White like Mrs. Finch’s. She was considerably prettier than Mrs. Finch, though. Mostly because she was so much younger and young people were usually considered prettier just by virtue of their youth. Mrs. Finch might have been as pretty as she was when she was twenty. In fact, for an old lady, before her stroke Mrs. Finch wasn’t bad-looking. After her stroke, Mrs. Finch’s eyes—
    The receptionist was staring at Clover’s chest. When Clover looked down, she saw the sticky chocolate-and-cherry stain and covered it with her hand. “Heather Sweeney did that,” she said.
    The receptionist raised her eyebrows delicately. “May I help you?”
    “Yes, you may help me.”
    There was a moment of silence, and then, “
How
may I help you?”
    Clover cleared her throat and held up the envelope Kingston had given her. “I have this letter.”
    She pulled the envelope back before it could be taken from her. The girl tilted her head and read the name on the envelope without reaching for it again. “Mr. Bennett. Is he expecting you?”
    What if he wasn’t? She wouldn’t have the Academy or the Company, then. “I think he is.”
    “Okay. Well, why don’t I check?”
    She smiled, but her face looked frozen that way, so Clover wasn’t sure whether she would call Bennett or security.
    Turned out she didn’t say anything into the phone except for “Yes, sir,” twice, before she hung up.
    “Mr. Bennett will meet you at the elevator bank to the left.” She pointed at Mango with her chin. “He said to keep the leash on the dog, okay?”
    Clover tightened her hold on the envelope as she turned to her left, toward a wall of brass double doors. She’d read about elevators,and West told her that the Bazaar had some and had told her about riding them, but she’d never even seen one in person before. She looked back down the hall at the receptionist, who waggled her fingers before turning her attention back to her computer.
    Clover watched a digital counter above the elevator