A Beautiful Friendship-ARC Read Online Free PDF

chip she wanted. She also checked to make sure there was still at least one more t-chip in the drawer—one of the conditions for her free use of her father’s tools and supplies was that she help keep track of inventory and tell him when it was time to reorder items—then turned back to the chassis of the device she was building.
    “And that thinking led you to a conclusion which explains all this?” her father asked, raising an eyebrow and waving his coffee cup at the contraptions taking shape on the workbench.
    “Well,” Stephanie paused and turned around to face him fully, “ in a way. It all seemed pretty silly right at first, of course. I mean, celery? ” She rolled her eyes, and Richard snorted a laugh. Celery wasn’t very high on Stephanie’s list of edible foods. She’d eat it under parental duress (and if there was nothing better around) but that was about it. “Besides, according to all the reports, only a head or two at a time was taking missing, and who’d go to all that bother to steal that teeny an amount, right?”
    “I can see where those thoughts might have occurred to you,” he conceded.
    It had been almost a full T-year since a mounting number of settlers had reported vanishing crops, but in the beginning, most people had been inclined to think it was some kind of hoax, especially since the only plant that was ever stolen was celery. And since, as Stephanie said, so few heads of celery were going missing each time the “thieves” struck.
    “The first thing I thought when Mom told me about it was that some zork-brain was probably stealing the stuff and hiding it somewhere—or just getting rid of it, for that matter—as some kind of joke,” Stephanie continued. “It wouldn’t be any dumber than some of the other stuff I’ve seen kids in Twin Forks pull. In fact, it’d be less dumb than a lot of it!”
    “You know,” her father said after a moment, “not all the kids in Twin Forks are idiots, Steph.”
    “I didn’t say they were,” Stephanie replied. There might have been just a hint of insincerity in her response. “They sure act that way sometimes, though, don’t they?”
    “Not all of them,” he said. “Still, I’ll grant you that some of them do. Like that young hoodlum Chang.”
    “Stan Chang?” Stephanie cocked her head, surprised at the noted genuine anger in her father’s tone. It was unusual for her mild-mannered parent, and so was the curtness of his nod. “What did he do this time?” she asked a bit cautiously.
    “He says he only meant it as a ‘joke,’ and that’s his father’s view of it, too,” her father said. “It wasn’t very funny for Ms. Steinman’s Rottweiler, though. He set up a booby trap that was ‘only’ supposed to dump a five liter bucket of cold water on whoever walked into it. I guess we’re all lucky it was Brutus and not another kid.”
    “How bad was it?” This time Stephanie’s tone was resigned, not cautious.
    “Let’s just say he’s not a very good carpenter, and the entire contraption collapsed when Brutus walked into it.” Her father shook his head, his expression more resigned and sad than angry this time. “The whole thing came down on him. It crushed his entire right foreleg and he was trapped for over forty-five minutes before we could get him out. I spent better than two hours putting it back together again, and I’m not sure he’s ever going to recover fully.”
    Stephanie nodded slowly. Her father cared—a lot—about his patients. Like he’d often said, they didn’t have voices, so they couldn’t explain what was wrong. And people couldn’t explain it to them , either. No wonder she’d heard so much anger in his voice.
    “I’ll bet he wasn’t real sorry about it, either, was he?” she said after a moment, and her father laughed harshly.
    “Not so you’d notice,” he agreed. “After all, Brutus is only an animal, right? And like Stan said, it’s not like he got killed , is it?”
    The two