April

April Read Online Free PDF

Book: April Read Online Free PDF
Author: Mackey Chandler
and unregistered businesses.
    * * *
    April was dressed casually, like most people in the corridors. She wore gray sweats with loose pants and a zippered hooded top. Her snug moon boots were a popular fashion now, but with regular soles, not the expensive slick and stick nanotech soles like the real thing. It was just old-fashioned unpowered clothing, without heating or cooling and precut to size, not auto tailored.
    Her spex were thin film wrap-arounds, frameless except for the temple pieces. She didn't like watching video while she was walking, so the news was audio only, just the base spex menu riding in the upper left corner of her vision. She left them set untinted, so her face was fully visible.
    Her features retained some of the soft look of childhood and an arch of coppery freckles across her cheeks and nose were faint, because she was never in sunlight. April's reddish brown hair was cut short, boyish really by the current styles, with just enough on top to have a little shape and clipped very short all around the sides. It wanted to flip up in front and she didn't fight it, brushing the front up in a spiky line. The short hair made the gold pirate hoops she wore in her ears stand out.
    Overall, she looked like normal a thirteen year old, not far from her fourteenth birthday. She was short and slight framed like her father, but athletic looking not the awkward lanky look some teens have until they fill out. Her appearance would not be changing as quickly as might be expected at her age, because she had started basic life extension therapy three months ago.
    Eventually the full treatment would slow down her visible aging even more, as the therapies took hold. She'd only have the appearance of a sixteen or seventeen-year-old, until she was about thirty. It was something she worried about. She was convinced as long as she looked young, her parents would continue to resist treating her like an adult, no matter how she acted.  Life extension just voided all the visual clues of age, people depended on to form their impressions of others. Her parents had grown up knowing how old and supposedly how mature, anyone was at a glance. So she could picture them still talking to her like a twelve year old, when she was twenty-five.
    Her brother Bob looked much older than April. He even shaved now, although he was only three years older. He had taken after their mom instead of Dad or Gramps, so he was bigger. Her folks had only recently had the funds to start both their treatments, so Bob had to wait a few more years than she had. It might give her an advantage far in the future. But Bob's older appearance was a huge advantage right now. An advantage she begrudged him, due to her firm conviction he wasn't really as mature as she was in many ways and not nearly as honest.
    Most everyone who worked away from home had a nine o'clock report time on main-shift, if it was one of their workdays, so there was no line at the cafeteria and no big noisy crowd. At this hour it was mostly youngsters like her and Heather who didn't have a real job yet, retirees here to socialize and people who were self employed like Heather's mom, who was an artist, or Mr. Hathaway who was a writer.
    The aroma of hot bread and fresh coffee brewing was strong at the entry. April usually came before the main shift rush, not after, so she was hungry and her stomach was growling at the smell of all the hot food. She ordered a huge breakfast and piled on butter for her hot cakes, syrup, coffee, jam and orange juice on her tray from the self serve breakfast bar.
    Now that she wasn't walking, she set the spex to show market and news alerts to the top left of her view. Her brother had gotten her into a medical stock a week ago she was following.
    It was up twenty percent and she was getting twitchy to sell it. She rarely rode them as far as Bob. He was either fearless, or crazy when investing.
    Getting a carton of milk was best done when her mother was not along, to
Read Online Free Pdf

Similar Books

Edge of Honor

Richard Herman

To Steal a Prince

Cora Caraway

The Moving Finger

Agatha Christie

Deadly Offer

Caroline B. Cooney

Emerald Death

Bill Craig

Z 2136 (Z 2134 Series Book 3)

Sean Platt, David W. Wright