Coming of Age Read Online Free PDF Page A

something.”
    â€œNo, we’re fine; but thanks for stopping. If it had been an emergency, I sure would have been grateful to have your help.”
    â€œOh, that’s all right,” Lisa said, her face warming again. “I’d better let you get your nephew to bed. How old is he?”
    â€œAlmost five,” the man said.
    â€œHe looks younger,” Lisa commented, studying the boy briefly. A pang of sympathy touched the back of her throat; smaller than most of his peers, he was going to run into a lot of the same problems in his hive that she had had in hers.
    â€œHis mother was short,” the driver said. “Look, we really have to go.”
    â€œOh, sure—sorry.” Lisa stepped back from the car. With a wave, the driver rolled up his window and the car again headed down the road.
    Lisa watched its taillights disappear around a curve and then, with a sigh, teeked herself into the air and headed back toward Barona. So much for making a hero of myself, she thought, rotating once as she flew to get a last look at the glow of headlights. But even as she started to look away the lights made a sharp turn and disappeared behind a particularly thick patch of the woods.
    She’d never noticed a turn quite that sharp in the road, and for a moment wondered if perhaps he’d lost control and driven into the ditch. But an instant later she saw the glow again, a little further on. Reassured, she circled back toward the distant slice of pinprick lights that was Barona. With the excitement over, she turned her mind back to the problem that had driven her out here in the first place.
    She struggled with it for another half hour, and through all the tangle two thoughts gradually seemed to emerge: one, that to get the edge she desired over her peers she would need to start learning ahead of time the stuff the school would be teaching; and two, that the first thing on that list was reading.
    Reading. Even just bouncing around in her head the word was a little scary. Reading was something only adults did, like driving cars or making money—something that took a lot of time and hard work to become any good at. Could she possibly get anywhere with it in the few weeks or months she had left? After all, she’d always heard that reading was too hard for kids and preteens to learn—else why wait until after Transition to put people in school?
    But I’m almost a teen, she reminded herself firmly … and now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember anyone ever saying that a preteen couldn’t try to learn reading. If she could even just learn all the letters it would give her something to build on later. It was certainly worth a try, anyway.
    And with unusually good timing the idea had even come to her when she could take advantage of the extra free time the weekend provided. None of the books in the hive’s entertainment center had anything but pictures, but the Barona Library was open to anyone; and while Lisa had been above the first two floors only once, she knew kids were allowed up there. Provided the library opened early enough on Saturdays, she should be able to get busy right after breakfast.
    For a moment she frowned, and her thoughts went back to the man in the car. What sort of job did he have, she wondered, where he had to work on Saturday but not on Friday? The mines in the Tessellate Mountains near Rand worked eight days a week, she’d heard—a few of them a full twenty-one hours a day—but he hadn’t looked much like a miner. Perhaps he was a supervisor of some kind. Certainly he’d sounded educated enough to be somebody important.
    And that apparently was the secret of adult life. Education is power … and power means not being pushed around. Smiling to herself, Lisa increased her speed, hoping to get to bed early for a change. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day.
    Dr. Matthew Jarvis let his car coast to a stop by the cabin wall