Dreamland Read Online Free PDF

tricking them. Or maybe he was secretly a freak. Maybe he was hiding a third and fourth nipple, or a secret Star Wars addiction.
    â€œWant a ride somewhere?” Dea asked. “You can throw your bike in the back.”
    Gollum made a face. “I gotta go home. Besides, the Beast would never fit.” She patted the handlebars.
    â€œI’m getting the grand tour of Fielding,” Connor said, still smiling.
    Gollum’s face had returned to its normal color. She shoved her glasses up the bridge of her nose with a thumb. “Should be the most mediocre five minutes of your life,” she said, and thumped Dea’s door. “Have fun. Don’t forget to swing by the dump. It’s one of Fielding’s most scenic attractions.” When Connor wasn’t looking, she mouthed, Oh my God and did the bug-eyed thing again.
    Now Dea was the one blushing.
    Gollum wasn’t exaggerating: It took approximately four minutes to get from one end of Fielding to the other. The commercial district was just two intersecting roads and a heap of buildings in various stages of decay. On Main Street there were two gas stations, a church, a liquor store, a hair salon, a fried chicken spot, a mini-mart, and a mega-mart. On Center Street was a diner, a pharmacy (now shuttered), a 7-Eleven, another liquor store, and Mack’s, the only bar in town, which everyone always referred to by its full name, Mack’s Center Street, as if there were another somewhere else. Two miles past CenterStreet, after a quick patchwork of fields and farms and houses that were falling slowly into the dirt, was the Fielding School, serving grades kindergarten to dropout.
    They didn’t even have a Walmart. For that, you had to drive all the way to Bloomington.
    â€œVoilà ,” she said to Connor when they reached the Fielding School. The parking lot was mostly empty. In the distance, she spotted a bunch of guys from the football team running drills. “Tour complete. What do you think?”
    â€œI think the mega-mart was my favorite,” Connor said. “But the mini-mart’s a close second.” One thing that was nice about Connor: he didn’t fidget. He was way too tall for Dea’s mom’s car, another simulacrum: an exact replica of the original VW Beetle, with its engine in the back and everything. Even though Connor was squished in the front seat, knees practically to his chest, he looked perfectly relaxed. He didn’t even press Dea about the fact that the rearview mirror was blacked out with masking tape, even though she’d had an excuse ready: the glass had shattered and they were waiting on parts to replace it.
    â€œI told you there was nothing to see,” Dea said.
    â€œDepends on your perspective,” Connor said, looking at her in a way that made her suddenly nervous. She put the car in drive again, and rumbled slowly out of the parking lot. Plumes of red dust came up from the tires. The sun was so bright, it was hard to see. She was glad, at least, that the air conditioner was the modern kind.
    â€œSo. Anything I should know about F.S.? Trade secrets? Words of warning?” he asked.
    â€œAll schools are pretty much the same,” Dea said. “Don’tbacktalk the teacher. Don’t touch the hot lunch. Try to stay awake during history.”
    He laughed. He had a great laugh—just like his smile, it made him about a thousand times more attractive. “You been to a lot of schools?”
    â€œHalf a dozen.” Actually, she’d been enrolled at ten different schools, and lived in twelve different states. But no point in launching into a monologue about it. “My mom likes to move around,” she added, when he made a face. “How about you?”
    He hesitated for a fraction of a second. “My dad got laid off,” he said. “My uncle—that’s Will’s dad—is a cop down here. He hooked him up with a landscaping job. Dad