Fair Coin Read Online Free PDF

for?”
    “She—” Ephraim pressed his fingers against the countertop. “Never mind. Sorry for the confusion.”
    “You're agitated. Why don't you have a seat and calm down? I'll find someone who can help you…”
    Why would he be agitated? His mother was only missing. But he didn't want to draw the attention of Child Protective Services now, if they'd already forgotten all about him and his mother.
    “I must have the wrong hospital, like you said. I made a mistake, that's all.” Which reminded him…“Actually, maybe you can answer one more question. That boy who was killed in the bus accident yesterday. Did you ever find out who he was?”
    Mrs. Morales's face hardened. “I don't know anything about an accident, either, and I wouldn't be able to share personal information with you even if I did. This is really inappropriate. I don't have time for games.” She pushed the keyboard away from her, its plastic screeching against the metal desktop. He felt like she was the one playing a prank on him.
    “No, there was a body yesterday afternoon that matched my description. They found my library card in his wallet. There was a whole bag of his stuff, I left it in my mother's room—”
    Mrs. Morales scowled and stood up. “Mr. Scott, you aren't making much sense. Is there someone you'd like me to call to pick you up?”
    “Forget it.” He walked away quickly.
    He paused by the elevators and glanced back. Mrs. Morales had come around to the front of the station and was watching him. He couldn't blame her. He knew how his story sounded.
    The only proof he had was the coin he'd found in the plastic hospital bag yesterday.
    Make a wish and flip the coin to make it come true.
    It just wasn't possible. Coins didn't grant wishes. But he had wished his mother out of the hospital, and now she wasn't there—in fact, it seemed she had never been there at all. If the wish had wiped out her visit entirely, that might explain Mrs. Morales's memory lapse, just like the one Nathan had at school right after Ephraim flipped the coin. But then why didn't she remember the dead boy? He'd had nothing to do with Ephraim's wish. Of course, that didn't even matter, because wishes didn't come true, not by magic anyway.
    Ephraim took the elevator down to the lobby. When the doors opened, Michael Gupal was standing there.
    He looked like crap.
    Michael had a gash over his left eye, which was swollen half-closed. Blood dripped down his temple from a nasty cut, and his lower lip was split in the middle.
    “What the hell happened to you?” Ephraim said. No one had ever taken down the school bully.
    Michael squinted with his good eye. “Your friend Mackenzie is a psychopath.”
    “What?”
    “He went completely nuts on me.”
    “Nathan did this?” Nathan wasn't capable of causing that much damage to someone, except from behind the wheel of his car.
    Michael coughed. It didn't sound good. “Yeah. No one was more surprised than me.”
    “When I left school, you were beating him up.” If Nathan had finally managed to fight back, Ephraim didn't have much sympathy for Michael. As unlikely as it seemed, maybe Nathan had even planned this, the way he'd been acting. But he'd have needed a crowbar to do this to Michael.
    Michael shook his head then grunted with pain. “I only shook him up a little. And stuffed him in a locker.”
    Ouch. That had been Michael's signature technique in junior high. Nathan was one of the few people still thin enough to fit—and even so, he wasn't as small as he once was. That must have hurt.
    “Then you deserve whatever he did to you,” Ephraim said.
    Michael's one eye widened. “I don't know how he got himself out of that locker, but he was waiting for me at my car.”
    “You're sure it was him?”
    “I've been punching that face since the first grade; I'd know it anywhere.”
    “That's when he beat you up?”
    “He was strong. And he knew how to fight. He was like a different guy. Vicious. He smashed my