Last Chance Read Online Free PDF Page B

Connor.
    Matthew interrupted and said, “I can’t just sit there and let them say things that aren’t true in class. The history books that you have us read just don’t make any sense next to what we learn in school.”
    April, her head pulled back up from the table, glared at both of the boys and spoke with conviction. “I thought you boys were old enough to understand what I am trying to do for you. The greatest scholars and historians of our time would love to get their hands on the information in those books. It’s the truth of our past, and we have it right in front of us.”
    She started to pick up the empty plates from the table and walked toward the front door, but she quickly turned around and with more force behind her voice exclaimed, “If anyone finds out that we have these books, we will get a knock at our door one night and be taken away! Is that what you want?”
    Matthew understood the mistake he had made. “Sorry, I just got carried away; it won’t happen again. You can count on us.”
    “Both of you go on to your room and get to reading tonight’s lesson and I’ll get dinner cleaned up. And another thing: we aren’t called chicks; it is either girls or women. You’ve got to stop using slang words from those books.”
    The boys started to make their way to their room and heard April hand out one more order. “You have three hours before the lights are to be off, so don’t dawdle.”
    The boys entered their shared room. It was twelve feet by twelve feet in size, with a bunk bed in the far corner. Connor had the top bunk because Matthew was afraid of heights. Across from the bed, just under the room’s only window, sat an old wood desk with two swivel chairs, one for each boy. This was the hiding spot for the old history books that April presented to the boys every few weeks.
    Neither boy knew where the books had come from; April said that it didn’t matter, just that they couldn’t tell anyone they existed. Both boys had been reading about American history from the start of the 1770s revolution up to the late 1900s.
    It was so strange for them to read about patriots and civil rights leaders from the past. Everything they had learned in school about history had revolved around the Supreme Leader and the CCWO. It was clear to both of them that history was being altered in the classroom, and they both wanted to know why, but for different reasons.
    Before the boys grabbed their books to start reading, Connor popped Matthew a good one in the arm. “That’s for telling about the principal, you prick.”
    Matthew responded in kind, without near the pop, and backed away to the desk.
    “Sorry, it just kind of slipped out.”
    Connor plopped down in his desk chair and shook his head. “I don’t know why she gets so worried about this stuff. Does she really think masked men are going to come in here and take us all away?”
    Matthew ignored Connor’s question and said, “It says here that something called the Internet was really popular in the 1990s and people had their own computers at their homes.”
    Connor, perplexed, flipped over to the same page. “How did they have computers in their homes back then and we can only use computers at school? It doesn’t make sense.”
    Matthew backed up in his desk chair and responded, “It makes sense if you listen to what April has been telling us. We’re living in a time that is totally different from what our ancestors lived in.”
    Matthew paused a moment and then explained that he didn’t think the government was set up the same way in the past as it was now. He couldn’t find one thing in the history books about a Supreme Leader or any World Council.
    Connor had no problems whipping Matthew in a physical altercation, but he struggled when trying to match his logic. He couldn’t think of a good counterpoint to Matthew’s explanation, so he repeated his standard responses. He reminded Matthew about all of the wars they had read about in the