Rebel Nation Read Online Free PDF Page B

she’d lived in all her life.
    â€œMy dad might be there, you know,” she said as they walked upstairs toward the fifteenth floor of the hotel. The part they’d made their own. “At my house, I mean.”
    â€œDo you really think he will be?”
    She didn’t. Jude knew she didn’t. She hadn’t seen her father since the first day of classes. He came to the dorm room she shared with Bridget, spent fifteen minutes making miserable small talk, then left. “What do you think Leanne wants to talk to us about?”
    The door to the eighth floor, one landing above them, flew open and banged against the wall. Jude stepped down to the stair she was standing on and used his entire body to press Clover to the wall as someone yelled, “Holy shit!”
    A loud noise, almost but not quite a scream, echoed around the stairwell and Clover threw her hands over her ears. Mango went crazy, barking and throwing himself against his lead, nearly ripping Clover’s arm out of its socket.
    â€œOh, no.” Jude sighed and took a step away from Clover, taking the dog’s lead.
    The commotion at the doorway went suddenly quiet , and two voices whispered something that Clover couldn’t make out. Jude shined his hand-cranked flashlight upward. The circle of light illuminated round faces with expressions of such pure and classic shock that Clover had no problem placing the emotion.
    â€œWhat do you think you’re doing?” Jude asked.
    â€œWho the hell—Oh, no, oh, God—” One of the voices went from demanding to terrified in the space of a few words, and the screaming noise was back. Clover would have crawled right through the wall Jude had her pinned to if she could have. He shortened Mango’s lead just as the dog lunged against it. Two huge Canada geese half ran, half flew down the stairs. A wing flapped against Clover’s shins and she cried out, which made Mango bark even louder.
    â€œQuick, get back inside,” the voice above said.
    â€œWait a minute.” The eighth-floor door started to close. Jude sprinted up the steps and grabbed it before it did. “Jesus, Tim, it’s too late now.”
    â€œGreat.” Clover came up the stairs behind Jude. The geese were still honking and flapping around, not too far down the stairway from her. “You know each other. Can we get out of this hallway before they come back? Please?”
    Tim opened the door wider. Two more boys stood on the other side of it. When Clover shined her flashlight at them, their faces were red and splotchy.
    â€œWe could have caught them,” one of the other boys said. He didn’t look more than twelve.
    â€œNot likely,” Tim said, “since they been chasing you for the last half hour.”
    â€”
    Freeing the birds from the Dinosaur took the better part of an hour. Jude got ahead of them and opened the sixth-floor door, and then Clover, Tim, and the other boys chased them through it, into a room, and out a window.
    The geese flew away, probably at least as grateful to be out as Clover was to see them go.
    Without that time spent working together, Clover probably would have put up a fight about taking the boys up to the fifteenth floor. But she could see that Jude and Tim really knew each other, and working toward a common goal with the boys smoothed her feelings toward them. All she really wanted after the geese had flown away was to figure out what was going on before it was time to talk to her brother.
    â€œYou can’t be mad, Jude,” the younger boy, Wally, said.
    â€œWhy would he be mad?” Clover asked.
    â€œNever mind that right now.” Jude led the way as they trudged up the stairs. “Why were there Canadian geese in here?”
    â€œCanada geese,” Clover said. Jude lifted his eyebrows. “Well, that’s what they’re called. Technically.”
    â€œWe were going to eat them,” Wally said. “Do you know