The 5th Wave Read Online Free PDF Page A

planet,” I said. “Nobody actually knows, and they won’t
     tell us, so everybody sits around guessing and theorizing, and it’s all kind of pointless.
     Maybe they’re spacefaring micemen from Planet Cheese and they’ve come for our provolone.”
    bp doesnt know i exist
    “You know,” he said, “it’s kind of rude, texting while I’m trying to have a conversation
     with you.”
    He was right. I slipped the phone into my pocket.
What’s happening to me?
I wondered. The old Cassie never would have done that. Already the Others were changing
     me into someone different, but I wanted to pretend nothing had changed, especially
     me.
    “Did you hear?” he asked, going right back to the topic that I said bored me. “They’re
     building a landing site.”
    I had heard. In Death Valley. That’s right: Death Valley.
    “Personally, I don’t think it’s a very smart idea,” he said. “Rolling out the welcome
     mat.”
    “Why not?”
    “It’s been three days. Three days and they’ve refused all contact. If they’re friendly,
     why wouldn’t they say hello already?”
    “Maybe they’re just shy.” Twisting my hair around my finger, tugging on it gently
     to produce that semipleasant pain.
    “Like being the new kid,” he said, the new kid.
    That can’t be easy, being the new kid. I felt like I should apologize for being rude.
     “I was kind of mean before,” I admitted. “I’m sorry.”
    He gave me a confused look. He was talking about the aliens,not himself, and then I said something about me, which was about neither.
    “It’s okay,” he said. “I heard you don’t date much.”
    Ouch.
    “What else did you hear?” One of those questions you don’t want to know the answer
     to, but still have to ask.
    He sipped his latte through the little hole in the plastic lid.
    “Not much. It’s not like I asked around.”
    “You asked somebody and they told you I didn’t date much.”
    “I just said I was thinking about asking you out and they go, Cassie’s pretty cool.
     And I said, what’s she like? And they said you were nice but don’t get my hopes up
     because you had this thing for Ben Parish—”
    “They told you that? Who told you that?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t remember her name.”
    “Was it Lizbeth Morgan?”
I’ll kill her.
    “I don’t know her name,” he said.
    “What did she look like?”
    “Long brown hair. Glasses. I think her name is Carly or something.”
    “I don’t know any…”
    Oh God. Some Carly person I don’t even know knows about me and Ben Parish—or the lack
     of any me and Ben Parish. And if Carly-or-something knew about it, then everybody
     knew about it.
    “Well, they’re wrong,” I sputtered. “I don’t have a thing for Ben Parish.”
    “It doesn’t matter to me.”
    “It matters to me.”
    “Maybe this isn’t working out,” he said. “Everything I say, you either get bored or
     mad.”
    “I’m not mad,” I said angrily.
    “Okay, I’m wrong.”
    No, he was right. And I was wrong for not telling him the Cassie he knew wasn’t the
     Cassie I used to be, the pre-Arrival Cassie who wouldn’t have been mean to a mosquito.
     I wasn’t ready to admit the truth: It wasn’t just the world that had changed with
     the coming of the Others. We changed. I changed. The moment the mothership appeared,
     I started down a path that would end in the back of a convenience store behind some
     empty beer coolers. That night with Mitchell was only the beginning of my evolution.
    Mitchell was right about the Others not stopping by just to say howdy. On the eve
     of the 1st Wave, the world’s leading theoretical physicist, one of the smartest guys
     in the world (that’s what popped up on the screen under his talking head: ONE OF THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE WORLD ), appeared on CNN and said, “I’m not encouraged by the silence. I can think of no
     benign reason for it. I’m afraid we may expect something closer to Christopher Columbus’s
     arrival