The Amanda Project: Book 4: Unraveled Read Online Free PDF Page B

chair” that is the driver’s seat. Still, she loaded Iris, Pen, and me into the RV and pulled out of the driveway without looking back. That was the last we saw of the house we’d all been born in.
    We’d said good-byeto no one. Not our friends. Not our teachers. Not the neighbors we had known all our lives, whose casseroles we left to rot in the fridge. We ran like people being chased. I found out later that we probably were.
    When we asked my mom why—which, trust me, we did many, many times over the course of the year we spent on the road—she would close her eyes and say, “I’m sorry. It was just somethingI had to do.” Once, when we were lost in Arizona, and it was hot out, we had to drive with no A/C because we were about to run out of gas in the middle of the desert. Pen, who is not one to keep her opinions to herself, said, “Why are we even doing this? Answer us for real this time, okay?” Pen had sounded like she was about to cry, and so my mom said, “I don’t know. I’m following instructions, okay?”And her voice was so desperate we didn’t follow up with any more questions, even though what she’d said made absolutely no sense.
    At the time I thought, basically, she’d lost her mind. Sometimes I noticed when she registered us at campsites, she would even go so far as to use different, random names—Dolly Nabokov, Mrs. Reginald V. Quilty, Arianna Adore. Weird stuff. When we finally landed herein Orion, and my mom enrolled us in school, she went back to using our real names, though she made up this story about losing all our files in a fire to explain why we weren’t forwarding our transcripts from our old life and wasn’t able to produce Social Security numbers. In a way, it was as if our entire existence—my dad, California, all of it—had never been real.
    The day after we’d gone throughThornhill’s computer files at Hal’s house was a Sunday. Nia had church and a family lunch, Hal texted that he was going for a long run, and Callie was helping her dad haul and stack wood for his new furniture building business. I made toaster waffles for Iris and Pen while my mom slept in, recovering from whatever she’d been doing until four in the morning—I heard her car roll into the driveway.
    At noon, my mom emerged, ate a leftover waffle, and took the girls to a birthday party. I practiced the sax for awhile, though it was hard to focus. I couldn’t stop thinking about the pictures and documents that were on Thornhill’s computer. If my mom was at the grocery store, was someone taking pictures of her right now? Did whoever was collecting all these pictures and information know whatshe was doing at night? I wanted to warn her that her private life was not as private as she thought it might be. I didn’t want to talk to her about the obvious fact that she had a boyfriend, but was it irresponsible not to let her know that someone, somewhere was watching?
    At two I left the house on my bike to meet up with Nia, Hal, and Callie at the gazebo in the center of town. We’d told ourparents we were meeting to study at the library.
    “I did some research last night,” Callie said, when we were gathered—Nia was last, rushing from the Rivera four-course Sunday meal. “Orion College of Pharmaceuticals was founded in the 1950s. It got some kind of government grant and was able to build a campus outside town—as well as purchase buildings in town—all in its first year. That’s prettyfast for a college, apparently. Most start small and build up over time, but OCP hit the ground running. Which means it had money from the beginning, and lots of it.”
    “Okay,” said Nia. “Why did they close?”
    “Try a different question,” Callie said. “Not why did they close. But when . Remember 1984, that magic year when half our parents suddenly start to have lives? The year when your mom is ten,my mom is sixteen, Zoe’s dad is nineteen and Mr. Bennett is eighteen?”
    “Yeah,” I said. I felt a