The Battle of Darcy Lane Read Online Free PDF Page B

busy.”
    I felt awkward in my own body. I had no idea what to do with my arms, and wanted to ask Mom some questions about the birds and the bees and boob jobs. But it felt too weird now that I had the image of a hairy man in my brain. And anyway, Dad was there.
    â€œDo you have the receipt for my purse?” I asked.
    â€œI don’t know, why?” Mom was only half paying attention. “Is something wrong with it?”
    I looked at it, thinking I’d try to find something defective about it, but I still liked it. I sure liked it better than Alyssa’stacky chair and her ridiculous stuffed giraffe. “Never mind. So did you ask him?”
    Now Mom looked up. “Ask who what?”
    â€œDad.” I turned to him. “Can I please-please-please move into the office?”
    He was about to say something, but Mom cut him off.
    â€œJulia. I want to talk to your dad about that privately, okay?”
    He squeezed her shoulder.
    I went upstairs and thought about reading, but instead changed into my swimsuit. I went out to the pool and sat down at the edge, with my feet in, waiting for a face to appear so I wouldn’t be alone. I was also hoping to get hot—hot enough to want to dive right in—but there was too much shade, so I moved to a lounge chair and closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but I wasn’t tired.
    Then Peter called out “Julia,” and I looked up and saw movement—blue shirt today—behind the fence. I walked over, and Peter said, “Meet me in the woods in ten minutes?”
    â€œOkay!”
    I ran through the house, shouting out that I was going over to Peter’s.
    Since we’d had woods by our old house, I’d been excited when Peter had first shown me the woods across the street from him. Even better, these woods had a pond—not haunted—that we could ice-skate on. This past winter a big branch had fallen and frozen into it in justthe right spot for jumps. We sat on that same branch now—the part that was on dry land—with Peter’s dad’s iPad.
    â€œIt took me a while to figure out the password,” Peter said, “but we’re good to go.”
    It felt wrong to be watching a television show in the woods—and also wrong to be watching End of Daze against my parents’ orders—but it was also thrilling in a butterflies-in-stomach way. They weren’t going to be able to keep me from growing up no matter how hard they tried, and this was hardly the worst way for me to start.
    The trees offered just enough shade that we could see the images on the screen without too much glare, and I swear it was like neither of us moved the whole time, not for a whole hour or whatever an hour without commercials was.
    I saw the scenes I’d glimpsed that first night—of the mushroom cloud, of people being chased around corners by smoke. But now I learned the names of the main characters—Mack and Archer—a father and son who survived a chemical bomb attack on New York because they’d retreated to their crazy neighbor Buddy’s underground bunker. They were freaking out because Archer wanted his mom, but she was at work and also probably dead, and Mack and Buddy agreed they couldn’t go out for a few days. Buddy had an old radio but the news was grim—attacks in Europe, China, all across the US. And then the broadcast stopped all together. Eventually, the three ofthem left the bunker and started roaming the streets of the city, looking for food and water. But there were bodies everywhere, and Buddy started to get crazier, and he threatened Mack and, well, Mack had to take him out. Together, Mack and Archer made their way across town to the office where Helen, the mom, worked, and they found her body among the dead. The hour ended with them both weeping over her body . . . and then her cell phone rang. Mack picked it up and said, “Hello?”
    Roll credits.
    â€œOh, come on!”