The Thrust Read Online Free PDF Page A

rescued, just like Evan and just like all of the other people in Grand Central.
    She’d much rather focus on how to get them out, than on why .
    “Apple?” he asked, offering her one from a bowl.
    Clarissa took it gratefully. “We didn’t have much fresh fruit at the camp.”
    “I’ve got a bunch of apple trees,” he said. “They grow well here.”
    “I used to love going apple-picking in the fall when I was a kid, with my mom and Randy,” Clarissa said, smiling at the memory. “We’d always have so many extra afterward that we’d have to make pies and freeze them.”
    “Randy? Is that what you called your father?”
    “Stepdad. Yeah, just Randy. He married my mom when I was eleven, and calling him Dad felt weird for me.”
    Trent nodded, but she could tell he was fighting the urge to ask what had happened to her real father.
    “My father left when I was in kindergarten,” she offered. “My mom said he only paid child-support for a few years, and then he just . . .” She mimed walking her fingers across the table. “Dropped off the face of the earth.”
    “What a douche bag,” Trent said. “Sorry.”
    “No, that about sums it up.” Clarissa smirked. “But Randy’s a gem, so it’s all good. Even offered to pay for college so I wouldn’t have student loans.”
    “Nice,” Trent said. “Student loans are killer. Or, were. Guess no one’s paying those back now.” He shrugged. “What’d you study?”
    Clarissa waved her hand, as if it didn’t matter. “Never actually went. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, career-wise, so I figured I shouldn’t waste his hard-earned money.”
    “Do you know now? What you want to do, I mean.”
    What the hell kind of question was that? She frowned. “There’s nothing to do. Everything’s gone.”
    “Well, we might not need paleontologists or some other random thing right now, but people are going to get back to normal and have jobs. Being a blacksmith, or a baker, or a builder, or teacher, or . . .” He paused. “Probably will need some computer tech guys too, to help rebuild the grid.”
    “Darn,” she teased. “I had my heart set on paleontology.”
    He laughed, and she bit her apple, pleased.
    “My poor mother was convinced I’d be one of those seventy-year-old waitresses,” she smiled. “If the Pulse hadn’t happened, she might have been right.”
    “Where are they now—your mom and Randy?”
    She had no idea. No idea if they were even alive.
    “Portland,” she said. “Last I heard from them, anyway.”
    Clarissa had been finishing a shift at the diner and on her cell phone with her mom when the power went out. The call was dropped, of course—and she hadn’t been able to speak to her mother since.
    She’d carried that useless phone around with her for almost a month before leaving it behind to go to Grand Central.
    “Do you think they’re okay?” he asked, concern in his eyes.
    She shrugged. “If you go by the statistics everyone’s spouting, probably not. But I’m still here, so maybe they are too.” She smiled, trying to keep herself optimistic. “I mean, you’re okay, and your sister’s okay, so . . . you know. Other people might be too.”
    Trent was looking at her so intensely that she had to look away. There was a good-sized crumb on the stovetop behind him. “Hey,” Trent said, and she glanced up. “We’re meeting at the church in about an hour. To discuss the plan.”
    “Who’s meeting?”
    “Well, everyone. Anyone who wants to. But I want to go over some things with Jenna and Barker before we present them to people.”
    Clarissa nodded. “I’m ready when you are.”
    Trent gathered a covered bowl from the counter and rose. “I’m going to put some bread in the sun oven before we go, so it has time to bake. It’s not particularly good, since it’s just ground wheat and water with a little salt, but it’s better than nothing.”
    She looked at him with interest and followed him into his