The Vault of Dreamers Read Online Free PDF

sat in his lap. I put on my headphones
     and turned up the volume. It was natural sound, with the voice of my stepfather coming
     from off-screen. My sister called, “Coming, Dad!” and then rang her bike bell. The audio was delayed by a full second, and it was going
     to be a job to line it up again.
    Burnham unplugged. “Nice stuff,” he said.
    “Thanks.” I lowered my headphones and nodded politely at his screen. “What do you
     have?”
    He skimmed his touch screen and a dimly lit, underwater world appeared, with softly
     waving kelp below and the dark underbelly of a small boat above. There was just enough
     grainy blue light to see. A figure dove from the boat and a shimmer of pale, tiny
     stars trailed around his strokes as he swam down to the bottom, touched down, and
     sprang back up toward the surface.
    “How did you do that effect?” I asked.
    “It’s bioluminescence. It’s for real,” he said. “My brother and I went swimming last
     summer and I caught this.”
    “You shot that yourself?” I asked, amazed. “From the bottom of a lake?”
    “The sea. Yeah,” he said.
    And he thought my film was good. This was the sort of person I was competing against.
     I thunked my head down on my desk. “I’m dead.”
    He smiled. “Maybe you could switch to the drama queen department.”
    “Are you worried about getting cut tonight?” I asked. “Like, at all ?”
    “No.”
    I laughed at his confidence and straightened up.
    “I don’t believe in worry,” Burnham added. “It doesn’t change the outcome, but it
     makes the now miserable, so I don’t do it.”
    “The now. That’s very Zen of you.”
    “I’m a third child,” he said, smiling again.
    He awed me. “What’s your blip rank?” I asked.
    “Last I checked, sixteen.”
    “Sixteen!” I said. Who was this guy? “That’s why you’re not worried.”
    “Ranks can change,” he said. “They’ll fly all over the place today. No one’s safe,
     and you shouldn’t give up hope.”
    “You’re too nice,” I said. “But thanks.”
    He flipped to the window with the computer game again. Squat cartoon knights brandished
     axes and maces. A little dragon came on and spouted purple fire. It was distracting,
     at first, to have Burnham whizzing around with his computer beside me, but after a
     while, I got into my synching assignment. I sank my chin into my hand, rested my left
     elbow on the desk, and sprawled while I worked the touch screen with my right hand.
    “Where are you from?” he asked.
    “Doli, Arizona,” I said. “How about you?”
    “Atlanta.”
    His clicking distracted me again, and I looked over to see a strange sketchpad box
     where the dragon fire changed from purple to green.
    “Wait,” I said, frowning. “Are you making that game with the dragon?”
    “Yeah,” he said absently. “I’m still working out the kinks. I didn’t create the engine
     or anything. I just developed the game.”
    Okay, this was a boy with serious skills.
    “What do your parents do?” I asked.
    “They’re Fister Pharmaceuticals.”
    “Come again?”
    “My mom’s a biochemist. She started the company,” Burnham said. “My dad invested and
     expanded it.”
    “You should get them to supply the sleeping pills for the Forge School,” I said. “They’d
     make a mint.”
    “They already do.”
    Of course they do , I thought. I was such a genius. How did I not put this together? Fister was a major
     advertiser on the show.
    Burnham took off his glasses and polished the lenses with the bottom of his shirt.
     It was an old shirt, a button-down that had once been red, but had faded to a soft,
     cottony color. He also wore an analog watch with a rectangular face. Nobody wore watches
     except old men. And Burnham, apparently. Burnham had to be richer than he looked.
     A lot richer. Burnham could wear whatever he pleased.
    “Awkward,” I said.
    He squinted as he put his glasses back on. “Might as well say it. You think I’m