UnBound Read Online Free PDF Page B

runs on rigid schedules. Departures from normal behavior scream red alert.
    â€œBefore dinner, I want the children in your charge ranked. Reports from floors four and five only. Any questions?”
    Brooklyn does not wait for the questions. Any teachers leaving early will take the stairwell and see her. She eases the door closed, cutting off the voices.
    Quaking, she heads upstairs and into the room of a thirteen-year-old. Even though she throws herself onto his bed, he doesn’t react. Thor leans over his keyboard, his nose almost touching the screen. His room isn’t much larger than a mop closet, but he gets his own room. The luck of being in a protected class.
    Waiting till he realizes that she’s there, she stares at the bookshelf stacked with overdue library books, the laundry bag overflowing with soiled clothes, and a half-eaten sandwich on the nightstand. The only wall decoration is a rusty mallet nicked from the handyman’s tool kit. Thor’s Hammer. She has no idea who started naming all the protected-class kids after gods—but Thor always rolled with it. And besides, when you’re alone in a room in a StaHo, a hammer can ward off the worst kinds of intrusions.
    Her attention drifts back to Thor. He still doesn’t seem to have sensed her presence, and she tires of waiting.
    Stretching till her foot reaches the back of his chair, she gives it a good kick.
    He jerks forward, and then swivels his chair. His fingers fly.
    I knew you were there, B.
    When he signs the letter B , his fingertips curl like a claw, his name for her. She grins. No other kid would dare give her a nickname, but she likes him making a weapon of hers.
    How? she signs, and laughs when he indicates the mirror near his computer, facing the door. She laughs again when he mocks her by thumping his clawed B hand across his forearm. So he’d also felt her enter the room. Thor always knows. She would be suspicious of anyone else so observant—but there’s no one she trusts more than Thor.
    You’re gonna freak when I tell you what I discovered, Brooklyn signs.
    He sighs, spinning his chair closer to the bed. You can’t be in here, B. And I can’t keep wiping the demerits from your records. I told you to talk to me at dinner.
    He signs with an American Sign Language abbreviated by the home dialect all the StaHo deaf kids use. They’ve been friends since she stood up for him on the playground nearly ten years ago, so Brooklyn can extrapolate what she sees into her hearing-world’s English.
    She signs slower than he does, but her fingers jab the air insistently. We need to talk NOW. Teachers met in the headmaster’s office. He wants kids ranked this afternoon. On a Sunday.
    His eyebrows raise. Probably the state wants more data to feed their paperwork monster.
    She knows he doesn’t believe that. After all, he’s the one who suspected something was going on. For just the top two floors? she signs.
    He sucks in a breath and nods. He understands as she does. Only kids thirteen and older live on the top floors.
    Another harvesting so soon?  . . . His fingers trail off, and his gaze meets hers.
    Budget cuts? Brooklyn suggests. So StaHo sends another batch of kids to the harvest camps? It’s something they’ve never done before. Keeping the size of the home’s population consistent has always been at issue—around ten kids go every six months or so—but culling kids because of budget cuts? She looks to Thor, hoping he’ll laugh at the very idea or just shake his head at how preposterous it is. But there’s a seriousness to him now that makes her frown.
    They meet eyes, and Brooklyn stops signing. Now she mouths the words for him, slowly. Solemnly. You know something I don’t?
    The teachers make Thor speak in class, or at least they try to. Everywhere else he only signs. Brooklyn never makes him read her lips unless she needs to read him. See his