Young Squatters Read Online Free PDF Page A

phone?  I have just arrived home and have no idea what is going on.  There are two kids with a truck taking items into our home.  Did you have a hand in this?  Is there something you’re not telling me?  I need you to come home right away to sort this mess out,”
    When Nora had hung up the phone, she decided to also send Nick a text message.  There was probably more of a chance of him reading the text than listening to her voicemail.  She wouldn’t consider calling his work phone; he rarely answered his messages there, either, especially if they were from her.  It had always frustrated her that Nick was not available on the phone during the day, but she hoped he would sense the urgency in her voice, and in the messages, and come home immediately.
    Somehow, she doubted it.  She didn’t like the feeling of knowing that her husband probably would consider her messages just more nagging problems and not answer them at all, until he got home that night, claiming that he had been busy all day.
     
    ***
     
    Nick felt a buzzing in his pants.  He was in the middle of a conference call with some of his lawyers, debating next steps on an intellectual property action.  Annoyed, he inconspicuously slid the phone from his pocket and looked at it.  A missed call and a voicemail from his wife, followed up by a text.  “Come home.  NOW!”  He noticed the time.  Three-thirty.  What the hell?  He’d told her he’d be working late, and he couldn’t very well end this call early, especially since he had been late this morning.
    He loosened his tie again, feeling hot and tired.  He had drawn the curtains in his large office, hoping that blocking the sun would help with the heat, but to no avail.  The air conditioning in the building had been out for the last couple of weeks, making things worse.  He wondered if the fat on his belly resulted in better insulation; maybe he needed to get some short-sleeved dress shirts, even though Nora said those made him look old.  He felt half tempted to take off his shirt completely, but thought better of it.  What would those young secretaries think if they came in here with a message for him and they saw his big hairy body?
    “Nick, you still there?” the voice of William Powell, an important man in the lawyer world, interrupted his thoughts.
    “Yeah,” he cleared his throat, trying to breathe through what felt like a stifling heat now.  “Yes, William.  Do go on.”
    He tried to concentrate on the conference call, but his mind was on his wife now.  She had never understood the importance of his job.  He has lost count of the number of times he had told her he did not want any interruptions during the day.  “Come home.  NOW!”  She really did not understand him at all; did she really think he could walk out midway through a conference call?  He assumed she was angry about Sarah, or something.  Probably she had come home to a messy house and she didn’t like that one bit.
    There was no way he was going to leave early.  What with the late start and his problems concentrating in the heat, he was in no position to call his own hours.
    No, that was it; he was not going to let his wife distract him from his work.  He turned the phone onto silent so he would not be distracted anymore.  He was sure there would be further calls or texts throughout the day.
    Nick put all thoughts of his wife out of his mind and started debating with the lawyers on the conference call.
    Nick did not see nor hear the flashing of his mobile phone for the rest of the day.  Instead, all of the calls and urgent texts from his wife went unnoticed until he finished work hours later.
     
    ***
     
    As Colin stared at the empty desk to his right in his Computer Networking and Systems class, he wondered what had happened to his friend.  It had been a week since he had seen Bradford, and he couldn’t figure out what had happened.  There had been no indication that his friend was sick, or that