Jacked Read Free Page B

told his uncle.
    Despite all that, what he really wanted was to be able to do things with people his own age. He dreamed about someone to tell stories with, to laugh with when they did something stupid. He wanted what had been taken away from him by The Crash.
    Tar walked past the school and turned down the side street toward the far side. This was where the older kids had class and it was where Toby met him during free period. Tar sat on the concrete wall on the edge of the yard and waited.
    Once, when he was younger, his uncle had found out he had been to the school and whispered a warning into his Tar’s ear, which he had found scarier than if Jahn had yelled at him. “Don’t ever go there,” he’d said, and told him the other kids or teachers would turn him in to the Black Shirts if they found out what he was. When Jahn accepted he could not keep Tar away from the school, short of tying him up in the apartment each day when he left for work, his uncle had told him to keep his hands in his pockets and not touch anything, especially something that needed fixed.
    Tar saw some students leaving the building. He retrieved the tablet from his backpack and placed it at the base of the wall, then he moved over about three feet and sat down. Toby would run over as soon as he saw him, but just in case a nosy teacher came by first he didn’t want anything in his backpack out of the ordinary. There was always a possibility someone else might see the tablet and claim it. If so, he would not stop them. It was safer to just let the app go than get caught with it.
    Toby sprinted out of the school, leaping off the steps and landing on the sidewalk without breaking stride. His long blonde hair flew from side to side as he looked back at the boy following him. Tar recognized the trailer, a boy everyone called Shovel. Toby had told him one time that only his mother called him Clarence. Anyone else ended up with a broken nose or a black eye. Shovel stood a foot taller and at least a hundred pounds heavier than Tar so there was no way he would ever call him by his real name.
    “Hey, Tar!”
    “How ya doin’, Toby?”
    “Chilly. You remember Shovel, don’t ya?”
    The two boys nodded to each other, Tar craning his head back to look up at Shovel’s face.
    “You’re the lucky one, aren’t you?”
    Tar pulled his eyebrows together and tilted his head to one side.
    “What?”
    “You know, lucky. You’re lucky because you don’t have to sit inside that school every day.”
    “I guess so,” said Tar.
    “Hey! What’s this?” Toby could act surprised better than anyone. It was also his way of protecting his friend in case someone else was listening.
    “Oh, chilly!” said Shovel. His voice dropped down to what passed for a whisper for him. “Is it app or is it brick?”
    Toby pushed the button on the corner and a few seconds later tones rang out from the machine as it blinked to life.
    “It’s app.” Toby gave Tar a smile. “You don’t know how much this is gonna help me. My grades haven’t been too good.”
    “It’s too bad that the air is dead,” said Shovel, his eyes never leaving the machine. “If the air was still alive we could jack in and bam ! Automagically you know all the answers, just like that.”
    “You know we couldn’t have jacked in,” said Toby. “Nobody under the age of eighteen. Dad said those were the rules.”
    “Like we haven’t got around the rules before.” Shovel laughed and Toby joined him.
    “Yeah, you gotta wonder what it was like,” Toby agreed after a few seconds. “Think of a question, any question, and the answer is right there for you. No grepping around.”
    Tar had stayed quiet while the other two talked, dreaming about what life had been like before The Crash.
    “Yeah, it would’ve been great,” he said softly, “Right up until you went hard boot.”
    “Oh, wow. Or you went zom,” agreed Shovel, never noticing the look on Tar’s face. “That would’ve been worse.