The Project Read Free Page A

the gadgets and he wouldn’t have to pay for them. ButTommy said he didn’t want to wait that long.
    Now Luke examined the MP3 player closely, trying to work out what secret it was keeping. He couldn’t see anything unusual.
    “What is it?” Luke asked. “Looks like an MP3 player.”
    “Looks like, but it isn’t,” Tommy said mysteriously.
    Luke tried to act surprised.
    Tommy said, “It’s a two-way radio, disguised as an MP3 player. The microphone is hidden here”—it was cleverly concealed about halfway down the earphone cable, where the cable split into two—“and you listen through the earphones. You can have a conversation with someone and people think you are just listening to music.”
    “Wouldn’t they wonder why you were talking to your MP3 player?”
    “Just pretend like you’re singing along,” Tommy said.
    “Nobody would believe that,” Luke said.
    “Why not?”
    “Have you ever heard me sing?”
    Tommy laughed. Luke slung the gadget around his neck and put on his gloves.
    Tommy always had the coolest toys.
    “I’ll shovel, if you like,” Luke said. That looked like the harder of the two jobs.
    “I can handle it,” Tommy said.
    Luke shrugged, then grabbed a sack and held it underneath the cone.
    Tommy dug the shovel into the sand and emptied it into the cone.
    Luke quickly learned to keep the mouth of the sack tight around the cone; otherwise the sand came out in clouds and got into his mouth and nose and hair.
    When the bag was full, they each grabbed an end and hauled it over to the pallet.
    “That’s one,” Luke said.
    “That’s awesome, dude,” Tommy said, and they stood and looked at it for a moment.
    “How many do you think we need?” Tommy asked, glancing down at the line of bags by the river.
    “That depends on how high they want to build the wall,” Luke said. “And how deep. If the base is four sandbags wide and they—”
    Tommy held up a hand, stopping him. “One down,” he said.
    “No worries, bro,” Luke said. “Let’s finish off the rest and go home.”
    Down by the river, another group was working in pairs, unloading the sandbags from the pallets and stacking them on the beginnings of the river wall, under the direction of some guys with clipboards and pens, who Luke assumed were engineers from the county.
    Even Ms. Sheck turned up after a while, in a tank top and pair of cutoff jeans. She must have gone home to get changed. Her hair had finally escaped from the constraints of school policy and was jutting out at odd angles in all directions. Her wrists were covered with multicolored bangles, and she had a silver stud in the side of her nose and a tattoo of a roaring lion on her upper arm. She would have lookedmore in place at a rock concert than in a classroom. Luke caught himself staring and quickly turned back to his work.
    “Luke, one, two, this is Tommy, three, four. How copy? Over.” Tommy’s voice sounded in the earpieces of the secret MP3 walkie-talkie.
    “I’m standing right here,” Luke said.
    Tommy stopped digging. He pointed at the walkie-talkie and cupped his ear as if he couldn’t hear.
    Luke sighed and pressed the hidden TALK button. “Loud and clear, bro.”
    “Copy that, Luke, one, two,” Tommy said, and nodded at Ms. Sheck. “Can you believe she’s got a tat? Over.”
    “She sure looks different without her teacher clothes on,” Luke said, waving at her. She smiled, her hands full of sandbag, sharing the load with a guy with his shirt off.
    “Oh, and you’ve seen her without her clothes on?” Tommy said. “Awesome!”
    “You wish,” Luke said.
    “This is her first year teaching,” Tommy said. “I wonder what she did before.”
    “Probably a hired assassin,” Luke said.
    “Or a spy for the CIA,” Tommy said.
    “Or a stripper,” Luke suggested.
    Tommy grinned and dug the shovel back into the sand.
    The afternoon wore on. The trucks full of sand kept coming. The piles of sacks did not seem to diminish.
    Luke