Rivals by David Wellington Read Free Book Online

can you
still be drinking!”
    Eventually,
Brent managed to pull her away before she could do anything worse. They headed
home, jumping back the way they’d come but it wasn’t a game anymore. When they
made it back to their house and climbed back in through Brent’s window, Maggie
was shaking. She stood in the door of his room and looked down at her
fingernails.
    “I wanted to
kill him,” she said.
    “I know,”
Brent told her.
    “After all
this time I haven’t forgiven or forgotten anything. I don’t think I can. I
think there’s something wrong with me.”
    “No,” Brent
told her. “That’s not true.”
    “I could kill
people, now, pretty easily,” she said. “With these new powers? I could have
punched him a couple of times and that would have been all it took. I could
have picked him up, jumped to the top of the bank building downtown, and
dropped him over the side. I could have—”
    “But you
didn’t,” Brent told her.
    She went back
to her room without saying more.

Chapter 11.
     
    In the morning
Weathers was waiting for them when they came downstairs.
    Brent and
Maggie were already dressed, already had their backpacks on. Maggie had been
working her Sidekick hard all morning, texting with one thumb while she brushed
her teeth—making contact with her friends whom she hadn’t seen since
before Dad died, figuring out who she would eat lunch with at school. Brent
had already started worrying about how far behind he was going to be in
Algebra, having missed more than a week of classes. Both of them were in a
hurry to get to school.
    School was
just going to have to wait.
    Grandma had
made a pot of tea, and set out a simple breakfast. Toast and jelly and a
platter of scrambled eggs. Weathers was sitting at their kitchen table dabbing
at the corners of his mouth with a napkin.
    “You two have
fun last night?” he asked, as they came into the kitchen.
    Maggie took
off her backpack and set it by the door. She knew what that tone of voice
meant. Dad had never been much of a disciplinarian but he was a parent and he
could always let you know when you were in trouble with a single look or a few
softly-spoken words. This felt exactly the same as that.
    “Oh, come on!”
she said. “We were just getting some exercise. There was a whole presentation
at school last year about how the President wants us to get more exercise
outdoors. Don’t you work for the President?”
    Even Brent
couldn’t help but smirk at that. He quickly pulled himself together, though.
    “There are
damaged roofs all over town. One house lost its chimney last night,” Weathers
said. “The owner said it sounded like a bomb hit his house. The owner of the
Gilbert Brothers Junkyard tells me he doesn’t know what happened, but it’s
going to cost him good money to repair all the damage.”
    “What?” Brent
said. “That’s not fair! That was all broken down junk we were playing with.
We couldn’t possibly have damaged it any more than it was already.”
    “So you admit
you were there last night? I wasn’t sure, I was just hoping you might have
some information,” Weathers said.
    Maggie’s heart
sank in her chest. Smooth move, bro .
    “We don’t
admit to anything,” she said, before Brent could get them in any more trouble.
“If you have any questions for us, we want a lawyer here before we say anything
else.”
    Weathers
sighed and took another bite of eggs. He chewed very slowly and then took a
newspaper out of the inside pocket of his jacket. He unrolled it and threw it
on the table where they could both see it. The front page was taken up almost
entirely by a grainy black and white picture of Maggie holding a broken-down
car over her head while Brent raced backwards to catch it. The headline read
simply WHO ARE THEY?
    “The picture
was taken with a cell phone camera in poor lighting conditions. There’s not
enough detail for the local police to identify either of you,” he said,
reaching for a tea cup. “I