Tesla's Attic (9781423155126) by Neal Shusterman Read Free Book Online Page A

what’s for lunch.”
    Calmly, Caitlin turned the machine off, wrapped it in the tarp, then carried it out back and dropped the entire thing in the trash.
    Then she went to her bedroom, closed the curtains, and hid beneath the covers.
    The device remained in the trash for an entire ninety minutes before Caitlin took it out and hauled it up to her room. Any thoughts of smashing it were gone. She didn’t know what this thing was, or why it could do the thing that it did. But there was no doubt about it—somehow this old recorder took the things you said and turned them into the things you were thinking . Even more than that, the machine seemed to delve deeper, to the things you were feeling —and didn’t even know you were feeling until it played them back.
    To a girl like Caitlin, whose heart was wrapped in so many layers of disguise that she never knew exactly what she really felt, this machine was either her salvation, or her ruin.
    On Monday, as Nick struggled to fit into the school, Caitlin struggled with the tiny chink that the reel-to-reel player had put in her armor. Her well-crafted social veneer only worked if she was convinced she truly was the person she presented.
    She believed herself to be the kind of girl who didn’t play games, who said what she meant in take-it-or-leave-it terms. But the impossible nature of that tape recorder hinted that there were parts of herself she didn’t entirely know.
    Caitlin had always been a fearless girl. But this frightened her.
    Throughout the day, her thoughts kept gravitating to that new kid. Nick. The way the strange light had pulled her, and all the other people, to the garage sale.
    Nick had valiantly saved her life. She tried to imagine Theo doing the same, but she couldn’t. Not that Theo wasn’t a decent guy, he just wasn’t that kind of guy.
    There was a heightened sense of something surrounding Nick Slate. The energy of the school seemed to change around him. He even humbled Heisenberg.
    By the end of the day, it was her own interest in Nick that troubled her more than anything, so she resolved to take a healthy step away, and under no circumstances let him into her world.
    Nick’s world that afternoon had little to do with inexplicable garage-sale items and a lot to do with inexplicable math homework. In spite of Vince’s claim that the school was pathetic, it was somewhat less pathetic than Nick’s school in Tampa, because Colorado Springs eighth graders were way ahead in mathematics. Nick, in his attic room, was doing his best to get up to speed, because whether or not his principal believed it, he did in fact exist.
    Danny, on the other hand, took his official nonexistence as a no-homework pass.
    â€œIt’s not every day you get to be deleted,” he said. “I’m gonna make the most of it.”
    Nick had to admit that, for someone who didn’t exist, he had made an impression on his first day at Rocky Point Middle School. He had no idea how he would fare on his second day. Not only academically, but also socially. Caitlin came to mind—and her boyfriend. Theo was tall, mostly because of a long neck featuring an Adam’s apple the size of Nick’s fist. Nick, on the other hand, had not yet hit his growth spurt, which his father insisted was genetically inevitable.
    â€œIt’s all about perception,” his father had told him. “Think tall, and other people will think it, too.”
    Nick doubted that any kind of mind control would work on a girl like Caitlin.
    When he took a break, he went downstairs and saw his brother in the front yard, waiting for their father to come home from a day of job hunting. Danny absently tossed a baseball in the air, only catching it about half the time.
    Nick sighed. Danny had been born after their father’s major league days, but they still loomed larger than life for him. Wayne Slate had been an excellent pitcher, but unfortunately he was