The Variables by Shelbi Wescott Read Free Book Online Page B

on each other’s schoolwork? Did their parents approve of the burgeoning love?  
    Those were not the dark worries that clouded their conversations.
    Instead, they discussed their days inside the System. At worst, they discussed a bleak future ruled by a police state under Huck’s watchful eye. At best, they discussed their ever-growing ennui.
    “I agreed, Lucy,” Grant said to her as he laid with his back against the floor of the King family apartment, tossing a spongy miniature football into the air. He missed and the ball bounced off his hands, clumsily hitting the furniture until coming to a rest by Lucy’s feet. She kicked it back to him, frowning. “Don’t look at me with that pout. You know that I can’t take it back,” he said. “I promised him. And I think he needs me, you know? I think he likes having me there.”
    Lucy grumbled and shook her head. “I fought hard to get you out of that lab.”
    “We lied to get me out of that lab.”
    Her eyes darted to the ceiling, then to the door, as if she expected the guards to descend upon their fraud like rabid dogs. “Hey...you just can’t...Cass said...”
    Grant sighed and sat up. “Okay, okay.” He palmed the football and then tossed it under his left elbow, aiming for Lucy, but he missed by a foot, the ball careening into one of the dim table lamps where it knocked the shade askew. He shrugged and offered her a sheepish grin. “I want to help your dad. I like working with him in the lab, okay? It gives me something to do ...I grew up on a farm, Lucy. I’m accustomed to being made to feel useful. I hate being holed up down here, but if I am? Might as well learn a trade.”
    “Oh, yeah?” Lucy raised her eyebrows. “You think in the future, scientists doing studies on human tissue will be a lucrative profession?”
    “Will there be professions on the Islands?” Grant asked, changing the subject.
    Lucy hummed and shrugged. She didn’t know anything about the Islands.  
    “I’m kinda excited. About the Islands,” Grant continued. “Anything is better than this, right?”
    “I’m sure that’s the point,” she replied.
    Grant looked wounded. He crawled over to his abandoned football and grabbed it in his right hand, bringing it up into the air, letting it drop, and catching it with his left hand. Then he repeated the process, the ball falling into his hands with soft thuds. When he tired of the game, he let the football roll away, and he crawled up onto the King’s couch next to Lucy. She rolled her head over to him and smiled a tight-lipped smile.  
    “You’re grumpy,” Grant whispered.  
    And Lucy couldn’t fully deny it, but she sighed and turned her body to face him, tucking her bare toes under his legs. Grant draped an arm over her knees and leaned back against the couch. His coarse blond hair stuck straight up at his crown. She loved that cowlick, and she loved how it gave the vague impression that Grant was still a rambunctious child, too concerned with living his life to comb his hair.
    “I’m not grumpy . That makes me sound like an insolent teenager. I’m worried . And there’s too much to worry about right now without you deciding to go work for my father. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that you forgot he was trying to kill you.”
    “But he didn’t.” Grant shrugged, as if that was the only thing that mattered.
    The door to the King apartment burst open in a whoosh of sound and activity. Galen entered first, holding the hand of Harper, whose hair was neatly wrapped into two bursting topknots. He looked at Grant and Lucy and rolled his eyes.
    “Were you kissing? Please tell me you weren’t kissing,” Galen mumbled as he swung his hand free of Harper.
    “Ewww, kissing,” Harper repeated and then promptly stuck her thumb into her mouth, sucking away, her index finger curling around her nose.
    Maxine entered next, her body laboring under the weight of a sleeping Teddy. The young child’s head was tucked