Viral Nation by Shaunta Grimes Read Free Book Online Page A

you’d know,” she said.
    “Right.” Heather knelt and petted Mango on the head. “’Cause we’re the weird ones.”
    “Don’t touch him.”
    “But he’s so cute.” Heather’s brown eyes narrowed slightly, but her lips turned up into a wide grin. Clover looked from her eyes to her mouth and back again.
She’s not my friend.
A smile didn’t always mean friendship. Another difficult primary school lesson.
    “He’s working.” She moved Mango away from Heather. “He’s not a pet when he’s working.”
    “Oh, he’s
working
. Well, why didn’t you say so?”
    Heather reached over to the table and grabbed a piece of chocolate. Before Clover could stop either of them, Mango had gobbled it up. “Its your payday, boy.”
    “You’re going to make him sick!” Clover’s hands flapped at her waist, trying to get her head and her body on the same page. A thousand thoughts flew around her brain, like butterflies caughtin a net, careening off her brain and shooting off orders to her body in a disorganized puke of neurons and synapses.
    Just breathe. In, one, two, out, one, two. Breathe.
She would not lose it here. Not here. She had to calm down.
    She almost got there, too, before Heather pressed a chocolate into the front of her mother’s dress and ground it in with the heel of her hand, squirting bright red glaze over the yellow fabric and bruising Clover’s collarbone.
    Anger flooded Clover, pushing out her attempts at self-restraint. “What the hell is
wrong
with you!”
    Heather stood next to Wendy, who was laughing with another girl. She leaned close enough that her breath brushed Clover’s cheek. Clover stumbled back a step, barely containing the urge to double her fist and put it
through
Heather’s face.
    “You don’t belong here, Clover Donovan,” Heather said. “We all know that. Why don’t you just go home to your brother?”
    “Send her brother to me,” the third girl said. Clover’s anger hid the girl’s name, even though she’d gone all the way through primary school with her. Holly? Polly?
    “Leave her alone,” said a boy, one of the few Clover didn’t recognize.
    “Oh great, now the freak has a boyfriend.” Heather rolled her eyes and started to walk away. The heels on her shoes were twice as high as Clover’s, but she didn’t wobble. Not even once. Wendy and the other girl followed like sheep.
    “Molly,” Clover mumbled, suddenly remembering who the other girl was. She was on the verge of tears but fought hard to keep them back. Never let them see you cry. Any sign of weakness put them into a feeding frenzy.
    She rubbed at the stain on her dress with a paper napkin instead, and managed to make the mess considerably worse.
    “Don’t let them get to you,” the boy said after Wendy andHeather moved off to where their friends waited to congratulate them on their successful bullying.
    “Yeah, right.”
    “I’m Jude,” he said.
    She tossed the soiled napkin on the table. “Clover.”
    He wasn’t nearly as tall as West but still maybe five or six inches taller than her five foot nothing. He had dark hair and olive skin with a thick scar that ran from his left ear to the corner of his mouth.
    He was the only other person in the room not wearing the Academy uniform. He wore the same red canvas pants and white shirt that every Foster City kid Clover had ever seen had on. The red made him stand out, like he had a beacon on him.
    “What happened to your face?” she asked. His fingers went to the scar and Clover winced. Why couldn’t she ever get things to come out the right way? “I’m sorry.”
    Jude put his hand down and held his fingers out for Mango to sniff. Clover hoped her dog wasn’t going to be sick from the chocolate.
    “It’s okay,” Jude said. “We almost all come out of Foster City with scars.”
    “That happened in Foster City?”
    Jude shrugged. “My house father was a sick son of a bitch.”
    Clover looked at the scar again. It was deep and almost as