XGeneration 1: You Don't Know Me by Brad Magnarella Read Free Book Online Page A

and a community playground. Scott used to venture up to the field from time to time until Jesse Hoag snapped his arm.
    Scott’s hand went to the place above his wrist where the bone had healed into a lump. It still swelled when he slept on it wrong, and it ached a little this morning. But his mind was preoccupied with his phone call to Wayne from the night before, those extra milliseconds between the final pulse and the ring.
    How long had the FBI been monitoring him? Who had tipped them off? How much did the feds know? How much did they need to know? Had they pen registered his line or set up a full blown tap?
    The last question didn’t matter—not really. Even if they’d only recorded the digits he’d been dialing that summer, they would know about his illicit use of 1-800 numbers. They could nail him on toll fraud. For the less fortunate hackers, the charge had meant the seizure of their equipment, thousands of bucks in fines, prison terms…
    They can’t throw you in prison. You’re only fourteen .
    But he could still end up in juvie. And juvie would mean the worst abuses he had suffered during his ten years of public schooling added together and squared. He thought about all of the playground fights, the humiliating wedgies, the two times he’d had his head crammed in a bathroom toilet and flushed on.
    His ears burned. No, he wouldn’t do well in juvie.
    And what about Wayne? With his Napoleonic size and temperament, his D&D-themed insults, where he’d throw his face forward, lips pursed (“You’re not a Night Hag ,” he’d once informed Scott during a spat. “You’re a Night Fag .”), Wayne wouldn’t last a day. And if the feds had a tap on the Spruels’ line, they were likely to have one on Wayne’s as well. Scott needed to warn him. The problem was, Wayne would want to know how he knew about the tap, and then they’d be right back to what caused their fall out in the first place.
    Ass-wad , he heard Wayne saying.
    Scott unzipped the small pocket on his backpack, took out his Thirteenth Street High class schedule, unfolded it, and ran his finger down the first column: Advanced Computer Programming , the one class he and Wayne would be in together. Third period.
    He would have to figure out some way to warn him by then without—
    Scott whipped his head around. The thundering belch, still echoing from The Downs, fell into a guttural chop-chop-chop-chop . Scott crammed his schedule into his backpack and crouched low to the bush, checking to see that every part of him was concealed.
    A minute later, the black car trundled into view, not a Crown Victoria but a 1970 Chevy Chevelle—a car whose engine signature Scott had learned well and learned to avoid. The Chevelle idled at the stop sign, the chop of its engine like crude laughter. Scott didn’t need to see through the homemade tint job to know who was behind the wheel. The collapse of the car’s frame toward the driver’s side told him everything: Jesse Hoag, all three hundred pounds of him—the same three hundred pounds that had snapped his arm the summer before.
    The Chevelle continued chop-chop-chopp ing, its wheels compressed to the pavement, not moving. When a minute passed, Scott became certain that he was spotted. He darted his gaze to the left. Could he get over the Pattersons’ wooden fence in time, knock on the sliding glass door hard enough to awaken one or both of them, and convince them to let him in?
    Jesse was too big to give chase, but Creed Bast would be in the car with him. So would Creed’s younger brother, Tyler. Both of them had tormented Scott at one time or another—and why not? Unlike Wayne, Scott knew the game; he knew the score. He was among the weakest and geekiest. He wore thick glasses and carried an inhaler until just last year. And worst of all, he owned a pair of legs that did everything but what he wanted them to do, especially in times of stress. The qualities had singled him out of the healthy herd long ago.