Arrival Read Online Free Page A

hall and started checking through the whole house room by room, trying not to think too much about what might happen if there actually was someone else in here.
    But the whole house was deserted. Nothing missing. Nothing even moved. And I couldn’t see any sign of someone forcing their way in.
    Except for the envelope sitting on my bed.
    I went back into my room and picked it up, turning it over in my hands. No name, no address. There was something small and solid sliding around inside. I tore open the envelope and tipped the thing into my hand.
    It was a USB memory stick. Expensive-looking. Silver stainless steel. There were two letters on the side that looked like they’d been scratched into the metal with a paperclip: J.B.
    Someone’s initials, maybe? The original owner’s?
    But why would they go to all the trouble of breaking into my house and delivering me a secret message or whatever, if the initials on the stick were just going to lead me straight back to them?
    I pulled out my new laptop and drummed my fingers on the desk as it started up. My mind was flashing back to every movie I’d ever seen about an apparently normal kid being contacted by a secret spy agency or told they had hidden superpowers.
    Don’t be an idiot. It’s probably just …
    But I had no idea what it probably was.
    The computer finally finished loading and I plugged in the USB. A folder popped up on the screen, showing the contents of the stick. There was only one file on it:
    intSC1002A_lhunter.doc
    L. Hunter. So this was definitely meant for me.
    I opened up the file. It was a huge stream of garbled text, pages and pages of it, like someone had let their two-year-old loose on the computer and sent me the results.
    I tried opening the file up in another program.
    Nothing.
    Maybe this was all just a prank. Some stupid mind game that the kids at school played with new arrivals. But how could they have got inside the house?
    Then I remembered something: the principal, Ms Pryor, hadn’t been around today. Could she have had something to do with this?
    Yes, Luke, your new school principal (who you’ve never even met) took the day off school to sneak into your house and drop off a memory stick filled with gibberish.
    And make your bed.
    Right. That made sense.
    I closed my eyes and dropped back into my chair. This was going nowhere.
    But then I thought back to our computer studies lesson from that afternoon. We’d been given the whole period to turn some climate change data into a graph, but Peter had finished in about four seconds. Maybe he’d have more luck with this.
    Obviously a phone call wasn’t an option, but Mrs Stapleton had said that the town’s intranet was still working. I found Peter’s address in the town directory and emailed him about the USB, trying to sound as casual as possible, not wanting to give him another excuse to accuse me of worrying over nothing. I attached the garbled file and hit send.
    While I was at it, I tried sending an email through to Dad. It bounced straight back.
    I spun around in my chair and my eyes landed back on my neatly made bed. Somehow, those perfectly tucked-in sheets added a whole other layer of creepiness. I mean, why bother? Surely being a mysterious stalker was weird enough without being a neat freak as well.
    I glanced over my shoulder, trying to shake the feeling of unseen eyes bearing down on me, and went back to my schoolbag. Already, I had a ton of homework to do. Four pages of trigonometry questions and a research assignment on cyclones.
    I tried to make a start on it all, but with everything else buzzing around in my head, it was impossible to concentrate and I wound up lying on my bed watching TV instead.
    There was nothing on. As in, literally nothing. Every channel I flipped to was just a white screen with a Shackleton Co-operative logo that said, 150 Satellite Channels COMING SOON !
    I finally came across the one channel that was