Assured Destruction Read Online Free

above the warehouse.
    The upstairs was originally offices, and we converted them to a full apartment. If I ever invite friends over for a party, they all have their own offices in which to sleep. As I shove through the emergency exit door, my mom cries out and snaps her laptop closed. I stop cold.
    “You frightened me,” she says, clutching her laptop to her chest. Her wheelchair is beside her and her legs stretch out on the couch. She’s so small she barely dimples the cushions.
    I remain in the doorway. “Um … sorry, I’ll thump up the stairs louder next time.” She must have expected me to take the elevator, which is noisy and slow.
    “Good.” She seems mollified and relaxes, wrinkles smoothing from her brow. Her long fingers hook mousy brown hair away from her face.
    “What were you doing?” I walk into a large area which would have once been clogged with cubicles and cabinets. Now it is plush-carpeted and filled with two big couches, an armchair, a coffee table, and a dining section replete with IKEA table and chairs. If not for the buzzing fluorescent lighting, it would feel like a real living room.
    “Surfing the Web—you know,” she says. “Online shopping.”
    “As if,” I say, knowing my mom is not one to shop, online or otherwise. “I can find out the sites you were on in thirty seconds—I don’t even need your laptop.”
    She bristles, eyes widening. “Don’t you dare. I deserve my privacy.”
    I can tell by the straightness of her back: She’s hiding something. I decide not to press. And I won’t look at her browsing history, either, but I have a hard time not threatening her. It’s not that I’m ungrateful; I know my mom can’t do as much with the MS, but I never get a thank you from her. I work a minimum of three or four hours every day before homework, more on weekends. I don’t get paid for it. I could be designing apps or doing better in school or just being a teenager, maybe even have a boyfriend.
    My mom is still clutching the laptop with a white-knuckled grip, as if I can read the hard drive from the doorway.
    “I won’t go through your stuff,” I say.
    She swallows and flushes.
    “What—?” I ask.
    “I was on a dating site.” She says it in a rush like if she doesn’t she won’t be able to get it out.
    I clap my palm over my mouth.
    “No!” Then I laugh. “My mom is having cybersex!”
    Her flush deepens. “I didn’t say that.”
    “I’m kidding, but be careful, please!”
    “It is safe,” she says. “Actually, I’m really impressed by the people on it.”
    “Really,” I say. “Because they obviously look like the pictures they’ve sent you and are who they say they are.”
    She lets the laptop fall to her slender thighs. “Why wouldn’t they?”
    “Just saying, Mom, you don’t know.” She’s reminding me a little bit of Frannie.
    “Funny thing is,” she says in a weirdly pensive manner, “I wonder if I like it because of that too. No one can see me. My MS.”
    “And you’re the one who’s always telling me to be myself,” I say.
    She sighs and looks at me with a thin mouth. “Sit down, honey.”
    I bite my lip and take a spot in the armchair, curling my legs beneath me.
    “Up until a month ago I hadn’t gone on a date since Dad.”
    I blink my surprise. She’s been on dates in the last month I didn’t know about?
    “They’ve come over here,” she explains, sensing my distress. “I haven’t hidden them from you, but you’re always buried in your computers.”
    They?
    “To be honest, I haven’t felt very womanly since I was diagnosed, and since your dad …”
    “What? What did Dad do?” I ask. On the day they announced their separation, they had this huge fight over something. I have no idea over what and my mom has never trusted me enough to explain. Afterward, she collapsed into a major depression for a month, and I became the head of the family.
    “This isn’t about what happened,” she says. “It’s about how good I