Going Dark Read Online Free Page B

wouldn’t hire anyone under sixteen.
    I took my temperature.
    103.
    I wiped sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand, and then headed to math, money still weighing heavily on my mind. Minimum wage was $8.25. I worked through the budget on my notepad while the teacher droned on about something. It was a review of what we learned last year, and I knew all of that stuff.
    $8.25 times twenty hours per week, times four weeks in a month: $660. I could work twenty hours a week—that was what all of the jobs I saw online offered. Evenings and weekends. I could do my homework late at night, or when I wasn’t working on Saturday and Sunday.
    Maybe I could be a waitress and work for tips. I’d seen some of those jobs posted, too, and that might bring in even more money.
    Would an extra six or seven hundred dollars a month help keep my family from going bankrupt?
    â€œMiss Torreón?”
    I looked up from my notebook to see Mr. Vargas standing a few feet in front of my desk. The whole class was looking at me.
    â€œI hate to interrupt, Lucretia,” he said, “but do you want to join us?”
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said, wiping again at the sweat on my face and temples.
    â€œAre you feeling all right?”
    â€œI’m fine.” I knew I could go to the nurse and be sent home, but I also knew what Mama would say—she’d said it all this morning.
    â€œThen would you like to show the class how to factor this polynomial?”
    My stomach fell. I wanted to get out of that room—to be anywhere besides standing at the board. I still felt like I was burning up, sweat dripping down my back and plastering my hair to the sides of my face. The last thing I wanted was attention.
    â€œDon’t worry,” he said. “This is all catch-up from last year.” He turned my notebook and inspected it. “And it looks like you’ve been doing math, even if you haven’t been following along.”
    He handed me a green dry-erase marker and pointed to the whiteboard.
    An equation was written in red.
    x 2 -2 x -15
    Factoring. I knew how to do this. I’d done it a hundred times last year. Probably more than that.
    I held the green marker in my hand tightly and pressed its tip to the board.
    Why hadn’t I been paying attention?
    I drew two pairs of parentheses. That was how you always started.
    A drop of sweat broke free from the back of my neck and dribbled down my spine.
    Did factoring even matter? Papa didn’t factor at his job; I was sure of it. Celia didn’t have to factor to take tickets at the RealityFlux show at the Luxor.
    Focus. I needed to start with the fifteen.
    I wiped the side of my face. The marker felt wet and slippery in my hand.
    Fifteen was divisible by what? One and fifteen.
    I should just hand Mr. Vargas this marker and go back to my seat, or leave. Go home. Go to my aunt’s house. Go to the fire department and tell them what actually happened at the house. Go to a doctor and ask how my hand could have been in the middle of a fire—holding a piece of burning wood—and not get a single blister.
    â€œWe’re waiting, Lucretia,” Mr. Vargas said.
    Fifteen is divisible by what? Three and five.
    I felt a drip on my arm, and for a moment it stung. I looked at my hand.
    The marker was melting, dripping plastic over my thumb and down my forearm.
    I shrieked and dropped it.
    And then it felt like I was flying forward, like all the weight of my body was hurtling through my arm and hand and out of my fingers, like a stopper had just been pulled from a drain. Like the gates at a horse race had snapped open, releasing the tensed energy of a dozen raging thoroughbreds. A blast of light burst right in front of me, arcing from my hand and across the wall.
    I fell backward into the desks, pain bouncing through my still-healing head as I hit the floor. There were screams all around me and I struggled to stand.
    Smoke was billowing up to