Joshua Dread Read Online Free Page B

dad move into this, like, castle outside town. She doesn’t have a mom. No brothers or sisters either. Just the two of them in this enormous house. And the stuff they were moving. He’d never seen anything like it before.”
    “What kind of stuff?”
    Lowering her voice, the girl telling the story leaned across the table. The others did the same. Milton and I craned our necks to listen.
    “Weird stuff,” she whispered. “They had three entire moving vans full of flat-screen TVs. At least two hundred of them. And there were other things too. One truck was full of boxes that were completely empty. I mean, who brings an entire truck full of empty boxes?”
    Taking a bite of my sandwich, I couldn’t help wondering if any of this was actually true. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Milton sipping his chocolate milk and trying to listen without seeming conspicuous.
    “Wanna know the craziest thing, though?” The girl paused long enough to snap her gum. “Outside the house, there were guard towers. With machine guns.”
    The entire table gasped. Milton spit out his milk.Luckily the Cafeteria Girls were too immersed in the story to notice.
    “Machine guns? Why?”
    “That’s the point. Nobody knows. So I’m thinking that Sophie Smith is the daughter of, like, some mob boss who really likes TV or maybe a superwealthy guy who collects weird stuff for no reason and worries a lot about security, or maybe—”
    “Shhh. Here she comes.”
    The table went silent. I snuck a glance at Sophie as she passed our table. Light swam in her blue-gray eyes. Holding her food tray with one hand, she pushed a strand of blond hair out of her face with the other.
    She scanned the room, looking for a place to sit. For a second I felt sorry for her. First day in a new school without any friends. I’d been there before.
    I was about to offer Sophie a seat at our table—it would have been worth it just to see the looks on the Cafeteria Girls’ faces. But before I could say anything, she turned and walked outside.

    Rumors spread about Sophie Smith like a bad case of acne. People said that her dad was a celebrity in hiding. That she’d spent the last several years in an exclusive private school for the children of powerful parents. Thatshe was an antisocial weirdo. That she only talked to the kids of other famous people. That her dad moved to Sheepsdale to get away from the paparazzi …
    But in the end, they were just rumors. Sophie and her father were a mystery. A mystery everyone in school seemed to know about.

    When I got to seventh period, I took a seat at the back of the room. Joey and Brick were at their usual desks in the middle of the class (the most beneficial spot for cheating purposes). As soon as I sat down, they turned around in their desks and stared at me. I tried to block them out, but that wasn’t so easy.
    “I think Joey and Brick are trying to get your attention,” Milton said, poking me on the shoulder.
    “I know that, Milton.” I focused on my desk. “I’m ignoring them.”
    “Brick just rolled up his sleeves, and now he’s staring at you as he pounds his fist against the table.”
    “Thanks for the commentary.”
    “And Joey’s superangry about something. Looks like he’s writing a note. Hmm. I wonder what it says. Okay, he’s folding the note and passing it to Jade Watkins. Now she’s passing it over to Sam Berthold, and he’s passing it to … Oh— Hold on a second.”
    Sam handed the note to Milton, who took one look at it, then tapped me on the shoulder.
    “It’s for you.” Milton dropped the note on my desk.
    I unfolded the sheet of paper and glanced down at Joey’s sloppy handwriting.
              Dear Dorkface ,
                You = Dead Meat .
                    From ,
                    Joey and Brick
                P.S. Tell Milton to shut up .
    I looked up from the note when I heard a wave of whispers sweep across the classroom.