Salvation City Read Online Free Page A

the radio, Tracy says, “Isn’t it something, how he doesn’t sound a bit nervous? I could never do that, knowing all those people out there were listening to my every word.”
    “Me, neither,” says Cole. And he remembers that first day of school, standing up in front of his new classmates.
     
     
     
    No, his mother was not working right now. Yes, he liked their new house. The house belonged to the college where his father was teaching, and it was much bigger than the apartment they’d had in Chicago, and now they could have a dog. A sheepdog was what he wanted.
    The bully with closed eyes popped them open at this and exchanged a sneer with the other bully, and Cole figured a sheepdog must be a girly breed.
    He has no idea why he lied. In fact, they’d had a dog in Chicago, an old basset hound named Sadie (full name: Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands), who’d died in her sleep a few months before they moved. And though it was true Cole wanted a new dog, he hadn’t decided on any particular breed. So what made him say sheepdog?
    Cole didn’t tell the class his parents were getting divorced. Though she’d quit her beloved job at the theater and put all her energy into moving and getting them settled in their new home, his mother was planning to leave.
    It was her secret, but Cole had found out about it.
    If he had shared this with the class the other kids probably wouldn’t have cared, but the teacher might have been pissed. It would have been one of those times—and Cole has learned such times are not rare—when you got in trouble not for lying but for blurting out the whole truth.
    It never even occurred to him to tell his father what he’d heard his mother tell Addy on the phone.
    He didn’t know if he’d be leaving Little Leap, too. If it was just divorce his mother was looking for or Total Freedom.
    What if she was planning to go all the way to New York? Or Berlin, which Addy always made sound like the coolest place on the planet. (According to Addy, New York City was finished .)
    He couldn’t ask his mother about any of this. Not because he was afraid she’d be angry at him for eavesdropping but because he figured knowing he knew the truth would only make her more upset than she already was.
    In any case, as far as he knew, the plan was for him to finish middle school and then go away to some boarding school, location not yet decided.
    Sometimes he thought he could not wait for that day; other times he prayed it would never come.
    When it was over, the teacher made him stand and squirm for a few seconds, just so he’d know his performance had been unsatisfactory. Finally allowed to return to his seat, which had to be directly in front of one of the bullies, Cole realized he had sweat through his shirt.
    The teacher asked the class to tell Cole something about his new state. They shouted out things like Hoosiers and Indy 500, as if he’d come from some foreign country instead of right next door.
    The crossroads of America .
    He knew about Michael Jackson and Larry Bird and Indiana Jones (and that he had nothing to do with Indiana the state). His father had made him read Kurt Vonnegut. He had never heard of James Dean.
     
     
     
    Try to think of it as an adventure.
    The same desks and chairs. The same scuffed linoleum floors. The same smells (BO, new sneakers, mac and cheese).
    The same bullies. The same whispering girls.
    The new school was not really much of an adventure.
    Until everyone started getting sick.

    THE SCHOOL STANK OF LYSOL, and several times a day they all had to line up and wash their hands. Clean hands save lives was the message being hammered into them. When it came to spreading infection, they were informed, they themselves—school kids—were the biggest culprits. Even if you weren’t sick yourself, you could shed germs and make other people sick. Cole was struck by the word shed . The idea that he could shed invisible germs the way Sadie shed dog hairs was awesome to him. He