Taker Read Online Free Page A

the more Jason said stupid things, the cuter Nicole seemed to find him. That made no sense at all.
    Deep down, Ben had known what getting up to go to the bathroom would mean. But he had to get away. Ben excused himself and walked toward the bathrooms, but nobody noticed.
    There was a line from the plane’s bathroom to the aisle, and all the while standing in it, Ben had felt torn — half glad not to be playing fifth wheel to Nicole and the guy who’d introduced himself as Jason, the other half of him annoyed by Jason muscling in.
    As he made his way back along the aisles, Ben felt a new twinge of annoyance: Jason wasn’t standing in the aisle; he was making himself comfortable in Ben’s seat. That was bad enough, but would he move if asked? Ben had studiously avoided this kind of scenario at school, chiefly by scarfing his lunch quickly, or by taking a corner table in the cafeteria with less-threatening people wherever possible.
    Drawing himself up as he’d seen cowboys and certain animals do, Ben approached Nicole and Jason with what he hoped was a little alpha swagger to his stride. As he reached them, Nicole was laughing raucously at a joke her new companion had made. Her eyes were sparkling in a way Ben hadn’t seen before. Why didn’t she ever look at him that way?
    “Excuse me.”
    Ben stared down at Jason, who turned his blue eyes innocently upward. Ben felt irritated just looking at his face. He gestured at the seat, his point made.
    Jason’s face suddenly broke into an honest expression of shock.
    “Oh, I’m so sorry. My bad,” Jason said, lifting his can of soda off Ben’s tablet. This was almost too much for Ben — monopolizing Nicole and using his tablet as a coaster?
    Amy, amused at what was happening to Ben, held a fixed expression of delight, and she decided it was time to introduce Jason to the rest of the “family.”
    “Well, hello there. We haven’t been introduced.” She held out her hand to Jason. He shook it.
    “Jason.”
    “Jason. Sweet. I’m Amy, Nix’s BFF.”
    Nicole winced as she moved to give Jason and Amy room for greetings. As anticipated, the flight was having an adverse effect on her leg wound. She caught a look of concern on Jason’s face, and, trying to shrug off her pain, made a more casual effort when she sat back down.
    “You OK?” He placed his hand on her arm. The effect was of a small firework going off and tingling through every vein. She had to take a pause before replying with a near-frantic nod.
    Jason kept his hand on her arm. It gave Nicole a moment of hope.
    “Yes, I’m fine.”
    Nicole then turned to Ben, and her expression changed. It wasn’t the way she looked at Jason. Nicole looked at Ben the way Ben’s sister would when asking him for a big favor.
    “Is it OK if Jason sits here? Just for a little bit?”
    “Sure,” was all Ben could say.
    Jason handed Ben his tablet, still paused on the opening of Game of Thrones . “Oh, these are yours, too,” Jason said as he gathered up Ben’s headphones and the tablet’s various cords. As if that were all Ben had to be concerned about.
    For a moment, Ben just stood there holding his tablet uselessly. If he could have crawled away, he would have, but instead he aimed for the nearest empty aisle seat a few rows up and plunked himself down, defeated.
    The guy sitting by the window glanced over at him briefly and then stared back out the window.
    “This OK? I didn’t see anyone here on takeoff?”
    “Yeah. Whatever.” The man looked at him again.
    Ben noticed beads of sweat on the man’s balding head. Nervous flyer, perhaps?
    “My wife. She didn’t come,” the man added.
    “Oh. Sorry.”
    The guy shrugged and turned back to the window.
    Ben could still hear Nicole and Jason’s voices above the hum of the jet engines. Jason was explaining to Nicole how, the previous Christmas, he had managed to play off his two sets of parents to end up with not one but two tablets. This was the second tablet,