The Fallout Read Online Free Page A

we start talking.
    Eddy said, “School starts soon.”
    “I want to go to college,” said Lexie.
    Mom looked up at her. “I was thinking more along the lines of online school for you all. Just for this year, anyway. Until you are all used to being back.”
    Eddy looked at me, then back at Mom. “I thought we’d go back to our old school.”
    Mom shook her head. “There’s already so much speculation. I’d rather we give it a chance to all blow over.”
    “Right!” Lexie rolled her eyes. “The richest guy in America keeps his entire family prisoner underground for years, and you expect it to blow over? God, Mom, we’re never going to stop being freaks. Might as well let us out of the house to be freaks. I want to study something. Take actual dance lessons. Be a real person for once.” She shook her head. “I turn eighteen in less than three months.”
    “I realize that.” Mom sighed. “I just think it’s too soon.”
    Lexie glared down at her plate. That was the most outspoken she’d been for weeks. And I had to admit, I was actually glad to see her mad for once, after being sad for so long.
    Gram said, “Eddy was with me in Hawaii most of the time, at the local school. No one around here has seen him since you left.”
    I blurted out, “No one knows what we look like now.” I glanced at Lucas and Cara and Quinn. “And no one has ever seen them. We could use a fake name. Like you do.” Mom had been using Gram’s grandmother’s maiden name for everything: buying the house and all our online ordering. No one had any way of knowing it, and it kept the Yanakakis name off all our mail as well.
    Reese said, “Yeah! I don’t want to be online. I want friends. Mercer Island has a middle school.”
    I wasn’t sure I could see myself walking into Mercer Island High, pretending to care about making the honor roll and football games and asking someone to homecoming. After what I’d been through, how could I?
    Mom narrowed her eyes. “And what will all of you do when your friends want to see where you live? Meet your family?” She shook her head. “I just can’t allow anyone in here. I’m not ready.”
    Reese was quiet a moment, then said, “I could go to their houses until you’re ready. And by that time, they’ll be my friends and they won’t care who I am.”
    “Good luck with that.” I sighed. “People always care who you are.” I shoved my food around my plate.
    I’d spent enough of my life trapped. Even though our new place was great, I didn’t need it to turn into another bunch of walls keeping me prisoner. “I can’t be stuck here like we were stuck there.” I met Mom’s eyes. “I just can’t. I want to get my GED and go to college, too.”
    Mom said, “Eli, you’re fifteen years old.”
    “So? I’ve done nothing but study the past three years. I can get my GED and take the SATs while I’m working at YK.” I didn’t mention that there was no way, after what I’d been through, that I could immerse myself in the shallow, day-to-day dramas of the average teenager. I’d lost any chance there’d ever been to be that person.
    Mom shook her head. “You’re not working at YK.”
    “You said you wanted us involved!”
    She sighed. “Not in an actual position.” She held up her hand before I could protest. “Stop. All of you. I get it.”
    Eddy said, “We can protect each other.”
    Mom looked down at her plate. “You have to understand that this is hard as a parent. I worry about every one of you, each and every moment of the day. At least in the Compound … I always knew where you were. I always knew you were safe. And the thought of just letting you all go to school, out there, where I won’t always know where you are…” She trailed off.
    Lexie said, “Mom, you can’t hide us forever. We have to grow up and have lives at some point.” She added, “Otherwise, you’re no different from Dad.”
    Mom’s mouth fell open and she dropped her fork.
    “Lexie!” Eddy