The Subprimes Read Online Free

for a few nights, he had been told, and he was excited about that, imagining a swimming pool. But after that, where would they go?
    His parents had no answers for that. They offered a vague reassurance that they would get by, that they were strong, that as long as they were together they would be okay. But why couldn’t they just stay in their house?
    How long ago had that been, the boy wondered. He couldn’t guess. He had not been to school since, and he had trouble keeping track of the days. The hotel had been for just a few nights, and then there were a few nights with one of his uncles, and then a few more nights sleeping in the car, and then a few Ryanvilles, as his father drove the Flex around Los Angeles looking for work and a place to sleep. Griff had gone missing a few Ryanvilles back. He wandered off while they were sleeping, and the boy had cried when they had to pack up and leave without him and did not find consoling at all his mother’s belief that Griff had “found a better home.” How could there be a better home than with them?
    At first it had been fun, sort of like camping, or like being in an army on the march. You packed up every few days and moved out, but if you made any new friends, you left them behind and might never see them again. He missed his old friends, Daniel and Terry, and he never stopped missing Griff. They no longer had Internet access or cell phones—those had been cut off before they even moved out—and since free public wifi had been banned (in the National Right to Internet and Telecommunications Freedom Act), he had no way to stay in touch with his oldfriends or his new ones. The first few days they took their meals in fast-food restaurants, but since then they ate what they could cook on a fire, or, if they were in a Ryanville where fires weren’t allowed, they had cold sandwiches. The boy thought of his old house, and of Daniel and Terry and Griff, and dreamed that maybe in the next place, in this Nevada, they would have a little house and there would be kids there, not Daniel and Terry, he knew, but boys just like them, that he could have friends to go to school with.
    â€œMom, can we get a dog when we get our new house?” he asked.
    THE TRAFFIC SLOWED COMING OUT of Mountain Pass. There was nothing on either side of the road but washed-out scrubland and dry canyon, yet Jeb had to keep tapping the brakes to slow down until finally the line of cars came to a halt, moving ahead just a car length at a time. Coming back toward them were more battered SUVs, filled with families with sad, angry expressions. A few were parked on the side of the road, men and women talking in small huddles.
    The front passenger window on the Flex was broken, so Jeb rolled down the rear passenger window and shouted to a man wearing a backward Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim cap, “What’s going on?”
    â€œThey’re not letting anyone with California plates cross into Nevada if you can’t show a confirmation e-mail from a Vegas hotel or have a credit score over 650.”
    â€œCredit score?”
    â€œThey’re running your credit right there.”
    Jeb shook his head. Cars were turning out of the lane, making U-turns and heading back into California. He was about twentycars from a police roadblock—four squad cars, a half-dozen officers, and a black command post that had been pulled out by a semi-tractor.
    The police were checking IDs and then running licenses through handheld devices, checking credit scores.
    â€œWhat are we gonna do?” asked Bailey.
    Jeb pulled forward slowly. “What can we do?”
    Sargam had turned her bike around and was now at Jeb’s window, facing the other way. She flipped up her visor.
    â€œI don’t have any ID,” she said.
    Jeb and Bailey nodded.
    â€œThey’re checking credit. I never heard of that before,” Jeb said. “I guess they don’t want Californians in Nevada.