Читать книгу Thrive - Mary Borsellino - Страница 7

'Your reader's full of shit,' Hannah announces instead of saying hello the next morning. Olivia didn't notice that it was missing from her stuff. Hannah's waving the thin slate in one hand. 'There's nothing on here but schoolbooks and assigned novels. Nothing.'

'So?'

'Ugh.' Hannah shakes her head in despair. 'You don't even know how great books are, do you? You're as empty and full of shit as your reader.'

'Hey, fuck you too,' Olivia scowls. 'What am I supposed to have on my reader, then? A reader that the government can look through any time they feel like it, might I add. Sure, I'll fill that up with illegal shit right now, what a great idea!'

'Lame. There's some okay stuff on the permit list, if you bother to look, which I bet you never have. And jailbreaking readers so they can't be scanned by wifi is kid's stuff, come on. I had to hack part of it before I even turned it on so the GPS wouldn't kick in.'

'Don't jailbreak my reader, asshole! People get in trouble for that.'

'People get in trouble for that,' Hannah mimics in a sarcastic baby-talk voice.

'Cut it out. Just because I don't care about your dumb books doesn't mean you get to be a humourless asshole. Even straight mathematics is about a thousand percent less stupid than reading.'

'I can see your natural aptitude for it, with terms like 'a thousand percent',' snarks Hannah. Olivia rolls her eyes. 'You've been locked up your whole life,' Hannah goes on, 'In a cell so much tinier than this room right here. You don't know... you haven't got any idea how great words and stories can be.'

'And you don't know how beautiful numbers are. Patterns, puzzles, interconnected systems. The whole universe is made of that stuff!'

'Whatever, you stubborn lunatic.' Hannah's voice is breezy. 'I'm gonna bring you some of my paperbacks, and give you pop quizzes on them in exchange for your meals. If you don't read them, you don't eat.'

Olivia splutters in futile outrage. 'You can't give me homework! You're my kidnapper!'

'I'm pretty sure that means I get to do what I want,' comes the retort. Sure enough, when Olivia next sees Hannah, the rabbit-masked girl is carrying a pile of battered books with softened corners.

She puts them down beside Olivia and gives the uppermost cover a fond pat. 'There. Pick whichever you like; I've read them all often enough to think up quiz questions on the fly. Just let me know which one you've read when I come in later.'

Olivia can't imagine being thrilled about reading a book once, let alone liking the experience enough to do it multiple times. She's got no real say in the matter, though, so she picks up the top book — The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham — and opens it to the first page.