Turnabout by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Author:Margaret Peterson Haddix [Haddix, Margaret Peterson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Published: 2012-02-14T06:00:00+00:00

April 24, 2085

Melly stood still, trying to figure out what Anny Beth meant.

“You think the agency turned us in?” she asked. “You think they’re out to get us?” It was a thought that never would have occurred to her on her own. She thought of the people at the agency as misguided, not malicious.

Anny Beth sank to the bed and buried her face in her hands. After a moment she looked up at Melly. “I don’t know,” she said miserably. “What other explanation is there?”

Melly gritted her teeth, thinking. “Maybe this A. J. is just a really good hacker. Maybe she broke into our records—”

“With the government? Come on, the government’s had antihacker protection for seventy-five years.”

“Then, at the agency?” Melly trembled as she made that suggestion. If the reporter had access to the agency’s computer records, she knew everything about them. Their private lives were over. “Wouldn’t they have antihacker protection too?” It was strange, the number of things she didn’t know about the agency. Once she’d left, she tried not to look back.

Anny Beth threw up her hands helplessly. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? Either the agency spilled the beans on purpose, which means we can’t trust them, or your darling descendant is so brilliant she figured out how to get information from them without them knowing it. Either way, we’ve got to hide from the agency.”

Melly sat down beside Anny Beth and stared bleakly out the window. The desert scene beyond looked even more desolate than before. Hiding from the agency would mean no fake ID, no help at all. She’d spent the last eighty years thinking she was independent of the agency, but that wasn’t true. She’d always known she could rely on the agency officials, if worst came to worst. It was like still having a family, but one that you rarely saw because Aunt Mildred drove you crazy and Uncle Arnie was an embarrassment. But now, if they cut off contact with the agency, they would truly be alone.

“We could go back,” Melly said quietly. “Or just me. I’m the only one she’s after. Then you could do whatever you wanted.”

“You’d go back to the agency?” Anny Beth said. She launched herself off the bed and began pacing the floor. “Is that what you want?”

“Of course not,” Melly said. “But—”

“No buts,” Anny Beth said firmly. She began hitting the wall at each end of her pacing: Two steps, hit! Two steps, hit! Then she whirled around to face Melly. “There are two problems with that plan. First, it doesn’t solve anything. You go back to the agency, it just makes it easier for the reporter to track you down. And it guarantees that all the other Project Turnabout people will be exposed too.”

“Oh,” Melly said weakly.

“And second, it leaves me on my own. Listen, I’ve been married four times. The first three times were pretty much duds—at least that’s what I wrote down when I remembered them. The fourth time, with Bill, was great.

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