"Nancy Kress - Nano Comes to Clifford Falls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

I looked at him, standing there in his rumpled little pajamas with trains on them, looking like his best
friend just died. His hair fell over his forehead just like Jack's used to do.

"How do you know Caddie's got a new playhouse?"

"I saw it! From my window!"

"You can't see into Caddie's yard from your window. Did you climb out up onto the roof again, Will?"

He hung his head and twisted the sleeves of his pajamas into crumpled balls.

"I told you that going up on that roof is dangerous! You could fall and break your neck!"

"I'm sorry," he said, raising his little face up to me, and I melted even though I knew he wasn't sorry at all
and would do it again. "I'm sorry, Mommy. Can't we get a playhouse? We been inside all summer, feels
like!"
He was right. I'd only taken the kids outside our yard a few times. I'd hardly been out myself. I told
myself that it was because I didn't want to see everybody's pitying looks. ("Jack run off with that sexy
girl from the hardware store, Chrissie Somebody, just left Carol and those kids without so much
as a backward glance.") But it wasn't just that.

The big freezer downstairs was almost empty. I'd used up everything I could. I run out of Tide last
Thursday and the laundry was piling up. Worse, the Pampers were nearly gone. I had to keep the
checking account, the half of it that Jack left, to pay the rent and the phone as long as I could. After that
... I didn't know yet. Not yet.

So I guessed it was time. I didn't understand why I didn't want to go before, didn't understand why I
didn't want to go now. But it was time.

"Okay, honey, we'll get you a playhouse," I said. "Find your sneakers."

When I had Jackie changed and fed, Will and Kimee dressed, the stroller packed with diapers and
water, we set off outside. Will was good, holding onto the side of the stroller and not running ahead.
Kimee stood on the back bar and whimpered a little; she gets prickly heat in the summer. But when we
turned the corner toward the town square, she stopped fussing and stared, just like me and Will. The
whole place was full of garbage cans. Clean, blue, plastic garbage cans, hundreds of them, stacked and
thrown and lying on their sides, not a single one of them holding any garbage. People milled around,
talking angrily. I saw my neighbor.

"Bob, what on Earth--"

He was too angry even to leer at me. "That Beasor kid! The one that won the state technology contest a
few years ago--that kid's too smart-ass for his own good, I said so then! He hacked into the Big Gray
somehow and now all it'll make is garbage cans, no matter what you tell it!"

I craned my neck to see the big metal box under its awning. Sure enough, another garbage can popped
out. A bubble of something started in my belly and started to rise up in me. "Is ... is..."

"The kid left town! Anderson's got an APB out on him. You haven't seen Danny Beasor, have you,
Carol?"