"Tim LaHaye - Left Behind Kids 01 - Vanishings" - читать интересную книгу автора (LaHaye Tim)

floor. He headed to his room.

"Just a minute, young man," she said, using another of his least favorite names. "Get back here and give
me this mail prop-erly."

"In a minute," he said, jogging up the steps.

"Oh, never mind," she said. "By the time you get back here, I'll have it picked up, read, and answered."

"You're welcome!" he hollered.

"A job not finished is not worthy of a thank-you," she said. "But thanks anyway."

Judd took off his jacket, cranked up his music, and lay on his bed, opening the enve-lope. Onto his
chest dropped a credit card in his name, Judd Thompson Jr. A sticker on it told him to call a toll-free
number and answer a few questions so he could begin using the card. The letter told him they had
honored his request. He could spend tens of thousands of dollars using that card alone.

Judd couldn't believe his luck. He dialed the number and was asked his mother's maiden name and his
date of birth. He knew enough to use his grandmother's maiden name and his father's birthday. This was,
after all, really his father's card, wrong name or not. The automated voice told Judd he could begin using
the card immediately.

It was then that he planned his escape.

Judd felt desperate to get away. He wasn't sure what had happened or why, but he was sure his family
was the problem.

Judd's father owned a business in Chicago and was wealthy. His mother had never had to work outside
the home. Judd's little brother and sister, nine-year-old twins Marc and Marcie, were young enough to
stay out of his hair. They were OK, he guessed.

Marc's and Marcie's rooms were full of tro-phies from church, the same as Judd's had once been. He
had really been into that stuff, memorizing Bible verses, going to camp every summer, all that.

But when Judd had gone from the junior high to the senior high youth group at New Hope Village
Church in Mount Prospect, Illi-nois, he seemed to lose interest overnight. He used to invite his friends to
church and youth group. Now he was embarrassed to say his parents made him go.

Judd felt he had outgrown church. It had been OK when he was a kid, but now nobody wanted to dress
like he did, listen to his kind of music, or have a little fun. At school he hung with kids who got to make
their own decisions and do what they wanted to do. That was all he wanted. A little freedom.

Even though they could afford it, Judd's parents refused to buy him his own car. How many other high
school juniors still rode the bus to school? When Judd did get to drive one of his parents' cars, one of
them told him where he could go, whom he could go with, what he could do, and when he had to be
back.

If only his parents knew what he was doing when they thought he was "just out with the guys," Judd
thought. How he hated his curfew, his parents' constant watch over his schoolwork, their criticizing his