Rebel Nation Read Online Free Page A

hands under her, which was ironic since being touched out of the water usually made her lose any sense of being comfortable in her own skin.
    When she felt Jude’s hands on her back under the water, she knew she wouldn’t drown. The second he took them away she sank like a rock, then panicked and came up sputtering and thrashing until her feet were on the pool bottom.
    If she couldn’t float, she couldn’t swim. If she couldn’t swim, she couldn’t dive through the portal in Lake Tahoe.
    Everything you need to know is where all the information is.
That was what Waverly told her, just before he was murdered. They were supposed to be part of a rebellion. The rebellion
needed
Waverly’s information about Jon Stead and the suppressant and God only knew what else he’d put in that book.
    He’d left a quote that made her certain that the place where he’d hidden the book was somewhere that had to do with Thomas Jefferson. She’d been sure it was in the local library, named after the dead president, but it wasn’t. Not in the Academy library either. The Thomas Jefferson wing of the Library of Congress was her next best guess. Waverly had gone to Washington, D.C., to accept his Nobel Prize fifteen years ago; he could have left it then.
    If they could get to the notes he kept hidden in the future, though, they might know for sure where he hid the book. The more she thought about how badly she needed to be able to make that dive, the worse her inability to swim got.
    â€œThis isn’t working,” Clover said after an hour of near drowning. “I can’t swim. I’ll never be able to.”
    â€œYou have to relax.” He was not happy, and Clover knew that if she’d noticed his bad mood, it was very bad. The harder she tried, the harder she failed. She stood in waist-deep water looking at him, shivering more out of frustration than cold.
    â€œThis won’t ever work,” Jude said, his voice softer, “unless you relax.”
    â€œThe water gets in my nose.” Chlorinated water filled her sinuses, burning like acid, and then came pouring back out every time she came up gasping for air.
    â€œI know.”
    His patience made her want to scream. “I can’t breathe under there.”
    â€œYou aren’t supposed to!” They looked at each other for a minute. “We’ll keep working on it. We’ll find a way.”
    â€œThere isn’t time to keep working on it. We need those notes.”
    They didn’t even know where the notes were, exactly. And they couldn’t just ask the man. An hour after he told them about “the place where all the information is,” Clover and Jude had seen Langston Bennett, the head of the Company’s Time Mariner division, murder Ned Waverly.
    Clover didn’t even want to think about it. It haunted her to know that Waverly had hidden vital information in the future that only she could retrieve. Only autistic people could travel through the portal. Of all the Freaks—Clover, her brother West, Jude, and the others—only Clover could make the dive.
    Clover’s inability to learn how to swim was ruining everything.
    â€œYou can’t dive yet anyway,” Jude said. “The lake is too cold until next summer.”
    Clover brushed her wet hair off her forehead and worked her way toward the pool stairs. Everything about swimming felt wrong. The way the water made her limbs float so that they moved when she didn’t mean them to, and then didn’t move right when she was willing them to propel her forward. The way she couldn’t take a breath when her brain told her she should. The way she tried to breathe anyway, and water flooded down her throat and into her nose. “I can’t believe how much this sucks.”
    â€œWe’ll keep working on it.”
    â€œStop saying that. We both know it won’t do any good.”
    Jude shook his head and looked at