Tesla's Attic (9781423155126) Read Online Free Page A

but whether he intended to take her money or take her hand wasn’t clear. Her last impression of him before he grabbed her was that he looked like a deer in headlights.
    It turned out there was a reason for that.
    The car, a Buick that had seen better days, wasn’t speeding down the street intentionally. However, the man driving found himself in such an unexpected hurry to reach the garage sale he couldn’t help himself. He barely noticed his car jumping the curb and, at the time, the tree in front of him felt like a minor inconvenience. With the rain beating down on his windshield and a pair of faulty wipers, he never even saw the two kids in his path. But he did notice the table of merchandise in front of the garage, illuminated by a certain light that could only be described as compelling.
    Nick didn’t have time to think, only to act. He rammed Caitlin, tackling her to the ground just as the car plowed into the tree. Had he hesitated a split second, they both would have been crushed by the car, but Nick’s reflexes were just fast enough to save them. Now, lying together on the wet grass, Caitlin just stared at him.
    â€œExcuse me, but did we almost just die?”
    â€œYeah, I think so.” He helped her to her feet and they both stared at the car, its front end crumpled against the tree. Funny, but the moment after nearly dying felt as uneventful as the moment right before nearly dying. Nick figured the seriousness of the moment would hit him much later, when he actually had time to freak out about it.
    Danny hurried up. “Did anybody die?” he asked. “Dad’s in the bathroom, but if somebody died I’ll get him out.”
    The driver forced his way past the air bags, got out of the car, and instead of looking at his vehicle, asked anyone who was listening, “Is this the garage sale? Is there anything left?” Then he went to the long table to pick through the dregs of the dregs of Nick’s garbage, just like everyone else. All that was left were broken fragments of things that could not be identified when they were whole, much less now that they were in pieces. Yet people still sifted through them like prospectors panning for gold.
    â€œThese people are nuts!” Caitlin said, then added, “And I was just one of them!”
    Apparently the sudden shock of nearly getting killed had jarred her out of the weird state she had been in—yet even now, Nick couldn’t help but notice the way she was drawn back to that reel-to-reel recorder in the garage, and he followed her.
    â€œI already paid you for this, right?” Caitlin asked, standing over the recorder, her hand on it almost possessively.
    Drenched people kept arriving from the street. Many of them were not in rain gear or even carrying umbrellas. It was like they were drawn to the place like moths to a flame.
    Or a bulb , Nick thought.
    Nick turned to the oversize bulb on its stand, lighting up the garage and casting long shadows stretching out like spokes toward the mob examining the merchandise. There was something about that light. Not quite hypnotic, but soothing. Penetrating. Nick could feel it tugging at him like some sort of secret gravity. Was that crazy?
    He reached over to the light, took the switch between his thumb and forefinger, and clicked it off.
    The light died, its filament dimming to a faint orange glow before extinguishing entirely. And when he looked at the people scavenging the table, everyone took one last gander at the piece of broken junk in their hands and put it down.
    â€œWell,” someone said, “this was certainly a waste of time.”
    Everyone else seemed to agree, voicing thoughts from disappointment to disgust.
    â€œI can’t believe I missed the game for this.”
    â€œLook at my dress! Soaked!”
    â€œThey have some nerve calling this a garage sale.”
    â€œDid I just run my car into a tree?”
    None of them seemed to remember that