Read Arrival for Free Online Page A

get you?’ Peter muttered, still typing.
    â€˜Come on,’ I told him, ‘you still don’t think there’s anything weird about all of this?’
    â€˜Of course it’s weird,’ said Peter. ‘But you don’t even know what this thing says yet. Might be worth waiting until we get that much figured out before you start going nuts with the conspiracy theories, don’t you reckon?’ He kept typing, his eyes flicking back and forth between the two streams of text.
    â€˜Peter,’ I said, ‘what are you –?’
    â€˜It’s not a text file,’ said Peter.
    â€˜Huh?’
    â€˜You’re right, it’s one file split in half, but it’s not a document. It’s something else. A picture or a sound clip or – I don’t know. Something.’ He stopped typing.
    â€˜Can you open it?’ asked Jordan.
    â€˜I think so,’ Peter said, scrolling through the pages and pages of text, ‘but it’ll take a while to put it all back together. I’ll take the files home and work on it tonight.’
    â€˜Don’t you have to rewrite that essay for Mr Hanger?’ I asked.
    â€˜Stuff Mr Ranga,’ said Peter with a wave of his hand. ‘Besides, how could I possibly concentrate on homework with all this excitement going on?’
    Jordan rolled her eyes at him. ‘You’re an idiot. You know that, right?’
    The bell rang and we went downstairs to our science classroom. Like everything else at Phoenix High, the lab was brand new and unnaturally clean.
    Most of the class was already inside by the time we got there. The kids who weren’t chucking paper balls around or harassing the fish in the tank next to the window were sitting in groups of two or three at white lab benches. The bench tops gleamed so brightly it was almost painful.
    â€˜Oi, Weir!’ called a voice from across the room.
    â€˜Pay up!’
    I looked over and saw Michael sitting at a bench near the back, waving Peter over. Tank and Cathryn were with him.
    Peter sighed and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a handful of coins, counted out five dollars, and dumped the money on the desk in front of Michael.
    â€˜Should’ve listened to me,’ said Michael pityingly, gathering up the coins and recounting them. ‘Way too early, man. Seriously, you should’ve paid me in advance and saved yourself the trouble.’
    Peter pulled up a stool at the bench behind them. ‘Hey, what can I say? I’m an optimist.’
    â€˜Bah,’ said Michael, pocketing Peter’s money. ‘Optimism is for the poor! Trust me, mate, it’ll be at least another week before Pryor shows her face around here.’
    Jordan and I took the two empty spaces at Peter’s bench. Cathryn swivelled around on her stool, sizing us both up.
    â€˜You hanging out with these two now?’ she asked Peter, not taking her eyes off us.
    Peter shrugged. ‘You want to give me a reason not to?’
    I gave him a questioning look, but he was too fixated on Cathryn to notice.
    â€˜Do whatever you want,’ she said. ‘I just thought the last six months might have counted for a bit more than that.’
    â€˜Hey, don’t go making this about me!’ Peter snapped. ‘Any time one of you feels like letting me in on what you’re all –’
    â€˜Pete, look,’ said Michael, turning around, ‘you know it’s not up to us.’
    Peter got up off his stool, but before he had time to say anything else, a kid who’d been standing guard at the door pulled his head back into the room and yelled, ‘Benson’s coming!’
    Everyone raced to their seats and scrambled to pull out their laptops. Seconds later, a tall, skinny woman with red-framed glasses walked into the room. She glared at the class like she was sure we’d all been up to something, then turned around and wrote a heading up on the board.
    Comparative