Read Sabotage (Powerless Nation Book 3) for Free Online Page A

enough for a couple of hours, but the day was overcast and after spending the whole morning outside in the frigid weather, Dee could barely hold her pencil.
    “How l-long until l-l-lunch?” asked Jamie.  
    One of the town’s women was given extra supplies and assigned the task of preparing school lunch in her home every day, and Max brought the lunches to the library. Dee suspected that the reason most of the children were here was for the free lunch.
    Even though the town was no longer starving, they had to get through winter with their current food stores. Dee knew many people, including her grandpa, were worried about whether the town had enough food to make it until the first crops could be grown and harvested.
    “I don’t understand why we can’t use the fireplace,” said Jeremy.
    Dee sighed. Here we go again. “We can’t use it because it runs on gas and there hasn’t been gas in the lines for months.”
    “If there isn’t gas in the lines, then we should be able to use the fireplace to build a fire out of wood though, right?”
    “I don’t think that’s a good idea, guys,” said Dee.
    “Why can’t we use gas from our farm?” asked one boy.
    “You guys still have gas?” asked Angie.
    “Yeah, we have a little.”
    Dee shook her head. “It’s not the same kind of gas. The gas for this fireplace is called natural gas. The kind on your farm is gasoline.”
    “What’s the difference?”
    Dee rubbed her temples. Her class always had so many questions.
    “I’m cold, Dee,” said McKenna.
    “I’m cold too, honey. Listen, maybe we can start a tiny fire. But only if we can get it going without using matches or a lighter.” That was the next thing they were supposed to study and Dee was sure they wouldn’t be able to do it.  
    “I have something that might work,” said Harvey. “I read about it the other night in my chemistry book, and I thought maybe it would work in an emergency in case someone ever needed a fire really fast.”
    “All right, what have you got?” asked Dee. She wasn’t worried. Even if he managed to produce a small flame, she was sure it would go right out. They didn’t have any logs or kindling.
    Harvey pulled two plastic containers from his pocket. “This first one we got from the storage shed at the town pool. It’s a water purifier. We’ve been using it in our drinking water.”
    “What’s it called?” asked Dee.
    Harvey looked at the label. “Potassium Permanganate.”
    “Potassium Per-what-ee-ate?” asked Kylie.
    “Look,” said Harvey opening the bottle. He shook out a small piece on the table. It was a chalky, dark brown substance. Harvey touched the powder and some of it stuck to his finger. “It looks brown, right? Watch.”
    He touched his stained fingertip to a glass of water, and amethyst threads streamed down through the liquid. “It’s so dark it’s purple.”
    “That’s pretty,” breathed McKenna.
    “So that’s going to start a fire?” asked Dee.
    Harvey shook his head. “Not by itself. You also need glycerin. Luckily, we had some at home. It was in the garage with the stuff my dad used to use for the car.”
    Harvey showed everyone another small plastic vial. It contained a clear, viscous liquid, like vegetable oil but thicker, like a strange, clear goo.
    “What else do you need?” asked Dee. “Remember, no matches allowed.”
    “That’s it,” said Harvey. “The book said these two ingredients together will ignite. So I guess I’ll put them in the fireplace?” He looked to Dee for confirmation.
    “Sure,” she said, knowing a household liquid plus some water purifier wasn’t going to spontaneously burn.
    Harvey crumbled some of the brown lumps of potassium permanganate and then he shook the brown powder onto the fake logs in the gas fireplace. “Okay, are you ready?” He sounded excited. The other kids gathered around to watch.
    “Wait,” said Dee. “Who thinks this is going to work?”
    A couple of the kids raised