"Laura Anne Gilman - Strange Playmates" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gilman Laura Anne)

Teacher had freaked, town meetings that came to nothing 'cause it was illegal to not let them go to school
with everyone else. People had yelled about it for almost a year, both sides. His mom had cried every
night, when she thought he couldn't hear.

He never told her he could hear almost everything, long as the air was clear.

_____

"Bag it!" Max yelled, and Jordan surged forward to snatch the ball from his hands, rolling forward to
avoid the other team's grounders. Up on his knees, shoulders flexing to toss the heavy rubber ball at
Green's goal. Green at random, because that's the way he rolled. Blue was a weaker team; Beth and
Steve didn't have Changes, but they were fast and smart, and they had Carly. Blue team -- Ray, Sen,
and Ian -- were new to the game, and hadn't really gotten good at it yet. They kept forgetting they didn't
have to stay on the ground, or only use their arms and legs.

"Goal!" He pumped one arm into the air as Beth made a valiant leap but missed the defense, and the ball
thunked home.

"Goal and game." She collapsed next to him on the ground. "Nice shot, earless wonder. How the hell do
you throw so hard?"

"Ancient secret, never taught to icky girls."

She thwaped him on the shoulder, and he grinned, lying on his back and staring up at the blue sky. Beth
wasn't bad, for a normal. Her brother Rob was a pain in the butt, one of the older kids who stared, and
called them freaks. She'd told Rob off more than once, in front of his friends, even. Jordan knew that she
took a lot of flack at home for hanging with them, but she didn't seem to care. And her dad stopped once
to give him a ride home when it was raining. You couldn't help who your family was, he supposed.

"They're scared," his mother told him, not about Beth's family but people in general. "Scared because
you're the first. People are always scared of what comes first."

Although they weren't the first, not really. The first ones died, mostly when they were babies, because of
internal stuff not forming right. Even the second ones died, a lot of them who shouldn't have, medically,
until the Alteration Protection Act which he wasn't supposed to know about but Carly found on the 'net
and they all read way back in third grade.

"Come on, you stupid grounders." Ray's skin glinted pale green, and he scratched at one scale absently
as he extended the other hand first to Beth, then to Jordan, pulling them to their feet without effort.

"I'd kill for a soda," Ian said. "Gonna ride by Dackey's. Anyone else?"

"Count me in." It was still early in the summer, not too hot yet and pretty dry, but Jordan's shirt was
sticking to his back and his scalp was sweating. Freeball wasn't for wusses.

Beth and Steve had to get home, and Sen was broke, again. Ray wouldn't go -- he rarely went anywhere
other than school and home. His mom worried a lot.

"Can someone give me a lift?" Marta's bike had been stolen last week, and Dackey's was too far to
walk.