Free Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Reardon’s desk….
    “Jonah?” Mom called from the other side of the bathroom door.
    “Coming.”
    Jonah wiped his face on his sleeve—okay, not good manners, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances—and left the bathroom. Mom was waiting right outside the door; Dad and Mr. Reardon were a little farther down the hall.
    “Are you—” Mom started to ask, but Jonah cut her off. “I told you, I’m okay! Let’s just get this over with.”
    Mr. Reardon watched coldly as Mom and Jonah went back toward his office.
    “Really,” he said, “I believe we’re done here.”
    “No, no, please—Jonah’s fine now,” Mom said. “We still need to talk this out. I think we just got off on the wrong foot.”
    Getting off on the wrong foot was a Mom catchphrase—that was what she’d said about Jonah and Billy Barton in second grade, when Jonah came home with a black eye. (Jonah had completely misunderstood: “No, Mom,” he’d insisted, “it was his right fist. Not his foot at all.”)
    Mr. Reardon looked doubtful, but they all settled back into their chairs near Katherine, who’d evidently never bothered getting up. Jonah shot her a resentful glance, but she looked even worse than he felt: she was deathly pale, and her eyes were huge and round, as if she’d just been terrified out of her wits.
    Wow , Jonah thought. I’ve never known Katherine to be that concerned about me getting sick.
    “I’m fine,” he half-whispered, half-mouthed to her. But her eyes stayed huge; her skin stayed pale.
    Mr. Reardon and Jonah’s parents were still talking, but Jonah tuned it out for a moment. Pretending he was just, oh, maybe trying to see if Mr. Reardon’s laptop was a Mac or a PC, he glanced toward Mr. Reardon’s desk.
    There was a file there now. It was one of those thin, cheap, neutral-colored folders people used in offices.
    But at the same time Jonah looked at the folder, Mr. Reardon did too. Jonah was sure he did, even though he didn’t move his head at all, and his voice didn’t waver. In fact—Jonah started watching Mr. Reardon now—Mr. Reardon kept glancing at the file surreptitiously, every few seconds. It reminded Jonah of the time that he’d broken a window playing baseball, and he’d thought that if he just didn’t mention it, maybe Mom and Dad wouldn’t notice. But when Dad came out into the backyard, no matter how hard Jonah tried, he couldn’t keep from looking toward the broken window. It was like the window was a magnet with an irresistible pull on his eyes.
    The file seemed to have the same pull for Mr. Reardon.
    Of course, Jonah had been only six years old then, and Mr. Reardon was a grown-up. But the more Jonah ignored what Mr. Reardon was saying (something about the greater good of the entire nation and compromises made by all Americans for the sake of security), and the more he just paid attention to the small twitches of Mr. Reardon’s eyes, the more Jonah was sure of three things:
Mr. Reardon was surprised and upset—no, make that furious —to see that file on his desk.
Mr. Reardon really, really, really didn’t want Jonah’s family to notice the file on his desk.
There was no way Jonah would be able to casually lean forward, open the file, then look at and memorize its contents. Not when Mr. Reardon was already alternating his nervous glances at the file with nervous glances at Jonah.
    Because I was sick? Because this whole meeting’s about me? Or because he already saw me looking at the file?
    “Really,” Mr. Reardon was saying. “I believe we’ve already covered this. I see no reason to continue this discussion.”
    Oh, no! Mr. Reardon was about to end the conversation and kick them out of his office!
    Jonah panicked. Should he fake another stomach problem? No—Mom and Dad would focus all their attention on him; it’d just give Mr. Reardon the perfect opportunity to hide the file. What then?
    Jonah glanced around frantically, at the ceiling, the floor, the