Clean Slate Complex (a daynight story)

By Megan Thomason

Meet The Second Chance Institute (SCI): Worldwide non-profit and do-gooder organization. Their motto: Because Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Life(TM). Reality: hidden behind every kind act is a dark agenda designed to gain control and force societal and moral extremes. Currently, the SCI’s pushing Project Liberate, a program to woo the poor and downtrodden into their Clean Slate Complexes—where “everything is provided” from jobs to food, shelter, clothing, and education. Unfortunately, as with all things that sound too good to be true, there’s a catch...

Meet Alexa Knight. Feisty, tough and currently homeless in Los Angeles, Alexa agrees to help the SCI in return for medical care for her sick mother. When she starts to suspect there’s more to the SCI than meets the eye will she believe Adam—the boy who saved her life and the SCI’s biggest champion, or Joshua—the attractive enigma who sings about conspiracy theories and pretends to be someone he’s not?

Full of action, humor, romance, twists and turns, clean slate complex is a companion story to the highly-praised dystopian novel, daynight. It can be enjoyed before or after reading daynight.

Praise for daynight:

Book of the Year Award Finalist-Young Adult Fiction, ForeWord Reviews

"Sure to win over YA readers looking for a dangerous, dystopian adventure story" --Kirkus Reviews

"Gripping young adult dystopian novel; compelling conflicts; high stakes; powerful narrative; surprises keep coming; strong writing; page-turner; engaging characters; Readers will be hungry for the sequels."--BlueInk Review (starred review)

"Thomason's description of Thera's totalitarianism will make fans of Brave New World shiver... SCI, her fantasy corporation, has disturbing parallels to actual companies and regimes that claim to do good while harming people... The author deftly appeals to both romance-loving teens as well as those intrigued by young adults fighting the establishment."--ForeWord Clarion Review, 4 stars

• Language: English
• Publisher: Megan Thomason
• Release date: Apr 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301811939

Megan Thomason

Megan Thomason lives in paradise aka San Diego, CA with her husband and five children. A former software manager, Megan vastly prefers writing twisted tales to business, product, and marketing plans. When she isn't typing away on her laptop, she's reading books on her phone—over 600 in the last year—or attending to the needs of her family. Megan’s fluent in sarcasm, could potentially benefit from a 12-step program for road rage, struggles with a Hot Tamales addiction, loves world travel & fast cars and hates paperwork & being an insomniac. 'clean slate complex' is Megan’s second published work (after 'daynight'), but fifth written one.

Book preview

Clean Slate Complex

clean slate complex (a daynight story)

by Megan Thomason

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

If you downloaded this ebook during a free promotion period, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

This book is a work of fiction. All characters, entities, events, portals, alternate worlds and the like in the daynight series, including clean slate complex, are fictional and products of the author's overly active imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright (c) 2013 by Megan Thomason

ISBN: 9781301811939

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Dedicated to Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and non-profits like it—

who truly give people a second chance at life.

Table of Contents

Title page

Copyright information

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

About the Author

"Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity."

—Vaclav Havel

CHAPTER ONE

My mom’s going to croak in the back of our beater van. It’s bad enough to live in it, but dying in it...that’s no way to go. She’s been shaking so bad that she woke me up, being that we’re all cozy like sardines in this tin can. Or maybe more like two sardines (my mom and me with our small frames) and three sharks (my older brothers who are built like NFL linebackers).

I wonder if Mom’s going through withdrawals. Every time she forgets her meds it gets really ugly. Her doc warned me that her body can’t handle going cold turkey off of them. That she could up and die. I feel her forehead. She’s burning up from a fever. Oh no. My poor Mom. Being sick’s the last thing she needs. She’s got it hard enough. In the dark I rustle around until I find a half empty bottle of water and a packet of aspirin my brothers lifted from the emergency station at their last short-lived warehouse job.

Mom, take this. I’m begging her. I open her mouth and pour the water down her throat. She chokes on the pill and starts hacking something awful. The moonlight’s pouring in through the windows and making her dark skin look white. I’m not liking what I’m seeing. You okay?

She grabs ahold of my shirt. Her throat’s so swollen she can barely whisper. Alexa, my pretty girl. You gotta keep your brothers in line. I— Her words are cut off as she coughs up everything I just got down her. She keeps on coughing and I know I’ve got to get her help fast. I feel around for a flashlight. Once I turn it on I see that it’s blood she’s been hacking up. What do I do? I’m no doctor.

It’ll be okay, Mom, I tell her, but my lips and hands are trembling. I grab the first thing I can find and wipe up the mess. Then I shove Trey who’s on the other side of me. Trey. Bryce. Lol. Wake up! I’m loud enough to get all three of them to sit up fast. Trey and Bryce smack heads and Lol catches an elbow on the back of the van. They’re like black-skinned versions of The Three Stooges. Bunch of goofballs. Trey’s 21. Bryce and Lol (I mispronounced Oliver when I was little and it stuck) are twins at 19. I arrived ten months after the twins.

What the hell, Alexa? Trey yells back. He’s rubbing his head and looking between Mom and me. You’d think the sight of Mom trying to cough up a lung or two would give him a clue. I love him—love all my brothers—but they’re a couple cans shy of a six pack as far as their brains go.

We have to get Mom to a hospital. She’s not doing too well, I say, my eyes filling with tears. You drive while I take care of her. I wipe more blood from her mouth. The sight of her being in such bad shape’s killing me.

My mom shakes her head. She’s having a lot of trouble sucking in air but manages to get out, No hospitals. Clinic. Normally I’d smile since I know she’s got a huge crush on her doc there. But she’s asking because he’s the only one she trusts. She’s always making excuses to go to the clinic and dragging me along. Less than a week ago we’d been in when they had free blood screenings and flu shots—and to refill Mom’s meds. She’s been mentally unstable since my dad ditched us three years ago. Things got so rough that she couldn’t hold a job. I quit school at sixteen to take care of her full time. Sad because I’d been on the college track, but family comes first.

I’ll get you there, Mama. Trey promises. He gets his supersized butt in gear and kisses Mom on the head before climbing to the front of the van and taking the wheel. Lol and Bryce each take one of Mom’s hands. I say a quick prayer asking God for our van to behave enough to make it to the clinic. The sky’s starting to lighten so I can watch our progress out the window. Trey’s taking a shortcut through a sketchy neighborhood of LA to save time.

The piece of crap, white box on wheels only makes it a few blocks before the engine sputters and chokes on the side of the road. Apparently God’s too scared to come around here and listen to prayers. Trey slams his hand against the wheel and curses a foul string of garbage. If my mom wasn’t so sick she’d be slapping him upside the head. He keeps turning the key to try to restart the van but the engine’s not even turning over.

Hand me the phone, I say to Bryce. I’ll call 911.

Bryce responds, No go, baby sis. We’re out of minutes. I look outside. This is no neighborhood to be knocking on doors and asking for help. The windows are boarded up, siding’s falling off. Junk’s all over the yards. The only people brave enough to live in these parts have sold their souls for a quick fix of nothing good. My mom’s coughing’s getting a whole lot worse, so much that she can barely get a breath