I didn’t have time to respond to that particular insult before Brooke lifted her hands and clapped eight times, a rhythm I vaguely remembered trying to scour out of my brain after the one mandatory pep rally I hadn’t managed to skip the year before. As soon as Brooke finished clapping, the others repeated her motions, and the lights dimmed.
“Screen on.” Brooke didn’t sound like a cheerleader. I didn’t have time to decide what she did sound like before the plasma screen in front of us turned on and an image appeared.
“Is that my yearbook picture?” I almost didn’t recognize myself. They’d blown the picture up to larger-than-life-size, and you could totally see up my nose.
“Wow. Talk about unfortunate photos.” One of the cheerleaders let out a low whistle at the picture, but Brooke glared whoever it was back into silence.
“Toby Guinevere Klein. Born August nineteenth. Brown hair, brown eyes, medium skin tone. Five feet, three inches, a hundred and three pounds as of last Wednesday.”
First the picture, now my weight and my hideous middle name. I couldn’t wait to see what they pulled out next.
“Your father’s a physicist. Your mother’s a karate instructor. Your little brother, Noah—”
“Leave Noah out of this.”
Brooke inclined her head slightly. “Fine. We’ll get back to you.”
That definitely sounded like a threat.
“Third-degree black belt, two suspensions so far this school year, a total of fourteen at your last seven schools, dating backto the third grade, when you belted a sixth grader in the groin for throwing gravel at your classmates.”
I smiled. I’d almost forgotten about that.
“You’re a novice computer hacker.”
I narrowed my eyes. Who was she calling novice?
“Next.” At her one-word command, the image on the screen changed (thank God), and I found myself looking at an extensive list of company names and dates.
“Look familiar?”
I skimmed the list: Freemont Electronics, Conley Anti-Virus, Semi-National Bank and Trust, the Girl Scouts of America …
“Vaguely familiar,” I replied before she could continue.
“It’s a list of every secure system you’ve breached in the last twenty-six months,” Brooke said, and for the first time, I caught something that might have sounded like respect in her pretty-girl voice.
“Impressed?” I asked.
Chloe scoffed on Brooke’s behalf. “Get over yourself, hacker girl.”
“Impressed?” Brooke repeated. “Puh-lease. This is kiddie play.”
Hey! I was deeply insulted. That bank and trust one hadn’t exactly been a piece of cake.
“Whatisimpressive,” Brooke continued, “is what you did twenty-six months ago.” She turned her attention back to the screen. “Next.”
I recognized the code the moment I saw it. “Oh,” I said. “That.”
“Yes. That.”
Before I explain what “that” was, I’d like to take this opportunity to say that when I’d weaseled my way past the firewalls and hijacked one of the user IDs, I thought the site was fake, one of those things that a hacker will put up on the Net just to see if there’s anyone better out there. I figured that if it was legit, I wouldn’t break through, as simple as that—only not, because it was legit and I did break through. My bad.
“The Pentagon,” Brooke said. “Not bad for a thirteen-year-old girl.”
“I was almost fourteen.” I glanced away.
“Four months later, your dad was transferred here,” Brooke said. “And you’ve been lying low ever since.”
