I take a deep breath and dial my lawyer’s number. I need to convince him Wallingford is a terrible, terrible idea.
“Hello,” he answers.
“Mr. Needleham, it’s Logan. Logan Evans.”
“Oh, hi. How are you doing? How’s your military school?”
“Awful.”
“What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
“I can’t stay here until graduation. This place is horrible,” I say in a rush of words.
“Do you want the plea bargain?”
My forehead wrinkles. “Well, yeah. Of course.”
“Then we need to prove it to the commonwealth’s attorney. You electively choosing to go to Wallingford shows you’re on the right track. It’d be a huge mistake to leave.”
“Isn’t there another school I could go to instead?”
“None of them would take you in the middle of the semester. If you want the plea bargain, you should stay there. I’m sorry it’s difficult, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s only a few months. Just do what they tell you, keep up your grades, and stay out of trouble. It’ll be over before you know it.”
I grit my teeth. Easy for him to say it will be over before I know it. He doesn’t have to put up with this shit. Every minute here feels like an eternity. At this rate, I’ll have a full head of gray hair—make that a buzzed head of gray hair—when next June rolls around.
“I know you can do it,” Mr. Needleham says. “You’re a good kid, Logan. A good kid who got himself into a bad situation, but you can turn this around.”
I shake my head and bite down even harder. I’d love to tell him the truth—that I didn’t do anything—but I can’t hurt Lora. Instead, I’ll stay here making myself miserable while she goes on with her life like nothing happened. When this is all over, she owes me so big.
“You there?” my lawyer asks.
“Yeah.”
“Do your best. Who knows, you might even find they have something to offer you. Maybe you’ll actually learn to like it there.”
My jaw clenches harder yet. There’s no way in hell I’d ever like it here. But if staying here is the only way to keep myself out of prison, then I have no choice. I’ll have to make it work somehow.
After a terse goodbye, I open up a browser on my laptop and try to navigate to the game I was playing with Gordy before I was sent here. This is why I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. I had a brief moment of optimism, only to be smacked back down to reality. I’m stuck here. Absolutely stuck and there’s nothing I can do about it.
I sigh and wait for the site to connect, but, of course, it’s blocked, just like it has been all week.
I know I should find something else—an approved activity—to do instead, but if I’m going to last here, I need to find a way to keep my sanity. It’s just a video game during my personal time. It’s not a big deal.
With a newfound sense of purpose, I consider how to get around the firewall. Earlier this week, I never attempted it because there was always a teacher monitoring us, but it’s just students in here now. And I’ve got hours to figure it out, if necessary.
Without a second thought, I pull my phone back out of my pocket to turn on the hot spot, but my data connection is virtually nonexistent. Strike one. Luckily, that’s not my only option. I type in the address for a proxy server I used at my old school. Unfortunately, Wallingford seems to have a better network manager than my public high school because this site is blocked, too. I try a few others I’ve heard of, but none of them work. Strike two.
Off the top of my head, I know of one other possibility. If it doesn’t work, then I’ll need to talk to Nate. He’s what you might call a recreational hacker. He does it more for the thrill and just to prove he can do it than to steal any private information. As far as I know, the worst thing he’s done is removed a few black marks from Gordy’s school record. I could use some help now with my police record, although that’s probably a federal offense and I’m not about to drag him down with me.
I pack my computer back up and head outside into the cold again, walking around the entire quad until I finally find a place where my data connection might work. It’s in the parking lot, right by the exit gate. I reach over the gate as far as I can, and the connection improves a little. It makes me wonder if Wallingford has some type of high-tech 4G blocker or if I’m just really unlucky with my carrier.
After lowering myself to the curb, I set up the hot spot and drag my laptop out of my bag again. In no time, the Tor download starts, but it’s going to take forever with my weak connection. I stuff my hands in my pocket and pull my collar tighter around my neck while I wait.
With nothing else to do, I decide to catch up on texts. I have at least thirty messages from Gordy, each one getting more and more frantic and assuming the worst. The last one, dated this morning, reads, After three days of unreturned messages, I can only conclude one thing. It’s been great knowing you. You’ll be missed and all that shit. RIP, Megaloser. I smile at the nickname. He used to call me that in middle school when we first started hanging out because I had straight As, something which was totally out of the realm of possibility for him.
Glancing around, I see upperclassman continue to pour out of the dorms and into their cars before speeding down the steep road to town. It’d be nice to get away for a few hours, but it’s not like town is all that great. Noah told me there’s an ice-cream place, a non-chain fast-food burger place, a Piggly Wiggly grocery store, a mom-and-pop hardware store, a gas station, and a small motel. That’s it.
A cold breeze whips past me, and I check the status of my download. If it doesn’t finish soon, I’ll be frozen solid. It’s only halfway done, so I draw my knees to my chest and try to conserve body heat. A few students give me curious stares, but no one says anything. Is no one wondering why the new kid is huddled up at the edge of the parking lot, staring at his laptop? Or maybe they’re just used to odd behavior from new kids.
After another ten minutes, the screen suddenly changes, which draws my attention. It’s done. Thank God. I pack up my things and head back to the warmth of the computer lab, where I configure the VPN. With crossed fingers, I try the video game site again. Boom—the heavily muscled soldiers and scantily clad women slowly come into focus on my screen. I actually did it.
And I think I just gained a better appreciation for why Nate does what he does. There is a weird sense of satisfaction knowing I just outsmarted the Wallingford IT department.
Not even five minutes into my game, someone sits down right next to me, despite the many open seats throughout the room. I ignore the person but use my foot to pull my backpack on the floor closer to me.
“What are you doing?” a familiar and accusatory voice says.
“Huh?” I glance up.
Paige.
She’s eyeing my computer with a frown. “Nothing,” I say, closing my laptop.
“Was that a video game?”
“No, of course not.”
“It sure looked like a video game.”
“It was an ad for an online video game development course from the community college,” I lie, thankful Gordy put that idea in my head earlier.