over. The usual bull. Rules I might have willingly broken except it was Nana's house.
My mother had no idea how lucky she was. Compared to my friends I was a walking saint.
A bad day's bag of anger began to rise, I was going to unload all of it on her when Nana stepped out and hugged me, kissed me on the cheek, and said to my mom, "Back off, Julie. She's a grown woman of eighteen."
I'd have walked over broken glass for that woman.
Mom rolled her eyes behind Nana's back before hugging me goodbye. "I mean it, Hailey, be good, okay," she whispered in my ear. "A quiet weekend, I mean it."
That was exactly what I wanted. A nice, quiet weekend.
Chapter Two
Ryan
Squinting my eyes, I tried to find the glitch in the code. I was the King of Nerds remember. The guy with no car and no money who spent his days suffering through high school and his nights holed up in his mother's basement. Cutting code and fixing other people's computer problems.
Turning to Mark, I laughed to myself. He was sitting on the old couch we'd rescued from the curb, rereading a Batman comic, taking a break from what he was supposed to be doing, which was helping me break into this system. The comic was one of dozens spread out around him. He'd probably read it a hundred times before, that never stopped Mark. Each time it was as if he'd discovered a new planet or something.
I sometimes thought that Mark would have preferred to hang out in the Geek world. It seemed a more natural fit.
Add that to the list of my problems, getting Mark to care about something important like this project.
"Why are you here again?" I asked him.
"Your stuff's cooler than mine," he said without looking up from the page. "Besides, you got special plans or something?" Mark asked.
My brow scrunched, he knew full well we never had plans on a Friday night. Just like we didn't have plans for Saturday nights. We'd spend the weekend in this dank basement. Mark hanging out, mooching my Mountain Dew, while I worked testing computer security programs.
Looking around the room, a sense of pride washed over me. "The Bat Cave" Mark called it. Two six foot metal cabinets held my equipment. Servers, routers, switches. A dozen green and red lights flashing. I knew intimately what each light meant and what it was saying.
My workbench overflowed with tools and spare parts. An empty computer case sitting ready to be filled with new parts. A one-meg copper disk, the size of an old-fashioned vinyl record, hung on the wall next to a poster of Emma Watson. I'd found it behind the federal building on a trip to Seattle. The disk that is, not the poster of Emma Watson. That I got off the web.
I'd built it all myself. Every screw, every wire. One piece at a time. For the last three years, I'd spent every extra minute and every spare dime developing a reputation as a pretty good security hacker. Way more than some script kiddy who couldn't break into a paper bag without help.
Most of my customers didn't know about my age. Those that did know couldn't care less, I was that good.
Now, I was turning that reputation into money. A freelance job here and there went a long way. Heaven knew Mom could use the help. With a derelict of an ex-husband, a going-nowhere job at the hospital, a nerdy teenage son, and a blind fifteen-year-old daughter. Every dollar I added to the household budget meant a little less stress on her.
Companies paid me to try and break into their systems, hoping to learn about their vulnerabilities. You'd be surprised how often I got in. But then, that's why they paid me.
Mark gave me crap about it. Saying I should have used some of the money to get a car. He'd never understand. I had plans for that money. Or at least, what little was left.
Turning back to my computer, I resumed where I'd left off. Probing, trying to find the holes in the system. There were always holes. The trick was getting them to line up so I could get in. My hands flew across the wireless keyboard trying all the
My mother had no idea how lucky she was. Compared to my friends I was a walking saint.
A bad day's bag of anger began to rise, I was going to unload all of it on her when Nana stepped out and hugged me, kissed me on the cheek, and said to my mom, "Back off, Julie. She's a grown woman of eighteen."
I'd have walked over broken glass for that woman.
Mom rolled her eyes behind Nana's back before hugging me goodbye. "I mean it, Hailey, be good, okay," she whispered in my ear. "A quiet weekend, I mean it."
That was exactly what I wanted. A nice, quiet weekend.
Chapter Two
Ryan
Squinting my eyes, I tried to find the glitch in the code. I was the King of Nerds remember. The guy with no car and no money who spent his days suffering through high school and his nights holed up in his mother's basement. Cutting code and fixing other people's computer problems.
Turning to Mark, I laughed to myself. He was sitting on the old couch we'd rescued from the curb, rereading a Batman comic, taking a break from what he was supposed to be doing, which was helping me break into this system. The comic was one of dozens spread out around him. He'd probably read it a hundred times before, that never stopped Mark. Each time it was as if he'd discovered a new planet or something.
I sometimes thought that Mark would have preferred to hang out in the Geek world. It seemed a more natural fit.
Add that to the list of my problems, getting Mark to care about something important like this project.
"Why are you here again?" I asked him.
"Your stuff's cooler than mine," he said without looking up from the page. "Besides, you got special plans or something?" Mark asked.
My brow scrunched, he knew full well we never had plans on a Friday night. Just like we didn't have plans for Saturday nights. We'd spend the weekend in this dank basement. Mark hanging out, mooching my Mountain Dew, while I worked testing computer security programs.
Looking around the room, a sense of pride washed over me. "The Bat Cave" Mark called it. Two six foot metal cabinets held my equipment. Servers, routers, switches. A dozen green and red lights flashing. I knew intimately what each light meant and what it was saying.
My workbench overflowed with tools and spare parts. An empty computer case sitting ready to be filled with new parts. A one-meg copper disk, the size of an old-fashioned vinyl record, hung on the wall next to a poster of Emma Watson. I'd found it behind the federal building on a trip to Seattle. The disk that is, not the poster of Emma Watson. That I got off the web.
I'd built it all myself. Every screw, every wire. One piece at a time. For the last three years, I'd spent every extra minute and every spare dime developing a reputation as a pretty good security hacker. Way more than some script kiddy who couldn't break into a paper bag without help.
Most of my customers didn't know about my age. Those that did know couldn't care less, I was that good.
Now, I was turning that reputation into money. A freelance job here and there went a long way. Heaven knew Mom could use the help. With a derelict of an ex-husband, a going-nowhere job at the hospital, a nerdy teenage son, and a blind fifteen-year-old daughter. Every dollar I added to the household budget meant a little less stress on her.
Companies paid me to try and break into their systems, hoping to learn about their vulnerabilities. You'd be surprised how often I got in. But then, that's why they paid me.
Mark gave me crap about it. Saying I should have used some of the money to get a car. He'd never understand. I had plans for that money. Or at least, what little was left.
Turning back to my computer, I resumed where I'd left off. Probing, trying to find the holes in the system. There were always holes. The trick was getting them to line up so I could get in. My hands flew across the wireless keyboard trying all the
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