Logging on and choosing a network, I frowned. Even if I did need to call him, I couldn’t, not as things stood. We could only talk over chat. I’d brought my laptop because he claimed the app on our phones wasn’t quite as secure.
“What is it?” Devin said. “I have a little sister, and whenever she looks like that I know she either skipped lunch or is mad at me for something I didn’t even realize I did.”
“Neither,” I said. “Though I could use a snack.”
Maddy rummaged in a desk drawer, then tossed me a bag of pita chips.
I caught them. They’d do in a pinch. “Thank you. My neurons go on strike when I’m hungry.”
At their desks, the others went back to work. And after I unrolled the top and crunched a couple chips, I felt better. I remembered that I had an adorable baby cow picture coming later. Though I was frustrated by all the things I didn’t yet know about the Warheads.
Thinking out loud, I said, “I wish I could see the Warheads’ schedules. Anavi said something when I interviewed her about Butler giving them afternoons ‘free’ off campus. Do any of you have classes with them after lunch? Or know where they might go?”
Devin shook his head. “No, which is weird, because I actually do have an advanced design class that usually goes along with advanced comp sci. Electives that most people tend to elect together.”
He hesitated. I put down the bag of chips and entered my passwords, but when I looked up, Devin was still hovering on the cusp of saying something. “What is it?”
“I could . . . I could get you in. To the schedules. I’m pretty sure. The school’s firewall . . . A class I was in last year helped build it.”
“That seems wise of the school,” James said.
“They didn’t tell us that’s what it was,” Devin said, clicking around to open some windows on one of his giant monitors as he talked. “But I figured it out by the questions they asked us, and how they made this big deal about destroying the code and all our work at the end of the semester. You want to see their schedules that bad?”
I stood and walked over to Devin. Maddy got up and followed me over. “Of course I do,” I said. “Do it.”
James was scowling again as he joined us. No surprise there. “You can’t do that,” he said. “I don’t think Perry would approve.”
“Perry’s not here,” I said. “Maddy, did Anavi seem like she needed us to help her make this go away?”
Maddy didn’t want to disagree with James. She fidgeted, her eyes fixed on the floor. “Yes,” she said. “She did.”
James started to protest again, but then his face turned smug as Perry strolled through the door. He took us in, gathered around Devin’s desk.
“I can already tell this is going better. I won’t stay and get in your way.” But he did come a little closer. “What are you working on?”
James gave me a superior look, but before he could open his big mouth and spoil things, I spoke up. Trying to keep my voice light, as if playing around, I said, “Devin’s just hacking into the school’s mainframe so we can check out some schedules for a few students. They’re up to no good, and Principal Butler’s in on it.”
Perry snorted. “Good one. Whatever you’re doing, carry on.” With a wave, he was gone, out the way he’d come.
“He didn’t think you were serious,” James said, back to disbelieving.
I would need to make a list of his expressions: disapproving, disbelieving, dis . . . something else. I shrugged. “I didn’t lie.”
“Got it,” Devin said. He stopped typing for a second, raising his hand to direct us to the screens on his giant monitors.
We watched as he opened several smaller windows on them, each one with a name and ID number at the top, followed by a class schedule and current grades for each class. The schedules shared something in common. There were no afternoon classes, nothing except the words:
Independent Study — Project Hydra
“That definitely looks like dirt to me,” I said. “The incriminating kind.”
Devin grinned.
He was cute, and he had hacking skills he wasn’t afraid to use. I grinned back.
Then promptly thought of SmallvilleGuy and felt a twinge of guilt.
And though this Hydra mention on the Warheads’ schedules was an undeniably positive development, evidence that there was more going on here, it bugged me. I wanted to know what it meant. What the more was.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve heard the word Hydra today,” I said. “Our comp sci teacher said it to them in second period. I thought it might be something in the game. But when I asked Anavi, she said even though it’s in the game, it’s nothing much.”