XGeneration 1: You Don't Know Me by Brad Magnarella Read Free Book Online

tunnel through the garage last night and carrying his incriminating computer equipment, printouts, floppy disks, and Bell manuals to the rear storeroom, it was after two o’clock in the morning. He wasn’t even able to manage one last check of his bedroom to see if he had missed anything. Fully dressed, he collapsed into sleep, only to dream his door was being kicked in. The FBI always raided in the wee hours, went the rumor. So you couldn’t warn your hacker friends.
    The microwave beep-beep-beep ed at the same moment his mother patted the files down and snapped her briefcase closed. “All right,” she said, slinging the briefcase over her shoulder. “I put three dollars on the mantelpiece for your lunch. If there’s any change, I want it. Mr. Shine might come this afternoon to weed. Tell him I’ll have his check this weekend.”
    She wrapped the steaming muffin in aluminum foil, took a bite from the end, and patted her short, dark hair.
    “And wake your father before you leave.”
    For the first time that morning, Scott became aware of the choked snores from the living room. After pizza last night, his father had fallen asleep on the couch, trying to watch his three rentals from Video World, action-comedies from the sounds of them. His volcanic laughter had erupted on and off until about a quarter to one, then ended abruptly.
    “Yeah, all right,” Scott said to his mother.
    But she’d already seized her thermos of Ultra Slim-Fast and was halfway to the front door.
    * * *
    The early morning, though dim, felt raw against Scott’s eyes. The front yard was empty, the street still. No swarm of black Crown Victorias parked helter-skelter over his lawn, which Scott had dreamed as well. He staggered down the street, his oversized backpack bearing mechanical pencils, a scientific calculator, two sheaves of paper inside a green Trapper Keeper, and his unread copy of 1984 . The backpack, one of his father’s finds, had sagged to the backs of Scott’s knees the year before; now it barely touched the hemlines of his shorts. His summer growth spurt had been more vigorous than he realized.
    He approached Oakwood’s main intersection—no cars coming—and scuttled across. But he didn’t stand beside the stop sign as the letter sent by the school had instructed. Instead, he studied the Pattersons’ driveway, where a pair of tall bushes flanked the garage door. The nearer bush looked fuller. A moment later, he was crouched behind it, peering through the leaves at the intersection. He shrugged off his backpack and held up his calculator-wristwatch. 7:02 a.m. He was probably safe unless the FBI decided to come for him at school or bide their time until the weekend, when they would have a better chance of catching him asleep.
    That’s how the FBI had nailed hackers all summer. “Public Enemy Number One” the headlines announced after a big bust. “War Games II.” The thing of it was, the hackers Scott knew from the boards were harmless, not out to bring the system to its knees or start thermonuclear warfare (as if they could). To them, hacking was a challenge. It was learning how systems worked and then becoming master of those systems. It was sports for nerds. Scott had never scored a goal or a touchdown or swatted a home run—and probably never would. But he couldn’t imagine any of those matching the rush of a successful hack.
    Or the terror.
    Scott watched cars pause at the stop signs, then cruise down the hill toward Sixteenth Avenue, their taillights as red and bleary as his eyes felt. Most of the cars he recognized, many of them just by the hum of their engines, the cut of their tires: Volkswagen Rabbit, Chevy Chevette, turd-brown Toyota Tercel. Most recognizable were those cars that came from The Meadows, the subdivision where Scott lived. Less familiar were the ones puttering up from The Downs or coasting down from The Grove, where the biggest houses were. The Grove also featured a field with a giant oak tree