“Sorry,” I said before he could continue. “Principal Tanner had a technical issue.” May have been with “my skills” and not a computer, but close enough for the excuse.

Mr. Griffin waved me off. His black polo was untucked, one hand loosely hanging in his khaki pocket. Fresh out of college, he had to be one of the youngest teachers at Wilmont, but no one could deny his enthusiasm for teaching code. “No worries,” he said. “I wanted to ask you what your favorite coding language is.” He glanced around the room at the other students who had been taking notes before I dropped in. “I know you’ve been at this for longer than some of the class.”

I scanned the room. The only other true hacker in the room was a swirl of light pink in a sea of blind curiosity.

Amber Henderson.

The girl had skills. She also happened to be funny as hell, sharp, and wicked hot. The fact that she’d had a boyfriend for the past year had kept us merely acquaintance-like friends. Her fingers currently clicked her keyboard—she was locked in—the rest of the room vapor. Griffin could’ve easily called on her for the question, but he was ribbing me for my late arrival.

Touché.

“Python,” I finally answered, returning my focus to the front of the room. The words Programming Language were in black letters on the screen behind Griffin.

He nodded rapidly, clicking to the next slide where five bullet points listed the most effective coding languages. “You probably like that because you’re a pen tester, yeah?”

I held my hand out and did the universal so-so shake. I loved breaching walls and locks and codes meant to keep me out, but I hadn’t chosen cybersecurity as my only flavor of hack. Not yet. Not when there were so many more avenues to take.

“Well,” he said, mimicking my so-so shake, “Python is a great language. So is C or C++.” He pointed to the slide behind him. “Coding languages are not only important if you want to break into something or build something. They’re vital to understanding what you’re working on. If you can’t read the language, you’re not going to get far with the given task.” He smiled, an easy grin that was rarely seen on the staff here at Wilmont. “Which,” he continued, “is why we’ll be spending the next few weeks on languages…” Griffin launched into his lesson, and I lost myself in a project I’d meant to wrap up last night but had crashed before I could.

I already knew my preferred language. I already knew almost everything Griffin would cover this semester, but this was an advanced computer course—one of many offered, the only perk of sticking it out at Wilmont. I couldn’t not take it. Plus, the hour block gave me extra time to code on my own.