Comic Brew—the coffee shop/comic bookstore I worked at part time—was pretty dead for a Friday night. A group of sophomores had taken up residence at one of our largest booths, completely immersed in an intense game of Clue as they sipped their cappuccinos.

One of the sweet perks—besides the comics and stellar coffee—was the insane amount of board games we had for people to play. Gary was an awesome boss and let me have flexible hours, but the chill vibe of the place was the perfect counter to my normally high-speed, high-tech life. Board games, people actually interacting with each other in the real world, it was all balancing for me—even if I rarely played where I worked. But being in the presence of it helped me keep one foot in the real world while the rest of me was often lost in cyberspace.

Doing another scan to make sure no one would see what I worked on, I pulled up my website. It had been a week since my first blog went live.

It had over five thousand hits, and the girl who’d asked the question had already emailed me to thank me. I’d felt unworthy of that thanks as I read it, but when I gave the email a second pass, some small piece of my jagged heart had…healed. The gratification, the notion that in this one moment I was doing the right thing—despite the fact that I’d be expelled and could kiss my hopeful acceptance letter to MIT goodbye if I was ever caught—filled me with this awesome sense of purpose I couldn’t properly explain. It was enough that I was devising a plan to post every day. To try to help as much and as often as I could—and if the blog got so big it counteracted every Dark-Aged piece of propaganda Tanner’s site posted, then win-win.

As I scrolled through the never-ending inbox of comments, I wondered what Dean was working on. Wondered what his challenge entailed and if it was as scandalous as mine. Knowing him, it would be more discreet. He’d already seen mine—that night at the taco shop—though he didn’t have a clue I was behind the blog, and I hadn’t given him a chance to offer his thoughts on it.

My stomach fluttered, even though I told it to calm down. We’d had Code Club two nights ago, and one tonight that I’d had to cut short because of my shift.

We’d worked at the same table but facing each other so neither one of us could see what the other was working on, the backs of our laptop screens almost touching. It was a comfortable yet charged silence, one I found myself looking forward to all week.