It was just past nine in the morning now. Sam had already showered and dressed, and had just finished breakfast. He had the TV on in the living room, though he wasn’t paying much attention to it. The people on Good Morning America were talking about the Moon landing, which had happened exactly twenty years ago today: July 20, 1969.

Sam was in the kitchen, rinsing his cereal bowl in the sink, when someone knocked on the door. A small hand, pounding hard. He set the bowl down and shut off the faucet and dried his hands. He stepped out of the kitchen into the front entryway and saw Dani through the narrow window beside the door.

Her eyes were red, like she’d been crying. She saw him through the glass and waved him toward her. He crossed to the door at almost a run and pulled it open.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Yesterday’s tape,” she said. “You need to listen to it. Can you come over right now?”

He got the front door key from its drawer in the kitchen, locked up, and followed her back to her house. He could hear a hitch in her breathing as they walked. She kept wiping at her eyes.

“Dani, what is it?”

“I want you to hear the tape first. I want to see if you think the same thing I do.”

The day before, she had described the exact process she used for sending and retrieving the tapes. She actually had two recorders, and she had lots of leftover tapes from the previous school year. Her approach was simple, and was designed to minimize the risk of her father catching her in the act.

Every night, once both her parents were asleep, she went into the den and opened the briefcase. She pulled the recorder out of its hiding place inside the lining, popped out the tape and put in a different one, then hid the recorder again and closed the case. The whole thing took less than thirty seconds, from the time she left her bedroom until she was back in it. She could do it in almost perfect silence, and without turning any lights on. Best of all, she could hear her parents’ breathing the entire time; if either of them woke up, she would know instantly. She would have plenty of time to simply close the briefcase and slip back to her room, and try again later in the night.

The rest of the process was a cakewalk: she simply waited until both her parents left in the morning, then listened to the previous day’s tape using her second recorder. Most days, the tape contained just a few minutes of audio. She would listen once, then listen again and try to write everything down, then listen a third or fourth time and make sure she had it right.