There was stunned silence. Until someone said, “I think that’s a great idea.” It was the cookie girl. I was ready to gloat with satisfaction from my impassioned, persuasive speech . . . until the cookie girl said, “We should use the money from the bake sale to have an interracial dance!”

And suddenly everyone was energized with this new idea that they accused me of coming up with.

“Hey,” Paul said to me with a shrug, “maybe it’ll make the news, like you said, and get other schools to do it, too.”

I left the meeting feeling like I’d accomplished a whole lot of nothing.

“Don’t be so surprised,” Paul said. “Support for desegregation might be miles wide, but around here it’s only inches deep.”

Considering how little time I’d been spending on schoolwork lately, Paul and I made plans for some much-needed math tutoring, then went our separate ways. It wasn’t until after the last bell rang that things took yet another unexpected turn.

“Ash, wait up!”

It was Layton. He came trotting toward me with Katie in tow as I shut my locker at the end of the day.

“Hey,” he said. “Glad I caught you before practice. Katie and I need to talk to you.”

“We do?” said Katie, clearly not consulted about this encounter.

“Yeah,” said Layton, “I thought I told you.” Then Layton pulled out his phone. “There’s this new app—have you heard about it? It’s called Public-i. It lets you access feeds from any public video camera anywhere in the country—and if you report something that actually leads to an arrest, they pay you in Bitcoin.”

“That so?” I said, not caring in the least, and too slow on the uptake to know where this conversation was going. But Katie clearly did, and got visibly nervous.

“Yeah,” continued Layton. “People are getting rich off of it—and the best thing about it is that it’s a public service!”

I idly wondered if this app existed in my old world, or if it was unique to this one. Maybe I didn’t want to know.

“Anyway—and this is really cool—look what I caught this morning!”

He pulled up the app, and the second I saw the video, I knew what this was about. He had tapped a surveillance feed in the gym—the one set up so that security guards could shoo away any horny or spider-interested kids who had slipped behind the bleachers. Public-i now showed Katie and me coming out from under the bleachers.

“Isn’t this an amazing app!” said Layton with a forced enthusiasm that was too scary for words. “Hey, here’s an idea! Why don’t you explain to me why you and my girlfriend were hanging out in a known make-out spot.”

A suitable response did not present itself to my brain, so Katie took over.