“R-i-i-i-ght,” Gavin said in a spot-on impersonation of Ryan. Delia felt Lucy tense beside her. Gavin continued. “D-Day’s coming, and you chicks aren’t the Allied forces or the Germans. You’re the beach.”

He high-fived his teammates, who seemed as dumbfounded as Delia. “What does that even mean?”

Lucy looked disappointed and then said through gritted teeth, “It means we have to succeed. In all of this.”

“We will.” Though the queasiness in Delia’s stomach seemed less sure. The confidence fueling her inside of Pulse petered out the more she thought about what she’d done and what she was about to do, which she was pretty sure was illegal no matter the intention behind it.

She switched seats with Maddie, who’d begun filling Lucy in, talking softly to her in the French they both knew, while Delia watched San Francisco pass on by. She wanted to be here, she wanted to succeed, but like this?

Ryan, Gavin, the guy who betrayed Maddie, the boys who insulted Delia for years, they were bullies; they didn’t care who they hurt.

Delia leaned forward to face both Maddie and Lucy. “This girl . . . Natalie. Natalie Travest.” Delia picked up her phone, found her on Instagram, and followed her. “I don’t want her to get in trouble. I’ll hack in as far as I can and make a copy of everything I can find, but I won’t log in again.”

“What?” Maddie said. “What if you don’t have everything? We just stop? We’re so close.”

“I know,” Delia said. “It’s just . . . Girl Empowered. It’s not just a name to me.”

“Me neither,” Lucy said, surprising Delia.

Lucy looked around the bus. “It might have been . . . before all this. But now . . . it’s different. We have to be different. Change comes from us, right?”

Maddie hesitated. “Most people wouldn’t care. Not if we get results.”

“We’re better than most people,” Delia said.

“Or we’re trying to be,” Lucy said.

Delia wasn’t sure she could do it, not because she didn’t believe in herself but because confidence and arrogance were two very different things, something personified by Gavin and Ryan. “I’m going to ask Eric for help. You can trust him because—”

“You do,” Lucy said.

“When will you get started?” Maddie asked.

“Tonight,” Delia said.

*   *   *

“How can you possibly carry that much weight?” Eric asked, four days later.

Delia plunked half a dozen books down on the library table, the noise loud enough to draw looks from their neighbors.

“Oh, of course,” she said. “I forgot how soft you city people are. See, we Midwesterners can carry a cow into the barn while we’re milking it.”

“You have a barn?”

“No. But that’s what you ask? Not if we have a cow?”