“He hacked us!” Nathan shouted.

“How could I?” Crosby yelled back. “I was in the middle of the match.”

“Why would that stop you?” Nathan demanded while Caleb and Zach held him back.

“ ’Cause if you knew anything about hacking, you’d know I couldn’t launch a malware attack while I was playing,” Crosby yelled. “I’d have to do it from another server.”

Nathan twisted and squirmed, struggling to break free from Zach and Caleb. Now Ms. B stepped between them. “That’s enough,” she said firmly. “Calm down or this is the end of the eSports club.”

Nathan stopped struggling. Everyone caught their breath, but Zach and Caleb stayed between Nathan and Crosby just in case the fight flared up again. It felt awkward for Caleb to be standing practically shoulder to shoulder with Zach. They hadn’t spoken since seeing each other at the mall over the weekend. Since then, Zach had stopped coming to the cafeteria for lunch. Caleb sensed that he was upset about what happened at the mall. And the more Caleb thought about it, the more he wondered if Zach was right. Maybe Caleb should have been more sensitive. Inviting Zach to hang out with him and his cousins wouldn’t have been so hard. Caleb had hoped that after today’s match he would walk home with Zach as usual and smooth things over. But now he had to go to the yearbook office to look at portraits after the match. So talking to Zach would have to wait.

Why me? Crosby thought. It’s totally unfair! Ms. B was marching both Nathan and him down to her room. She can’t prove I did anything! Nathan’s the one who started it.

Ms. B made them sit, then gave them the old “no one ever solved anything with their fists” lecture. She warned them that if it happened again, they’d both be written up and sent to Principal Summers. She gave Nathan an assignment to write about self-control and how he could have handled the situation differently. Then she told him he could go. Crosby couldn’t believe it. Why’s she letting him go and making me stay?

Nathan left, and Ms. B focused on Crosby. “What do you know about what happened today?”

“Nothing,” Crosby said.

The wrinkles around Ms. B’s eyes deepened. “When Nathan accused you of hacking, you said that if he knew anything about it, he’d know that you had to do it from a separate server. So clearly you do know something about hacking. Or, what did you call it…a hardware attack?”

Now Crosby saw his mistake. “Malware,” he said quietly.

“And it happened just when the Axis side was going to lose another round,” Ms. B added.

Crosby bit the inside of his lip. He knew where this was leading. She was going to accuse him of having something to do with the malware attack even though she had no real proof.

“And I suppose it was just a coincidence that the images that appeared on the monitors included Iron Crosses and swastikas?” Ms. B said.