“Oprah says there are no coincidences—everything has a purpose.” Crap. Not Oprah. I’d already had my cell phone grounded; I didn’t need to be tortured too. She waved the principal’s note at me. “This is fate’s way of giving you a wake-up call. Oprah says you get a whisper first, then you get a little pebble upside the head, next it’s a brick, then a brick wall, and then the whole wall falls down on you. This is your whisper, Ser.”

Hmmm … I was sort of hoping it was a pebble, because then I could chuck it at her.

“Okay, Mom. I’m sorry. Can we go now?” I pried the note from her tightly pinching fingers and handed it to the principal’s secretary. My whisper? Was she serious?

I shut myself in my room as soon as we got home, turned up the stereo, and went online in stealth mode, disabling my IMs. I didn’t want idle little chitchats. I wanted to get that lost feeling, that floating fog.

I signed onto my game and picked up with my coding, trying to get into that hacker haze I needed. I was just free coding. My brain full of delicate state—juggling priceless eggs in variable gravity, as my fellow aliens would say. I basked in the white noise vibration of it.

Some hours later, a clinking noise overtook Rob Zombie’s “Dragula,” jerking me painfully out of my hacker mode bliss. It took me a second to realize it was a pebble hitting my window. After quickly saving my game, I unlocked my window and looked out. Kori’s eyes stared up at me, concerned.

I glanced back into the house, thinking Mom would be knocking soon, and even if I wasn’t grounded, she wouldn’t be pleased about seeing Kori there.

“I’ll be quiet!” Kori shouted up. Loudly.

With a groan, I waved her up and waited while she climbed the handyman’s ladder.

“Seriously, be quiet. I’m in enough trouble,” I said as I helped her crawl through my window while trying to carry her flour baby. As she stood, I stared. The skinny wench was giving me a serious case of pelvic bone envy. She was wearing a pair of black leather pants that were cut so low she had to shave her special place just to wear them.

She hooked a thumb in her front pocket, which inched them down even farther, if that was possible. “What? Don’t tell me you forgot.”

I looked back at her face.

“The party? The dare?” She went straight for my computer monitor. “I tried to catch you online.”

“Stealth, sorry.”

She turned back to me. “Your cell went straight to voice.”

“Mom grounded it.”

“Well? Is she shipping you off to Brat Camp?” In addition to being heavily involved in Colorado Cares, Mom is also lead advocate for Wilderness Wonders.