Page 32 of Chasing Headlines
Bingo. Happened far too often. She liked to game, was a badass at it. And too many of the guys who could keep up with her were younger teens. “I know the feeling.”My prospects are just as depressing. The screen went dark. My stomach dropped and my reflection in the laptop screen grimaced. Then the little loading icon came up. “Phew.”
“What's that?” Cathy’s voice sounded far away. More tapping filtered through my phone.
“Nothing. Just quietly freaked out when the screen went dark. I can't say the user experience with this thing is worth what I had to pay to send one stupid file.”
She snorted. “Whose is? But yeah, I'll be there Friday. What've you been up to since you got there? Seen much of the campus? The town?”
I laughed. “Hate to break it to you, but this is what you get for doing a virtual reality tour. There's no town. Campus is nice, though.”
“Eh, doesn't bother me. I'm there for school, my few friends. And no parental oversight telling me what to do twenty-four hours a day.” The clickity-clack typing stopped. “Ah, freedom, besides, I can do what I do as long as I have power and wifi,” she said with a real sigh of relief. She and her adopted parents had been struggling to connect since her older brother had gone away to college. They meant well, but didn't really understand her.
“I can't wait. That and non-stop hang-outs with you and Hilda.” Cathy said with a smile in her voice. “At least until her medical internship takes her away.”
The loading bar crept across the screen. I had to stop looking at it. “Not until junior year. How can anyone plan that far ahead?”
“Some people just . . . do. But anyway, you didn't say?—”
“Been covering baseball camp—for the paper.” The upload bar finally finished. The page refreshed, displaying the words: check your email for confirmation.What the hell?“I have check my email to make sure the file went?”
“Seriously?”
“That's what I said.” I opened my webmail. There were at least ten messages from the service already. Ugh.
“More baseball? You didn't get enough testosterone and tiny balls while interning for Curt?”
“You sound like Dubby. Ugh, looks like I signed up for FastTransfer’s perma-spam program. Joy.”
“Oh yeah, they already sold your data. That’s how it works.”
I ducked my head into my hand. “Great.”
“So, what’s in this one hundred and twenty-eight gigabyte treasure trove? By the way, who’s the school Internet provider? That upload speed’s not the worst I've seen.”
“Uh. Hmmm.” I glanced around my computer screen as if that would somehow tell me . . . something. “How do I tell the provider?”
“There’s usually a clue in the SSID. What’s your wifi connection called?”
I pulled up the list of available networks I'd chosen from earlier. “Student-verse Reunion.”
“Hm.” She clicked her tongue. “What others are in the list?”
“Oh, yikes, ImHackingYou, all one word. FBI Surveillance Van, uh-huh. Student-verse Alamo, Student-verse Rio Grande, names of nearby dorms. Can you tell we’re in Texas? Mobile h0t sp0t with some suspicious-looking zeroes instead of oh’s.”
She giggled. “That’s my girl.”
“Z-Verse-Athlete-Zone? Maybe one of the athletic dorms? And Not-a-pineapple.” I snorted.
“You have hackers on campus. Already.”
“The only people supposed to be here are those in athletic camp, and some support staff—like coaches, trainers, journalists.”
“Don’t connect to Not-a-pineapple, or we can’t be friends.”
I laughed. “You've taught me better than that! So, Z-verse? Is that what you were looking for?” I shrugged like she could see me.
“That’s it. I can look up their coverage map to be sure. My guess is the college is on its own dedicated lines.”
“Even if it wasn’t. It's not like?—”