He was right. Even Eddie with all of his swimmer’s sleekness would have a hard time fitting into something this super-thin guy would wear.

  “Oh my God, Mitch is arguing over clothes.” Iris laughed, and when Mitch didn’t take the frown off his face, she strategically attacked his ribs, forcing him to laugh.

  He squirmed and tried to move away, but he was sitting on the edge of the row so he didn’t have far to go without falling onto the stairs. Iris had mastered the tickle attack. Mitch couldn’t move his hands fast enough to keep her away. It was good he wasn’t a goalie with those slow reflexes.

  “Okay. I’m sorry. You two can ogle all you want, and I’ll keep my mouth shut.” He relented and she stopped. He scooted back, closer to her.

  “You’ve got nothing to worry about. He’s way too thin for me.” She ran her hand over his shirt-covered stomach. “And you’ve got nice abs too.” Iris kissed his cheek as a tinge of red flooded over it.

  I grinned. They were too cute.

  The announcer’s voice over the PA got the event started. There were a few individual events and three relays on the program. Eddie competed in the one-hundred-yard backstroke and anchored one of the relays.

  He was poolside getting into his competition mode. During the warm-ups, he was his usual animated self, but once the meet started, he went into his own headspace. A calm fell over his face as he took a seat and put his earbuds in. I asked him once to play for me what he listened to. I expected hard driving music—rock, rap, techno—to get pumped up. But he surprised me with a swelling orchestral score. It reminded me of a medieval knight’s movie soundtrack. He said it inspired him.

  I didn’t question it. Athletes have their things they do to get ready to compete. Our goalie listens to the same three Korn songs while he gets dressed. Mitch has to put his gear on in a certain order. I run a specific sequence of warm-ups when I hit the ice.

  It was difficult to do anything but watch Eddie. It only took me a few meets before I fell in love with the subtle changes that would come over him as he got himself ready. He’d explained he wanted to be relaxed so he’d be flexible enough to slice through the water like he wanted to.

  He sat quietly in his team’s area, music on, towel around his bare shoulders and sweatpants on. His eyes were open, but I don’t think he really saw what happened around him. He was in Eddie World getting ready to give his best race for the team.

  Some of his teammates had their own thing going on, but none of them had intensity like he did.

  Once the swimming started, I forced myself to split my attention between Eddie and the pool. Mitch, Iris, and I had our own running commentary on what happened in the races. This meet was important. We were number one and East Boston was number two. The schools had traded rankings most of the season.

  “Did Westfield and Northampton actually show up?” Mitch asked. “There’s such a gap between East Boston, us, and them. Usually there’s decent four-way competition.”

  “Maybe they know they don’t have a chance,” Iris said, as usual being the most forthright one in our group.

  “Hopelessness sucks,” I added. “I’ve been in games where you know you’ll be pummeled. Those aren’t fun.”

  “I’m glad we don’t do that anymore.” Mitch put his fist out and I bumped it.

  He was right. We’d done well our first two seasons at McKinley, and we were holding our own in the rankings this year—in the hunt for a spot to send us to the state playoffs.

  “He’s on the move.” That’s what I always said when the towel dropped off Eddie’s shoulders. He followed the same pattern every meet—he stood up when the race before his got set, took his earbuds out, wrapped them around a couple of fingers to store them in his sweats pocket, took those off, folded them neatly, and put them on the chair.

  I loved his last stretches. He’s normally pretty bendy, but these routines were insane. He tried to get me to stretch with him when we worked out together, but I was never flexible like he was.

  Mitch reached across Iris and shoved me in the shoulder. “You’re about to drool, man. That’s even worse than you two all worked up over someone’s abs.”

  “He’s doing it over his boyfriend.” Iris shoved Mitch like he’d done to me. “Leave him alone.”

  I pulled myself together. Yes, watching Eddie swim always horned me up. What was I supposed to do? He was just a few feet away, practically naked, and he looked awesome.

  “I bet you don’t look like that when you come to one of my games,” Mitch added.

  “You’re not on the ice in super tight swim trunks. Do that, and I’ll look exactly like Theo does.”

  Mitch turned about fifty shades of red before Iris winked at him and turned back to the pool. I grinned, on the verge of laughing. Our banter during the meets was always awesome and silly.

  Eddie stepped up to the start point at the same time as his competitors, and they all dropped into the pool. Grabbing on to the handholds in front of him, Eddie waited for the start tone. He pushed off gracefully to arc over the water before dropping in to swim. He had the lead after the start and settled into his stroke, his arms reminding me of windmills as they cut through the water.

  “Goooo, Eddie!” I screamed. I was very vocal during his heats. We joked that if he played tennis, I’d get thrown out for making too much noise. Two lanes over, the guy from East Boston pushed hard to catch up. Eddie flipped at the far wall and got a massive push off.

  Iris, Mitch, and I all stood up. It was going to be a close one because East Boston worked hard to close the gap. That guy’s head was about at Eddie’s chest. Eddie’s coach yelled something, and Eddie’s body pulsed as he added speed at the same time the other guy did. The effort paid off. Eddie touched the wall a fraction of a second before East Boston came in. The race finished in less than a minute.

  We cheered and I tried to be extra loud to make up for Eddie’s parents not being here.

  Eddie looked elated as he came out of the water, pumping his fist in the air a couple of times. He had a huge smile, specifically for winning, and I loved seeing it coming off such a close race. Even the smiles he gave me weren’t that big, although they were cuter and sexier. As an athlete I understood.

  “He looked really good today,” Mitch said.

  “Yeah. He’s worked hard to improve his time for this week. It paid off.”

  Eddie finished toweling off and pulled his sweatpants back on. Before he sat to get back in his zone, he looked up in the stands, pointed at me, and winked. That was our thing. He did that after his first swim. I did it when I skated out for the first face-off of the third period.

  It took a half hour to get to the final race, the relay. As much as I liked to see Eddie run his own race, watching his team work together for the win and him cranking hard in the anchor spot was the coolest thing of any meet. Watching him extend his team’s lead with his powerful strokes or digging deep to make up time needed made me a proud boyfriend.

  This relay was the most intense I’d seen this season. East Boston and McKinley were neck and neck the entire way. They had to go to a video to see if Eddie or the other team touched first. Even before they announced, I knew we’d lost because Eddie’s face fell.

  “I’m gonna head down there,” I said. “Catch you guys at Tommy’s tonight?”

  “Yeah, man.” Mitch fist-bumped me.

  “Give him a hug for me,” Iris said before they left.

  I walked down to the edge of the bleachers. I could’ve gone out onto the deck around the pool, but I never wanted to crowd him or the team. He came over to me once he had his T-shirt and sweats on. We kissed and he rested his forehead against mine. He wasn’t usually this upset over losses. Against this school, though, I understood.

  “I want to rinse off the chlorine,” he said, not moving. “Can you hang a couple minutes?”

  “Of course.” I gently kissed him.

  I sat on the lowest level of seating and watched him head to the locker room with some of his team. Even though, based on points, the team still won the meet, the relay always mattered most to them. I needed to do something special for him tonight to take his mind off it.

  My phone pulsed in my pocket, and it was Lorenzo. I wasn’t sure he ever took a day off anymore.

  “Can you talk?” he asked after he identified.

  “Not freely. Let me pop my earbuds in.” I looked around, and while no one was near me, this still wasn’t a secure location. He could talk, but I’d be careful what I said. I put in my eavesdrop-proof buds. “Go ahead.”

  “We had a brief lead on the missing file this morning. One of the bots blipped for a couple seconds before going dark again. They must be storing offline and the blip was either a file transfer or, maybe, testing online for something.”

  “Keeping them offline.” I kept my voice low. “It makes sense. Decrypt offline and then use the information when you want. Any idea of location?”

  “We couldn’t narrow it down any more than to the East Coast.”

  I sat silent, processing the new information.

  “We should vaporize the file the next time we see it.” I suddenly envisioned the bots as terminators looking for their target. “Should be doable even within a short time.”

  “My only fear is that there could be copies we don’t know about. They managed to get it off the laptop. We’d have no way to know if we got them all.”

  “True. No amount of—” Eddie appeared from the locker room, so I needed to wrap this up. “I gotta go. I’ll think on this and get back to you.”

  “Understood. Later, man.”

  Crap. Now I had work to do, but I wanted to cheer up Eddie too, preferably before we went to Tommy’s.

  “Hey,” he said, not sounding any better than he looked. “Can I borrow your phone a second? Mine’s drained and I need to call Mom back.”

  “Um. Sure.”

  I hated letting my phone go, despite the security it had on it. I keyed in the code that would put the phone in super secure mode—none of the TOS stuff would show and no secure calls or messages could come in until it went back into standby.

  “Thanks.” Eddie took the phone and dialed. “Hey, Mom. Sorry, my phone conked. Yes. I know I should keep it charged better.” He rolled his eyes at me. “What’s—I planned to hang with Theo.”

  My watch buzzed and showed the “icing” message. No one I could see in the aquatic center had a phone or computer visible. I also wasn’t on Wi-Fi, only standard cell service. I’d have to look and see if Dean was using a different tactic this time.

  “But—okay. I’ll be home in a few minutes.” He clicked off and handed the phone back. “I gotta go home for a few hours. Turns out my grandparents came down to surprise us. Mom’s stressed because she doesn’t get along with Dad’s mother and he’s not home.”

  “S’okay. Still on for tonight?”

  “For sure!” He brightened up at that. “We’ve got plans. I don’t care if the grands plan to stay all night.”

  Eleven

  I hated the mall, especially on weekend afternoons when everyone else seemed to be there too. I preferred online shopping. The only thing the mall had that I liked was the amazing ice cream place. It had an outside entrance so you didn’t have to go inside the rest of the place.

  For this trip I ended up deep in the mall, though, because I needed new sneakers and the best place to get those was here. Luckily I knew what I wanted, so I didn’t have to stay long. I cut through the food court and I saw Dean at a table with his phone out. He smiled in kind of an evil way and far different from the sullen look I usually saw in school.

  It was unsettling.

  Part of me wanted to go home since I’d completed my shopping, but Dean and I hadn’t talked after he tried to get into my phone. At least no one would pay attention to us if we talked here. His attention seemed to shift between his phone, occasionally tapping the screen, and staring off into the distance. Weird.

  Did I do weird stuff like that?

  “Hey, Dean.” He jumped so hard the table shook. I figured he’d seen me in his peripheral vision so I wouldn’t be sneaking up. “Sorry, man. Saw you sitting here and thought I’d say hello.”

  “What do you want?” I didn’t expect the harsh tone or that he’d turn back to where he’d been looking.

  I followed his gaze and saw Wes inside The Gap. He was folding pants at a display and had a name tag on his shirt. I didn’t take him for the type to have a job, especially in retail. Wes pulled out his phone, looked at it, shook his head, and repocketed it. A few seconds later, he repeated the motion. It reminded me of what he’d done in the parking lot the day Eddie and I pulled him off Dean.

  “What are you doing?” I took the chair adjacent to Dean.

  “A little revenge.”

  “You know if he catches you, he’ll beat you senseless, right?” Dean’s look told me to mind my own business, but I wasn’t going to let this go. “Besides, what you’re doing is illegal. Tampering with someone’s phone.”

  “Like he’d even figure it out.” He didn’t look at me. “I vibrate it like it’s Gina calling. But when he looks at the screen, there’s nothing there. Do you wanna see the pics he’s got? His camera roll can be kind of hot sometimes.”

  I shook my head. Any doubt about who sent the email a couple of days ago disappeared. I snatched the phone out of his hands and kept it out of his reach. At least for the moment, he didn’t try to get it back.

  “Why not go to the principal and tell her what he’s done to you? Eddie and I can be witnesses since we pulled him off you.”

  “She doesn’t care. Wes has been a thorn in my side for years.” He held out his hand, but I didn’t give him the phone. “Now I can torment him back.”

  This was not my specialty. I didn’t know what to tell him. I was lucky and had limited experience with bullies. Yes, Wes tried to torment me a few years ago. And, in sixth grade some guy wanted my lunch money. I’d said no, he got one punch in, but then I’d wailed on him. I didn’t have my TOS training back then, but I still had better reflexes and won easily. While I’d gotten suspended for three days, it set me up as someone not to mess with.

  “The school will take action. The athletes all get a big anti-bullying speech at the start of the season.”

  “Great for you. It doesn’t seem to trickle down to goons like him who don’t do sports,” he said, voice full of sarcasm. He stood and tried to reclaim his phone, but I moved it out of reach too fast. “I’m not like you. Mr. Jock. Mr. MIT. I’m a scrawny guy who wants to be left alone behind a keyboard.”

  In the store Wes looked at his phone again, frowning as he jabbed at the screen. Dean laughed at Wes’s distress.

  “Is that why you tried to get into my phone?” I kept his phone, and he dropped back into his chair. “To try to pull this kind of stuff on me?”

  He focused on me. “No,” he said, some regret in his voice. “Initially I wanted to see if your phone had vulnerabilities like everyone else’s. I was curious if the big-shot cyber expert,” he said as sarcasm took over, “kept himself secure. Once I pinged you and saw the wall you had in place, I wanted to poke it. I didn’t expect the meltdown.”

  I grinned, which seemed to relax him a bit. “Better safe than sorry.”

  “It’s a little extreme for a phone, though, isn’t it?” Now he sounded like the guy at the whiteboard on Friday discussing how the team could design its project. “I mean I’ve got a firewall up, but you’ve got extreme security. It’s what I’d expect to find on a government or bank server.”

  “I like to experiment. Good thing I do or who knows what you might try.”

  “No, man.” He sounded sincere. “No way I’d burn you. Why didn’t you call me out?”

  I shrugged and put his phone on the table between us. “What would’ve been the point?” This time he shrugged but didn’t move for his device. “Here’s what I want to know. Why don’t you lead the class to get the encryption written for the competition? The team doesn’t need me. They’ve got you.”

  “I like to stay under the radar. I don’t need another reason for the likes of Wes to fuck with me.”

  In the few minutes I’d sat with him, he’d gone from mad villain to angry to sad.

  “Can you show me what you use to protect your phone? I’d love to see that code.” The question was a non sequitur.

  I pushed back from the table and stood up. “No. What you’re doing is so beyond wrong, not to mention Wes could go to the police, and then you’d be in big trouble. There’s no way I’m going to show you how to build better defenses when you might try to use it to do something like this, or worse.”

  He still hadn’t touched his phone. He held my gaze and when it was clear he wasn’t going to speak, I turned and walked away. I stopped after a few steps and pivoted back.

  “If you want me to help you with anything, stop messing with Wes and start stepping up in the team meetings. Be the better man.”

  I walked away because I wanted him to think about his response. There was probably a better way to handle him, but it made me angry that people invaded lives like he’d done to Wes. Messing with people’s security shouldn’t be a game. It’s part of why I went into the field as a specialty. Whether I applied my skills for TOS or somewhere else, people deserved to be safe from electronic attacks.

  Twelve

  Spinning around in my desk chair at home, I considered what Dean had done to Wes. He clearly had skills beyond what he showed the team. It left me torn. What Dean was doing was wrong. But in some ways, Wes deserved payback.

  And Dean. I’d underestimated him. Being able to trigger the secondary alert on my phone wasn’t a simple task. What else did he get into? Was he malicious all the time?

  I stopped my spin in front of the keyboard. I hadn’t taken the time to look in depth at the logs from my phone yet. With everything going on, it’d been the least of my priorities. But it’d be good insight into Dean to see what his attack looked like.