rules.” She wrinkled her brow, probably sensing I wasn’t buying it. “Think of it as the UN Security Council, but instead of old people in suits, it’s people like us on the Internet.”
I stretched my neck, and a wave of pain shot down my back. “I don’t know. It sounds complicated.”
“It is.” She frowned. “But I don’t want you to leave.”
Estelle waddled to my desk and leaned nose to nose with me, peering over her spectacles. “This is your last warning.” Stale coffee and sweet perfume wafted from her face. She straightened and turned to the class. “Can anyone tell me the five permanent member nations of the Security Council?”
“America,” Stacy called out.
Estelle nodded. “Yes, the United States of America is a permanent member. What other countries? Anyone?”
“England?” Tyler Campbell asked.
“Close. The United Kingdom.”
“Africa,” Sparky said.
Estelle lifted her eyebrows. “Africa’s not a country, Mr. Donovan.”
Shaneta Williams raised her hand, nodding at her friend and chewing gum. “Paris?”
Estelle rubbed her brow. “Paris isn’t a country either, Shaneta.”
Lowering my voice, I leaned close to Allie’s ear. “How would we even do it?”
“We’d make a website, like Facebook but different, and ask everyone to join.”
“Everyone?”
Allie nodded.
My right shoe was scuffed at the toe, another reminder of the brawl with Kyle yesterday. I rubbed it with my thumb, but it didn’t fade. “Even our simple plans don’t work, and we’d need to make a website for this one. That’s hard, right? I’d be dead before you got started.”
“With an out-of-the-box white-label social platform, I could create our own social network in a few hours.” She clutched my arm with both hands. “We can do this. Will you at least let me try?”
Outside the window, a row of gray buildings with cracked concrete and weather-stained eves looked as miserable as the winter sky. Last night I slept well for the first time in a week with the thought of being hundreds of miles from Kyle, blending into three million Chicagoans. Not having to deal with school anymore would be a bonus. But leaving wasn’t just about me. Raj and Gordie needed somewhere to stay, and without wanting to sound cocky, they needed me. But then there was Allie. Being close to her was like coming in from the cold to stand in front of a warm fire. Now that I was here, the thought of leaving chilled my insides.
She touched her finger to my cheek and gently turned my head till our eyes met. “Please.” She stared at me with a manic intensity.
Saying no to her wasn’t my greatest strength. I gave a half smile. “I’d need to make arrangements for Gordie and Raj to stay with my cousin.”
She grinned. “We’ll start this afternoon. Meet me in the school computer lab after last period.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I know.”
Estelle licked her finger and thumbed through a book on her desk. Class could be ten minutes shorter if she made use of bookmarks.
Allie swept her hair from her face, missing a strand at her temple. I lifted it behind her ear, and she bit her bottom lip.
“Allie…” I hesitated to finish the thought out loud.
Her lips parted slightly.
“It's good of you to do this,” I said.
At the front of the class, Estelle slammed her book shut and speared me with a glare. “Get out! I refuse to teach students who don’t care to learn.”
No argument from me. I stood and started toward the door, smiling back at Allie.
22. Spinning the Web
I’d only been in the school computer lab twice before, both times so Raj could torrent old Bruce Lee movies. I wasn’t into computers. Something about bright lights and the hum of computers made me want to go someplace else. Cannondale’s computers could’ve been hand-me-downs from NASA’s first moon-landing mission: small dirty screens, sticky keyboards, and grimy mice. The chairs stank of old sweat and had stains to match. A broken keyboard lay on the carpet and a ripped wall poster said I should upgrade to Windows XP.
Three freshmen sat at the front of the room, headsets on, hammering their keyboards as they slashed at dragons. At the back, Allie sat slumped in her chair. I walked over.
Three empty coffee cups and a pack of Chewy Chips Ahoy were scattered around her keyboard. Her hair was in a loose ponytail with one stray curl at her cheek. Her fingers moved on the keys faster than I thought possible, and her eyes darted back and forth across the screen.
I put my hand on her shoulder. “Hey–”
She whipped around, knocking a cup off the table. “Chris! You nearly made me pee myself.”
“Maybe you should ease back on the coffee.”
She turned back to the screen, smiling slightly as her fingers started on the keyboard again. “I skipped class.”
“All of them?” I pulled up the chair next to her. You’re becoming a badass, Allie Brookes.”
Her eyes zigzagged across the screen as she muttered under her breath. She was a million miles away in a world of cryptic computer code.
I took a cookie from the packet. “So this is the Security Council thing?”
She scrolled through the code and pointed at the screen. “I’ve setup a site using Ning.”
“Ning?”
A smile flickered on her face. “It’s Chinese for peace. It’s a ready-made social platform that’ll get us up and running in no time.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It’s a website that lets you make your own site like Facebook, but you can set it up however you like and be the boss.” She clicked the mouse, and photos of Cannondale students filled the screen. “I’ve configured it a little, added some custom code using the API, and added Polldaddy for voting. It’s half-baked, but it’ll work.”
“What’s with all the photos?”
“I’m preloading student account data. We can’t wait forever for people to set themselves up.”
“Where’d you get the photos?” I took another cookie.
She typed something that looked like math but with words. “I took them from the school admin system.”
“You’re allowed to do that?”
“No. It’s data theft. I also took all the student email addresses and cell numbers.”
I lowered my voice. “You hacked the admin system?”
Across the room, the three freshmen cheered and high-fived each other. Apparently the Doom Lord Kazzak was dead.
Allie sat up straight. “Nope. I tried to hack the admin system, but it was too secure.”
“Oh.”
“But then I found out Rhonda keeps an unencrypted backup of the database on a flash drive, so I used that instead.”
“I think that coffee’s affecting you more than you realize.”
She opened a web browser and typed studentsecuritycouncil.org. “Check this out.”
The letters “USSC” appeared at the top of the screen in large writing.
“What’s that?”
“The United Students Security Council.”
Under the heading were the words: Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
I pointed at the words. “What’s that?”
“It’s a Harvey Fierstein quote. He’s a playwright. I thought it summed up the goal of the USSC.” She scrolled through a list of student photos on the left. On the right were status updates and a chat window.
I leaned back in my chair. “It looks like Facebook.”
“Kind of, but it’s a different type of social network.”
“How’s that?”
“It has a lot of the usual Facebook stuff, but it’s more than that.” She pointed at a red button at the top of the page. “I added this button so that members can let other members know when they’re in trouble.”
> “What happens if you press it?”
“You’re asked to describe the problem, and other members chat about it and vote on what action to take.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “It already does all that? What kind of computer genius are you?”
“It really wasn’t that hard. Ning’s doing all the work – I just put the icing on the cake. She adjusted her glasses. “Members can have different roles, and it’s gamerfied so they get points for making highly-rated comments.”
“Gamerfied?”
Allie untied her hair and let it tumble over her shoulders. “People will do just about anything to score internet points. You also get points for taking action against a threat.”
“What do you mean by taking action?”
“Mostly it’d just be standing together as a group to threaten someone who’s causing trouble for a member. Sometimes it might mean getting physical to prevent a member from getting hurt.”
It was starting to make sense. “Like how Estelle was saying the United Nations can start a war if nothing else works?”
“That’s it.”
I pointed to a line of logos at the bottom of the page. “What are these?”
“Members can post to other social networking and blog sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. It’ll help spread the word. The more members we have, the better it’ll work.” She clicked a link and the screen changed to a blank page with the word CHARTER at the top. “Members will see this when they log in.”
“The Charter is the set of rules, right?”
“Right. After Estelle kicked you out, I took notes on Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter to give us ideas. Article 1 of our Charter should be that every member is entitled to nominate a threat and receive a hearing by the Council. Sound okay?”
I nodded. “And Estelle said the United Nations has
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