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I nodded and finally slumped down onto the couch next to her since her boyfriend was off, clustered over with Todd in front of the television.

“I still don’t understand how I had so many requests as soon as I got home from school. You guys work fast.”

“Na. We just sent them from school.”

“Really?” I lifted my eyebrows. “That’s cool. They blocked social networks on our computers at Hillsburg.”

“Oh, they block them at Southeast too.”

I crinkled my brow and sent her a disbelieving look. “Then, how did you get in?”

“Easy.” She shrugged. “You just type S after the HTTP part of the web address.”

“Huh?” I said, blinking.

“Add an S. You know, S for secure.”

Above us on the upper level of the room, Kiera snorted. “Yeah, kind of like L for—”

“Kiera,” Ryder hissed, grabbing her hand and yanking down the L she was forming off her forehead as she smirked directly at me. “Cut it out.”

“What?” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and sent him an innocent, choirgirl smile. “I was just teasing.”

I really did not like that girl, and it wasn’t just because somewhere deep inside me I was jealous she’d stolen my man. Kiera was simply evil. That’s all there was to it. It was petty, spiteful girls like her who gave nice, hard-working cheerleaders a bad image.

As Ryder scowled suspiciously at his girlfriend, Todd clapped his hands to gain the room’s attention. “Okay, we’ve decided on tonight’s activity. We’re going to bowl. Who wants to play?”

“Bowl?” I repeated, ever being my clueless self.

“Yeah, on the Wii.”

Ryder had a Nintendo Wii, too? It was official, I decided; the boy had everything.

So we Wii bowled. I fully planned to sit out and watch, but somehow Todd sucked me into joining the game. I’d never played any game on a Wii before and was shocked I even needed to create my own Mii person before starting.

It felt strange, realizing a Mii Grace would forever more dwell on Ryder’s Wii. But I had little choice in the matter as Todd created my avatar for me.

Turned out, I was a natural at Wii bowling. On the first game, I hit three strikes in a row, with Ryder following at a close second place.

He scowled at me after the final scores tallied.

“One more game,” he announced, and the two of us openly competed against each other as we took our turns. Everyone in the room encouraged it, having fun as they cheered against Ryder and rooted me on.

I won again, hitting five strikes in a row and four spares on the second game.

Ryder demanded yet another replay, his competitive streak shining through. But Kiera wanted to play something else. So the Wii was put away and Ryder’s Xbox Kinect—which I’d nev

er even heard of until then—was dragged out. Yeah, yeah, I know. I was sadly behind in the gaming world.

On Kinect, we played Space Pop. I totally sucked at Space Pop because I felt like a total moron jumping around in front of a television without any kind of controller in my hand. Motion censored games were so not my thing.

Todd won all the Kinect games we played and gloated mercilessly in Ryder’s face, which didn’t really win him brownie points in my book. A smug winner was worse than a sore loser.

By the time everyone grew tired of him chanting, “You lose, sucka,” it was a quarter after eleven. A couple people had already left and Mindy and her boyfriend were digging their coats out of the pile we’d made on the floor.

“Man, I still have to study for that history test in the morning,” the boy who’d ridden with Todd announced as he stretched his arms over his head and let out a resounding yawn.

“I do too,” one of the cheerleaders said. She glanced meaningfully toward Todd.