Brett's friend was a gawky, skinny kid with oversized hands and a nose like a beak. Tara had pointed him out in the cafeteria at one point but I forgot why. He took Brett's keys when Brett started fumbling with the lock. "Easy there, Jocko," he said. "Let me drive, okay? It's just up the hill after all."

"I thought you only had your permit," Brett said.

"Nope. Got the provisional last week. I'm good to go."

Brett frowned. "Uh, but-oh, fuck it. Sure."

They put the boards in the back seat, angled to fit, and drove slowly off.

"What's his friend's name?" I asked.

"That's Joe," said Tara. "He's that skateboarder I told you about, the one who's also a jock, since he's captain of the snowboarding team."

"And he's the reason Brett is on the team, too," said Jade.

"Really? Brett looked okay on a board, I thought."

"Oh, he's okay on the snow. But if Joe didn't help him with his schoolwork, Brett wouldn't qualify academically."

My face dropped.

Tara glanced sideways at me. "He's still got that cute butt."

I remembered helping him over to the truck, tucked into his side, his arm over my shoulder. I wasn't thinking about his academics then. "I guess."

Clouds were moving in and it was getting colder.

"Who wants to come to my house and shoot pool?"

"I thought it was luck the first three times, but that's the fifth bank shot you've made." I said.

"Really?" said Tara, deadpan.

We were playing cutthroat and Tara was kicking our butts. She had been kicking our butts for the past five games.

Jade was better than me but she was also losing.

"There should be the table's-owner-automatically-gets-to-win rule," I suggested.

"Good luck with that," said Tara, knocking in another ball. "By the way, you're out."

"Aaaagh!" I shook my fists at the ceiling and made faces for the amusement of all. "Who wants more drinks?"

"I'm good," said Jade, swirling her half-full Diet Coke.

"Me, too," said Tara. "Gonna have to go after this game, anyway."

I watched her hit the ball cleanly, watched it go from stationary to a white streak across the table as if it had accelerated instantly. I knew that wasn't the case, but it reminded me of the way I could go from falling off the deck of our cabin to a dead stop under my bed without a single newton-second of imparted momentum.

At supper I asked Dad, "When I jump, can I increase my relative velocity?"

"You do, all the time," he said. "Remember when we talked about jumping from the cabin to the desert?"

"Well, that's matching the local frame, not coming out with a velocity different from the local frame. What happens if I jump to exactly where I already am, but with a change in velocity?"

His jaw started jutting forward. "Remember what we said about smashing through walls? Or having your limbs ripped off?"

"Yes, but..."

"But nothing! Don't even think about it, young lady."

Mom took a deep breath and I held up my hand. "I was just wondering, Daddy." Okay, I was 'thinking about it.'

It wasn't worth getting Dad strung out, though. And I'd also avoided promising I wouldn't try any experiments.

He opened his mouth, as if to add something, but now Mom was giving him the eye and he closed his mouth again.

Mom said, "Don't you have something to tell Cent?"

"I was going to wait until later, but okay."

He turned and reached behind him, to the sideboard next to the dining room table, and grabbed a small cardboard box that he handed to me.

"Here. Reach out and touch someone."

I squealed, then sat back, my mouth open. "Did I just squeal? Tell me I didn't just squeal." I still felt like squealing.

Mom was no help. "I'm gonna have to come down on the side of 'you just squealed like a teenage girl'."

Dad nodded. "Yep ... squeal."

I breathed out heavily and closed my eyes. "Okay. Let's just pretend that never happened, all right?" The box was already opened. It was a small but thick smartphone with a touch screen. There was a volume rocker and a power switch but everything else was on the touch screen. It was already on and fully charged. "What's the drill?"

"It's like your mom suggested. I found someone to program these so the cellular radio won't come on unless the phone is within a set radius of a GPS-determined position. I've got it set for downtown and a radius that pretty much takes in the entire county. If it loses connection with a cellular tower for any reason, it shuts down the radio until it's verified the position again. You jump out of the area and obviously it will lose the tower. There's a lot of metal roofs around here so if you've lost the tower for more prosaic reasons, you may have to go outside before the GPS receiver can verify the location."

"And I can text?"

"Prepaid. I'll keep it topped off. It just won't work out of county. If you go out of town on a school trip, we can modify your location settings appropriately."

I got up and hugged him. "So I can call you here at the house?"

Mom nodded. "Yes, but Dad got us phones, too. Same deal. If we're not in county, calls will go to voice mail, texts won't be delivered until we come back. Ditto for yours."

Dad showed me how to turn the phone on, where the contacts were stored. He'd already added ones labeled Mom, Dad, and Home. I scrambled downstairs and got phone numbers for Tara, Jade, and Grant's big sister, Naomi, from precalculus.

Dad hovered while I entered the numbers, but I glared at him and Mom patted the couch beside her and said, "Give her some room, Davy. She can ask for help if she needs it."

"Right." He pulled the manual out of the box and laid it on the table, and sat down by Mom.

I sent him a text almost immediately and he jerked, like he'd been poked. Mom and I both laughed and he fished the phone out of his pocket. "It's set on 'vibrate'." He read the text aloud. "Thx4tehfone." He spelled it out. "Uh. Thanks for the phone? You misspelled 'the'. Also 'thanks' and 'phone' and 'for.' I did say we had unlimited texting, right? You don't have to abbreviate everything. Won't cost a penny more."

I rolled my eyes. My phone buzzed in my hand and I jerked, nearly dropping it.

Dad laughed. "It's set on 'vibrate'."

The text was from him. UrWlcm.

ELEVEN.

Millie: FERPA Millie dropped by the school office.

"I understand getting calls on my home number, but why am I getting calls from the PTO on my cell phone?"

The secretary blinked. "You didn't give it to them when you signed the PTO membership during registration?"

"I signed up for the PTA. What is this PTO?"

The secretary said, "We have both. Our Parent Teacher Organization isn't part of a national group so it isn't as limited in what it can fund. I believe they share the phone list with the PTA, though."

"I didn't give it to either of them." Millie leaned forward. "It's a brand new phone. I didn't have it at registration. I've given the number to my daughter, my husband, and, who else? Oh, yes, you, two days ago, as an emergency contact number."

The secretary looked down the connecting hallway to the vice-principle's office, then leaned forward and whispered. "I'm so sorry. Once it's in the system, even as an emergency contact, any of the administration and teaching staff can see it. Some of them are deeply involved with the PTO." She glanced down the connecting hallway again. "Some of them."

Message received.

"Didn't I receive a FERPA information brochure at registration?"

The secretary turned pale. "And read it, too, I see."

"Yes." Millie held up her hand. "Don't worry, I'll take this up with the PTO."

"Darice Mendez? This is Millicent Ross."

"Oh! Excellent, I can mark you off my list! Will you be attending the mixer?"

The "mixer" was a cocktail party/funding drive to supplement the high school's budget.

"I will."

"Oh, excellent! You have the location?"

"I do. The back room at the Resplendent, yes?"

"That's right. We had our Christmas party there. It was very nice. So I'll put you down for two?"

Millie had already brought it up with Davy with predictable results. He'd said, "No, and make damn sure they don't get hold of my cell phone number, too!"

"Just myself," Millie said into the phone.

"Oh. Is Mr. Ross out of town?"

Millie resisted the urge to snap, Want the man of the house there for a real donation?

"Let's just say this is not his kind of event."

"Oh. Very good, thanks for call-"

"One more thing," Millie said, before the woman could hang up.

"Yes?"

"Some of your messages came to my cell phone."

"Yes?"

"I'm afraid that some helpful person from the school must've passed that number along, but it was for emergency contacts only."

"Oh, that's all right! We don't share our list with anyone."

Millie said, "That's not the point. Whoever gave it to you was in violation of the Federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act."

"Yes?" The woman didn't sound overly concerned.

"That means they're endangering the school's federal funding. I believe that would include the Bureau of Indian Affairs funding that makes up half the school's budget."

That got her attention. "Really?"

"Really. I want that number removed from your records and I strongly recommend that you let Ms. McClaren know about this issue before she provides any more emergency contact numbers."

"Yes ma'am, I'll tell her!" She inhaled sharply. "I mean, so she can find out who might be doing it."

Right.

"And the phone number?" Millie asked.