Running with Fox

The house was dead silent at 2 AM, but my heart was doing cartwheels. I'd been planning this for weeks, ever since Mom and Dad instituted the Great Cable Ban of sophomore year. No more streaming, no more gaming, no life — basically, my social status was about to plummet harder than my GPA after calculus.

"You ready?" Fox's text glowed on my phone screen. Fox wasn't her real name (obviously), but she'd earned it freshman year when she'd pulled three different fire alarms to get us out of a pop quiz. Chaos followed her like a bad habit.

My room was on the second floor. The cable line from the telephone pole outside ran right past my window — I'd noticed it during those endless nights of staring at the ceiling instead of Netflix. According to the YouTube tutorial I'd watched on my phone at school, you could splice into it with the right equipment. I had the equipment. I had the motive.

I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

"Yeah," I texted back, fingers shaking. "Cable's in five."

Fox was waiting outside with a ladder she'd "borrowed" from her neighbor's garage. This was it. The moment that would define me. No more being the girl whose parents treated WiFi like a controlled substance. Tonight, I became someone else. Someone with options.

The cable line was slick with condensation when I reached it. Fox held the ladder steady, her breath fogging in the cold night air.

"You good?" she whispered.

"Never been better," I lied. My hands were shaking so hard I almost dropped the splicer.

That's when we heard it — the back door opening.

"What are you doing out here?" My dad's voice cut through the darkness like a chainsaw.

Everything happened at once. Fox jumped. I slipped. The cable line snapped back, whipping through the air with a sound like angry electricity. In that frozen moment, looking at my dad's silhouette in the doorway, I realized something.

I wasn't running toward cable internet. I was running from being the only person in my grade who couldn't quote our collective shows. I was running from missing out. But Dad just stood there, then sighed.

"Your mother's going to kill you," he said, then — "I know a guy who can fix that line by morning."

Fox raised her eyebrows. I raised mine.

"And," Dad continued, "we can discuss getting you actual internet. The legal kind."

Fox high-fived me in the dark. I wasn't sure who I was anymore, but I was pretty sure this version had better stories.