Read Don't Turn Around for Free Online Page B

in the whole world: Ask someone for help.
    She logged into her email account and scanned through. A few messages from Rocket Science about potential jobs, the tone becoming increasingly annoyed as “Ted” didn’t respond. Some spam, and a couple of online billers.
    Nothing personal. She’d been gone three weeks, and no one had missed her. Noa knew it should make her feel sad, but it was oddly gratifying. It meant she was leaving a tiny footprint, which was exactly what her goal had been.
    Lacking those personal connections was inconvenient now, though. She’d had a foster family a few years ago that had been okay, or at least less awful than the others. She wondered how the Wilsons would react to her showing up on their doorstep....
    As she was debating it, an email popped into her account. She recognized the handle, Vallas, but frowned at the message. Had this been sent accidentally? She hadn’t graced a school in over a year, ever since she figured out how to game the system. Yet the email mentioned a term paper.
    Curious, she responded with, Sure. See you there .
    She closed out her email and logged on to The Quad, an online forum populated entirely by hackers. Tough to find if you didn’t know where to look for it, since it was shielded from all the search engines. You had to be invited to participate, and it was a fairly exclusive community; only the best of the best were asked. Noa had been thrilled when the offer to join came in. One of the only times in her life when she’d really felt like she belonged.
    Online, Noa went by the handle Rain. She’d become curious about her name a few years earlier and nosed around into the origins of it. It turned out to be a relatively common Scandinavian name. One site claimed it derived from Odin; in Denmark “Noa-skeppet” and “Oden-Skeppet” were used interchangeably to describe a type of cloud formation that meant rain was coming.
    She’d always liked rain anyway, not being much of a sun person. So it suited her.
    She waited until Vallas appeared as a user, then invited him into a private chat and typed, What’s up?
    Need help researching AMRF, Vallas wrote.
    That was strange. She mainly knew Vallas from a hacktivist group she frequented, /ALLIANCE/. She generally shied away from that sort of thing, not being much of a joiner. Most were focused on pulling off juvenile pranks anyway, or were downright criminal, and she had no interest in drawing the attention of law enforcement. But /ALLIANCE/ seemed different. Some of what they did struck near and dear to her heart, like when they went after perverts and bullies. So she’d participated in a few of their raids over the past few months.
    Still, with everything she had going on right now, she wasn’t about to get involved with someone else’s vendetta. She was busy enough with her own.
    Sorry, no time .
    A pause, then Vallas typed, It’s important. I can pay you .
    Noa was about to respond that she didn’t need money, then hesitated. Actually, that’s exactly what she needed. But she needed it now. Western Union would ask for some sort of ID before handing over cash; otherwise she’d initiate a transfer from her own account. But based on some of Vallas’s posts, she knew he was a local kid—a couple of times he’d referenced things only a Bostonian would know about. Still, that didn’t necessarily mean she could trust him. Dare she risk it?
    It has to be cash, she typed. Tonight .
    A longer pause before he wrote back, How much?
    A thousand to start .
    I can get you $500 .
    Noa smiled—that would be more than she’d need to get her through the next day. And barring any bank screwups, she’d be able to access her own money again by tomorrow or the day after at the latest.
    Fine, she wrote. Where should we meet?
    Peter signed off and closed the phone. He’d logged on to The Quad with his cell since he figured it would be more secure than using Bob’s computer. At least in theory it would be harder for