Double Digit (21 page)

I’
VE BEEN LET DOWN BY TV
a million times. You envision what the school dance is going to be like or a homecoming football game, based on what you’ve seen on TV. But when you get there, there’s no soundtrack, the lighting’s all wrong, and no one’s smiling. My trial was the opposite—it was exactly like it is on TV: the courthouse looming on top of the huge steps, the hushed lobby, the double wooden courtroom doors that make the
Law & Order
“Boom! Boom!” when you close them. Seriously, it was just like TV.

I’d texted John late Sunday night before I went to sleep.

Google “incident at MIT.” I’m fine. Jonas Furnis is dead.

Going to sleep. See you tomorrow if you can make it.

And I turned off my phone. In the morning I turned my phone back on to John Bennett 6
TEXT MESSAGES
.

I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.

You must have been terrified.

I’m glad he’s gone.

Can we talk, are you asleep?

Okay, I’m leaving D.C. now, will be there tomorrow.

Love you, of course.

I like how a series of unread texts sort of reads like a sonnet.

We ran into John and Mr. Bennett as we walked into the courtroom. Mr. Bennett gave me a quick, too quick, “Hello, Digit,” and John pulled me back out into the hallway. Uncle Bob called after us that we had three minutes.

“Digit, I don’t even know what to say. I’m so glad you’re okay.” He hugged me for half of our allotted three minutes. “Are you scared?”

“This is the least scary thing that’s happened to me in the past twenty-four hours. I’m fine.”

John smiled. “Okay, and this is going to be okay. I can’t . . . Well, it might get weird in there. Will you just trust me?”

“Weird? What about this isn’t weird?”

John gave someone behind me a nod and then leaned down and kissed me. I think I’ve established that I am not very good at describing a kiss. In this context, this kiss could have been an “I don’t know when I’ll ever have a chance again” kiss. Or even an “I’m so relieved you weren’t blown up” kiss. I deserved either. But what I got was neither of those. It was more like a kiss that was put on me. Like when you have a stamper for a return address and it’s almost out of ink. You press it down on the paper and hold it there, just to make the ink stay. This kiss was stamped on me. I’d never had this particular kind before, and I felt a little like a fire hydrant that had just been marked.

I turned to see Bass behind me, hands crossed over his
DIG IT
T-shirt and looking like he didn’t really know where to be. He shook hands with John. “So today’s the big day.”

“It is,” John replied.

“I’m pretty sure yesterday was a big day. This? We know how it’s going to end.” I was trying to be light, trying to make this okay for everyone. I mean, I had no one to blame but myself for all this, and I was kind of sick of everyone feeling sorry for me.

John said to Bass, “Nice T-shirt.” And it sounded less like a compliment than it should have.

We entered the courtroom, and, just like on TV, there was a long table just for Uncle Bob and me. My parents and my star witnesses were seated directly behind me. John took an empty seat next to his dad in the back. All of the other seats were filled with reporters and other interested parties.
On TV don’t they close these things to the press?
I had a feeling that the press was exactly who the prosecution wanted here.

Court was called to order at exactly nine a.m. The Honorable Alvin Horowitz presiding. “In the case of
The United States of America versus Farrah Higgins,
how does the defendant plead?”

Uncle Bob stood up and approached the bench. He stopped and looked at his yellow legal pad for reassurance before saying, “My client pleads nolo contendere.” A big smile took over his face, like he’d just gotten down the sidewalk on a two-wheeler for the first time. Before sitting down, he explained to the judge, “That means no contest.”

Opening statements were made. The prosecutor: “We have here today a very straightforward case of a very complicated crime. Miss Farrah Higgins, a student at MIT, is pleading no contest to hacking into the mainframe of the Department of Defense of the United States of America. This security breach put the lives of everyone in our nation in jeopardy. She did so willfully and with intent to take information that was not hers to take at that time.”
True that.

Uncle Bob: “Your Honor, my client is eighteen years old. She is a freshman at MIT and was trying, misguidedly, to make it to a toga party on time when she decided to hack into the DOD. She had formally requested access to the information that she took, and that access had been granted. She gained access to the DOD’s systems on her own just to speed up the process. You might call it a timing difference.” Uncle Bob turned to me for approval. I should have just gotten up there and given the tater tot defense—same difference. “Since that time, Miss Higgins’s life has been in jeopardy several times in defense of her country and the well-being of her classmates . . .”

“Objection!” I swear, exactly like on TV. “Her actions subsequent to the events in question have no bearing on the events in question . . .”

The prosecution called its first witness, a guy named Norb Wolford, whose job it was to keep the data at the DOD secure. He outlined my crime in such excruciating detail that even I was bored by it. What was interesting was what he left out. He described exactly what I did, without revealing any details about how I did it. Probably smart.

When he finished, the prosecution called its second witness. “The prosecution calls Henry Bennett to the stand.”
Wait. What?
I swung around to look at him as he walked down the aisle to the witness stand. He did not meet my eye. John gave me a slow shake of the head. No? Was he shaking his head no? As in,
No, this is not really happening?
Or,
No, my dad is not really going to get up there and say anything against you?
Or,
No, you shouldn’t have agreed to trust me?

Mr. Bennett was sworn in and answered some questions about his position at the CIA. And then it began.

“Mr. Bennett, how long have you known Miss Higgins?”

“Seven months.”

“In that time have you noticed anything extraordinary about her?”

“She has an extraordinary ability with numbers and codes.”

“At what point did you realize that she was a danger to society?”

“Objection!” I bellowed.

“Miss Higgins, please. I repeat: At what point did you realize that she was a danger to society?”

“I knew Miss Higgins for less than a week when I realized that her gifts could be used as a weapon.”

“Would you call her a threat to national security?”

“I think she’s demonstrated that on her own.”

“So at what point did you begin tracking her computer activities in the interest of protecting state secrets?”

I passed a note to Uncle Bob:
It was illegal surveillance.

Uncle Bob shouted, “Objection! Mr. Bennett’s surveillance of my client’s laptop was illegal. None of this testimony should be admitted.”
Take that!

“Your Honor, I submit Exhibit A, an unlimited warrant to monitor Miss Higgins’s telecommunications and computer activity, signed by the director of the CIA, July 19 of this year.”

Uncle Bob sat down and shrugged.

“In your surveillance, when you saw that Miss Higgins hacked into the DOD, what was your reaction?”

“I realized that she was more dangerous than I thought.”

With that, the prosecution rested its case.

I watched Mr. Bennett walk back down the aisle, trying to catch his eye for some sort of clue that maybe I’d been
Punk’d.
I turned to look at John and got that same stupid shake of the head. This had to be a joke or a mistake—or maybe, most likely, I was having a nervous breakdown and imagining this whole thing. I mean, the kidnapping and then the whole almost-being-blown-up thing? It can take a toll.

I turned to my parents and saw this: Mom was looking into a compact and applying a thin layer of lip gloss. Dad was looking at me, nearly expressionless. Not expressionless like disbelief or shock that is so extreme that you can’t muster up any expression. More expressionless like you’re watching the third hour in a row of NASCAR racing on TV.

The only confirmation I had that this had actually happened was from Uncle Bob. “I can’t believe he just did that to us. I ate his bacon.”

“If the defense would please call its first witness . . .”

Uncle Bob was stunned for sure and didn’t seem like he was quite ready to proceed. The plan was that I was not to testify on my own behalf, because if the prosecution started asking me questions and I seemed too knowledgeable about these things, I might freak out the judge. My job was to sit there in my nice navy dress and look young and unthreatening. Mr. Bennett had taken the whole concept of my being unthreatening with him when he left.

“The defense calls Isabella Clarke to the stand.” Clarke walked up to the witness stand in her now signature
FREE DIGIT
T-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms. Uncle Bob had suggested that she remove some of her piercings for the trial. Her face on that witness stand indicated that she did not hear that suggestion.

“Miss Clarke, please tell the court how you know Miss Higgins.”

“Digit lives on my hall at MIT. She is a hero and a patriot. She is the voice of hackers everywhere who want to show the world its weaknesses. Just because you are all embarrassed that she could get into the DOD doesn’t mean she needs to be treated like a hardened criminal. I say you end this thing right now, go back to Washington, and build a monument to her . . .”

Established so far: Dangerous girl has crazy friend. This trial wasn’t going quite my way.

Uncle Bob knew when to cut his losses. “Thank you, Miss Clarke. You are excused. The defense calls its final witness, Mr. Sebastian Taylor, to the stand.”

Bass was sworn in and sat down. He looked unusually agitated.

“Before we begin, Mr. Taylor, are you a hacker?”

“I am not.”

“Good.” There were chuckles in the courtroom, which I found a tad bit insensitive.

“Would you please tell the court how you know my client?”

“I am her RA, residential adviser, on her hall in McKinsey at MIT.”

“Would you consider her a threat to society?”

“No.”

“Would you please share with the court what you know of her character?”

“Her character? This whole thing is crazy! Do any of you people have televisions? She saved my life yesterday. Isn’t that enough?”

“Objection!” the prosecutor shouted.

“If you would please stick to her personal traits and qualities,” Uncle Bob reminded him.

“Fine. My dog loves her. She can’t dance. She looks away from you when she’s about to say something she means. And she only looks at you if you’re talking to someone else. She doesn’t mind silence, but she’ll open up to you if you’re on a walk. Sure, she’s a genius. But not this threatening genius she’s being made out to be. More than anything, she wants to fix things. Make them better.”

He stopped talking, like maybe he couldn’t believe he’d said so much.

“So you would vouch for her character?”

“Of course. This is ridiculous. I’d do anything for her.”

Bass looked at me, no smile. I smiled a thank-you. I saw him look to the back of the courtroom. I turned around and saw John leaning back in his seat, arms crossed and eyebrows all the way up.
Really? You’re pissed that this guy’s my friend? Can we talk about your dad for a sec?

I looked away from both of them. I had bigger problems for sure because just then Uncle Bob announced, “The defense rests.”

The court went into recess so that the judge could decide my fate. My dad hugged me. “It’s going to be okay.”
Would everybody please stop saying that?

“Dad, how could it possibly be okay? I was pretty sure I was going to jail already. But how could Mr. Bennett have done that to me?”

“He was just doing his job, honey.”
Et tu, Daddy?

Bass was waiting behind my dad. “Hey.”

“Hey, thanks.”

“You’ve been completely screwed over.”

“Feels like it.”

“Where’d the boyfriend go anyway?” Bass was angry. And that made him seem like the only sane person in the room. I looked around the crowd, and John was gone.

I said, “He wouldn’t leave. Nothing’s making sense to me right now.” Bass hugged me. I started to cry. “I really feel like I’m going crazy.”

Bass turned my face up to his. “Listen, you’re probably going to jail, probably for not that long. And I’m going to come visit you. And I’ll bring research for you to read. I’ll bring Buddy if they’ll let me. He’s going to miss you.”

Judge Horowitz banged his gavel. “Welcome back to the speed-dating version of the criminal justice system . . .” Chuckles all around.
What?
“This case has been quite literally open and shut, and the penalty seems quite straightforward as well. I hereby sentence Miss Farrah Higgins to three months in minimum security prison in Duluth, Minnesota. Miss Higgins, if you would please go with the bailiff . . .”

I stood up and hugged Uncle Bob. “Three months is not the end of the world, Digit. You’ll be back at school before spring break.”
Ever heard the expression “Easy for you to say”?

I hugged my unsurprised parents. “What’s with you guys?”

My mom said, “Henry told us it would be about three months. We were expecting this. Just three months, darling, and you’ll be back at school.” She snapped her fingers to show me just how fast three months’ incarceration can seem.
Hello, I’m going to jail now.

Dad was a little more earnest. “Honey, you are going to be fine. I know it. I promise. And I am very, very proud of you. You have no idea.”

W
HEN THEY PUT ME IN THE
van to take me to the airport, there were a few things I was wondering in the back of my mind:
Why are they going to the trouble to fly me somewhere? Isn’t there a suitable prison within driving distance? Why do they never show this part of the process on TV?
Usually the perp (now felon) just leaves the courtroom, looking over his shoulder. After the commercial, he’s behind bars. I was in some sort of criminal justice purgatory that I wasn’t familiar with.