The next day after school, Ash and Maya turned on “Jacob’s” laptop in their basement television studio. They connected to Wi-Fi and logged in to their fake account. The Planet Pizza Monthly was there, just as they’d left it.
“No ads here,” Maya said with a frown.
“We knew there wouldn’t be, though,” Ash pointed out. “There are no ads in Van Ness Media.”
“I know they’re keeping profiles on all of us. I just know it.”
“But how can we prove it if we never leave Van Ness Media?”
Maya placed the laptop on the washing machine and leaned against the dryer. Ash sat down on a step. They both stared at the dusty floor.
“What other information did we give them about Jacob,” Maya asked, “when we opened the account?”
Ash thought back to yesterday afternoon, smiling at the memory of naming too many presidents. “Name, username and password, birthday, email . . .”
Maya stood up straight, her head barely missing the low ceiling. “Maybe there’s something in his email?”
Ash shrugged. “It’s worth checking. Here, take my phone.”
Maya positioned herself for optimum light. Ash brought the laptop to the step. They both waited until a truck passed on the street outside, making a racket and rattling the walls.
“One day has passed,” Ash said to the camera, “and it’s time to check Jacob Brown’s email account.” She typed in his username and password, holding a hopeful breath. Then she let it out. “No new emails,” she reported, spinning the laptop to face the camera.
Maya cut recording and plopped down next to Ash again, newly disappointed.
“It’s only been one day,” Ash reasoned. “It might take a lot longer for the information to travel.”
“It might even be years,” Maya said sadly, like she’d been hoping to avoid sharing this bad news. “Because we’re kids. Dev said there are probably companies compiling information about kids, making the profiles more and more detailed, so they can sell them for a real lot of money when we turn eighteen.”
Eighteen! Ash thought. Jacob Brown was twelve. “You mean we might not be able to report on this story for six years? Would we have to keep making Planet Pizza newsletters every month?”
The videographer rested her head in her hand. “How could we? There are only eight planets.”
“And only so many pizza toppings. Or good ones, at least.”
Maya giggled. “We’d have to do a whole edition about mushrooms.”
Ash put on her news anchor voice. “Jacob Brown here, with everything you ever wanted to know about red peppers.”
“Next month,” Maya added jokingly, “green.”
Ash snorted. “And what will The Underground News report on in the meantime? Dog poo?”
Maya wrinkled her nose. “Six years of dog poo on the sidewalk? There’d be nowhere safe to step.”
Ash pushed that disgusting thought from her mind and turned the laptop back to face herself. “It’s been two minutes. Maybe Jacob got an email now.”
“An email about anchovies,” Maya joked.
Ash refreshed the page, and they both looked at it expectantly. But apart from the “Welcome to your Van Ness Media free trial” message from yesterday, the in-box remained empty.
“Wait,” Ash said. “Look.”
It had taken a few seconds to load, but an ad had appeared on the side of the in-box. An ad for . . . Domino’s Pizza.
The girls pulled their eyes away from the ad in order to stare at each other.
“Holy moly,” Maya whispered. She fumbled for Ash’s phone and started recording the screen.
“It could be a coincidence,” Ash said, too tingly with nerves and excitement and fear to remember to sound like a newscaster.
She refreshed the page. A new ad loaded. This time, Maya captured her shocked expression first, then slowly panned to reveal the ad: Pizza Hut.
“One more time,” Maya mouthed.
Ash hit refresh. The ad reloaded. The Baltimore Planetarium.
Back in news anchor mode, Ash gulped and faced the camera. The Renegade Reporters had hit on a major, major story. “This is Ashley Simon-Hockheimer,” she said, “with proof that nothing kids do in Van Ness Media software is private.”