- Meet Marcus Yallow, our mostly fearless narrator. He's going to be telling us his story from some unspecified point in the future.
- Marcus is a high school senior at Cesar Chavez High in San Francisco. He explains how to pronounce "w1n5t0n." (It's "Winston," not individual letters and numbers.)
- Now meet Fred Benson, one of the school's vice principals. Marcus got called to Benson's office over the PA. This doesn't seem to be uncommon for Marcus.
- Marcus leaves Ms. Galvez's social studies class, grabbing his computer (though doesn't shut it completely because he's got downloads going), and heads to admin.
- His friend Darryl gives him a smack on his butt as he walks by. They're old friends.
- Marcus takes a quick detour to check an email on his phone about Harajuku Fun Madness, "the best game ever invented" (1.9). We get the sense that Marcus doesn't care much that phones aren't allowed in school.
- Marcus knows a lot about Benson, including his social security number and mother's maiden name.
- Marcus also knows Benson's tells—like tapping his class ring on his desk blotter when things aren't going his way.
- Benson wants Marcus to confess that he's w1n5t0n. It's Marcus's internet handle, but he keeps denying that he knows anything about this person who's been posting how to sneak out of school and disable security measures.
- Benson claims he has "reliable intelligence" that w1n5t0n stole last year's standardized tests.
- Marcus thinks that was a sweet hack, but he didn't do it (1.23).
- Benson threatens to call the police, and Marcus says that sounds like a good idea.
- (When in doubt, call the vice principal's bluff.)
- And it works. Marcus gets kicked out of an angry Benson's office, and goes back to his social studies class.
- Marcus explains to us that he's cracked the security of his school-supplied laptop, called a SchoolBook, adding modifications like the instant messaging app IMParanoid he uses to chat with Darryl during class.
- Important historical context note: the book seems to be set around 2008, when it was published. People used instant messaging apps like AIM then.
- So Marcus really likes explaining things. He tells us more about Harajuku Fun Madness, an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) that's fun, but totally different from the LARPing (that's Live Action Role Playing for you cool kids) he did in his younger days.
- Marcus chats with Darryl about skipping school to go get the next clue in Harajuku Fun Madness. Darryl doesn't want to, but Vanessa Pak will be there. And Darryl's had a crush on her for years.
- Skipping school requires some more explaining from Marcus about gait-recognition cameras (they track how people walk because tracking faces in school was ruled unconstitutional).
- He not only can hack computers, he can hack this system by putting some gravel in his shoes. And he tells us exactly why this works.
- The learning continues with how to get around Windows Vista4Schools' spyware and how TOR (The Onion Router) makes browsing private.
- Now that Marcus has the new clue about where they need to go, it's time to leave school. All the extra security has make sneaking out even easier.
- But wait: Darryl has a library book on him and it has an arphid—Radio Frequency ID tag—that could track them. Marcus pulls out a Faraday pouch to stash it, but it's a physics book the size of a dictionary. So that's not going to work.