Read Online Only Girls Allowed by Debra Moffitt - Free Book Online

have to fix it,” Kate said.
    For weeks, we’d been finding our way and feeling proud of ourselves for helping girls. Now the day had come for a PLS-SOS. Kate whipped out her red phone and texted:
    Emergency!

 

    At 1:35, more than a little breathless, Kate and I rushed into the PLS offices. Still weirded out by what we had seen that morning, we overlooked our snacks and ran straight upstairs to answer the ringing phone. Piper and Bet were already there. Funny how Bet chose this particular meeting to attend.
    On the line were Anna Hansen, the computer consultant, and Edith, the grandmotherly woman who was our point of contact with the Pinkies.
    â€œHiya, girls, what’s the emergency?” Anna asked.
    Piper’s words came out in a torrent, explaining what was going on and how we didn’t know what to do.
    â€œSomeone has hacked into our site and they are sayingsuch awful things.” Piper said. “There are probably a dozen girls crying right now. It’s revolting!”
    We heard the
click-clacks
of typing as Anna and Edith navigated to www.pinklockersociety.org . Edith gasped.
    â€œOh, my Lord, what is going on?” Edith said.
    â€œSomeone has really pulled a fast one here,” Anna said.
    â€œHow are they doing this?” Bet asked Anna.
    â€œHackers hack into Web sites in a buncha ways,” Anna said. It’s going to take some detective work to figure out how they’re gettin’ in—and to keep them out.”
    For a few moments, we just stayed quiet—all of us—waiting for a good idea to come to us. It was Edith who spoke first, and she did so in a quiet voice.
    â€œIn the best interests of the Pink Locker Society—its past and future—I have no choice but to shut down the Web site,” she said.
    â€œShut it down?” Kate asked.
    â€œTemporarily, I hope,” Edith said.
    â€œLet us see if we can get it fixed first. We can’t just give up,” Piper said.
    â€œI can get right on it,” Anna said. “Best case, we’ll have it licked in forty-eight hours.”
    â€œYes, please. We don’t want to go out of business,” I said, sounding a little desperate.
    Again, Edith paused. I could almost feel her kindness through the phone. But she stuck to her decision.
    â€œI’m sorry. There’s just too much liability here,” she said. “I know you girls have worked so hard and were off to a promising start, but we can’t let other girls get hurt. It’s not the Pink Locker way.
    â€œAnna, please turn the site off until we can figure out what’s going on,” Edith said. “I’ll call an emergency board meeting to let the other Pinkies know. They will be more disappointed than you girls, if you can believe it.”
    I couldn’t believe any of it.
    â€œDears, I will be back in touch as soon as it’s safe to restart the site. Stay positive,” Edith said.
    Just like that, Anna pulled down the entire Pink Locker Society site, and our pink world faded to black.

 

    Did you every worry that by wishing something, you made it come true? Confession: I loved the PLS, but before we were shut down, I had wished that it would slow down just a bit. The weight of everyone’s problems was sometimes too much. We received more and more questions each week, and it was tough to answer them—and answer them right—and still keep up with my schoolwork. I had a huge English paper that I hadn’t even started. And a ton of geometry proofs to do. Sometimes I turned off my phone so I wouldn’t have to be bothered with new alerts from our PLS mailbox. But now, after of few days of never hearing that “Think pink!” ringtone, I felt guilty.
    In our downtime, Piper, Kate, and I talked about whether we should try to keep up with the questions, justso we’d be prepared for the moment the site turned back on. But in the end, we decided that made no sense.