Leo blinked. “You… know how to unblock it?”

Mr. Henderson took a sip of his coffee. “Leo, I don’t block things because I hate fun. I block things because the school board makes me. A firewall is just a locked door.” He winked. “And a smart kid knows how to find a window.”

The page loaded slowly, like a fossil waking up. Google Translate’s crawler acted as a middleman. The school’s firewall saw translate.google.com —a safe, educational domain—and opened the gates. On the other side, rendered in a clunky, translated frame, was Omegle.

The trick was absurd. He typed https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://omegle.com into the address bar.