“I can’t just ask Mr. Henderson to whitelist it. He’d take three weeks.”

He hit Enter. The translated page loaded. It was clunky, and the images were a bit squashed, but there it was: the forum, readable, clickable, unblocked . The filter saw only Google’s domain, not the forbidden one.

Frustrated, Leo turned to his older sister, Maya, who was sprawled on the couch coding something that looked like green hieroglyphics.

She explained: a Virtual Private Network encrypts all your internet traffic and sends it through a server in another location—say, a coffee shop across town. To your school’s network, it doesn’t look like you’re visiting the history site. It just looks like you’re talking to the VPN server. The filter sees nothing to block.

“Then don’t ask.” She finally glanced over. “Think of the block as a locked door. You don’t break the door; you find a key or another way in.”