Gabriella Gigabyte

Even though she’s not quite a teenager, Gabriella Gigliotti is a computer wizard; she’s so good with technology that her friends call her “Gig,” and she helps her father in his electronics repair shop. Her family lives in a rough neighborhood, though, and sometimes there are gang fights. Her mother, a police officer, works hard to protect the area, but there’s only so much she can do.

When Gabriella learns that one of her friends may be involved with a local gang, the Cobras, she springs into action. She discovers a portal to police records, and Gabriella’s investigative instincts kick in. The more she looks into events surrounding her friend and a missing local girl, the more trouble she finds. But as she gets closer to the truth about one of the toughest gangs in the city, she might run into more danger than she could ever imagine.

This novel tells the story of a young computer genius who uses her skills to help track down the truth about her city’s worst gangs.

Chapter 1: Fall from the Sky

Voices from the kitchen stirred Gabriella from her sleep, and she could tell something was wrong. She tapped her phone. It was 3:06 a.m. She walked out of her room and past her grandfather Tato’s room. The muffled sound of his sleeping came from behind his closed door. She smiled, remembering what her mom always said about Gabriella’s grandfather: “Papa, you may be a retired, but your snoring is still hard at work.” At the top of the stairs, she stood and listened for a while. Mom and Dad talked in quiet voices. Listening to them was sometimes fun. They would kid with each other and laugh. Tonight, however, there was no laughing, but why?

Her heart started to race.

She walked down the stairs and toward the kitchen, pausing a moment in the shadows of the living room to look at them. They stood in the kitchen; her mother’s face was blank. Her father looked deeply puzzled, like when he tried to fix a TV and it still didn’t work. Gabriella also had seen that look as she helped him in his shop, which she had been doing most every day after school since she was six. His brow curled inward to the top of his nose, but the difference this night was his eyes were watery. As she looked at her parents, she realized not for the first time that they were getting older. Both were short and lightly built. Sprays of gray streaked her dad’s thick black hair. He was second-generation Italian, and he’d always had a dark complexion, but his face looked darker this night. Her mother had bottled-blonde hair and a lighter complexion that made her look as if she could be at home in Norway instead of her native Colombia.

Even her mother’s blank look revealed an expression that Gabriella had rarely seen on her mom’s face. Mrs. Gigliotti was a police officer, so Gabriella reasoned that she had to keep a cool composure during her shifts when she was on the street. Her dad owned an electronics repair shop, and she had seen how friendly and sympathetic he was to his customers. Something was seriously wrong, though, because even her mother was frowning. Gabriella’s stomach churned—she wished that she was dreaming. She emerged from the shadows, and her mother saw her first.

“Gabriella,” she said, wiping her nose. “We have something to tell you.”

She looked at her mom and then her dad. Her mother glanced over at her father, but he kept his gaze on Gabriella. That scared her a little. He cleared his throat.

“Spike’s dad …” he started and stopped, clearing his throat again. “He had an accident today. At work. And he … he died.”

Gabriella’s eyes widened and began to fill. Her heart felt heavy, and her lip quivered. As the first tear streamed down her face, her nose began to run. She couldn’t speak, and she grabbed a napkin nearby. By the time she could utter a sound, all she could say was “What happened?” She felt cold all of a sudden.

Her father walked over to her and put his arms around her, and her mother joined them. The three stood there in the kitchen surrounded by all of life’s reminders—calendars, schedules, Post-it notes, circled memos, piled-up mail, unread newspapers—and they all cried. Gabriella was the loudest with deep waves of sobbing. Her father murmured, “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.” Her mother, with her own tears flowing down, only said, “So young,” as she rubbed her daughter’s back. Gabriella barely heard it but wondered if she meant it for Spike or his dad or for Gabriella herself.

They stood for several minutes. The soft, fading sounds of a cool late-summer breeze, nearby busses, and faraway sirens traveled in through the slightly opened windows of the first floor. Gabriella could hear them, and she often took comfort in those sounds. Sometimes they helped her sleep when she had a lot going through her mind. Her father would say the sounds were an urban orchestra—movement with no rests—but Gabriella didn’t understand that. She just liked them. They brought her comfort most nights—and this one would be the worst yet of her life, she thought.

In the moment, her mother’s cell phone rang. She kept holding Gabriella but retrieved the phone. She had to. It was work.

“Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, I’ll be right in.”

Gabriella’s father glanced at his wife.

“There’s trouble,” she said and pulled away slowly. “These gangs fighting. I’ve got to go. Everyone’s being called in to help.”

She stood there a moment longer and then left. Gabriella sat with her father in the kitchen. He poured both of them a small glass of water. They didn’t talk much. The open window let in a few more sounds. Sirens. Voices from several blocks away—all yelling. Then some pops, which Gabriella convinced herself were just cars backfiring. She didn’t want to think they were anything else. Her brow began to furrow. He crouched down until she looked into his warm, sympathetic eyes.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I’m worried about Mom,” she said and drank her water. “Aren’t you?”

“Every night.”

“I’m sick of hearing about these gangs.”

“Where do you hear about them?”

“Mom talks about them.” Gabriella pointed to the open window. “And I can hear through the windows. Somebody needs to stop them.”