He laughed. “Charlotte didn’t need Wi-Fi. She had words.”

Mia thought about that. She thought about the difference between spinning a web for the world to see and spinning one just to catch what mattered.

Her dad watched from the hallway. That was the part the news articles never captured—the joy. Not the brand deals, not the engagement rates, not the lurking dangers. Just two kids, connected across town, making each other laugh by pretending to be a depressed koala astronaut.