I was in my bedroom, doing the typical at-home teenager thing: staying up late, digging around the depths of the internet, and generally not paying attention to anything other than what was on my monitor. It was the early morning, around 2 o’clock, and everyone in my house was asleep but me. The room was nice and warm despite it being the dead of winter, since we had the windows replaced last week. We had been losing heat, especially in my bedroom, through some old storm windows, but the bitter cold was now kept outside.

I don’t remember what I was doing; I think in the...