Swipe

the Pacific Wing, where a pod of computer-generated dolphins swam by. “Hey, I bet he’d love to pick your brain about it sometime,” he said, trailing behind Erin, who simply could not understand why this kid wouldn’t leave her alone.
    “Maybe,” she said.
    “Where do you live? I’m over on Wright.”
    “I don’t know where that is,” Erin said. She tried walking a little faster.
    “Just a few blocks from here.”
    “Well, I’m on Vital Lane. It’s a pretty far walk.” Erin was glad to have an excuse to get rid of the boy, who so obviously liked her and whose enthusiasm bordered on pathetic.
    “I’m right on the way!” Logan said. “I’ll walk with you!”
    Erin rolled her eyes, but Logan couldn’t see.
    So this is life in Spokie, America , she thought. Boring classes, long walks home, and desperate boys .
    Erin couldn’t get back to Beacon quickly enough.
    6
    “Space is at a premium here, since we’re so close to New Chicago, and we need to save space for farming ’cause so much of the land farther out’s gone bad.” Logan shrugged, trying to fill the empty air on his walk home with Erin. “I guess in Beacon they just have hydroponic farming, but we don’t have that out here yet. So to leave room for everyone after the Unity, Spokie said any private lot couldn’t take more than four hundred square feet of ground space.” Logan pointed to the examples as they walked past along the sidewalk.
    “’Course, you can buy more than one lot, but for most people that’s too expensive, and the zoning’s usually restrictive. That’s why a lot of public buildings, like our school, are underground. And that’s why all the homes here are so skinny . . .” Erin didn’t care. But it was easiest just to let the boy speak until they made it to his house. “. . . and why most people just build up and up. Mine’s eleven stories, but it’s just one room to a floor, so it isn’t actually that big. Some houses have twenty or more.”
    Logan went on to talk about the days when almost everyone in the Corn Belt lived in houses that were wider than they were tall. And you could still see examples of them, he said, in the few that remained among the buildings in Old District farther across town. But only the very wealthiest citizens could afford a home like that, since there were so few left, and since no more were being built.
    “But you live in an apartment, right?” Logan asked. “All the buildings on Vital Lane are apartments, I think.”
    “Yeah,” Erin said. “It’s an apartment.”
    “That’s cool. You have more space to spread out that way,” Logan said, “since it’s not a private lot. I bet your floor’s pretty wide.”
    Erin stopped him. “Well, here you are.” Wright Street was just up ahead. “It was nice meeting you . . .”
    “Logan,” Logan said.
    “Right. Thanks for taking—”
    “Oh, I don’t mind. I’ll keep walking with you.”
    And Erin couldn’t help but laugh.
    “I see you got the Mark already,” Logan said, clueless and trying to keep up with her accelerating strides. “Must’ve been recent—it looks dusty, still.”
    Erin glanced down at her wrist without stopping. “I guess so,” she said. In fact, Logan was right. She’d Pledged for the Mark just last month, and fine nanodust—enough to notice even without a black light—did trail off it as she swung her arm, though she hadn’t noticed until Logan pointed it out.
    “It’s nanotech ink, you know,” Logan said. “Not sure why they can’t just use normal ink, but I guess they don’t.”
    “I wouldn’t know,” Erin said. “Those details don’t make their way onto the test.”
    Logan was quiet for a moment. “I’m kinda nervous about the whole thing, to be honest,” he said.
    Erin frowned. “That’s stupid. There’s nothing to be nervous about.”
    “Mm-hm,” Logan said. “Everyone keeps saying that. No one likes to talk about the kids that don’t make it through.”
    This got Erin’s attention. She stopped short and looked Logan in the face. “That’s a myth. And it’s absurd. There’s no such thing as flunkees.”
    Logan frowned. “It’s not a myth.”
    “Come on. Flunkees? There’ve been, like, two.”
    “More than that,” Logan said. “It just never makes the news. No one talks about it.”
    Erin sighed. “You sound paranoid.”
    “I know,” Logan said.
    She looked at him, trying to gauge whether or not he was joking. It alarmed her to conclude he was