Swipe

mocking herself. Dear. Sweetie. It’s up to your—
    And she made her way to Iggy, whom she picked up and kissed on the head.
    “I heard those pets carry disease , ” Logan had said.
    And she hoped it would give her salmonella. She hoped to puke her guts out. She kissed the lizard again. She wanted to puke her brains out and die.
    She cried and held Iggy in her lap for a long time. And it was in that odd moment that Erin found her resolve.
    She would be the one to get herself back to Beacon.
    She would be the one to pull her family back together.
    And if that meant solving the mystery of Peck and the Markless threat in Spokie herself, then that’s exactly what Erin intended to do.
    11
    At that moment, seventeen stories below, a boy named Blake ran over the shadowed sidewalks of Spokie, furious with himself and weighing the consequences of having been seen.
    Not as bad as getting caught , he concluded, darting unpredictably through side alleys and streets. Whatever they are, they’re not as bad as getting caught would be .
    Behind him, he heard the heavy breathing of the boy he was supposed to be pursuing. But that was botched. This was backward.
    What Blake had witnessed, just moments before in their showdown on Wright Street, was a new side of the boy he and the Dust had followed all these years. A latent spark in the eyes of a kid he’d always seen as broken. Perhaps it was this spark that Peck had seen all along. Perhaps that spark was the danger.

    Half a block behind and running off pure, stupid adrenaline, Logan yelled between breaths, “Just tell me what you want from me! It’s all over now! Just tell me what you want!”
    But it wasn’t over. And as houses turned to empty lots and streetlamps faded off into the far distance behind them, Logan began to lose his nerve. Slowly it dawned on him exactly where he was chasing this boy, exactly where he himself was headed, and the realization was far from welcome.
    Slog Row. The most dangerous, sordid street in all of suburban New Chicago. The street crawling with Markless, with disease and crime.
    He could not go there. Ever. To walk down Slog Row was to walk with death.
    Whoever this boy was, he had as good as escaped. Logan’s steps slowed to a stop, and he caught his breath with his hands resting on his bent knees. He could follow no farther. Before him now, beyond the several empty lots and across the crumbling, abandoned six-lane expressway of years ago, was the silent and decaying street of so many parental warnings. He could see its panorama all at once, and in the moonlight, it was seething, a corpse lined with maggots.
    What was I thinking? Logan thought. Following even this far?
    And yet something in Logan had come alive. Something in him had flirted with the danger he’d spent so long avoiding, and the danger flirted back.
    But no. That’s crazy . And your parents will be worried sick . So all at once Logan’s nerves dropped out from under him like a trapdoor, and he turned to burst full-sprint down the quiet Spokie avenue from whence he came, not looking back, not catching his breath, not stopping for anything else until he’d reached the safety of his own front door.

FOUR

THE INVITATION
    1
    T HE NEXT DAY AT SCHOOL, LOGAN WAS JUMPY, even for him.
    “You always been this wired?” Dane asked as they filed out of computer science. “Looks like you had about four cups of nanotea this morning.”
    Logan spun around as if Dane had poked him with something burning. “Sleepless night,” he said, without a trace of humor in his voice.
    “Sorry to hear it.” Dane frowned. “Hey, Tom!” he yelled. “Aren’t you Pledging today?”
    “Just finished,” Tom said. He held his wrist up. Its nanoink was so fresh, it sparkled. “First thing this morning. I walked straight here from the Center. Couldn’t wait any longer to show this bad boy off.” He pointed smugly at the Mark.
    “That’s awesome ,” Dane said. “Hey, buy me a soda!”
    “You bullying me for my lunch money, Harold?” Tom asked.
    “Sure am!” Dane laughed, and he pounced on Tom’s arm, wrestling the class president, grabbing at his wrist with fake effort to pull the guy’s hand off. Tom, who had Dane by four inches and at least thirty pounds, stood and waited for the joke to be over while Logan tried not to laugh.
    “Dane Harold, knock it off!” the school secretary said as she hurried past.
    “Sorry, Ms. Carrol.” Dane gave up the act and brushed his hair