Swipe

over here with me?” And she pulled him aside and into the crowd without letting him refuse.
    “This is ridiculous,” Logan said. “We need to get back there, and I don’t care what some volunteer chaperone has to say about it!”
    “That’s no chaperone,” Erin said. “That’s DOME.” Logan peered at the man, disbelieving. “I’m sure of it,” she said. “I’m sure of it.”
    “Okay . . . ,” Logan said. “Well, that’s good, then! That means they responded to the call! Look, maybe . . . if you’re right, maybe we can tell them everything—just . . . confess to everything, right now.” Erin could see the wheels turning in his head. He was getting excited now. “Yes. Erin, this is great. They can work with us. Erin, they’re gonna help us!”
    But Erin looked at the man by the door. She studied his expression, watched the way he mumbled into his collar. “Logan, I’m not so sure there’s much left to confess,” she said. And now several other men, just as large and weirdly average-looking, stepped ominously from the crowd and moved directly toward her and Logan. “And no, Logan . . . I don’t think they’re about to help us.”
    4
    Onstage, Dane played the final tune of his set—his new song “Comet”—and let the music envelop him. He sang into the microphone and wailed with his hands to his sides, gazing out into the crowd of classmates and friends who screamed and clapped and jumped up and down, like a tidal wave summoned by him. By his music. By his words. And Hailey in the front row. It was perfect. It was his moment.
    And even when the Boxing Gloves left the gym and turned the stage over to the next band, even when the glow and applause and sparkling air faded completely behind the harsh fluorescent light and cold, cinder-block walls backstage, Dane still was flying so high off adrenaline and endorphins that he could barely feel his feet on the ground.
    “We’ll for sure get the encore,” Dane told his drummer as they walked off. “We’re for sure gonna win.”
    The excitement continued well into the wings, where Dane and the rest of his band walked back through the hallway, slapping one another on the shoulders and laughing. In the midst of the commotion, Dane almost passed right by the tall girl and her two friends, who were standing, waiting for him, bouncing a little, eyes wide and thrilled and eager, just a short way down the hall.
    “Dane Harold?” she asked. “Are you the Dane Harold? Of the Boxing Gloves ?”
    Dane laughed. “Uh . . . yeah, that’s me.”
    “Dane, I am your biggest fan!”
    Dane smiled at his bandmates. He didn’t know he had any fans, let alone a biggest one.
    “Can I have your autograph? Please, Dane? Please ?”
    “Of course!” Dane said. He felt around in his pockets. “But I don’t seem to have a stylus on me . . .”
    The Boxing Gloves’ drummer rolled his eyes. The bassist crossed his arms and began tapping his foot impatiently.
    “That’s okay, you guys. Go on ahead. I’ll catch up with you in the crowd.”
    When they left, Dane saw his bandmates walk past two grown men who sat, slouched against the wall, sleeping. How odd , Dane thought. He wondered how anyone could sleep in all this noise, or why they would want to.
    But that didn’t matter. Right now it was just Dane Harold, lead singer of the Boxing Gloves, alone in the wings with his three biggest fans.
    5
    In the gymnasium, Mr. Arbitor pushed his way past kid after sweaty kid. He hated rock music. He hated crowds. And right now, he especially hated teenagers.
    His daughter was an exception . . . but barely.
    He cleared the worst of the moshing now, and walked toward the circle of his men, camped outside the crowd and in front of the side door. There she was, in the middle of it. Erin. And her stingy friend, Logan Langly.

    Standing among the DOME agents, Erin looked up with a horror Logan had never seen on her face, not in all their adventuring, and that frightened him worse than anything else.
    “Hi, Dad,” Erin said. “Like the show?”
    Mr. Arbitor gazed down upon her with an authority that was absolute.
    “Snooping through classified documents. Breaking and entering into government property. Grand theft of weapons-grade materials. Taking the highest laws of the A.U. into your own hands. And playing a monthlong game of chicken with a known serial kidnapper. Just for fun.”
    “It wasn’t for fun . It was self-defense!” Logan said.
    “I’m not talking to