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“No, thanks,” he said.

“So, your sister . . .” Erin sat next to Logan and pulled the iguana down to her lap, petting it in a way it didn't particularly seem to mind. She ate the apple as she spoke. “What happened when she didn't come back?”

Logan sighed, keeping an eye on the lizard but mostly looking down, one distant part of him ecstatic to have made friends with the new girl so quickly, but the other devastated to have done so in this way. He couldn't imagine his sister's story being the basis of any positive relationship. “You mean that night?” he finally said. Erin shrugged. “I was shielded from a lot of it. But of what I can remember, some DOME officer came to our house. Said something like, ‘We regret to inform you your daughter won't be returning from her Pledge,' which my parents didn't understand. So he told them sometimes the Pledge process didn't agree with the Markee, that it was rare, but that on occasion, it happened. ‘Procedural risk,' I guess he called it. And my parents asked, ‘Dead? Is she dead?' And they started to cry, and the officer said we'd be compensated for our loss.”

“Compensated?”

“Mom doesn't have to work anymore, if she doesn't want to. And her medical bills are covered by DOME. Prescriptions and such. Though the deal terminates on my thirteenth birthday, in November, if I don't Pledge. DOME's little form of persuasion, I guess.”

“What about your dad?”

“Same offer, but he refused it.”

“How come I've never heard of anything like this?”

Logan frowned. “It's probably not in DOME's interest to talk about it, even among themselves.” He shrugged. “Anyway, things have been sort of rough for me ever since. I've spent a lot of time . . . scared.”

“Of the Mark?”

“No. Of being watched. Soon after Lily didn't come back, I guess I started feeling . . . haunted. I'd hear footsteps in her room at night. I'd see faces in my window. Or thought I did. Things in my room seemed to move on their own while I was away. There were a few years where it had gotten better, even went away. But recently . . . it's come back big-time. These last few months, everywhere I go, I feel like I'm being followed, or . . .” Logan stopped himself. “I know it sounds crazy.”

Erin leaned down to put her iguana on the floor, and it dashed out of sight. “You don't actually think you're haunted, do you?” she asked.

Logan laughed. “Not by Lily. Not by ghosts,” he said. “That'd be less scary, I think.” He shook his head. “No. Someone really has his eye on me.”

“Do you have proof?” Erin said.

“None. Nothing I can point to, anyway. That's why it all sounds so ridiculous. But I'm not crazy, Erin. I swear to you.” He stared at her for a moment, and she stared back, curious, evaluating, piecing him together like a puzzle. Inside her head, something uncanny rang out, some distant alarm about . . .
Peck? . . . the Markless threat in Spokie
? But none of that surfaced just yet. Instead it weighed on Erin, a pressure just under her skull, waiting to get out. It hummed like a teakettle in the silence of the room.

“Hey, you know . . . I should probably get going,” Logan said. He looked at the time on his tablet and noticed his father's three missed calls. “It's getting dark. My parents are probably worried.” He tried to look nonchalant about it when he tapped the tablet to call his dad back, but Erin noticed he made it a private call.

“Yes. Yes, I'm
so
sorry, Dad. Walked a friend home from school and just lost track of time—I'm on my way, I promise.” Logan ended the call.

“I'll see you around,” Erin said with a small wave.

“Tomorrow.” Logan nodded.

Erin was slow about closing the door behind him.

9

As he exited the building, Logan tried to take in the possibilities of his new friendship. He knew he liked Erin—a lot. And here he was, leaving her apartment, to which he'd
actually
been invited. But his excitement quickly went dull against the grinding prospect of a long and terrifying walk home in the dark.

Logan didn't like evenings even when he was safe in his own home. A stroll by himself through dimly lit sidewalks on empty streets was enough to make his heart race.

You're stupid
, Logan told himself.
There's no danger in this. It's just a stupid walk home
.

But he didn't believe it.

No one is after you. No one is watching you. It's just you and your stupid secret flashlight and the mile between here and your front door. No problem at all
.

He refused to call home. He refused to call Erin. He would be fine.

But a trash can rang out in a nearby alley.

It's a cat
, Logan thought.
Or a raccoon. Nothing with its eye on you
. But Logan picked up the pace even so.

He wasn't far now from Wright Street. Just another couple blocks, and he crossed each with increasing speed. Along the way he gazed up periodically into the yellow-lit windows of the houses along the street, looking at each for the warmth inside. This one belonged to the Coles, that one to the Conways. He ran through the list of names in his head, bringing each to the tip of his tongue, ready to shout them out at the slightest sign of trouble.

Carl, help!
he thought.
Rachel, I'm being attacked! Yes, good, that would work
.
That would bring them out here
.

If he'd had the Mark, Logan would have hopped on an electro-bus. He would have at least stopped in a deli or a convenience store on the way home, just for the respite of a lit room with a cashier to watch over him for a minute. But he didn't have the Mark. And he had to get back.

Footsteps. I hear footsteps behind me!
Logan spun around and took in the scene. Long shadows under a crimson, three-quarters moon; tall, thin buildings lining the streets; wind blowing trash and stray leaves from a nearby park. No one visible. But there were plenty of places to hide.

“Hello?” Logan called. No answer. Desperate, he took the flashlight from his backpack and swung it around in long, frantic arcs. Nothing. The shadows danced in its beam.

“I can see you!” Logan bluffed, speaking to no one, knowing no answer would come, sure that this was just another one of his own delusions, but indulging it even so.

For a split second he even contemplated walking
toward
the sounds in the alley, imagined confronting whatever it was that haunted him right here and now, to prove it to himself: that there was nothing there, that these fears were unfounded, that he was being ridiculous. But Logan knew that was a fantasy. He shuffled one step forward, and that was exactly as far as his nerve would take him.

“So you might as well just come on out,” Logan said, startled at the sound of his own voice, the beam of his flashlight shaking wildly in the grip of his trembling hand.
Stop. Playing. Games
.

Then Logan heard a shuffle just past the garbage bags on his left, and thought,
Trash, leaves . . . that could have been anything. But it wasn't a person
.
It couldn't have been a person, because no one is following you
. And with all the willpower he could muster, Logan shut the flashlight off and forced himself to turn around, to finish this walk home like a grown-up. Like someone he could respect. Like someone not afraid of the dark.

But Logan heard another footstep now, close this time, and he couldn't help but indulge his fear once more.

Just one look
, he thought.
That's it. That'll be all I allow myself
.

He would glance over his shoulder.

He would turn in place and face the moonlit alley . . .

And that's when Logan saw the boy. Real. Born not of imagination or paranoia or delusion but of blood and bones and skin and nerves. He was a teenager, unidentifiable in the shadows among the trash, but solid and actual and horrifying in a way entirely new from the abstract fears Logan had known until now.

Five years of bottled terror flowed through Logan all at once, paralyzing him, filling him with a grave sense of acceptance that if this boy were to charge or attack, right at this moment, Logan would simply let him. Logan would simply let it end.

But the boy didn't attack.

Instead the boy turned and ran fast down the blood-moon streets.

And Logan followed before any part of him could think better of it.

10

Back in her apartment and still a little spooked by what Logan had been saying, Erin checked the locks on her front door twice before crashing onto the bubble wrap of her living room couch. It squeaked and popped beneath her as she slumped down and pulled her knees up, tucking her chin into the collar of her shirt and resting a tablet computer against her legs. She unfolded it and stared at her reflection in its blank screen, noticing her hair sticking out in unkempt wisps, seeing the bags under her eyes, realizing that her brow and lips were curled down in an ugly grimace. Finally she turned the thing on, dragging some files aside and opening its message window. Then she stared at that too for more than a few minutes before she finally made the call.

“Mom,” she said. “Hi.” And a hologram of Dr. Arbitor's head popped up out of the screen.

“Erin! How have you been? I haven't heard anything, and I've been so curious—how's Spokie? How was the train ride? How's your new school?”

Erin immediately felt a flood of guilt for not calling her mom sooner. “It's . . . good.” She swallowed.

“Yeah? What's it like out in the country?”

“Quiet,” Erin said honestly. “But Iggy seems to be adjusting.”

“That's good.” Dr. Arbitor laughed, and Erin turned the tablet so her mom could see the lizard, perched under a reading lamp and absorbing its heat.

“How's Beacon?” Erin asked.

“The same. Lonelier now.” Dr. Arbitor smiled, and it broke Erin's heart.

“I shouldn't be out here,” she said. “You shouldn't have let Dad do this to us.”

“I had nothing to do with it, sweetie.”

“You should have let me stay with you. I wanted to stay with you!” Her sadness turned to anger now.

“That wouldn't have been possible, Erin. You know I'm in Europe half-time these days. There wasn't a choice in the matter.”

“Wasn't a
choice
? At what point is one of you going to stand up and put this family first?”

Dr. Arbitor was quiet for a long time.

“Mom?” Erin said finally. She thought hard about which words to say next. “Are you and Dad . . . okay?”

Dr. Arbitor frowned over the connection. “Why . . .” She cleared her throat. “Why would you ask that?”

“He insists everything's fine. To hear him tell it, you're joining us out here any day now. But I know you're not going to, and I tell him so.” She scanned the small, undecorated space of the room around her. “So then he changes his story, says it won't be long before
we
come home to
you
.” Now Erin's eyes found the DOME box in the corner, holding the truth behind the scope of her father's assignment. “But I don't think that's true either. In fact, I'm starting to think the job he took here is supposed to last a good long while . . .”

Dr. Arbitor left the tablet's field of view. Through the connection, Erin could see the living room of her apartment back in Beacon, and a new wave of awful homesickness swept over her. She could see her mom's hunched shadow in the reflection of a far window, and Erin thought with some alarm that her mother appeared to be wiping her eyes.

“Mom, when are we going to be a family again?”

“That's up to your father, dear.”

“No! It isn't! It's up to both of you! You're in this marriage together!” And immediately, Erin was hysterical. “How could you let things come to this? Did you really think you could keep it from me? Who gave you two the right to destroy my life like this?” She went on and on, not listening to her mom's stuttered interjections and not wanting to.

“Erin, please!” Dr. Arbitor finally snapped, and Erin subsided. “There's no reason to get so worked up about—”

But Erin
was
worked up. And for no good reason she thought of bedtime reading and Shakespeare in pajamas, and then her heart broke in two and it sank and burned in little pieces in the acid of her stomach and suddenly she was
very
worked up and she said, “Are either of you even
trying
anymore?”

And Dr. Arbitor said, “Of course we are,” but the words hit Erin like a punch in the gut. Because her mother's voice was hollow. It was broken. Her mother was lying.

“I love you, Mom,” Erin said, ending the call so fast she wasn't even sure all the words made it out. She was not about to let her mother see her cry.

Dr. Arbitor called her back, of course, immediately and probably frantically and surely wanting at least to say, “I love you too.” But Erin would not let her do that. She declined the call. And when she did, she saw her own reflection again in the glass of the tablet's screen, and this time it was red and blotchy and it disgusted her. So she threw the computer into the bubble wrap of the couch, and she insisted to herself that she was disappointed when the thing didn't break.

It's up to your father, dear
.

It's up to your mother, dear
.

It's up to the other to keep us together, dear
.

Erin paced across the room, sobbing, 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.