Still Point
Author: Katie Kacvinsky
Date: 2000-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Dystopia; Young Adult; Science Fiction; Romance; Fantasy; Fiction; Teen; Novels; War; Futuristic
Description: In the final installment to the trilogy begun with "Awaken, " Maddie returns home to make her final stand against Digital School, and uncovers deeply guarded secrets about her family an new truths about herself.
Publisher: Harcourt Brace and Company

Table of Contents

Title Page

Table of Contents

Copyright

May 20, 2061

Chapter One

May 21, 2061

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

May 24, 2061

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

May 31, 2061

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

June 24, 2061

Read More from Katie Kacvinsky

About the Author

Copyright © 2014 by Katie Kacvinsky

All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhco.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kacvinsky, Katie.

Still point / by Katie Kacvinsky. p. cm.

Sequel to: Middle ground.

Summary: “Maddie returns home to make her final stand against digital school, and uncovers deeply guarded secrets about her family and new truths about herself.”—Provided by publisher

ISBN 978-0-544-35296-4

[1. Government, Resistance to—Fiction. 2. Science fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.K116457St 2014

[Fic]—dc23

2013050207

eISBN 978-0-544-35296-4
v1.0914

May 20, 2061

Before I left Eden, Elaine warned me to be careful. She said I have a lot of water in my personality and it’s a gift, but it’s also a challenge to control. You can’t tie water down. Water can be difficult to love too, because it moves around anything trying to contain it. It can overflow its banks and lose its sense of home. She told me to use my water to my advantage, but to be aware of what I can destroy. She said not all obstacles are meant to slow me down or block my path. They’re simply there to redirect me.

Here’s the advantage of being water: It’s forgiving and ever-changing and unpredictable and strong-willed. It’s stronger than rock; it can wear it down or move it or break it, or slowly seep through the surface. It can flow around anything and through anything or under or on top. It can change into so many forms. It can be so calm it’s invisible, so wild it’s uncontainable. It can smother fire with one spray.

But here is the weakness: People with water are susceptible to drought. We can run dry, and when we do, we shrink, until something replenishes us. We rely on others. We need love and support. When we’re not fed, we become a bit calloused and cracked, like dry skin. We wither, we wrinkle, and we can disappear inside ruts, until we flow again.

People are like their own ecosystems, little planets made up of islands and climates and forecasts. Some of us carry jagged mountain peaks, and some of us carry lakes. It makes me think about other elements, how we all carry something inside of us. I think Justin is made of so much fire, that he is so inspiring and reckless and impressionable and creative. My dad is made mostly of earth—tough, impenetrable, stubborn, and inflexible. My mom and Clare are light like air, always trying to see the best in others, always stirring things when they walk into the room, trying to bring people together and accept every perspective.

Once we know our elements we know our strengths, but that is nothing compared with our weaknesses. Our strengths define us, but our weaknesses limit us. It’s a constant tug of war in ourselves.

But you need all of these elements in order to live. You can’t cut off the earth and wind in your life, just because their movements conflict with yours—that wouldn’t sustain anything for very long. They’re all necessary. The trick is to figure out a way for all of them to combine. I need earth and air in my life in order to be happy. At least, in order to be whole.

That’s why I’m ready to make this decision.

There’s only one problem. I didn’t get to talk to Justin and explain that I’m not choosing my family over him. I know where I’m headed; I’m just making my own travel plans instead of being handed the directions. I hope he understands.

Chapter One

“Home, sweet digital home,” I said as Scott’s car exited the highway when we hit signs for Corvallis. Dark gray clouds gathered in masses above us, competing with patches of blue sky where the sun shot through. I looked up at the sky and felt like my future was as ambiguous as the clouds, constantly changing formation, impossible to nail down. Just when I think I can pinpoint a shape or direction, the wind switches course, always to leave me staring up at the clouds wondering what I see.

“You’re the one that wanted to come back here,” Scott reminded me, his tone sharp. “Was the detention center not enough torture for six months?”

I looked out the window and focused on the blue sky, even as fat raindrops hit the windshield. We stopped for a train, the only other movement on the barren street. We had driven for hours with hardly any conversation, and I was tired of trying to avoid the tension that was brewing.

“Scott, let’s play a game called brutal honesty. I prefer it to the silent treatment.” I grinned at him, but his jaw was set tight. “You go first,” I nudged.

His hands were tight on the steering wheel as he turned a corner. We passed through a neighborhood so quiet that even the trees looked like they were sleeping, their green leaves as still as a photograph.

“Sorry I’m a little annoyed you’re choosing your dad over us,” he said. “We’ve helped you out for the last six months, and now you’re bailing on us. And you didn’t tell anyone back in Eden what you’re doing. It’s like you’re running away.”

I chewed on my fingernail and took a long breath. I tried to keep my voice light. “I didn’t want people to try and stop me,” I said simply, and the car accelerated. I closed my eyes and embraced that feeling, how the tires collided with the road when we moved, how friction needs to be there to propel anything forward. That’s what I was about to become—the friction in my family.

“I get it—you’re going behind enemy lines. Good for you. But you don’t need to prove yourself anymore.”

“That’s not why I’m doing this,” I said.

“Then why are you, exactly?” he asked, turning onto my street. My shoulders tensed and my knees instinctively moved away from the door, as if the car were my shell and I was slowly receding inside.

I studied Scott’s profile, his black glasses sliding down his nose and his black hair gelled into hard spikes on top of his head. “I don’t want my family to be the enemy lines. I can’t accept that. I need to figure out what’s going on with my dad, and he’s not going to tell me through a screen. He wants to play a game, so I’m going to suit up.”

“Your dad is a world-class manipulator. What if he forces you to join his side?”

I looked down at the bird tattooed on the inside of my wrist. “If a detention center couldn’t break me, I don’t think we have to worry about my dad,” I pointed out, and Scott couldn’t argue.

“How do you plan on getting in touch with Justin?”

Good question. I tapped my foot on the floor. “Justin will find me,” I said. “He’ll figure it out.”

“Not when it looks like you’re turning on us. Did you even talk to him about this?”

“I don’t need his permission. He’d support me either way. That’s what friends do,” I hinted.

“Not if they think you’re making a stupid decision.”

Every once in a while I had a technology relapse, where I missed a function from my digital life. Like putting people on mute, or switching them off, or deleting their existence entirely. You hardly ever got annoyed in that life, because you didn’t have to put up with people. You didn’t have to learn patience. If someone said something you didn’t like, you could delete their existence. People became that inconsequential—they were just a funny app or an attractive image you could swap updates with.

You can’t do that in the real world. You need to be more patient and forgiving and accepting of people’s flaws. You can’t be as choosy about your friends. But you also become less selfish, more understanding. Liking people exactly like you isn’t very rewarding. It doesn’t challenge you. My mom used to tell me you should love the people who are hardest to love. I think she was talking about my dad, but you can expand that to people in general.

I shrugged off his comment because I knew Scott looked at life through a narrow lens. You were with him or you were against him. He didn’t understand a middle ground.

He pulled up to the curb and pointed down the street. “My apartment’s two miles from here. You can stay with me and Molly if you want. You can meet with your dad in person but still have some distance.”

I thought about Scott’s offer. Everyone seemed to want to keep me under their supervision.

I shook my head and clutched the door handle. “I don’t want distance,” I said. “Distance is the problem.” I opened the car door and grabbed my duffel bag off the floor. “See you around.”

“Not likely.”

Scott was already gunning the accelerator before I could swing the door shut. I watched with a frown as his car disappeared. When you agree to help one person, you ultimately have to disappoint someone else; it’s like a karmic law. I just had to trust myself. That’s where it needed to start. That’s why I knew Justin would understand.

I blinked down at the turf grass next to the road, so immaculate it looked like footsteps had never grazed its green peaks. I looked past the crest of plastic blades shining in the sun, wet from the short burst of rain, and my eyes traveled slowly up the four front steps, stopping on the black front door of my parents’ house. Doors are supposed to be welcoming. The silver sloping handle shined like it had been polished, twinkling in the sun. But there wasn’t much welcoming about it. It felt like a target I needed to try to hit, and my aim was always off.

You can feel the energy in a place. It has a lightness or heaviness; it presses on you or it lifts you up. A place has its own mood, inviting you in or casting you out. This place felt sad, isolated, even a little regretful. I was afraid that if I stood and listened closely enough, I would hear a low whine seeping through the windows.

I absorbed the quiet sounds of the neighborhood and tried to reinsert myself into this life, like a plug into an outlet. The wind blew through the plastic leaves, a familiar clatter, and trains wheezed in the distance, the electric start and go of breaths. A plane buzzed somewhere in the sky. They were all artificial noises. I waited for something to happen—for a siren or a crash or a shout. Maybe I was waiting for someone to stop me so I’d have an excuse to turn back. But I never chose the easy path. That seemed to be my motto in life.

I had lived here for seventeen years, so why did I feel like such a stranger? It’s an odd feeling to realize you don’t belong where you came from.

I knew that the longer I stood there, the more I’d second-guess myself, which is a waste of time. I learned that once you make a decision, you need to see it through. If you don’t, you’ll lose faith in yourself, and that’s when you’ll let other people make decisions for you. Now I knew better.

I tossed my bag over my shoulder and took my time walking to the front porch, my gray tennis shoes brushing the smooth stone walkway. I searched my heart for an attachment to this place, for memories to pull me in and hold me tight. I waited for the feeling of home to swell up inside me like a reassuring, steady pulse. But I didn’t feel anything, just a wave of detachment. On the front porch, two wicker rocking chairs greeted me beside a small wrought-iron table. On the table stood a flowerpot full of yellow plastic geraniums, pale and motionless, beautiful in a frozen way. Doubt crept her fingers up and down my spine. I looked once more down the street and envisioned Scott’s car. I could still change my mind.

Familiar barks filled the silence. At least someone would welcome me home. I heard footsteps inside, and my mom threw open the front door and stood behind the screen, shocked, her mouth frozen in a circle. She was dressed in a pair of black leggings with a long gray tunic sweater. Her brown hair had light caramel highlights. I had always been impressed that even though my mom hardly ever left the house, she still made it a priority to get dressed every day, to style her hair, even put on the small details of earrings and bracelets. I was happy to see she hadn’t given this up. It made me feel like there was still hope of bringing her closer to my world.

“Maddie,” she said, her voice so light it was almost a laugh.

Baley, our chocolate Lab, scratched at the door, and my mom opened it before the dog tore a hole in the screen. Baley scooted around her and almost knocked me over when she lunged at my stomach with her enormous paws. I knelt down and caught her around the shoulders because I needed to hug somebody. As soon as I stood up, my mom threw her arms around me, almost greedily, as if she’d been starved of physical contact. I leaned against her and she was laughing and it made me laugh but then I heard a choking sound and her back was shaking. I held on while she cried into my shoulder. I felt terrible in that moment, terrible that I’d stayed away for so long, terrible that I went almost a year without her. I couldn’t get that time back, but all my doubts about coming home vanished and made room for solid confidence, so solid that both of us could lean on it.

“I’m glad you’re happy to see me,” I said, and she pulled me away, and even though there were streaks of tears on her face, these narrow canals running down her cheeks, her eyes were shining.

“What are you doing home?” she asked.

“I want to take Dad up on his offer.”

She opened the screen door, and we walked inside. Baley clung to my side, and I nearly tripped over her.

“You’re willing to work with him?” She studied me. “Or are you here to spy on him?” She knew me too well. A door creaked open down the hall.

“I’d like to hear the answer to that myself.” My father’s voice streamed into the room like a cold front pushing over a warm front. His dress shoes tapped against the laminate floors, and he appeared in the foyer. He looked more skeptical than relieved to see me, but he still smiled.

“You never informed me you were coming home,” he said.

Nice greeting, I thought. “Sorry,” I said. “I figured it was a standing invitation, or did I need you to sign a permission slip first?” I mentally kicked myself. It was too easy to spar with my dad, and anger wouldn’t get us anywhere. I needed to start over with him. I needed to have a clear head.

He ushered us all into the kitchen, and my mom grabbed a couple of mugs out of the cabinet for coffee. He sat down next to me at the table. It was the closest I had been to him in a year, and it made the hair on my arms stand out, my own tiny quills jumping up in protection. I studied his face—it seemed to never age. His high cheekbones arched above his broad mouth, so defined that they looked chiseled. I was so busy looking at him, I didn’t realize he was giving me the same physical critique. He always studied me a little too carefully, like he was looking at me through a magnifying glass for any cracks or imperfections—for something he could fix.

“You put on some weight,” he noted. Normally this isn’t something a girl wants to hear, but in my case it was a compliment. I looked like myself again. I was healthy.

“Elaine fed me really well,” I said. “Did you know we eat three meals a day in Bayview, all together at the table, all homemade?”

“Is that right?”

“Have you had home-cooked food lately?” I asked. “You can actually taste it. There are even grocery stores, here in Corvallis, but most people don’t know they’re out there because local stores can’t compete with online advertising.”

“Maddie—”

My mom shot me a warning look that told me I’d already overstepped my obedient boundary, and I pressed my lips together, but Dad looked like he was enjoying my lecture.

“Thanks for the tip,” he said, and sipped his coffee. I pressed my palms down firmly on the table.

“Dad, you told me if I came home, we could talk. Is this what you call talking?”

He looked at me. “You want to talk about grocery shopping?”

“You agreed that if I came home, we’d work together.” I searched his face for any hesitation. “If that offer doesn’t stand, you need to tell me right now. Don’t waste my time. Are you really willing to work with us?”

My mom stood against the kitchen counter, studying my dad in a way that surprised me; she seemed to be wondering the same thing.

He let out a slow breath and took another sip of coffee. I sat back in my chair. Okay, so maybe I could give my dad five minutes to accept that I was home before I assaulted him with ultimatums.

“I came home because you’re my family,” I told them. “I don’t want to build a wall and have to live in one world or the other. That’s not an option. That’s not any kind of answer to this.” To my dad I said, “You spend your life building walls.”

“And your gift seems to be scaling them,” he said with a small grin.

I shrugged.

“Have you ended correspondence with your friends?” he asked, and I nodded. “And they won’t be contacting you?”

“I think they’re pretty mad at me right now.”

“And Justin—you’ve ended that as well?”

I swallowed and nodded. Not exactly “ended,” I thought. If he comes looking for me, I can’t really help it. Clare still lived in town, and Scott and Molly. Gabe was moving here as well. My dad couldn’t keep track of my movements if they weren’t online. I just had to believe my friends would come after me. It was part of my gamble.

“I am willing to work with you, Maddie, but first I need to see that you’re serious about this. You’re on a one-week trial.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but my dad was already shaking his head.

“If you pass, we’ll talk.”

I narrowed my eyes and smiled, a fake smile, no teeth. “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I wasn’t on some kind of probation,” I said, but my dad wasn’t amused. There was too much truth to my words to make it a joke.

“I’m serious, Maddie. No leaving the house unless you’re escorted by me or your mother. No sneaking off.”

My eyes instinctively moved to the kitchen window, and I visually estimated other windows around the house that I could crawl out of. There was a tree outside my bedroom window. I mentally imagined the branches and tried to remember if they formed a ladder. Then I realized I’d never actually climbed a tree. I wondered how bad a fall from a two-story window would be. I wondered if turf grass provided any kind of padding.

My dad read my mind. “Our screens have security latches, so don’t think about crawling out of a window in the middle of the night.”

I started biting my nails. I could turn the sensors off; that wouldn’t be hard.

He smiled again. “And don’t think you can hack your way around the sensors. I just installed a new house security system. Its signal is sent straight to the police. I wouldn’t tamper with it.”

“Is it meant to keep people out, or in?”

A call buzzed on our wall screen, and my dad looked at the incoming number.

“I’ll take that in my office,” he said.

I watched him stand up and leave the room and felt like he had become more distant than ever.

“I have some good news,” my mom broke in. I raised my eyebrows at the wide grin on her face. It gave me hope. They would let me out one night a week?

“You made it home just in time to order a dress.”

My face scrunched. “A dress?”

“For the National Education Benefit. It’s on Friday.”

My eyes widened. The dreaded formal event. The Thompsons. Damon Thompson, who had willingly fed me into the teeth of the detention center, and his arrogant, chauvinistic son, Paul, who was even happier to see me locked up. I shook my head decisively.

“No way,” I said.

“Madeline—” My mom’s tone shifted into her guidance voice, and I cut her off.

“Mom, do you honestly expect me to sit through a benefit parading the gifts of digital school, after what I just experienced?”

She looked down, her face guilty. “I think your father would want you to be there. Believe it or not, he is proud of you.”

I smirked. “Are you sure?” I asked. “I’m not exactly a spokesperson for his program.”

“Well, I’d like you to be there. It would mean a lot to me.”

I thought about this. I considered who else might make an appearance, and the idea of seeing Justin was all the encouragement I needed.

“Fine, but I get to pick out my dress,” I warned her.

I sat in my room and unpacked my duffel bag, but nothing I owned fit with my new life. Tennis shoes for running, flip-flops for the beach, sunglasses, a raincoat, tank tops so I could feel the sun on my skin. A paper journal stuffed with pencils and pens. None of these things were necessary in the digital world. I looked at my empty desktop. I thought of Elaine’s desk in Eden, full of mugs crammed with pens, baskets of letters and papers and magazines, spiral notebooks and markers. I set the leather journal on my desk. It looked strange there, the faded red leather juxtaposed against the hard glass desktop that served as a digital keypad.

I already felt lonely. I thought it would take weeks, but it had only taken minutes. I felt the urge to escape pulling at my arms and my legs and my heart.

My life here was one room. It was an extreme cutoff, like running through a wide, open field and then suddenly walking a balance beam. And I’ve never had very good balance. At least now the balance beam didn’t intimidate me. My steps were as solid as ever, like walking in shoes with metal tips. I guess that’s what confidence is, not worrying so much about the steps you take.

May 21, 2061

I’m thinking about myself this week. Feeling sorry for myself. I’m heavy with me. What’s the point of thinking about me, really? Where will it get me, other than stuck, alone, centered on myself, which only makes me feel too huge to handle?

So instead of sitting around dwelling on this tiny island of me, I’m going to spread myself larger and concentrate on things around me, and then I’ll become smaller. I become irrelevant and then I stop suffocating.

I remember, when I was young, my mom gave me a book called About Me. It’s a two-hundred-page interview of yourself. But what’s the point? Why be so self-indulgent? Why not interview someone else? Why not learn two hundred pages about something other than yourself? Why do we get so fixated on ourselves? Where does that lead us, other than in circles? The happiest people aren’t necessarily the most successful, or the most popular, or the most talented. They’re the ones who are interested in the people around them.

I miss him right now.

I realize I don’t need him to feel whole. I’ve found that place now. I don’t need him to feel complete or confident or self-assured. I’ve found that person already. But I still need him in another way. In the same way water needs a shoreline—even if it recedes, it still needs a place to come back to. In the same way migrating animals still need a destination, and dust always needs a place to settle. It’s the same way things are pulled to other things, instinctively. I still need him in that way. I would still be receding, still be unsettled, still be wandering a little in the sky, without him.

Chapter Two

It was cloudy outside and the air was balmy and humid, carried in on an east wind. I went outside to our backyard with Baley for the first time since I’d been home and that’s when I noticed rosebushes had been planted along a gravel path that snaked in a loop around our yard. Their colorful blooms bordered both sides of the trail, like a rainbow fence full of blossoms. I inhaled a deep breath through my nose, and I could smell the sweet perfume and the soapy aroma of the petals. My mom stood on the deck, next to a green umbrella shading a patio dining table we had never used.

“You planted flowers?” I asked, as if I might have dreamed up the image.

“It was your father’s idea,” she said.

I nearly tripped over my feet when she said this. I looked back at her.

“Dad wanted to plant these?”

“Well, I was complaining to him about how much I missed gardening.” She walked down the patio stairs onto the path. “When you and Joe were little, I spent hours outside planting while the two of you played. It’s how we spent most of our afternoons, before M28. Your father surprised me with these on my birthday,” she said, and smiled slowly, like she had to force the gesture. I walked over to the rosebush closest to the porch steps and leaned over to examine the salmon-pink blossoms. They were strangely perfect.

“Don’t touch that one,” my dad’s voice rang out. “Not that one, Madeline. It hasn’t been stapled down yet.”

My hand stopped a few inches short of the petals. My fingers turned in. My smile died.

I looked up and saw my dad standing in the doorway. “Stapled?” I asked.

“They’re fake, Maddie, obviously,” my mom said, as if there were no other options. “Nothing natural looks this perfect.”

I looked back at the flowers. I was so sick of fake. I wanted to unfake everyone and everything.

“Do you like them?” I asked her. I needed her to say no.

She shrugged, and glanced at my father. “At first I was a little disappointed,” she admitted, “but it’s so easy to get used to. You don’t have to prune them or fertilize them. You don’t have to cut off their blossoms after they die. You just spray them every month with the scent can, and they smell like this year-round.” She cupped a plastic flower in her hand. “Now I can’t imagine all the work it would take to actually maintain real roses. The planting part is easy, but it’s having to take care of them every day that becomes a nuisance,” she said.

I looked at her and wondered if these were her honest words, or my father’s, or maybe from the instructional setup video that came with the plastic plants. But that was our culture. We wanted to plant things, but we didn’t want to maintain them. We wanted the beauty but didn’t want to put time and effort into things. I wondered how we had come to look at joy as a chore. I wondered why using our hands and our time to create things had become such an inconvenience.

Justin was right. The detention center had given me new eyes. I was seeing the world in a completely different way, seeing how technological and artificial we had become. I had always sensed it, my whole life, but it’s hard to know if something is off when that’s all you know. It’s like living in a constant winter—you never understand the comfort of shedding your layers, of living light. But now I understood.

I wasn’t rebellious. Maybe I was just more human than the average person.

I remembered planting flowers with Elaine, how wonderful it felt to use my hands. It eased my mind. It made negative thoughts slip away and more sunlight filter in. It made me feel awake, mindful, and in the moment. You need to put love into something in order for it to grow. Maybe that’s why this house felt so sad to me.

“Be careful out here, Maddie,” my dad said. He was talking about the garden, but I knew his warning was about life in general. I had a habit of tearing up anything that was too constricting.

“I need to start getting ready for the benefit,” I said, and headed for the door. I brushed my hands against the roses’ thorns as I passed. They were plastic and soft and weakly grazed my skin.

I opened the door of my bedroom with a wide smile and carefully maneuvered down the plush-carpeted hallway, four inches taller in my black, clunky platform heels. My long, leopard-print dress nearly grazed the floor. It was fitted, showing off the curves I was finally getting back. Black lace and sequins trimmed the chest, connected to thin spaghetti straps. A black leather cuff clung to one of my wrists.

Usually my hair was tied up for this event, in a conservative braid or twist. But tonight it was loose. It fell long down my back. That’s what caught my parents’ attention as they waited for me at the bottom of the stairs.

“Madeline Rose Freeman!” my mom exclaimed. “What did you do to your hair?”

I ran my hands through pink streaks of highlights and smiled.

“I hope that’s a wig!” she gasped.

I pretended to be hurt. “You said pink is my best color.”

She raised her hands above her head like she was praying for a new daughter. “Pink? You dyed your hair pink? I told you that you couldn’t dye your hair,” she said.

“Until I was eighteen,” I corrected her.

My dad didn’t look angry, which was surprising. He was fighting a grin. My parents stood in their usual formal outfits for the event: my father in a black tuxedo and my mom in a long-sleeved cream-colored dress that cinched at the waist and flared out at her ankles.

“Couldn’t you have done that after the benefit?” Mom asked.

I pointed out it wasn’t completely pink, just pink highlights. I had ordered the ten-minute dye kit online, and it had arrived today, just in time. Rebellion brought to me in twenty-four hours by glamordye.com. High-five technology.

“What on earth are you wearing?” she asked.

I looked down at my dress and smiled. I think the design is called Suck It, Digital School.

“Leopard print,” I said.

“Well, you can turn right around and change,” my mom insisted, and spun her finger in a circle. I held my ground.

“I don’t have anything else to wear,” I said. “I’m still a size smaller than all my clothes.”

“Never mind, we’re already late,” my dad said. “Just put this on.” He handed me a long black dress coat, which I accepted. It covered most of my outfit, but it only made my bright hair stand out like a fire at night. Tonight, that was my plan. It had taken me eighteen years to understand I wasn’t invisible.

I followed my parents outside, and my mom critiqued my feet.

“Madeline, those shoes are not appropriate either. Too loud.”

Water adhered to the black driveway pavement and shined under the streetlights like silver puddles. Two men dressed in black suits waited at the open limo doors to escort us to the event. My shoes thudded hard against the ground and made me so tall I had to fold my body in half to get inside the limo.

We headed downtown to the annual National Education Benefit. When we arrived at the front of the colonial Stratford House, we were met by an usher. I noticed there were fewer paparazzi than usual. Normally a trail of reporters lined the red carpet on either side, a living wall five people deep. This year there was just a smattering of reporters roaming around the open area, which was encased in a fence of gold ribbon for the event. The two escorts opened the limo doors, and my father was the first one out of the car. The cameras immediately caught him. I ducked out of the limo and kept my eyes on the white marble steps ahead.

I didn’t stop to have my picture taken with my parents, which I had obediently done every year. I walked away, unbuttoned my coat, and shrugged it off. Instantly the cameras started to turn. People ignored my dad, and a curtain of blinking lights followed me down the red carpet. I smiled for the cameras. I waved. I even stopped once and blew a kiss for a photographer, a sultry kiss where I puckered my lips together and paused with my hand held out toward him. People whistled and the digital billboards broadcasting the event switched from my father to me. I was on national television. I turned and waved to the audience before I headed for the stairs. Two tall men in elegant white suits held the front doors open for me, and their eyes took in my hair and outfit with stunned surprise. The wind blew my hair back, and I strutted through the door—the first time I’d ever walked inside this building smiling.

I checked my coat in the lobby, raised my shoulders, and tossed my hair back. Guests loitered on velvet seats and couches in the spacious entry room, staring into handheld screens. It reminded me of old-fashioned smoking parlors in movies, where people would flee to spend time with their addictions. My parents found me, and my dad’s hand pressed against my back as if he thought he needed to push me into the ballroom. When we walked in, people stared at my hair, my lipstick that was too bright, the heavy liner that outlined my green eyes like a cat’s. I could hear people leaning in to criticize me, to judge me. Fingers pointed. I tried not to let it bother me. The moment you open yourself up is the moment you’re scrutinized. Humans love to judge one another. No wonder so many of us preferred being behind a screen.

All of the negative attention made my steps shaky. Annoying my dad was one thing; taking on the world was another.

The party was smaller this year. I could remember when thousands of people turned out for this event. Now the benefit was lucky to pull in a few hundred. I knew it wasn’t because the supporters of DS were dwindling; it was because face-to-face interaction was becoming so rare, it made people uncomfortable. This year the giant wall screens were set to mirrors and reflected the room to make it look like more people were in attendance. Tables were larger than normal to try to hide the lower numbers, but they still took up barely half of the room. The rest was empty space. So much of our world was turning into empty space. I watched people sit stiffly, a little robotic, not touching, not knowing how to use their senses, not understanding how to be in the moment. I looked around the room for a couple who were touching each other, who were engaged with each other. I couldn’t locate a single one. Everyone was staring into a screen attached to android hands.

I looked into the back corner of the ballroom, where I had seen Justin a year earlier. I knew he could get in tonight, if he wanted to. He knew I would be here. I looked for Riley, Jake, or Scott and Molly, for any person in the room I could connect with, for anyone who dared to make eye contact with me. So far, everyone looked away, as if meeting my glance would spread a virus.

During the benefit dinner with the Thompsons, I kept my head down and my eyes locked on my plate. I pretended to be fascinated by the thread count of the white cotton tablecloth. Damon discussed a train accident that took him two weeks to clean up, and Paul talked about police academy training, and Becky, guess what, played with her phone the entire time. It lit up on the table every time she had a message, which was constant, like a strobe light. It was distracting.

Paul didn’t tell me I looked pretty this year, because I didn’t. I looked like I was ready to start a riot. I looked like I could tame lions in my sleep. I passed the time by listening, mostly to the strange silence that shouldn’t exist in a room full of people.

I eavesdropped on conversations around the table. Mrs. Thompson was telling my mom how Paul moved out to live at the police station during his training. She let Becky join a movie club that meets face-to-face. My head perked up at this, and I looked at Becky. I saw red flags. And potential. I glanced at my mom, and she looked equally surprised.

“You let Becky go out?” my mom asked.

“There’s an old cinema in town,” Mrs. Thompson said. “It’s the only one open, a single screen that plays old classics. I’m efriends with all the mothers. It’s a nice group of girls.” My mom and I glanced at each other while Mrs. Thompson continued. “I want Becky to get a little bit of interaction, now that Paul’s never home. I read a study that you should expose your child to face-to-face communication once a week. It’s good for social behavior.”

“Statistics show that kids who socialize face-to-face three to six hours a week have higher self-esteem,” Damon reported. “And even healthier immune systems.”

I smiled to myself. Imagine what interacting every day would do.

Mrs. Thompson’s eyes cut quickly to mine. “I’d invite Maddie to join, but . . .”

“I’m not exactly a teen role model,” I finished for her, and moved my glass to the side so a waiter could set down my dinner entrée. Everyone at the table turned to look at me.

“Grounded, as usual, aren’t you?” Mrs. Thompson asked.

I smiled politely and asked my mom to pass the water pitcher. “Actually, I’m not. I came home willingly.”

“After you broke out of jail?” Paul snapped.

I lightly bit my tongue to force myself to pause. “Detention centers aren’t jails, Paul,” I corrected him. “One of these days you’ll find out what’s really going on inside them.” I calmly poured water into my glass and offered to fill up glasses around me. “I can leave here any time I want,” I stated. “I’m choosing to be here.”

That ended the conversation. My mom’s eyes flickered toward mine across the table, her way of saying she was on my side. I concentrated on eating my dinner.

“How was the detention center?” Paul asked a couple of minutes later, with the nerve to smile.

“A blast,” I said, and tugged a piece of bread apart, pretending it was Paul’s head detaching from his body. I pulled my napkin over my lap and didn’t meet his eyes. I looked at his forehead instead, into that small little programmed brain of his. “I met some really amazing people who changed my life, and then we set it free, as you may have heard. So, thank you for the philanthropic opportunity.” I smiled widely.

“You didn’t free anybody,” he said. “It’s just on a lockdown, and the majority of people support those centers. The kids will all have to go back. You think you’re all a bunch of saints changing the world. All you do is cause a little trouble. You get a two-second mention in the news, and you think it’s going to make a difference. But you don’t change anything. You just make a mess for us to clean up.”

I glared at Paul, and his eyes trailed down my outfit.

“You look like a hooker. Where did you get that dress?”

I gritted my teeth. “Your mom loaned it to me.”

I looked away but I heard Paul shift in his seat. I winced, afraid he was going to pull a gun on me.

He leaned so close that I could feel his warm breath on my neck. “Don’t think for a second that I’ve given up on arresting Solvi.”

I took a sip of water from the long-stemmed crystal glass and looked over at him. “I certainly hope not.”

“If Justin ever crosses my path, I have personalized handcuffs waiting for him. I won’t let up, Maddie. And after I arrest Justin, you’re next.”

I looked away. Justin would be honored to hear this. But instead of encouraging the argument, I let it go. I didn’t bother giving Paul the satisfaction of looking annoyed. After all, I had been through enough to know how to beat people mentally. If a psychological mastermind at a detention center couldn’t break me, there was no way Paul could come close. So, I tried not to think. I reminded myself that sometimes the best thing you can do is to stop thinking and be aware. Absorb the now. Sometimes being aware is your greatest weapon. People don’t know how to do it anymore.

Becky excused herself to use the bathroom, and I watched her walk across the expansive floor. I looked around at the quiet atmosphere, masked by loud classical music. I watched people awkwardly try to be human.

After the entrées were taken away, before dessert was served, the emcee climbed the stairs to the stage and addressed the audience. He was old and cupped the microphone in a shaky hand, but his voice came out clear and strong and caught everyone’s attention.

“Tonight we have two important announcements. First, this evening marks the last face-to-face benefit event. To make it more convenient for everyone to attend, we will continue this annual event virtually from now on.”

He paused so the crowd could applaud his announcement. I joined in, clapping my hands loudly and thinking, Too bad there won’t be a DS program to celebrate next year.

“Tonight,” he continued, “we have something special to share with you. Before we hear from Kevin Freeman, the honored designer of DS, we will play a video that celebrates digital school’s great achievements over the last decade. So, here it is: Digital School’s Greatest Hits.”

Fantastic, I thought. As if the evening couldn’t get any worse.

He stepped to the side of the stage, and the lights dimmed overhead. Everyone was quiet as a screen along the entire front wall snapped on. A few seconds went by, and someone in the audience coughed. The screen buzzed and crackled and snapped off. The emcee stood at the edge of the stage and looked around the room with concern. That’s when I knew something was off.

The speakers crackled and the screen turned on again, and I pressed my hand over my mouth with surprise when Clare’s image appeared. She was sitting on a stool, and the background was a gray curtain. Soft light lit the space, like a professional photography studio. Paul heard me shift in my seat and glanced over at me.

Clare smiled and waved at the camera. “Thanks for meeting face-to-face tonight. You all look beautiful, and you smell fantastic.” I pinched my lips between my teeth. People in the audience adjusted themselves in their seats and looked around.

“The DS Dropouts took the liberty of interviewing a few students enrolled in your program. Here are our thoughts. We thought you should know, since this system affects us more than it’s affecting you.”

The image switched to a girl, young, probably in her early teens. Just like Clare, she was shot in front of the gray backdrop.

Am I happy? Well, according to my social sites, I rank in the top eighty-fifth percentile of my peers when it comes to popularity and group involvement. I had eighty thousand social invites this month! I had more than a hundred thousand messages. I don’t have the time to not be happy.

People looked around the room with confused expressions. My dad’s eyes were pointed dead center at me. I looked back at the screen, where another teenage girl was being interviewed.

According to my online dating program, my boyfriend and I are completely in love. We’ve passed eight out of our ten relationship compatibility exams. We scored nine point three out of ten for a match rate. He’s already proposed, but we haven’t met in person yet. I’m waiting for our next exam, which is a DNA study to genetically screen for our kids. There’s no point in meeting face-to-face until we pass all of our exams. I don’t want to get emotionally involved until our numbers score high. What would be the point?

The image switched to a young man, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, still carrying baby fat in his cheeks.

Do I have pets? Yeah, we have a dog. I think.

A couple of people in the audience coughed and cleared their throats. This time the speaker was a girl whose face was sad and serious.

My little brother is two years old. He spends about twelve hours a day online. They’ve made virtual daycare really interactive. He loves it. It’s easier on my parents, because they have so many online communities to get back to.

The polished ballroom floor squeaked against chairs scooting back. My dad was already on his feet, followed by Damon and Paul. People moved around on the stage, probably trying to cut the sound or the feed, but it kept playing and my eyes were mesmerized, my ears embracing each word.

Molly’s image filled the screen:

I blink twenty thousand times a day. That’s the only way to avoid looking at some kind of a screen these days—to close my eyes completely.

The camera zoomed in now, so faces filled the screen and you had to look at their eyes, into the depth of them, until you could see light reflecting back.

The first full face was a young girl’s.

I haven’t experienced violence or unhappiness, but I haven’t experienced love either. There aren’t any roller-coaster rides in this life. It’s really entertaining and convenient and safe, but it’s all pretty flat, like a train that just circles in one predictable loop. I guess that’s the problem. There are never any crashing lows, but there are never any insane highs. It isn’t much of a ride.

Gabe was interviewed next. Seeing him made me homesick, like I was staring at family I hadn’t seen in years.

I want to meet somebody the way my parents did. Face-to-face. They didn’t get to know each other through messages or stalking each other’s profiles. They met in person. They got to know each other in person. That seems so much more exciting to me, and more intimate and mysterious and all the things I guess a relationship should be. I must be pretty old-fashioned. I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, and when I decide to date someone, I’m not going to ask for her number or her online contacts. I’m not going to get to know her through a screen. I’m only going to get to know her in person. I want to work harder to know her. I want her to make the same effort to know me. Aren’t we worth it?

A boy’s eyes filled the screen, so dark they were nearly black.

You think DS is safe? Well, I don’t think it’s safe at all. There’s something really cowardly about it. Everyone’s anonymous. You’re always hiding. You can backstab anyone you want. You can be as mean as you want. You never have to see the hurt inflicted on someone else. And that’s become okay. Yeah, DS has its advantages, but it opened up a ton of disadvantages. I’m bullied almost every day. Random nobodies can spread lies about me. And there’s no point in trying to turn these people in because they’ll just set up a new profile with a new name and do it all over again. You’ve made it easy to be mean. You’ve brought out the worst in us. People have more freedom to express whatever they want, but there’s no respect, because they don’t have to feel responsible for what they say. They’re anonymous. But it sucks being the person on the other end because you can’t fight back. You can’t defend yourself. If you’re going to say something mean to me, at least be bold enough to say it to my face. I’m afraid to leave my house because it seems like the world is full of jerks. Man, we are so disconnected. That’s what DS should stand for. A disconnected society.

Faces poured over the screen like a waterfall, so fast you could hardly see them. Clare’s voice spoke around us.

This is the paradise you all have created. What do you think about your system now?

The video snapped off and we were met with silence, the kind of silence that hits you like a crash, like cymbals or fireworks or a window smashing. Silence that leaves you shaken. The lights turned on and people sat in their seats, still staring at the screen. The emcee was fumbling with the microphone, trying to turn the sound back on. People were murmuring now, starting to talk for the first time tonight.

The overhead lights flickered and the energy in the room shifted with the lights. Chairs brushed back against the floor, and people were panicking.

The volume snapped on. “We apologize for this interruption,” the emcee said. “Please stay seated and stay calm. Our network lines have been hacked. This broadcast is nothing more than contraband by the DS protesters. We’ll be under way with the benefit video in a few minutes.”

Someone grabbed my arm, and the next thing I knew, a security guard was hauling my mother and me out of the dining hall toward an exit sign next to the stage.

“What’s going on?” my mom asked behind me.

“It’s just a safety precaution,” the guard told her. “In case things get escalated in there.” The guards took us down a long hallway until it reached a dead end and told us to stay there until they came back for us. My mom crossed her arms and I could feel her stare. She didn’t have to say it.

“This has nothing to do with me.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“I didn’t leave my seat the entire time,” I said, and pointed back toward the ballroom. “I promise you, I didn’t know this was going to happen. But don’t you agree with some of it? You would have said some of those exact same things.”

“Maddie—”

We were interrupted by one of the security guards. “Your husband needs you,” he said to my mom, and then he glanced at me.

“Stay put,” he said firmly.

My mom followed him through a door that led backstage, and it swung closed behind them.

Stay put, I thought. He obviously didn’t know me. An orange exit sign loomed at my side, tempting me. I needed to know.

Chapter Three

I opened the door and a cool wind pushed against my dress. I held my hands up to move my hair out of my face, and there he was, sitting on his motorcycle in the alley outside the hotel. His helmet was in his lap, and his dark hair reflected the moonlight creeping through thin wisps of clouds. My stomach twisted in a dozen directions at once, but he looked calm, like he expected me. His eyes trailed up my dress and settled on my face, and his eyebrows arched with surprise. He whistled through his teeth.

“Look at you,” Justin said.

I had momentarily forgotten about my hair and now ran my hands through it.

“Nice dress,” he said with a smile. His smile made me smile. I kept smiling, like an idiot—I couldn’t help it. I forgot how wonderful it felt to stare into eyes that accepted you and trusted you and loved you.

“You really want to piss your dad off, don’t you?” he asked.

“Apparently, so do you,” I pointed out. “You organized this?”

He grinned at me in this mysterious way. Some people come with a few chips and cracks, and even though they might be the strongest people you’ve ever met, there will be things about them that you can’t quite connect. There was something amazing and extremely frustrating about it.

“Didn’t you expect me to make an appearance?” he asked, and I nodded.

“Great video,” I said.

“I think we adequately pissed off the close-minded.”

“Is that your monthly goal?” I asked him.

“That’s my hourly goal. Isn’t it yours?”

I thought back to all the glares people had given me inside. “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s hard to stand up straight in there. And it’s not because of these shoes,” I clarified. “People hate me.”

“You just have to grow a shell,” Justin said. And that’s exactly what I didn’t want to do. I wanted to live light, not with a heavy shield around me all the time. Justin had a shell that took me a year to pry through.

I looked around the empty alley. “How did you know I’d come out here?”

“I’m friends with those security guards,” he said, and nodded toward the door. “They’re buying me a little time right now.”

I should have figured. “Nice connection.”

“How do you think I got in last year?”

“They told me to stay put,” I pointed out.

Justin smiled. “I told them to say that. I figured it was all the encouragement you needed to walk out here.”

I nodded because he was right. “You have me figured out.”

His smile disappeared and his eyes grilled me. “You’re impossible to figure out.”

We were both quiet for a few seconds. I thought about last year, how I left with him and we spent the night together. How much that night had changed me. How I had never wanted to go back to my old life again. Tonight wasn’t any different. I still wanted to run away.

A pipe stemming out of a grate in the hotel siding pumped steam into the street, and it floated into a thin cloud between us. It made me feel like I was drifting, like neither of us was anchored in this place, like we were just floating.

He studied me. His hands rested on his knees, and his feet started to bounce on the ground. I walked up closer to him, until we were close enough to touch. His feet shifted like he was about to stand up. He reached out and grabbed my hand, tentatively, like he was afraid I’d snap it back. He’d been careful not to touch me ever since I escaped from the DC, as if he thought he might break me. He looked down at my hand, lying on top of his, and his fingertips curled around mine, slowly, like a flower closing in on itself. He was acting like he shouldn’t be touching me, which was unnerving, since that was all I wanted him to do.

“You didn’t say goodbye.” His eyes dimmed when he said this. He looked genuinely hurt.

“I thought you’d all understand. Obviously, Scott didn’t,” I said. “He’s mad at me.”

“Scott’s mad at everybody,” Justin said. “It’s part of his charm.” He looked up at me. “He’s also pretty sensitive about loyalty.”

This word hurt, as if he were jabbing his fingers between my ribs. But only one thing really mattered. “Do you question me?”

He blew out a long breath. His hand trailed up my arm, all the way to my shoulder strap, and it made goose bumps rise on my skin. He pulled his hand away, and something in his eyes bothered me.

“No. I know you have your reasons.” He paused, like he was waiting for me to list them. I knew he had doubts.

“I want to figure out what’s going on with my dad. I want to see what he’s up to. And there’s another reason,” I added, thinking of my mom and how I felt like she needed me more than anyone right now. I knew I couldn’t leave her.

He nodded slowly, like I had just affirmed something. “I get it,” he said.

I met his eyes with surprise. “You do?”

“At first I was surprised, but I thought about it and you’re right. I can’t really blame you.”

I felt a chill and hugged my arms over my chest. “Wait. Right about what?”

“You made the right decision. I told you over and over not to get involved with me, that I wasn’t worth the trouble. I’m glad you finally came to your senses.”

“Wait—”

He held up a hand.

“No, I get it. I screwed up so many times with you. Ever since the day we met I’ve royally screwed up, and you gave me so many chances. I honestly didn’t deserve it. It’s just messed-up timing—you realized you don’t need me at exactly the point when I realized I need you.” He smiled, this sad smile. “Is that how it usually works?”

Before I could argue against his ridiculous logic, the exit door flew open and I turned to see the two security guards who had left me in the hallway. Now they stood on either side of my dad. They each pointed a gun at Justin. One guard had a trace of a smirk on his face.

I turned and glared at my father. “I’m not afraid of you,” I said.

“I never wanted you to be afraid of me, Madeline. That was never my intention. Drop your guns,” my father commanded both guards.

Their arms fell to their sides, and my dad told them to leave us. He said he’d be inside in a few minutes. They nodded and turned back into the building. One of them waved the peace sign at Justin over his head before the door closed behind him.

“We need to get back,” my father said. “I have a speech to make, to try to fix what just happened in there.”

“What’s there to fix? That video was completely honest,” I said. I was bristling with anger, but it wasn’t because of my father. I hated that Justin had doubted me, and I hated that there was no time to explain.

My dad waited quietly and I knew what he wanted. I walked over to him and he grabbed my arm, at the elbow, and held on. I stood there, in such an awkward place. Even though Justin was just a few feet away, I felt this barrier between him and my father, and I knew I was standing on the wrong side.

A wind blew through the alley and brushed Justin’s hair over his forehead. He looked calmly at my dad.

“You need to let her go,” my father warned him, saying each word slowly so there was no confusion.

“I’m not the one who’s holding on to her,” Justin said. They were the first words he had ever targeted directly at my dad. Up until this point, he had never said a thing to my father. My dad seemed to register that as well.

“That’s all you have to say to me?”

Justin leaned back in his seat. “I don’t waste my time talking to people who can’t listen,” he said, his voice smooth and direct. They regarded each other with the same determined eyes.

“Stay away from her,” my dad said slowly. “I mean it, Justin. Look at what happens the second you come into her life. Guns are pointed at her.”

“I wasn’t too concerned,” Justin said through a smile. “Those guys are friends of mine.”

My dad’s fingers flinched on my arm. It was a small indication that he was annoyed, but his face still hid behind a stoic mask. “You think this is funny? Do you have a cocky comeback for everything?”

Justin smirked. “Is this your idea of collaborating with your daughter? Physical force and threats?”

“And this is your idea? Storming the National Education Benefit? Ruining this event? Can you operate on a level other than extreme?”

I stared between them and felt like I was caught inside a crossfire.

“Can you?” Justin threw back at him. “You know, you’re not the only one who can spread a message,” he pointed out.

“It’s not that easy,” my dad said.

“Would you stop doing this?” Justin said, his patience withering. “Just talk to people, talk to Maddie. She’s your daughter. We’re human beings; stop talking in some cryptic language all the time. Can’t you just tell us what you want?”

We could hear scuffling behind the door. My dad’s fingers flinched again.

“You better get out of here,” he warned Justin. “Now.”

Justin studied my dad, and for a second his expression changed. His eyes narrowed. Something surprised him. His eyes cut to mine before he slid his helmet on and gunned the engine of his bike.

My dad tugged me to the door as Justin’s bike peeled out of the alley.

Chapter Four

My dad pounded his fist against the metal door three times, and one of the security guards let us in. Paul was stomping down the hallway toward us, his eyes burning.

“Was she trying to run away?” he said accusingly to my father, and then he glared at me. “I knew you were in on this.”

“I’ll handle it from here, Paul,” my dad told him, and pressed his hand against Paul’s chest, warning him to back off.

“We need to question her, Kevin. She’s a number one suspect for this,” he said.

“I said I would handle her,” my dad ordered. Paul looked between us and stalked through the stage door. One of the event staff stood in the doorway and motioned for my dad to come inside.

I glanced through the open door into a room lit under bright fluorescent lights and saw Paul and Damon standing inside with a cluster of reporters and a few cops. Paul glared again in my direction. My father told the worker we needed a few minutes, and he nodded and shut the door.

My dad turned to me. A long sigh told me he was fighting to stay calm.

“Your sworn oath to never communicate with Justin Solvi lasted a whole two days,” he grumbled.

“I had nothing to do with this, if that’s what you’re wondering.” My eyes were steady on his.

He leaned his head to one side and regarded me. “Yet, you somehow knew Justin would be right outside those doors? It doesn’t add up, Maddie.”

That’s because people are more than numbers on a chart, I wanted to say. “I haven’t done anything wrong,” I insisted.

“I let the dress go, and your obnoxious hair, and your defiant attitude in general, but this is getting ridiculous. Do you want me to send you to prison? Is that what you want?”

“I want you to stop treating me like a wild animal. You treat me like I’m some kind of a leopard that needs to be caged. So I’m going to play the part. Start taking me seriously, Dad, and maybe I’ll stop acting out.”

He mulled this over, as if he was just realizing this was the case. We were interrupted when the stage door swung open and the same staff worker stepped out and gave my dad a nervous glance. He cleared his throat.

“Mr. Freeman, sir, we can’t find the benefit video. It appears to have been deleted.” My dad nodded quickly to him and motioned for the guards, who were waiting at the end of the hall.

“Escort her back to the dining room,” he ordered them, “and make sure she stays there.” His eyes dug into mine. “You are not to leave your seat the rest of this evening,” he said, and turned to the stage door.

I followed the guards back to the table, empty now except for Becky, sitting all alone in the circular space and staring into her phone. I felt eyes stick to me as I walked. The entire room watched the procession, and I could already hear the whispers, but I kept my eyes focused straight ahead at the table.

Overhead music snapped on, which was a relief from the hum of gossip.

One guard sat down next to me, and the other guard backed away and stood against the wall closest to our table.

I chewed on my nails, annoyed that I would be blamed for this, but even more annoyed at Justin’s words. Scott was right; I should have waited to talk to him before I left Eden. Of course it looked like I was leaving him. I needed to talk to him, the one person I was forbidden to communicate with.

I watched Becky and waited for her to look up from her phone screen. Her head was down, her eyes fixed, like they were connected to the glowing pixels.

“Becky,” I said.

“Hm?” she mumbled.

“How long have you been working with the DS Dropouts?” I didn’t care if the guard next to me heard. If they were friends with Justin, they probably knew what was happening tonight.

Her eyes stopped scanning the screen, and she pulled out an earpod and looked at me. “What?”

“I think you heard me,” I said. She blinked for a few seconds, stalling.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied.

“I saw one of your messages,” I told her. “From Riley. How do you know Riley?”

I looked over and saw my mom and Mrs. Thompson coming out the stage-door entrance. I didn’t have much time. Becky’s eyes focused on mine, wide with fear that I had discovered her. I knew I was right. I pressed harder.

“Was it just a coincidence that you got up a few minutes before the video started?” I asked her. “There aren’t any other DS protesters in here. It had to be you.” Her eyes flickered between me and the guard.

“Did you tell her, Ryan?” she grumbled at him, but he shook his head. I raised my eyebrows. So she definitely was in on this.

“You helped set this up, didn’t you?”

I watched her and waited. Her dark eyes cautiously settled on mine, still contemplating what to confess. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that it was her. It made sense. Damon was almost as controlling as my dad. Usually that encourages at least one kid in the family to start asking questions.

I nodded to the phone in her hand. “Your screen saver is of a rock stack in the ocean,” I added. “I recognized it. That rock stack is in Eden.”

Her eyes lit up. “You’ve been there?”

I nodded.

“Riley told me about it. It sounds like—”

“So, you are friends with Riley.”

Her face flushed. “We’re a little more than friends.”

I smiled. I could see it. It’s amazing what people don’t have to say, what you’re capable of seeing from their reactions. I loved that about being face-to-face. Those small, intimate reactions. You could read people. Their eyes were chapters and their faces were books. Their expressions were stories. It always fascinated me.

“Are you going to rat on me?” she asked.

“Do I look like I would?” I asked. I glanced over and saw my mom and Mrs. Thompson heading toward our table.

“You’re probably going to be blamed for this,” she pointed out.

“True. Then I guess you owe me a favor,” I said.

“What?” she asked, her voice wavering.

“You can help me get in contact with people,” I said. “I need you to come over to my house this week.”

She laughed. “No offense, but I’m not allowed to hang out with you.”

I tapped my fingers on the table and smiled. She wasn’t going to get out of it that easily. “You obviously know how to sneak around your parents, if you helped set this up. I’m not allowed to leave my house. But if I’m with you, my parents might let me go. They trust your family.”

“I don’t know,” she said, stalling again.

“If you don’t want to, that’s fine, but I’d hate to have to tell my mom what happened.”

Becky glanced up just as our moms arrived at the table. My mom still looked startled by the events. She sat down on the other side of Ryan and took a sip of white wine. Mrs. Thompson remained standing, and I looked up at her. Her back was straight and tight, and her hands gripped the silky black fabric at her waist.

“Let’s go, Becky,” she said quickly. Becky stared at her, her eyes widening.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, worried that she was caught. She was completely obvious, I thought. More doubt than confidence. I seemed to be the only one who noticed. It’s amazing what people allow themselves to be blind to.

“I’m sorry, Jane,” Mrs. Thompson said to my mom. “But I’m not going to sit here when this entire night was ruined by your daughter,” she said. “I respect you and Kevin, but I truly feel sorry for you. This girl should be locked behind bars. Take one good look at her. She’s out of control.” With that, she turned and walked away. Becky slid out of her chair and gave me a fast, apologetic frown before she caught up with her mother.

I chewed on the black polish of my fingernail and snuck a look at my mom. I was waiting for her to kick me out of the room before she lost all her friends.

“Do you hate me too?” I asked quietly. My eyes started to burn. I felt like I’d let down everyone tonight, and she was the last person who deserved it. Before I had time to doubt, she reached across the table and grabbed my hand.

“Mrs. Thompson has the compassion of Genghis Khan,” she told me. “She doesn’t want her daughter to be influenced by you—well, as far as I’m concerned, those women don’t deserve the privilege of your company anyway.”

I squeezed her hand back, so relieved that I laughed. “I thought you were friends.”

“Friends don’t treat each other like that.” My mom looked at me. “They don’t get up and walk away just when things get hard. I know you didn’t do this, Maddie. And even if you did do it, honestly, I don’t care. I’m proud of you. You’ve never done anything wrong. Maybe we’re the ones who are doing it all wrong. I don’t really know anymore.”

My mom let go of my hand. I sat back in my chair when the emcee came onstage to introduce my dad. I snuck a look at the security guard, and he was holding his phone under the table. He pointed to his screen, and I glanced down. There was a message there. It read, “Tell Maddie, I never got the chance to tell her something. It’s three words. They’re too personal to say over a screen. But she knows what they are. ~J.”

The guard and I shared a smile before the lights dimmed.

May 24, 2061

Parents show you life is a paved road. Friends show you the road isn’t there yet, it’s waiting for you to carve it out. Parents show you life is a handbook, with rules set in place. Friends show you how to break the rules you’re handed.

With my dad I always felt like I was living life in the passenger seat, watching it go by. Justin always put me in the driver’s seat. He never gave me directions, he just showed me how to accelerate. The steering was up to me.

Family has the greatest influence, but friends make the greatest impact. That’s something I’ve learned over the last year. Influence and impact mix together, like ingredients that shape us into who we are. Influence only goes so far. It lays the foundation. But impact disturbs the foundation. It makes it crack or sink or rise, maybe topple altogether to start over again. I guess that’s why parents are so protective about what kinds of friends we make when we’re young. They seem to be in on this secret.

Chapter Five

“You’ve been home for forty-eight hours, and you’ve already managed to have two guns pointed at your head,” my dad informed me during breakfast the next morning. He was dressed in his usual uniform of a business suit. My pink hair was tied up in a ponytail. I felt like a color photo displayed next to something black and white.

This was a conversation I had hoped to avoid. I had the naïve wish that my dad would let what happened at the benefit the night before be a blip in my otherwise perfect behavior. I watched the wall screen in front of the table, where the morning news was on.

My dad cleared his throat. He wasn’t going to ignore the topic. I busied myself with stirring loose pieces of cereal off the sides of my bowl until they all swirled together in the center.

“Technically, I’ve been home for seventy-two hours,” I said. “And technically, those guns were pointed at Justin’s head.” I asked him a question that had been bothering me all morning. “Why didn’t you just have Justin arrested last night?”

Dad set down his coffee. “And give him the publicity he wants? That would have been doing him a favor. If we tried to arrest him, it would have sent a mob of rioters to the building. All it would have done was draw attention to his cause, and it probably would have pointed back to you.”

We were interrupted when a local news story flashed on the screen. An animated cartoon of a reporter spoke to us behind a desk littered with advertisement banners. Although the voice of the reporter sounded mature, the cartoon character depicted a woman closer to twenty-five, with long, golden hair that curled in waves around her tight, black blazer. Her eyes were so large and crystal blue, they looked like a pool you could dive into.

“Due to the declining use of public transportation, half of the city’s ZipShuttles will be retired this month,” the voice informed us. “Also, all ZipTrains will be rerouted to account for fewer stops needed around the city. The south-side Langdon Street offices have closed downtown, deciding to go completely online, which is fantastic news, as this will save on electricity, fuel, and energy bills. Now you can find anything you need on their websites.”

I frowned at the screen. This is great news? I thought. That the world, every day, is drying up? And we were supposed to feel like this was a positive sign? Maybe, if we were robots running on electrical wires.

My dad surprised me by turning off the kitchen wall screen. We always had it on while we were eating. I glanced down at his black suitcase.

“Business trip?” I asked.

“I have meetings with lawyers about the detention centers.”

I leaned forward. Now, this conversation interested me.

“Are you finding the evidence you need to shut them down?” my mom asked, and Dad shot her a look.

“You know I can’t talk details of the case,” he said. My mom nodded, backing down, but I wouldn’t settle.

“When are they freeing the rest of the centers?” I pressed.

My dad finished his coffee. “They’re still on lockdown, Maddie. Last I heard, the centers were going to keep operating.”

“What?” my mom and I said in unison.

“Changes will be made,” my dad said in a simple tone, as if the only changes they had to make were remodeling buildings, not dealing with chemically brainwashed kids.

“Dad, where is Richard Vaughn? Why isn’t he in jail after what he did to the people at the detention centers?”

My dad’s eyes shot straight into me. “He isn’t your concern, Maddie. This is out of your hands. Don’t make Vaughn your responsibility. You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

My dad’s eyes were so severe, I lost the nerve to argue. My mom stared into her coffee cup, and the room was silent except for the hum of lights and machines and wires.

I watched my family fall apart, slowly, like a sunset, all the brilliant colors fleeing and stretching and shrinking until they can’t compete with the dark sky. It was strange that the structure of our house could be so strong and solid when all of the energy inside it was crumbling. It made me want to save my mom.

“Before I leave, I’d like to talk to you in my office,” my dad said, and stood up. I followed him down the hallway, past the foyer, and into his office. He pulled a chair over to his desk and motioned for me to sit down. I sank onto the cold leather cushion.

“I’m still doubtful you weren’t involved in what happened last night,” he said, getting to the point. I met his questioning eyes. I wasn’t in the mood for one of his interrogations.

“Is this when I shamefully retreat up to my room so I can think about what I’ve done wrong? Is this the part where you ground me again, instead of trying to listen to my side?”

His eyes regarded me.

I crossed my legs casually. “Well, that’s not me anymore.”

He tapped his fingers on the desk. “Is that why you came home? To prove me wrong? To make me look bad? Is that what this is, a game of right versus wrong? Good versus evil?”

“I’m here to finish what I started when I was fifteen. You said that you were open to listening. I didn’t come home so you could ground me. I’m not your property. And I’m not a kid anymore.”

He unlocked a side desk drawer by scanning his fingerprint. He pulled out a white square box and took off the lid. Inside were narrow strips of paper, the size of Band-Aids. He took one out and peeled off its backing.

“I’m putting a skin tracker on you,” he said, and held the sticker out to me.

“Dad—”

“The adhesive lasts for one month.”

“No,” I said.

“It’s safe,” he assured me. “It dissolves in your skin.”

“I don’t care if it gives me superhero powers,” I said. “I’m not letting you track me.”

“Maddie, I don’t want you to run off to Eden, or back to him. That’s what worries me. I know you’re wired to run on your emotions, but that’s what gets you into trouble. You need to try to control your flight reflex. That’s why I don’t want you interacting with your friends, especially Justin. They’ll just tempt you.”

I looked skeptically at the tracker in his hand.

“If you can use it to track me, what would stop the police? Or Vaughn? Couldn’t someone else trace this?”

My dad shook his head. He pointed to the second tab on the paper.

“It has a twin signal. The only way I can follow you is by keeping the other half. I’ll wear it, just like you. There’s no way for a third person to track it.”

I looked down at the bird tattooed on my wrist. I rolled my fingers into a fist and squeezed to make my blood flow faster.

My mom stood watching from the door. I looked up at her and her eyes were sympathetic. She walked around to the side of my chair and leaned down next to me.

“It’s temporary, Maddie. This is all very temporary.”

Great, I thought. My life will suck, temporarily. For the time being, my life is going to be claustrophobic and awful and lonely and desolate and depressing. Temporarily.

She put her arm around my shoulder.

“You have me and Baley, and you can start looking into college classes. I found an online soccer team you can join. The team you played on last fall ended. They couldn’t find enough girls interested to keep it going. I dusted off your running machine.”

I wanted to shrug her arm off me. All of these things felt like a punishment now. But she didn’t understand. Her hand slipped off my shoulder.

“Dad, what prison movie are we starring in right now?”

He bit the inside of his cheek. It was one of his mannerisms that showed he was losing patience—subtle, but one that I had picked up on, since he usually did it in response to me.

“I’m sure it seems strict after you’ve been running around in Eden for the past month with all the other invalids.”

“Strict?” I said. “Where do you get your parenting ideas? Dictatorship dot com?”

My dad almost cracked a smile, but it was more of a lopsided frown. “I take it you aren’t willing to cooperate?”

He adjusted the cuff of his sleeve. I was trying to read into his movements, into all the things he wasn’t saying. He was fidgeting more than usual, that much was evident. Something was at stake here.

I pressed my feet against the side of his desk and swiveled the office chair back and forth. My dad wanted me home for his own reasons, reasons he wasn’t willing to discuss. I realized my bargaining chip was myself. My dad had one goal: to keep me under his watchful control, as if the future of digital school rested on his ability to keep me in check. Instead of being frustrated that he was trying to lock me down, for the first time in my life I was intrigued. It was a compliment that my dad was so afraid to let me loose. This gave me a power of negotiation I hadn’t realized I had.

I had always felt like a chess piece to him, but one that was easily dismissible. Now I knew I had high stakes. Maybe I was a queen—one sudden move could alter his strategy. Maybe we’re all that significant in life, we just have to realize it.

“Here’s my rule,” I said. “I’ll wear your skin tracker. If.”

My dad raised his eyebrows.

“Yes?”

“There are a few things that I want in return.”

My mom was still watching us. She looked amazed at my tenacity.

“Such as?” he asked.

“Your files,” I told him.

He leaned his head toward me like he hadn’t heard me right.

“The same ones that I stole from you when I was fifteen. The files with all the digital school contacts. I won’t steal them ever again. I promise.”

“Then how do you plan on acquiring them?” he asked.

I raised my hands. “I want you to give them to me. Willingly, because you want to do the right thing.” I sat up straighter in my seat. “You could consider it my eighteenth-birthday present.”

He laughed out loud. “Those are confidential, Maddie. I can’t share those, with anyone. Family connections and birthdays don’t apply.”

I leaned closer to my dad and smiled. “No one would have to know about it. I know people who can help. We can make it look like your computer was hacked. We’ll be careful to keep you innocent. We just want to spread a message, Dad. People have a right to know what else is out there.”

His mouth tightened. He looked away and nodded once. “I’ll think about it.”

I exhaled a long breath. Internally I was screaming. Justin was right. There was no point in talking to my dad when he can’t listen. “Got it.”

“Your mother will keep an eye on you while I’m gone.”

“Terrific,” I said, and stood up. “Good talk, Dad.” I turned sharply on my foot and stomped out of the room and up the stairs. It was bratty, I knew, but so was his pathetic effort at communication.

Two could play the dismissive game.

I sat on my bed and soft footprints padded down the carpeted hallway and into my room. I looked up and expected to see my mom, her neutral eyes pleading for a truce. She was our live-in peacemaker. But instead, my dad stood a few feet inside the doorway and looked as surprised to be inside of my room as I was to see him there. He hadn’t been in my bedroom in years. He walked over to my window seat and sat down, next to a pile of books. He picked one up and flipped the pages, his eyes looking wistful for a second before he set it down.

“I’m not trying to hold you hostage. I’m trying to protect you. That’s all. You always see protection as control, Maddie. Please try to understand the difference.”

“You don’t need to protect me,” I said.

“It’s not because I don’t trust you. It’s because there are people outside of here I don’t trust,” he said, and glanced through the open window blinds to look out at the empty street. “That’s why I want you home.”

I knew exactly who he was referring to, and every time he showed that he would never accept Justin it was harder to take, because it was the same as saying he would never accept me. I wanted to love my dad. But how do you love someone who doesn’t see you? How do you become close to someone so set on changing you?

“I don’t think you trust anyone,” I told him. “And that’s your weakness. That’s why your system is going to fail.”

His eyes shifted to mine. He looked more amused than annoyed. His amusement irritated me. Did he ever take me seriously? I guess my pink hair didn’t help my I’ve grown up and I demand respect case.

“How do you see that?”

“You’re all about power and control. But you hold it all on your own shoulders. It’s like trying to hold up a mountain that doesn’t have any foundation. You need to spread it out,” I said. “Give everyone a voice. You put all the pressure on yourself. You can’t do that. The foundation is everything. You like to imagine it’s the other way around. You’re standing by yourself, trying to hold up the world, Dad. We’re going to topple you.”

“Interesting theory,” he told me.

“New offer,” I said. “I’ll wear the tracker so you’ll always know where to find me, if that’s what you want. I’m not trying to hide anything from you. But then let me talk to my friends.”

He rubbed his eyes. “Maddie, we can’t take the risk right now. Your phone could be tapped. Everything you do online, digitally, is followed. I have enough issues over the detention centers to deal with. You are an additional, volatile concern that I can’t have loose right now. I need it to look like you’re at home and cooperating.”

“Fine,” I said. “I won’t interact with anyone digitally. But what if I should happen to see them face-to-face? At least you’ll always know where I am.”

My dad thought about this. He knew as well as I did that if something happened outside, it was as if it never happened. No one took the time to wonder about the real world anymore.

He handed me the tracker, and I stuck it on my wrist, below my tattoo. The adhesive rose on my skin like a bug bite.

“Deal?” I asked him.

He nodded and left me there, inside the walls, inside a heavy block of time.

Chapter Six

I woke up to the sound of a woman screaming and bolted upright in bed. My hand went to my heart, and for a brief second I thought I was back in the DC, until my soft comforter and Baley’s barks howling through the dark house reminded me I was home.

Another high-pitched shriek flooded through my bedroom window. I flipped the covers off my bare legs and pulled back the blinds, but the usual electrical shower of streetlamps was out. It looked as if there was no world beyond my window, just a black, inky canvas.

“On,” I said, and rubbed my eyes, but nothing happened. “On,” I muttered again. I looked around at a pitch-dark room. Did the voice-recognition system cut out? I reached blindly for a pair of shorts at the side of my bed and tugged them on.

My dad’s voice called out in the hallway, shouting for Baley to be quiet, and my door tapped open as I was pulling on a sweatshirt.

“The power is out,” he said. Our house generator kicked in, and emergency ribbons of light streamed along the edges of the ceiling. I followed my mom and dad downstairs.

Baley was still barking at the foot of the stairs, and I ran my fingers down her back to quiet her. My mom pulled a white robe tight around her waist, and I opened the curtains in our foyer to look outside.

“All the streetlights are out,” I said. “The whole block must have lost power.”

My mom pointed out a group of people huddled around flashlights and pulled the door open. “Maybe they know what happened.” Her hand hesitantly unlocked the screen door, and Baley took the opportunity. She pushed the screen door wide enough to wriggle through and jumped down the porch steps.

“Baley!” my mom screamed after her.

I grabbed an old leash hanging in the closet and kicked on a pair of tennis shoes. “I’ll get her,” I said, and ran past my mom.

“Maddie!” my dad yelled after me, but I ignored him to chase Baley. I spotted her halfway down the block, sniffing the ground, but she started to run when she saw the leash in my hand. Neither of us liked to be tied down. I chased her down the block and around the corner. I smiled as I ran, silently thanking Baley for giving me a reason to be outside. The night air was foggy and cool and smelled sour, a common effect from the wet turf grass.

We sprinted down the dark street, past people fumbling with tiny beams of light. I lost Baley and stopped to listen for her collar tags when a hand suddenly grabbed my arm. Out of instinct, I swung my free arm up to try to elbow whoever was holding me, but the person let go in time to catch my flying wrist and pin it against my side. Before I could scream, a familiar voice cut through my panic.

“It’s good to see you too.”

My eyes were still adjusting.

“Justin,” I breathed.

He let go of my arm, and I realized his other hand was holding Baley’s collar. I bent down and attached her leash while Justin scratched her ears. My heart was still hammering from the jolt of surprise, and my lungs burned from the sprint.

“What are you doing here?” I panted.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

My eyes adjusted well enough to see him. He was wearing a baseball cap backwards and a black soccer jersey, as if he had been sitting on the couch, bored, and decided to get up and shut down the city power just for kicks. He hadn’t shaved in a while, and a light stubble was growing in.

“Look at what you did,” I said. People were stumbling in the grass, fidgeting with flashlights, and staring anxiously around the empty street like being outside at night was as terrifying as a haunted house. One woman tripped over a curb and stared down like she had never seen one before. A tree branch hit her arm, and it made her scream and lash out like she was being attacked.

He smiled. “It’s pretty funny sometimes.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Are you trying to intercept someone?” I asked.

“I was,” he said, and looked at me. “I found her.”

“This was for me?” I asked.

He nodded. “We were interrupted at the benefit.”

I looked around. “You did all this because you want to talk?”

“You don’t like my romantic gesture?” he asked, and I rolled my eyes. “I can’t call you. How else was I supposed to get you out of the house?”

Someone screamed in the distance.

“Why do you feel the need to cause mass chaos everywhere you go?” I asked him. I wiped off a layer of sweat beading on my forehead.

He took a step closer to me, and even in the darkness I could see his eyes were hard. “Why do you make it so impossible to see you? First a detention center, now the impenetrable fortress of Kevin Freeman?”

“I thought guys liked a challenge.”

He shook his head. “No, we really don’t. A little mystery in the beginning is okay, but this is getting old.”

I blew out a sigh. “I know.”

“I needed to see you,” he said. “I want to finish our conversation.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Now I get the chance to tell you how I feel about you.”

He grinned. “That you’re more in love with me than ever?” he asked.

“No, that you’re more of an idiot than ever,” I said.

His smile faded. “What?”

“I didn’t leave Eden because I was breaking up with you,” I told him. “I can’t believe that idea even crossed your mind.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah, Clare tried to explain it to me.”

“And you didn’t believe her?” I asked.

A piece of hair broke loose from my ponytail, and Justin brushed it back off my face, letting his fingers linger on my cheek. “I don’t like secondhand information. I prefer to hear it from the source.”

“That’s why you’re here?”

He dropped his hand. “I thought you left California because you were leaving me, but after I saw you last night, I knew I was wrong. That’s why I’m here. I came to get you.”

My eyebrows rose. “Right now?”

He nodded and laced his fingers through mine. “Why not?”

“Where would we go?” He looked at me as if he had never contemplated this.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said.

“We’d be on the run again.”

“We’d be together,” he pointed out.

I shook my head. “I don’t want to hide anymore, Justin. I’m tired of running away. This is where I need to be right now,” I said.

He squeezed my fingers. “Look, I let you rot in that detention center because you convinced me it was what you wanted. And even though it was crazy, I supported you. But it killed me every day you were in there. I can’t go through anything like that again.” He gave my fingers a soft tug. “Come with me. I have a car waiting down the street.”

“This is a little different,” I said. “My dad isn’t torturing me.”

He let my hand go and took a step back. He looked at me like he didn’t recognize me. I couldn’t blame him. “You want to be here?”

“I don’t want to be here, but I need to be.” I looked down at my feet because I didn’t want to see his disbelieving eyes at my next statement. “I know it’s the best thing.”

He slid his hands over his baseball cap. “You’re really messing with my head, you know that?”

I sighed. “I’m sorry. But I have to do this. I need you to trust me, one more time. I started something when I was fifteen that I need to finish. And I hate being here. I’d leave in a second if I could.”

His dark eyes dared me. “Then leave.”

“It’s not that easy. I’ve got my father to deal with.”

“Don’t let your dad scare you. Don’t let me persuade you, either. Just do what you think is right,” he said. “I spent a lot of time trying to protect you when I first met you, because I didn’t know you. And I finally get it. I don’t need to protect you. You push people away when they do; you think it’s suffocating.”

“True,” I said.

“You can handle anything. Your dad hasn’t figured that out yet. So show him.”

I nodded. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

Justin’s mouth tightened. His eyes scanned mine for any hesitation, for any way inside. But he couldn’t find an opening. “Fine. You’re staying. What can I do to speed up your self-induced prison sentence?”

I fidgeted with the leash in my hand. “I might need to do this one on my own.” I looked up at him, and his face was unreadable. “I’m tired of making other people responsible for my problems.”

“Didn’t the DC teach you anything? You can’t do things by yourself,” he argued.

“Well, there’s a slight problem.” I held up my wrist. “A little welcome-home gift. He guessed I’d cave in and run away.”

Justin rubbed his fingers over the small bump that was starting to dissolve under my wrist. He had seen skin trackers before.

“He’s not kidding around this time.”

“Nope. He clipped my wings.”

More people were opening doors and talking. Someone laughed. Justin’s fingers traced my skin, my wrist, all the way down to my fingertips.

“They’ll grow back,” he said, tapping my fingernails.

Justin’s hands slid around my waist, and he pulled my body so close to his that I almost gave in. He was the most important thing to me. But that’s also why I needed to stay. I was doing this for him as well, for us. His lips were inches from mine. His fingers were in my hair, and then he pulled my face into his hands.

“They’re going to have the lights on soon,” he said, his eyes drinking me in. I hadn’t kissed him in weeks. I stood on my tiptoes and breathed him in, the soapy smell of skin and lotion. The lights above us started to flicker. We could hear emergency sirens in the distance. I wanted him to stay more than anything else. He added texture to something flat, flavor and color to something dull, heat to something lukewarm, and movement to something fixed so that it all melted and blurred inside of me and around me.

“By the way, this was a very romantic gesture,” I told him. I closed my eyes and waited for him.

His lips grazed mine, but it wasn’t a kiss. It was the teasing flitter of a kiss.

“Come with me and I’ll promise to do a lot more,” he said, his voice low and raw. My heart tripped and clamored and I reached out for his shoulders, but he pulled away. He turned and walked down the street, leaving me with Baley and legs so wobbly I could hardly walk home.

Chapter Seven

Student ID #DS1029MF. Submit.

I was done. I finished taking my last graduation exam to finish DS-4. A stadium of claps and whistles filled my room. Voices applauded me. A generic audience surrounded my walls, made up of friends and parents and teachers. They all waved and smiled and offered me digital high-fives. My pixelated image pumped her fists in the air.

I sat at my bedroom desk and stared at the screen and waited for a feeling to take shape. Shouldn’t I be relieved? Excited? Proud? Instead, I was confused. What had I actually done? What memories had I made in this place, this school I had been a part of for more than ten years? Who were my friends? I could barely even remember one class from another. I’d never met one of my teachers. I’d never met a single student. I’d never gone to a real dance.

All my social and professional profiles immediately switched to my new status. High School Graduate. A list of congrats flooded my screen. My yellow happiness meter shot straight up.

Before I could second-guess myself, I was bombarded with advertisements.

Take a virtual tour of Europe!

More time on your hands? Learn to play an instrument in a week with these video tutorials.

Apply for early college-entrance classes.

Consider a digital internship.

Take a break and relax at oceansidespa.com. You’ve earned it!

Just out of curiosity, I clicked on the last advertisement.

A sultry female voice oozed out of the speakers, cleansing the air.

Take a virtual beach walk on our imagery sand belt. Exfoliate your feet with sand, pumice, and salt stones on our uniquely designed belt you simply attach to your walking machine. No people, no distractions, just peaceful radiance.

I twisted a piece of pink hair around my finger and started to crack up. The voice continued to try to seduce me.

This package includes a heated massage mattress, mailed directly to your home. The taxels on the mattress bend and flex to your contours, giving you a full-body, facial, or foot massage. No making appointments, no hassle. Let the massage mattress come to you. Or check out our listing of self-adhesive stone, oil, and clay massage options.

I watched an image of a woman lying peacefully on a beige mattress with the sea rolling in the background.

Our software package includes yoga tutorials, oils, meditation workshops, aromatherapy room scents, and twenty-four different wall-screen décor options to fill your house with relaxing scenes and music. And remember, relaxing is eating well. We have a list of menu choices: fruit smoothies, organic veggie trays, and ready-to-eat pasta salads. Check out our incredible five-course dinners, all freeze-dried for your easy preparation.

“What are you looking at?” My dad’s voice cut through the room and made me jump in my chair. I looked up to see him standing in the doorway.

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” He walked all the way in. “You looked a little frazzled,” he said.

I glanced back at my wall screen. “I was stuck inside a virtual horror movie,” I said. “What is that?” I pointed to a piece of paper in his hands.

“This was just sent to me,” he said. “Congratulations.”

I looked down at the high school diploma he handed me. I received an honorary diploma for a perfect grade point average. The diploma was decorated with three horizontal stripes across the top: gold for highest grade standings, green for best test-score comparisons, and royal blue for highest college-placement exam grades. I looked at the three bright colors, my academic-achievement rainbow. Underneath was my name, Madeline Rose Freeman, and my digital school code number: DS1029MF. On the bottom of the certificate my father’s signature was emblazoned in gold writing, just like it was on all DS graduate diplomas. I ran my finger over my dad’s autograph. It didn’t even look like a name, just a scrawl.

“You printed it out for me?” I asked.

“I thought you would prefer a hard copy, since you don’t really use your wall screens anymore.”

I looked around my room and nodded. In the past few days I had “broadened” my bedroom horizons, just like I’d attempted to do in the DC. I used my canvas program to paint screens into a mural that stretched across my entire room. One wall was a beach scene, one a desert, one a forest, and one reminded me of the city skyline view from Justin’s apartment in L.A. The ceiling was a mixture of night and day skies, stars and sun, clouds and rain. Over the entire ceiling and walls was a trail of footprints, in different colors, stepping across every surface.

“There’s a virtual graduation ceremony next month,” he said, and my catatonic look told him I wasn’t remotely interested. “They have quarterly ceremonies, if you want to attend another time,” he added, as if timing were the problem.

“That’s okay.”

“It looks like you’ll have your choice of online colleges,” he said, and sat down on the edge of my bed. “Have you thought about where you want to enroll?”

I blew a loud, sputtering breath out of my lips.

“Maddie, this is a huge accomplishment. You have too much going for you to quit school. You can make an impact.”

I turned my chair to face him. “Can I?” I asked him.

He frowned at me. “You don’t want to continue?”

“I want to go to school, but not DS. I’m not going back until it’s a face-to-face program.”

His face hardened. “Well, that’s not an option right now.”

“Not right now,” I pressed. “But what about next year? Maybe some classes could become available if certain ‘facilitators’ were open to the idea.” My dad stood up and headed to the door.

“You need to let this go,” he said. “There are some amazing online electives available. At least try them before you quit.” He turned to me. “Why are you so adamantly against this?”

“Because I want to be human,” I said, my voice rising. “Is that so much to ask for? I’m so tired of having to try to remind people to act human. It’s like reminding a river to flow. It should just be natural. But you’re making it so hard. You’re not giving people a chance.”

“I don’t have time for a DS debate right now,” he said. “I have a plane to catch.” He walked out of my room, and I followed him down the stairs. I talked to his back.

“I want my first college class to be face-to-face. And I want to study computer law. I want to make sure that no program ever gets so huge and corrupt that it takes over our culture. I want to make sure nothing like DS becomes a law again. I want to make that a law.”

My dad turned to face me at the bottom of the stairs. My mom was standing in the foyer next to his luggage, ready to see him off. She stared between us, an ache in her eyes.

“You can’t start a new school program in less than a year,” my dad informed me. “DS took me six years to design.”

I wasn’t going to give up. “We can start small. One community at a time. My friends have designs in mind. They have lists of teachers willing to lead classes. It’s already in place, Dad. We could start a local university this fall.”

He opened his mouth to comment but was interrupted by a call on his phone. He checked the screen and cleared his throat.

“I’m going out of town this week,” he said. “When I get back, we’ll talk. I promise.” The ease of a smile curled on his lips. “You need to work on your patience. You’ve been home for barely a week.”

I considered his offer. “You promise you’ll help us?”

He thought about this. “Yes, Maddie. But sometimes help comes in ways you don’t expect. It can feel like a dead end. But maybe it’s just pushing you in a different direction?”

I sighed. I felt like I was throwing words at my father like darts, hoping they would stick, but they always bounced off the surface. Or missed entirely.

I passed him without saying goodbye and headed into the kitchen. I opened cupboards and slammed them. I lived inside a mansion and felt like I had the confinements of a crawlspace. My mom stood in the doorway. She knew I was still mentally fighting with my father.

“He’s in a difficult position right now, Maddie. We need to try to support him.”

I turned to her. “But you’ve said yourself you don’t agree with what he’s doing.”

“I don’t agree with where the system is headed, but I agree with what it’s founded on. Your father has the best of intentions.”

“So do psychopaths.”

“Madeline Rose—”

“I’m sorry.” I sat down at the table and raked my hands through my hair. I had only been home a week, and I was already sick from living in so much stillness. I was about to fly out of my skin.

I watched my mom order groceries on our wall screen, lacing her fingers in the air to add products to her online shopping bag. There was something so elegant about the way her fingers moved and spun, like she was composing a song. Advertisements popped up all over the screen while she worked, featuring new products. The advertisements constantly changed depending on what she was ordering.

“Will you lift your feet for a second?” she asked. “I need to clean the floors.”

I kicked up my feet and rested them on top of the chair next to me. She flipped a switch above the sink. Small spray ducts in our floor lifted and shot a soft, warm mist across the fake wood. After a minute, a fan turned on, emitting a low purr along the floor panels and blowing the mist into tiny swirls. The water shut off and the fans turned on high, exuding a hot gust of air across the floor that sounded like the old-fashioned vacuum cleaner my mom used when I was little. A couple of seconds later the fans turned off and I set my feet down on a warm, shiny clean floor.

“Where’s Dad going?” I asked.

“Portland,” my mom said. “More issues about the DC cases. They have to do a lot of the interviewing face-to-face, for legal reasons. That’s all he tells me.”

I rubbed my thumb over the tiny spot on my wrist where the tracker hid. Why would he take a plane to Portland? It’s barely an hour train ride. I walked upstairs and changed into my running clothes. I passed my mom on the way down to the basement, and she smiled, no doubt happy that I was finally using my running machine.

I ran until all the angry energy drifted out of my body, until all the hard heaviness in my mind melted and drifted out of my pores. I hadn’t run in months, but I had no problem finishing a seven-mile track. It’s easy to find the energy to run when you feel like you’re always being chased. I grabbed a towel off a stack in the workout room and wiped the sweat off my face and neck.

Before I went back upstairs, I walked into our storage room, the only unfurnished space in the house. The cement floors made the entire room feel cold. The light snapped on and I walked past a few boxes until I came to the computer monitor in the corner that controlled the electricity running through our house. It ran on a separate network than our home computers ran on, so I assumed my father wouldn’t track it. I scanned my finger along the keypad and sat down. The computer only offered access to the energy networks that our house used, so I couldn’t do any website searches for tracking software, but it was still worth a try.

It was the only reason I’d agreed to my dad’s latest spyware tactics. If the tracker really ran on a twin signal, then I could watch him just as easily as he could watch me. I hoped that one of these energy grids could detect it.

Our house had constant access to a weather radar in order for the solar cells in the outdoor house paint to predict weekly energy amounts. I found the weather page and searched for GPS scanning software. When the page opened, I scanned my wrist against a panel on the keypad and the network picked up the signal. A radar map appeared on the screen and illuminated longitudinal directions. I tapped the directions, and sure enough, it located my house in Corvallis. I reversed the output and the machine came back with a new coordinate. I smiled and tapped the location.

“Hi, Dad,” I said out loud.

I looked around for streets I knew in Portland, but nothing looked familiar. I scanned the area and looked for the Willamette or Columbia River, or one of the bridges downtown, but nothing familiar appeared. I zoomed in and started to recognize some of the landmarks, but the computer claimed I was looking at the Hollywood River. I zoomed in closer and recognized streets in Los Angeles. I found my dad’s location right on the coast, a few blocks from the LADC, the detention center I’d been sentenced to for six months.

I narrowed my eyes at the yellow, blinking dot, like a tiny, betraying heartbeat. I could feel my pulse in my wrist, as if all of my blood was flowing to that tracker. What was my dad doing in Los Angeles? And why would he lie about it? He’d always been secretive, but now he was even lying to my mom.

My heart felt like it had slipped down my stair of ribs and collided with my stomach.

What if he really was the enemy?

The doorbell rang while my mom and I were watching TV on the loveseat. She jumped with surprise while I calmly pulled a throw blanket off my lap and sat up.

“It’s a bell, Mom, not an alarm,” I said.

“Why does that always happen when you’re home?” she asked. She scanned the wall screen for security, and it showed a video of our front door, where Becky stood, nervously turning a ring on her finger.

“Hi, Becky,” my mom said into the wall speaker. Becky looked up at the video camera.

“Hi, Mrs. Freeman. Is Maddie home?”

I stood up, wondering why my mom didn’t just answer the door. “Let’s be old-fashioned and invite her in.”

“But your father—” My mom cut herself off and nodded. We walked into the foyer and I held Baley back while my mom opened the door for Becky. She walked in, her teeth prying at her bottom lip. Try to play it cool, Captain Obvious, I wanted to tell her.

My mom looked at the digital clock over the door. It was past dinnertime. “What are you doing out?” she asked.

“I stopped by. T-to a-apologize,” Becky stammered. “For what happened at the benefit.” My mom glanced at me, and I just shrugged.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” my mom said.

Becky picked at the ends of her long, brown hair. “Yeah, well, I feel bad about the way my mom reacted. She didn’t have to blame Maddie.”

My mom looked at her skeptically, but she nodded. “Your mother and I have grown apart. And that’s okay. It doesn’t make either of us a bad person. People just outgrow each other.”

Becky nodded and there were a couple of seconds of silence. I raised my eyebrows at her, a subtle hint that she needed to say something.

“You came all the way over here just to apologize?” I helped out.

“Yes. I mean, sort of. Not really.” She cleared her throat. She took awkward communication to a whole new dimension. “I wanted to invite Maddie out with me tonight, if it’s okay with you.”

My mom looked between Becky and me. She started to shake her head, but Becky kept going.

“It’s just to a movie,” Becky assured her. She reminded my mom about the movie club she’d joined. “I meet with a few other girls face-to-face. Now that my brother’s moved out, it’s the only way I can interact with people my age.” She handed my mom a card with a few numbers written on it. “You can echat the other parents if you want; they all know about it. Tonight they’re showing a romance marathon.” She smiled.

My mom took the card but kept her eyes on Becky. “Does your mother know you’re inviting Madeline?” she asked.

“Eh, I might have forgotten to mention it.”

My mom coughed out a laugh, and I looked down at the ground. Maybe Becky and I should have rehearsed this majorly sucking performance.

Becky lifted her hands. “Look, I know Maddie’s cooped up here. I thought she might be interested in going. That’s all. You can call my mom if you want.”

“It’s not like I’m going to run away,” I said, and waved my wrist.

“But your father—” my mom started, and then she cut herself off because she could see how badly I wanted this. “You girls go ahead. Have fun,” she said, and stepped back from the door.

I realized I had been holding my breath and inhaled a deep lungful of air. Becky’s eyes had such a wide look of surprise, I grabbed her hand and yanked her out the door before she could say another stupid thing.

We practically skipped to the sidewalk, and my eyes embraced the dark gray sky and my skin embraced the breezy, humid air. Even the plastic trees were a relief from the screens that had become my life.

“Do you think she bought it?” Becky asked.

“My mom has a functioning brain, so probably not,” I said with a smile. “I think she just likes the idea that she’s not the only mother with a rebellious daughter.” At this point I didn’t care if my mom never let me out of the house again. I was free tonight.

We hopped onto the empty train when it hissed to a stop, then scanned our fingers and sank into the first row of seats. An advertisement immediately popped up on the screens and caught our attention before we could talk.

Ladies, how would you like a pedicure or manicure delivered right to your front door! Our NailNow equipment can sense nail follicles down to the cuticle. Just turn on the machine, place your fingers or toes on the nail deck, and the brush sensor will do the rest. Dip your hands into the cuticle-cutter cream, and your cuticles will naturally dissolve! No spilling, no hassle. No appointments and no waiting! Let luxury come to you.

I silenced the screen when another advertisement started running.

“Sorry I was so nervous,” Becky said.

“I wouldn’t pursue an acting career,” I told her. “But thanks.”

She beamed. “Anytime. This is an honor. You’re famous, did you know that?”

I looked out the window at the empty streets and nodded. “It’s hard to keep all my fans away,” I said. I looked back at her and smiled. “You never answered my question at the benefit. How long have you been hanging out with the DS Dropouts?”

A worry line creased her forehead. She reminded me of how I used to feel when I first started doubting DS, like something was wrong with me, like one day I would wake up and snap out of my animosity. I spent most of my life walking on my tiptoes and trying not to leave an impression, but that was the worst part because that’s all I wanted to do. I wanted to leave a mark, to prove to myself I was living in the first place. But it’s lonely to strike out on your own path. Not much foot traffic.

“I joined them a year ago,” she said. “After the benefit dinner. The night you pointed out Justin Solvi and his friends.”

“You remember Justin?” I asked.

“I remember his hotness.”

I smiled at this. “What inspired you to contact them?”

“You did. I heard you and your mom talking last year, and I was interested. So I looked into it. I wanted to meet guys as hot as Justin. That was reason enough for me,” she said. “I watched you leave with him and his friends. You know how bad I wanted to follow you that night? I knew right then, whatever you were doing wrong, it felt right to me.”

“I’m impressed you’re getting away with it. Your dad’s almost as controlling as mine.”

Becky smirked. “My dad thinks I’m perfect. It’s easy for people to think something’s wrong with somebody else’s kids and then they’re clueless about what goes on in their own homes. It’s like proximity makes people blind. I’m also a little more subtle than you,” she added. “I’m not trying to overthrow a system, I just hang out with these guys one night a week because I like flirting.”

“I can respect that,” I said. “I take it there’s no romance marathon playing tonight?” I asked. She flashed a smile at me.

“There is, but where we’re going is so much better,” she said.

It was raining when we jumped down from the train, an angry rain that gnawed against our jackets like teeth. The weather had been unseasonably rainy since I’d been home. The Willamette River, which cut through the center of Corvallis and flowed downstream all the way to Washington, was the highest it had been in years, already flooding in parts of the state.

We jogged two blocks, dodging puddles on the sidewalk, until we found the theater. A vertical neon sign clung to the brick façade of the building, lighting up the word Cinema. I stopped and stood under a black awning and looked at movie posters advertising the old classics. I ran my fingers over the glass display window. All the stars had died, but the stories lived on. Maybe old things could be recycled. They could rebound and come back to us.

We walked inside the lobby and brushed off our raincoats and stomped our feet on the bristled carpeting. There was a bored-looking attendant standing behind a glass display of candy and popcorn. We nodded to him, and I was about to approach him until Becky grabbed my arm and led me toward an exit sign down the hall. We passed the restrooms and came to a door where warped, stenciled white lettering barely made out the letters Staff Only. The door opened into a stairwell. I hesitated outside the door. The metal steps, the thin white railing, and the musty smell of paint took me back to the LADC. For a moment doubt overshadowed trust and I wondered whose side Becky was on.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Come on, it’s right upstairs,” she assured me. I followed her up two flights, and when she pushed open a heavy metal door, we were greeted with people screaming.

My pulse started to race and my arms tensed at my sides until I realized people were screaming at wall screens, set to soccer games.

“This is the cinema I was talking about,” she said. “It’s mostly a hangout for dropouts. That’s why they don’t advertise it.” The sports bar had wall screens covering the entire area from floor to ceiling, and every screen had a soccer game on. The soccer players loomed taller than me, as if I were out on the field with them.

Two pool tables lined the far end of the room, and an oak-wood bar stood in the center. Hanging tumblers and glasses above the bar reflected the yellow overhead lights. There were a handful of groups inside, gathered around tables, watching the games and eating baskets of food and drinking out of old Mason jars.

I pulled out my ponytail and my pink hair fell around my shoulders. “Why does this have to be a secret?” I asked Becky as we walked to the other end of the bar. “Can’t you just tell your parents you like watching soccer?”

She laughed. “My mom doesn’t have a problem with me going to a movie with a couple of girls. But soccer games, bars, and men? That she would definitely have a problem with.” We walked past a table of four young guys, and they all turned to check us out.

“I’m not allowed to date anyone face-to-face until I’m done with college,” Becky added. “My dad claims I won’t know anything until then.”

“Maddie!” a familiar voice screamed, and before I could turn, Clare’s arms were around me, pinning me in place. Clare was famous for her sneak hug attacks. She grabbed a chunk of my hair in her hands and stared at it like she was holding gold.

“I love it!”

“Really?” I said, and wove my fingers through it.

“Very badass. I’m sure your dad is thrilled,” she added.

I watched Riley saunter up to Becky and slide his arm around her waist. Her dad would kill her. I looked over Clare’s shoulder to see Gabe, Molly, and Scott sitting at a round table. It was such a relief to be around people again, even Scott’s smug expression didn’t bother me.

Clare pulled me over to the group, and I slid into a chair next to her. They all smiled and said hi, except for Scott, who still apparently held a grudge. Becky and Riley joined us, scooting their chairs close together.

I told them to catch me up. “Where are you all living now?” I asked. Clare started to explain that she was back in town, staying with a friend, but Scott interrupted her.

“I think you’re the one who should be catching us up,” he said, and the entire table became quiet. Eyes turned in one direction until I could feel an energy of stares.

“What do you want to know?” I asked.

He held up his hands. “What have you found out? Has your dad said anything about the detention centers? What about the national vote on digital school? Will he tell you when they’ve settled on a date?”

I could feel Scott’s hostile energy from across the table, like a wave of heat, but friends are the last people who should intimidate you. I couldn’t tell what annoyed me more, his frenetic bombardment of questions or the fact that I didn’t have any answers.

“They have to announce when a vote’s happening,” I told him. “That’s public information.”

Scott took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Legally not until seventy-two hours before the vote,” he corrected me. “Which would give us zero time to set up a protest.”

This news distracted me from my irritation with Scott. “Can they get away with that?” I asked.

Riley nodded. “The commission’s board has been meeting, but they haven’t announced a date. They don’t want to give us time to form a protest.”

“They’re postponing the announcement as long as possible so we can’t wage war,” Scott said.

Molly nodded. “It would take us a day just to contact everyone, and another day to travel and set up. By the time we round people up, the vote will be over. No media, no protest—it’s almost a waste of time to organize.”

I studied the brass tabletop, pink in the dim bar light. There were dots of water stains all over it. “Why don’t you just go up there now?” I asked. “Set up camp, build a tent city, and get ready?”

Scott shook his head. “They’ll just postpone it longer, a year if they want to. All we can do is listen and be ready to move. Or have somebody give us inside information.”

I nodded at his hint. “I’m working on it.”

“Is your dad starting to talk?” Scott asked.

“No,” I said. Scott slumped back in his chair. He looked exhausted. I knew he was in charge of organizing the protest.

“Look, I have a plan,” I told him. “That’s why I’m home. First I need to recruit some people.”

“Under your dad’s roof?”

“They show up in the most unexpected places,” I said. I thought about telling Scott I was tracking my dad. But something made me hesitate. Probably his aggressive attitude.

Riley tapped my arm. “Justin’s here,” he said, and pointed to a message on his phone.

I spun around in my seat and looked at the door.

“He’s downstairs,” Riley said, then pushed his chair back and stood up.

“At the movie theater?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” he said.

“There’s a club in the basement,” Clare said. “It’s no Club Nino,” she warned me.

“Promise?” I asked, remembering the virtual club went to together in L.A.

“It’s a little more . . . hands-on,” she told me. I followed her, Riley, Becky, and Gabe, but Scott and Molly hung back.

“You guys aren’t coming?” I asked them.

Molly scrunched her nose. “I’m not in the mood to be groped. It’s a den of hormones down there.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” Gabe asked.

“Everyone’s all sweaty,” Molly said. “It’s gross.”

“It’s dancing,” Clare said, but Molly pulled her turtleneck closer to her chin and waved us off.

We walked down three flights of stairs, and I could hear techno music seeping through the door and feel the bass shaking our feet.

“It’s not for everybody,” Clare warned me. “It’s been around for years. It’s one of the only places people can go in this town. To—”

“Feel each other up,” Riley finished for her.

“To be human,” Clare said.

When we walked inside, my eyes had to adjust to the darkness. The room was lit by black lights, casting a neon-yellow reflection off ceiling tiles and glistening skin. The entire room was a dance floor, except for a narrow bar along the wall, set up between old-fashioned box speakers. It looked more like a garage tool shelf stocked with glass bottles and silver coolers. Overstuffed leather couches stretched out along the wall, but hardly anyone was sitting.

There were only about twenty people inside, but they packed the small space. The air was humid and thick and smelled like salt and skin, with a strange current of adrenaline mixed in. The basement room seemed to serve one purpose, and that was to dance. The techno music blared and crashed around us, so loud I could feel it shaking my rib cage and pulsing in my jaw. It was too loud to talk, but I realized you weren’t supposed to talk in here. You weren’t supposed to think. Just feel. You need to drop some of your senses in order to heighten others.

Girls wore miniskirts and skimpy tank tops, some of them balled up to show off their stomachs. A few of the guys had their shirts off, and sweat glistened on their arms and necks. People blinked in and out as a strobe light flashed from a corner of the ceiling.

I scanned the room for Justin, and Clare nudged my arm and pointed past the crowd to the couches in the back. It was still so dark inside, I had to strain my eyes to see.

“Justin!” Clare shouted.

I nodded and squeezed by her. I scooted around couples and tried not to stare at people making out all around me. I was surprised I wasn’t more uncomfortable. This felt more natural and human than the last week of my life had.

When I got closer to the couches, I could see Justin. He wore a red T-shirt, frayed around the sleeves. He ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up through his fingers. He had a drink in one hand and was leaning over, shouting something to the guy sitting next to him on the couch. He was looking around the room with these intense eyes, like he could see things the rest of us couldn’t see. I missed that kind of awareness. It’s like he saw colors outside of the spectrum, or infrared rays of heat, or radars of jet streams, things that most people were blind to, or didn’t take the time to notice. He made the room more exciting, more vibrant, just by the way he noticed it. It made me love being here, in it.

The guy yelled something back into Justin’s ear, and then Justin’s eyes snapped to me like he could sense my presence.

My stomach jumped and kicked and rolled. He didn’t smile at me. He didn’t acknowledge me with a wave. He just watched me. There was an open spot next to him on the couch, and he moved his glass into his other hand so he could lift his other arm and rest it on top of the couch back.

I made my way over to him and sat down, sagging into the couch so that our shoulders touched. In that dark, warm space, people started to disappear. All I saw was a warm body and soft lips, and all I felt were warm fingers gliding over my neck and massaging my shoulder.

I leaned closer to him. “We need to talk,” I shouted over the music.

He watched my lips move and smiled. He leaned toward my lips like he was going to kiss me, but he pressed his mouth against my ear instead. “You don’t want to warm up before we do the heavy lifting?” he asked. “We don’t want to pull something.”

He leaned back and I stared at the cool smirk on his face. I looked at his T-shirt, bunched at his shoulder, and reached over and slipped my fingers inside the fabric and pulled it down. My fingertips grazed his arm. I noticed his chest rise. In a way it felt like we were talking. It was our way of saying things were fine, we were fine.

The guy sitting next to Justin yelled something, and Justin looked away. He lifted his hand off my shoulder, and his fingers found my hand, lingering next to his leg. He was talking to the guy next to him, but I couldn’t make out words. I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes and let myself feel. Justin’s fingers enveloped my hand, and it was such a small gesture, such a common touch, but it felt like my entire body was being shocked. All I could concentrate on was that touch. His fingers played around mine, tapping and then squeezing and then brushing and then squeezing again. There was an entire conversation going on with those movements. His hand was trying to tell me something. It made me smile. It made me crazy.

We kept having our own private conversation. I squeezed his hand back to tell him I was happy to see him. I pressed my fingertips against his, to tell him I missed him. He rubbed his thumb slowly over each of my knuckles to tell me how much he loved every piece of me. I squeezed his hand again to tell him I wished we were alone, and he agreed with his own squeeze.

I’m glad we’re still okay, we both seemed to be saying. It was one of the best conversations I had ever had.

I looked around and saw Riley and Becky on the dance floor, glued to each other. I raised my eyebrows to see Clare and Gabe making out in the middle of the floor, but I wasn’t surprised.

The couch cushions shifted and the guy sitting next to Justin stood up, and before I could blink, Justin pulled me up off the couch. The floor vibrated under my feet, rattling my arms and legs until it loosened every tense joint. I became water, fluid and bendable. I became myself. Justin led me to the dance floor, and I tried not to stare as couples straddled each other, their hands and mouths and tongues roaming each other’s skin. In my T-shirt and jeans, I was extremely overdressed. Justin leaned into me and pulled his arms around my waist.

“I thought dancing wasn’t your thing,” I yelled. His eyes were intense, and instead of answering me he leaned his head into me and rested his lips against my ear. That was all I needed. I lifted my head up until his lips were on mine. His hands trailed below my waist, and we started another conversation that was really hard to have in public.

But I didn’t care.

I pulled at his hair and he pulled my T-shirt sleeves over my shoulders. I was half touching, half clawing his skin.

I didn’t care.

We got tired of standing, so we sank into a free couch in the back. I straddled Justin and my hair fell over my face and he had to move it away so he could find my lips. Music and people and time blurred. We were still sitting there, I guess. The room was still there, and walls, but it was all white noise. It all faded into the background, and I was alone with one person.

I couldn’t believe I was doing this. I used to see people acting this way in virtual clubs, or in movies—making out and groping each other in public—and I always thought it was disgusting and why couldn’t they do it in private. But now I wondered if they were just hanging in a fleeting moment, never sure if they would ever get another chance. Maybe they were just meeting or leaving or on the brink of separating and they were letting it all out. That’s what I needed to do tonight. To do more every day. Just let it all go. All the bad stuff. The grit. And let the love in.

Even in public.

Chapter Eight

The black cement walls were cold against my bare arms. I stood in the hallway outside the club. Justin was leaning up against me, one hand pressed against the wall, the other one clasped hard on my waist. He rested his forehead against mine.

“I missed you,” I breathed.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too.”

I missed this so much, this being alive, this waking up. Everyone else seemed to want me hypnotized and controlled, under some kind of sleep-induced spell.

“You’re finally touching me again,” I said. Since I had escaped from the detention center two months earlier, Justin had been hesitant with me. Tonight he let go too.

He nodded his forehead against mine and let out a long breath, like he was just as relieved. “I was afraid before,” he admitted. “I thought if I went too fast, you’d have a seizure or something.” He moved his mouth down my cheek until I could feel his lips against my neck.

“Don’t be careful with me,” I said. “You’re the last person I want to give me space.”

He leaned back a little so he could see me. “Then what are you doing?” he said. I could see in his eyes that this was torturing him. He still wanted me to go with him.

“I have a plan,” I said.

“Maddie—”

Becky came around the corner and interrupted us. I blinked at her, confused for a second, like she’d stumbled into my fantasy.

“There you two are,” she said. “My mom’s wondering where I am. We need to get going.”

I nodded and looked back at Justin. His fingers still clung to my waist. He didn’t let up. I kissed him quickly before I slipped out of his hands and followed Becky to the door. I looked back before I walked out, and he was watching me, leaning against the wall, his hands in his pockets. His face was flushed and his hair was a mess and his eyes were on fire, and I could still feel the warmth of his skin. Walking out that door was one of the hardest things I had ever had to do.

“You two had a romance marathon going on,” Becky noted, sitting across the aisle of the train.

I chewed on the corner of my pinkie nail and blushed. I was floating. I looked out at the moon and admired how it painted everything metallic; even the wet leaves hung like silver ornaments.

“Yeah, sorry. I’m not usually like that. I don’t know what came over me.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” she said. “I think you two are awesome together. You’re going to have supersmart, superhot, superhero kids.”

I laughed and stretched my feet across the aisle until they were nearly touching Becky’s sandals. My body felt loose, like someone had unglued all my tendons. “I think we’re a ways away from that.”

“How is it ever going to work between you two? Considering who your father is?”

My mind snapped out of its daydream. “I try not to think about it.”

Her eyes were steady on mine. “Maybe you should. You guys are obviously in love. But it seems masochistic to me, falling for the one guy you can never have.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I said, suddenly annoyed. It’s easy to think people have no business giving you advice when it isn’t the advice you want to hear. But she had a point. I laid my head against the train seat. My entire body was warm, my cheeks were pink, my skin was hot. Being with Justin was like taking a drug; it was a high my body crashed into with a scintillating rush. When I immersed myself in it, I could feel my whole body glow on the inside until it pushed out. I just wanted to focus on that. I didn’t want to think about the crash that always came later, because I was too addicted to the high.

I took Justin’s advice—to stop thinking so much and to feel more. I wouldn’t let myself think tonight. I wouldn’t let myself doubt. I just wanted to soak in this perfect moment.

The next morning I walked downstairs and stalled when I heard my father’s voice in the kitchen, echoing down the hall. At first I thought he was home, and my chest deflated, but I realized he was just face-chatting my mom.

“She was with Becky,” I heard my mom say.

I inched my way down the hall.

“This isn’t what we agreed to,” my dad argued.

“We never agreed on anything. I think Maddie should get out of the house. If you want to make rules, then you stay home to enforce them.”

“I can’t be home right now, Jane.”

“Well, I’m not playing cop in this house. If you want to tie Maddie down, then you come home and do it yourself. I’m just happy to have her home, Kevin. For whatever reason she came back, for however long, I’ll take what I can get. But I’m not forcing her to stay here. That never worked.”

“I’ll be home in a few days,” my dad said. “We can talk about it then.”

The call snapped off and the wall screen switched to a morning news program. My mom turned as I walked into the kitchen.

“Hi,” she said. I wasn’t sure whether I should thank her or apologize, but she took care of the silence by listing breakfast options.

I sat down and we watched the news coverage in Portland and Washington, D.C., discussing interviews with politicians preparing for the national vote. Reporters talked about the vote as if it had already happened. No one even mentioned the words oppose, disagree, argue. We were ghosts.

“I almost forgot to give you your books this year,” my mom said. Every year around my birthday, she handed down ten real, paper books to me. It had become our tradition. She got up and came back a minute later with a cloth bag. She took the books out one by one, carefully handling them as if they were rare artwork, and displayed them on the table.

I looked at each one, running my hands over the colorful, smooth covers, as beautiful as pictures you could frame. There were two books of poetry. A mystery series. A memoir.

“I love this one,” my mom said, and flipped over a book called The Missing Piece. “The message changes every time you read it depending on where you are in your life. I reread it every year. I have my own copy.”

I looked at the simplistic line drawings inside. It was mostly white space, as if so much of the story was there for readers to interpret for themselves. I liked that. It made me think that so much of life is white space, waiting to be filled.

“This one’s my favorite,” she said. It was a square hardcover book, large and heavy. “It’s local photography,” she said, and bent over me, flipping through the pages. “It captures pictures of Oregon today, contrasted with pictures of Oregon one hundred years ago. I thought you’d appreciate it.”

I looked at my pile of new friends.

“Thanks,” I said.

“How was the movie?” she asked, and sat down.

“What movie?” I asked. Oh, crap. “Oh, the movie.” Double crap. “It was very . . . entertaining.”

I started chewing my nails. I am a terrible sporadic liar, especially when I knew my mom deserved the truth. “It was just a sports club, Mom. We watched soccer games and then we danced. That’s it. No rioting, no police. Maybe some boys.”

My mom blew a long breath out of her nose.

“Don’t tell Becky’s parents. Her dad would probably send her to a detention center for looking at a boy.”

She took a sip of tea. “Was Justin there?”

I nodded. “Yes, Mom. My boyfriend, Justin, was there.”

For an instant a smile crossed her face, but she quickly swept it away.

“Boyfriend?”

“Yes, and it’s getting pretty serious. And don’t say you’re disappointed in me because I know you’re not. You’ve always liked Justin. You can’t even keep a straight face when he’s around.”

She didn’t say anything. She looked down at the table.

“I’m being honest, so you should too,” I said.

“I knew you weren’t going to a movie. I’ve had a rebellious teenager long enough to know better than Margaret Thompson.”

I smiled. “Then why did you let me go?”

“Because every day I wake up with one wish, Maddie. That someday I’ll have my family back. I lost Joe to the digital world. I lost your father to his career years ago. Now you’re practically running away because you can’t stand this lifestyle, and honestly, I don’t blame you. But I can’t run away, because I have commitments. And even though I don’t agree with your father on everything, I still love him. He’s a good man.”

I thought about this. “What do you do when you don’t agree with the person you love?”

She sighed. “You agree to disagree. But you need to respect each other. If you lose the respect, then you have problems. And that’s one thing I haven’t lost. I still respect your dad, for what he’s trying to do.”

“Does Dad know where I went last night?”

She nodded. “He knows you went out. He’s furious.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that you went to a movie with Becky. I don’t know if he bought it, but I’m not going to play prison guard. You’re an adult. If he’s upset, he can come home and talk to you about it. I’m not tracking you, Maddie. As far as I’m concerned, when your father leaves, do what you want.”

I stared at my mom with surprise. I had an ally.

“You’re on my side.” It wasn’t a question.

She looked at me with sad eyes. “Why did you come home, Maddie?” she asked. “To make your father look like a monster? To ruin him?”

I shook my head. “Mom, I came home because I want the same thing you do. I want our family back together. What we’re doing isn’t working. Something is driving us all apart. I can sit around all day and whine about how I wish my family got along, and miss the way we used to be, or I can do something about it. Actively do something.”

She nodded and her eyes filled with tears. Her chin started to tremble but she held herself together. “I’m afraid, Maddie,” she said. She spoke quietly, like she was confessing a secret. “I’m afraid your father might go to jail for what’s coming out about the detention centers. He’s hiding something. And he won’t open up to me. He’s been meeting with attorneys every week—that’s why he’s out of town so much. They’re already planning the defense for his case. He keeps saying he wants to protect me.” She shook her head. “But your father’s idea of protection has become secrets. And I’m not okay with that anymore.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I said. “You haven’t lost any of us. Joe still loves you. We all love you.”

Her voice came out flat. “I only talk to him a few times a year, through a screen. That’s not a relationship. I want to be in my kids’ lives, not a digital icon they have updates with when it’s convenient. That’s not enough for me. And with you I know I can have more. I need that.” My mom looked outside, through curtains that only seemed to be open when my dad was out of town. “I love that since you’ve been home the windows are open. I want to open our lives up again.”

“I promise to stay close, Mom,” I said, and I meant it. I hated seeing all the sadness in her eyes, and maybe I couldn’t fix it, but I could at least support her. She supported everyone. But who supported my mom?

It was such a gift, to be here, sitting with her. I used to count the days when I could put space between us, but now I basked in her company. There are so many things and people we don’t notice until we are forced to live away from them. Why does closeness make us so blind?

“You grew up,” my mom said. She reached across the table and ran her fingers over my cheek, down to my jaw. “It’s a hard thing for parents to grasp. One day you blink and your children are adults.”

I smiled. I wondered if my father accepted that yet. My mom seemed to be reading my thoughts.

“Your dad loves you. He’s more stressed out right now than you know. Give him a little time.”

“Do you think his job will ever settle down?” I asked.

“I hope so. I fell in love with him for how passionate he was. He wanted to make the world a better place. Not very many people are that ambitious. But this is the reality,” she said, and pointed around our huge, perfect, perfectly empty house. “He’s never here.”

Chapter Nine

“Somebody has a boyfriend,” I said as I jumped onto the train next to Clare. I had asked her to meet me when I saw her at the club the night before. I needed her help.

Her entire face lit up. “I’ve had a crush on Gabe all year.”

I sat down next to her, so close our legs were touching. The rainy mist and fog turned everything outside a shade of gray. We could hardly see out the train windows.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked.

“It started happening at the detention center. I didn’t want to tell you, under the circumstances.”

“It’s not the most romantic setting,” I agreed. “Unless you’re into storage basements and eroding tunnels.”

She nodded. “I thought it would be a little selfish to tell you I was falling madly in love while you were being psychologically tortured.”

“That’s sweet of you,” I said.

“He’s moving up to Portland this summer,” she added easily.

My mouth fell open. Clare and I had been talking about moving to Portland together after the national vote. We wanted to be roommates.

“That happened fast.” I was surprised to feel jealous. Clare deserved to be happy.

She nodded. “When it’s right, I think it should happen fast. Relationships should be easy. It’s the ones that take too much work that aren’t worth the time.” She caught herself as she was saying this and noticed my expression change. “No offense,” she said, and pointed at me. “I’m not trying to date Mr. Real World Avenger.”

“Got it,” I said, and pushed my lips into a smile. But her advice sank in, under the surface, and rolled inside my head. I wondered what it would be like to meet someone you connected with and fall into a relationship. Go on dates, watch movies, make dinner. The timing is right. Your feelings are mutual. Your goals fall into place. Your parents actually like him. Must be nice.

“Anyway, it’s not like he’s moving in with us. He met some guys who live up there.”

She wrapped her arm around mine and started to talk about how fun it would be with all of us together in the city—me, Gabe, and Justin. I tried to envision it, but I couldn’t picture it as clearly as she could.

“Justin’s going to move there, right?” she asked. “Isn’t that the plan?”

“We haven’t talked about it. It took him a year just to admit he liked me,” I reminded her. “Justin’s more of a live-in-the-moment kind of person. I don’t think he plans more than a week into the future.”

Come to think of it, Justin and I had never actually been on a real date.

“People are worth some planning,” Clare said.

“I think he gets that,” I said in his defense. “We talk about things when they happen, when they’re in the present. Besides, why talk about an invisible point in the future? You’re just making predictions. Justin says that people can waste their lives planning and never actually do anything. He claims nothing happens the way you plan it, so why bother?”

The more I heard myself rambling, the more I realized I was filling silence with words because I really didn’t know the answer.

“He’s pretty impulsive,” Clare agreed. “You might need to drop anchor on that kid one of these days.”

I felt an irritation tickle through my chest, down to my stomach. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you two might need to sit down and discuss that big, scary word.”

I scrunched my face together. “Marriage? Ech. Please.”

She laughed. “Not marriage. The future. Planning is like emotional insurance. If circumstances suddenly change, you can handle them better because at least you have some blueprints to work off of.”

“Emotional insurance—I like that,” I said. That’s what best friends were for. They encouraged you to take giant leaps, but they were always there to be your parachute.

The train wheezed to a stop, and Clare and I jumped down to the street.

“So, where are we going?” she asked, and tried to match my fast stride.

“A house visit,” I said, my eyes fixed on the road ahead. Clare stopped in midstep. I looked back at her, over my shoulder. “You’ve done these before,” I said. “I thought you’d be up for it.”

“Have you ever done a house visit?” she asked. The fear in her eyes made me stop walking.

“No,” I said.

“Does this person know you’re coming?”

I shook my head. “It’s just a drop-by.”

She looked at me like I was nuts. “Maddie, that’s crazy. You don’t randomly drop by people’s houses these days. They arrest you.”

I waved my hand in the air like I was batting away her comment. “You guys do it all the time.”

She shook her head. “We always contact people first. We feel it out. We do background checks. Then we meet them in person, just like we did with you.”

“I can’t contact him,” I told her. “My dad’s still tracking what I do online. Trust me. He’ll be cool.”

She kept walking. “Do you know him?” she asked.

“Sort of. We used to be contacts, four years ago.”

She looked at me quizzically. “Why are you suddenly interested in him now?” she asked.

“I’m interested in his connections. You’ll see,” I said. “Come on, the worst he can do is say no.”

She raised her eyebrows and reluctantly followed me down the street. The road ended in a cul-de-sac, and we stopped in front of the last house on the street, a small, shabby yellow cottage. The siding was dotted with algae, and green moss grew in furry patches on the roof.

The trees and grass in the front yard were faded to a light green, in need of fresh spray paint. Weeds poked through cracks in the turf lawn. I marched up to the front door and confidently pushed the glowing orange bell. Clare hung back closer to the street. A few seconds later a female voice came over the speaker. She sounded older, and her voice was sharp.

“What do you want?”

“Hey, I’m here to talk to Jax?” I said in my best I swear I’m not a dangerous stalker voice.

A few seconds went by. “He doesn’t live here. Get lost,” she said. The speaker turned off with a clap.

I looked over at Clare, standing with her hands tucked into her jeans pockets. She was trying not to smile. She walked up next to me and I rang the bell again.

“You touch that bell one more time, and I’m calling the cops,” the voice barked. “Now, get off my property. Both of you.”

“We’re friends of his,” Clare insisted.

“I don’t know where the hell Jax is. Send him a message, you freak,” she said.

The speaker switched off again. Clare gave me one of those what did you honestly expect shrugs and started to turn around when the front door clicked open.

Large brown eyes underneath delicate lashes peered through the opening. Her eyes locked on my hair, and the guard in her face started to dissolve. She opened the door the rest of the way. Her brown hair was cut short, above her ears. She was wearing blue cotton sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt. Even her socks were blue. She looked older than us, in her late twenties.

“Who the hell are you?” she asked. “What kind of person randomly drops by? Are you mentally challenged?”

“Possibly,” Clare said, looking at me. “Your hair dye might have seeped through your skull and caused brain damage.”

“I thought you were the cops,” the girl said to us.

“Does Jax live here?” I asked.

“Does he know you’re looking for him?” she asked, avoiding my question.

I sighed and shook my head. “I can’t contact him digitally. My computer and phone lines are tapped.”

She groaned at the ceiling. “Oh, give me a break. Are you being censored too? Can’t my cousin have a single normal friend?” Clare and I looked at each other and back at the girl. At least we aren’t wearing our pajamas in the middle of the day, I wanted to point out.

The door creaked all the way open, as if it were stretching muscles it hadn’t used in years. She moved aside, her way of saying we could come in. I walked into the living room and felt like I’d walked into a video game. The ceilings, floor, and walls were all digital screens, all littered with talking heads and moving advertisements. A few couches and chairs were scattered around the space, but the seats weren’t facing one another. They were all facing screens.

There was so much commotion, I had to close my eyes because it felt like the ground was moving. A dozen different shows were on at once, and they all competed for our attention. My brain couldn’t separate all the things I was hearing, not to mention the lights flashing around me. I couldn’t even focus on what I wanted to say. Every time I opened my mouth, a video or advertisement would start playing.

The hug machine is on sale now! It’s a must-have for your family. This cuddly robot’s electronic textiles can sense touch. It can give hugs, hold, even read to your children! Too busy? Sore back? Let your hug machine take over. It will give your children hours of one-on-one, affectionate care! It even comes in adult sizes . . .

A Vacuumspot wheeled around the corner and started vacuuming the carpeting around us. It was the size of a flipscreen. My mom owned the same one; you just turn it on and a sensor directs its location. In about two hours it could vacuum our entire house. Baley loved chasing after it. It was the only friend she had. We got her a robot play dog when she was a puppy, but she preferred chasing the Vacuumspot.

The girl bent down and switched it off, after it hit her feet.

I squeezed my forehead in between my fingers.

“Would you mind turning some of these screens off for a second?” I asked.

She mumbled a few commands; the shows didn’t turn off, but a few of them paused and the volume was muted. I took a breath of relief. Finally, I could think.

“So, can I talk to Jax?” I asked her, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was distracted by something on a screen.

“Wait here,” she said. She padded down the hall and disappeared around the corner.

“Who is this guy?” Clare asked.

“He’s a DS Dropout,” I said.

Clare looked up at the ceiling, which depicted a giant advertisement for a virtual beach vacation.

“Are you sure?” she asked, looking around. “And he lives here?”

The girl sauntered back down the hall and pointed across the living room to two glass doors covered in digital curtains. “Through that door. Take the path through the backyard. Next time, use his entrance.” She said a few more commands, speaking some kind of robot language, and the volume snapped back on.

She dragged her feet down the hall without saying goodbye. Clare and I walked to the back door and opened it, careful not to displace the digital curtains. When we walked outside, we both stalled on the back porch. Tall pine trees stretched across the entire yard. It looked like a forest my parents used to show me in pictures, before cities switched to synthetic trees. The trees were young, their trunks not very wide yet, but they were real. The new growth of needles made the branches look like someone had dipped the ends of them in neon green paint. I touched the baby needles, and they were as soft as feathers. They made the air smell crisp.

I looked past the trees and saw two murals painted on the fence next to a small studio. I smiled because I recognized the prints; I had seen them online four years earlier. The murals depicted outdoor scenes. One was of the Three Sisters, a famous triplet set of mountain peaks that cut through central Oregon. Another mural showed Marys Peak, a hill outside of Corvallis, the tallest point of the Coast Range. The scenes were set as a high, panoramic view. Around the murals were benches made from logs that had been split down the middle with the flat side facing up. It reminded me of a small-scale Eden.

A mosaic path cut across the yard to the studio. It was carved out with blue and green beach glass, rocks, a scattering of red bricks, even crushed shells. I almost didn’t want to walk on it. I just wanted to stare at it. I loved that someone took the time to make even the ground look like artwork.

Clare suddenly grabbed my arm and her eyes widened. I looked to where she was staring. A guy was standing at the door of the studio. He was tall and wore a white T-shirt and dark green shorts. He had dark hair and eyes and olive-toned skin. I had never met Jax in person.

“You always make house calls?” he asked.

“We like to make people extremely uncomfortable,” I said, grinning.

He walked down the steps in front of his studio toward us. “Madeline Freeman,” he said. “At last we meet.”

“Hi, Jax,” I said. I introduced him to Clare, and she took the opportunity to reach out and shake his hand. She slipped on some of the beach glass and ended up falling forward, into his chest. I tried not to laugh as Jax steadied her, his hands on her shoulders. Clare didn’t seem to mind the contact, a gushing smile lighting up her face.

I felt my hands lock behind my back.

“Sorry for the surprise visit. It’s how we roll,” I said.

He shrugged. “I’m not going to turn away two hot girls,” he said.

I ignored the compliment, but he wasn’t hard to look at either. He had all the Italian looks that his last name, Viviani, would imply. Eyes so dark you could barely see the pupils, and brownish black hair that was short on the sides but longer on top.

I pointed at the yellow house behind us.

“What did we just walk through?” I asked him.

“Oh, the digital gates of hell? That’s my cousin’s house.” He nodded toward the studio. “I moved in back here after I was intercepted. She acts as a cover for me.”

“You’re still hiding out?” I asked.

“After I turned eighteen, I decided to stick around,” he said. “It’s a safe house now. I’m the lone renter.”

“How do you two know each other?” Clare asked.

His eyes stayed on mine. “I met Madeline four years ago. She was my first date.”

“It was not a date,” I said to him. “We met on a museum tour,” I explained to Clare as we sat down on one of the wood benches. “We were with a class of art students,” I clarified.

“But you ate lunch with me,” he pointed out.

“We didn’t eat anything,” I said, laughing. “The whole thing was digital,” I told Clare. I was surprised how well I remembered it. “We made fun of the virtual café.”

He smiled. “Then you hacked into the system and drew graffiti all over a Monet. You’ve never seen art until you’ve seen unicorns jumping across a Monet.”

I laughed again. “The guide didn’t appreciate it. He kicked me out of the tour,” I said.

Jax’s eyes fell to my shoulder, and I realized he was looking at my hair. “Nice color,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“Is that your rebellion flare?” he asked.

I couldn’t help it. I laughed again. “It’s rated number two for ‘how to scare your dad’ products, online.”

“Right under piercings,” he said.

“Actually, I think pregnancy tests are number one,” I said, and he laughed.

“And we can’t forget tattoos,” Jax offered.

“I’ve got that one covered.” I raised my wrist with a smile. I had been waiting for this moment for a long time.

His eyes widened when he recognized the bird on my wrist, the same bird that he’d drawn for me four years earlier. He sat down next to me and grabbed my arm. I studied his profile. I had talked to Jax online, but I never knew what his voice sounded like, that it was raspy. I never knew that he talked fast. I never knew his eyes were nearly black beneath his thick lashes. I never knew his lips were light brown, not red like Justin’s, that there was a crease in the middle of his bottom lip, that he had a dusting of freckles on his nose.

I glanced at Clare and she watched us curiously, with a small smile creeping over her face.

“Wow,” he said, admiring the tattoo.

“It was fitting,” I admitted.

His eyes met mine. “How did you find me?” he asked. He was still holding my wrist in his hand.

“You started showing your work online again,” I said.

“I don’t use my real name anymore,” he pointed out.

I slid my wrist out from his fingers. “No one else paints like you,” I said. “You always paint images like you’re thousands of feet up in the sky. As if you’re flying. I’ve never seen anything else like it. After you were intercepted, your gallery site closed down. But a few weeks ago your work started popping up again and I recognized it. It was under a new name, but I knew it was you. I traced the name to this address.”

“Impressive,” he said. He smiled and it made me feel relaxed. Too relaxed. I noticed he smiled with his entire face, his eyes curled up and his cheeks lifting, not just his mouth. It made him look young, even though I knew he was older than I was. I cleared my throat.

“We’re here on official business,” I said, changing the subject.

He stretched his legs out and casually crossed his feet. “That sounds boring,” he said.

I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. “I’m interested in what you were doing that led to your arrest. I did some research. You managed to get the names of all the kids who served time in detention centers.”

He nodded. “I had a few friends spend time in DCs. I was just trying to organize support groups. It’s almost impossible to find those kids after they’re released. They all have aliases.”

I slowly recapped what happened at the DC in Los Angeles. I told him what happened to me, what happened to all of the kids, how we were emotionally brainwashed and mentally tortured.

“We freed one of the centers, about two months ago,” I said. “The rest are on lockdown.”

He looked down at his fingers, stretched over his knees. “I heard about what happened,” he said. “I know they’re brainwashing people. I’ve worked with some of the kids. But the list doesn’t exist anymore,” he said. “I haven’t worked on it since I got busted.”

“Yeah, but other people probably picked up where you left off. I bet you could track it down.”

“Why don’t you make your own list?” he said. “Besides, most of those kids don’t even want to be contacted. They wouldn’t communicate with me when I tried.”

“Exactly,” Clare cut in. “Since no one who comes out of a DC wants anything to do with us anymore, they usually block us. We’re understaffed as it is, so we stopped keeping track of people. Now with all the DCs on lockdown, all of those names are confidential. And most kids who get out of DCs are sent to halfway homes, or relocated.”

“You designed a program that intercepts those names,” I said. “We’d have to start from scratch, and it would take us months. With your connections, you could probably do it in a few days. You’d be a hero in our crowd.”

He laughed. “I’m not in your crowd anymore,” he said. “Sorry, I can’t do anything.”

“You can’t or you won’t?” I said, pressing.

He stood up, and his casual smile slipped into a frown. “The list is gone. It’s been destroyed. Tell your little gang to stop bugging me about it.” He held out his hands. “I’m out.”

I stood up as well. “I didn’t take you for somebody who would give up. I remember the day we met; you told me to start speaking my mind. You told me we were living in a lie. That’s why you started painting. You wanted to show people what was real.” I stopped and took a breath. “That was so inspiring,” I said. “You were the first person who ever inspired me.”

He kept his eyes locked on mine.

“So, do you want to help us, or do you want to play it safe? You want to hide inside all these walls? That sounds really boring.” I was yelling now. I threw my hands up in defeat. Humility took over. “I need help, Jax. Please help me.”

His eyes narrowed and he took a step closer, so I had to look up at him. I could feel the energy pushing off his chest. I thought he was going to scream back at me and lose it, like I had, but he just watched me carefully, like he was examining me. He reached out and I winced, but he only gently brushed a piece of hair out of my eyes. Something in his face told me to calm down. Slow down. I was letting my personality become a rapids, crashing downstream.

“You got intense,” he said.

I sighed. “Yeah.”

“I always thought you were laid-back,” he told me.

I narrowed my eyes. “I was fourteen. You barely knew me.”

“Who wound you up like this? Did the DC do this to you?”

“Nothing did this to me.”

I glanced away because his eyes were looking for loopholes, for ways inside. I backed up and reached into my purse and pulled out my red leather journal. I asked Clare for her phone number and wrote it down, then tore it off the page.

“If you change your mind, give us a call,” I said, and slapped the paper in his hand.

I turned away without looking back at him, without saying goodbye. I stalked through the yard and down the path along the side of the yellow house. I opened a metal latch on the fence, and Clare shut it behind us.

We walked down the street in silence for a few minutes. The air was balmy and humid, like rain was coming. A row of low gray clouds pressed over the western horizon, blocking out the Coast Range.

Guilt hovered over my heart and started to push down.

“I was too hard on him, wasn’t I?”

Clare grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Your inspirational speeches could be a little more gentle.”

“I know,” I said, and slapped my hand over my forehead. “I wish I had your patience. I get so mad.”

She thought about this. “You take things personally,” she said. “And that’s not a bad thing, but you have to realize Jax isn’t against you.”

“Gentle prodding doesn’t get you very far in life.”

She nodded. “You’re more like a hard kick in the ass.”

Clare’s phone beeped and she looked down and checked it. She showed me the screen.

“I guess you got away with corporal punishment,” she said, and I looked at the message, from Jax.

Okay, Madeline. I’ll help you. On one condition. Meet me tomorrow. Alone.

Chapter Ten

The next day I waited outside, down the street from my house, where Jax told me to meet him. A ZipShuttle turned the corner and slowed down next to the curb.

I opened the door and Jax scooted over to make room for me next to him, but I sat across from him on the opposite side of the car. The inside was small, similar to a car interior, and Jax’s long legs took up most of the floor space. He pulled earpods out of his ears and turned them off. He told me he was listening to a podcast and started rambling about some sci-fi television series. I was annoyed he was making small talk at a time like this.

Something about Jax’s presence bothered me in general. He was too bright—the yellow rain jacket he wore and his blue tennis shoes with orange laces screamed for attention. I listened to him talk, noted his easy demeanor, as if we rode a ZipShuttle together every day. He didn’t have Justin’s intense eyes, the stare that’s always observing, calculating every detail around him and storing it away. Jax just noticed the things right in front of him. He fixed his eyes on that. At this moment, on me.

I looked out the window, at the soft texture of gray clouds. When he stopped babbling about his nerd-show-whatever-the-hell, I met his eyes.

“Why don’t you want to join the Dropouts?” I asked him.

“I’m not a workaholic,” he said simply and smiled because he knew I couldn’t argue with his point. “Don’t get me wrong, I like working. And the DS lifestyle is stupid as shit. But I also enjoy a little downtime. I like living.”

“So do we,” I said. “That’s what we’re fighting for.”

He leaned his head to the side. “Yeah, but you guys are always fighting,” he said. “I’ve been to a few meetings. DS Dropouts Need You. For a Better Tomorrow,” he said mockingly, in a militant voice, and it loosened my mouth. “I get it. I just don’t need it shoved down my throat every day.”

“You don’t want to work with us at all?”

“I just don’t want to be told what to do. That’s why I never liked DS. It was smothering. But the protesters follow the leaders too. I just want to do my own thing. Sometimes,” he said, and leaned forward, close enough that I could see his eyes light up, “I like to do absolutely nothing.”

“Sounds inspiring,” I joked.

“Have you ever tried to do nothing? It’s actually really hard. There are so many distractions. But it’s the best feeling in the world. If I could prescribe a bottle of nothing to people, it would make life so much better.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said.

I looked out the window at a city that was a ghost town. Buildings were boarded up. I had faint memories of downtown Corvallis when I was little. Shops had filled the main streets when people still shopped in stores, before everything went digital. I remembered mornings my mom would take me and Joe to a toy store downtown, full of kids and parents and toys and instruments we could touch. We’d stop at a bakery and get chocolate milk and shortbread cookies dipped in chocolate and covered in sprinkles. I remembered sitting outside and looking down at the river crawling past. I remembered the gardens blooming, the sounds of shoes and strollers and crosswalks full of people. It was like remembering a dream, but after a while that’s all it is, just a memory, and memories can turn heavy and sit in your heart like rocks. You can either hang on to memories or try to forget them and fling them away like stones over a bridge. But I not only wanted to keep these memories, I wanted to relive them. I wanted to somehow bring them back. But can you relive the past? Maybe that was why people clung so loyally to traditions. They simply wanted to relive their favorite memories over and over.

I started telling Jax about the photography book my mom gave me. I knew he’d appreciate it.

“It’s called Now and Then,” I said. “Its photographs of Corvallis one hundred years ago, featured alongside current ones. It shows parks with people actually using them, streets full of cars, storefront windows with displays inside.”

“And the current pictures?” he asked.

“ZipShuttles. An empty turf park. Digital billboards. Downtown stores boarded up. There’s not a single person in any shot.” I looked out the window again. Strange that in all of its beauty, this city had lost its life. By looking perfect it had lost its personality. By being so industrial, so functional, it had lost its artistic edge. It had lost its soul.

Jax leaned his head back and looked out the window. “That would be a cool course to study,” he said. “‘Now and Then.’ Have people compare the last fifty years and how much has changed.”

He asked me what college classes I wanted to take, and I listed them out loud. Computer law. Computer ethics. And an art class. It was nice to talk about the things I wanted without worrying that my thoughts would be shredded because I shared them.

“I want to be a lawyer,” I told him.

Jax nodded. “I can see that,” he said. “You’re great at yelling at people and drowning them in guilt.”

“You mean persuading them.” I smiled.

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

The shuttle wove along the Willamette River. Usually long, rocky sandbars were visible, but this spring the water came up nearly to the banks, which were overrun with thorny blackberry bushes that lined the river like natural barbed wire fence.

“Why didn’t you want to take a train?” I asked.

“Public trains don’t go where we’re headed,” he said, and pointed to high-rises in the distance. “The factory district.”

I looked out at the metal jungle ahead, crammed tight with smokestacks and office buildings. It was like a geometric pattern, all hard edges, contrasted against the puffy gray clouds. The factory district was in southern Corvallis, a place my parents referred to as the South Slums. I had never been inside; you needed ID tags to get access.

Jax pulled two ID cards out of the pocket of his yellow jacket and dangled them, reading my thoughts.

The factory district is where people who couldn’t work from home worked. Some jobs still demanded human hands and minds. We zigzagged closer to the metal and plastic refineries, steam and exhaust billowing out through ten-story-high pipes like giant lungs. We passed farm sky-rises, where some of the food that wasn’t shipped in was made locally. On the outskirts of the factory district was the Willamette Hospital. Most patient visits were done in-home, like doctor and dentist checkups, but emergency or specialized appointments still required a hospital. We passed Langdon Street, which offered the only city grocery store. There was also an indoor soccer park, where a semipro team used to play. My dad took us to a game once, when I was young, but after M28, most sports became virtual. People were afraid to gather in masses, afraid they would look like a target. So sports, just like businesses, migrated into the digital world. Professional teams still existed, but most of them were overseas. Virtual sports had taken over. Virtual fights and car races were all manipulated by the thumbs of skilled video controllers. They had replaced our athletes.

The ZipShuttle stopped at metal security gates outside of the factory district. Jax scanned our IDs against a digital screen, and the doors buzzed open. The ZipShuttle entered the last working district in town: grocery store centers where food was shipped, sorted, and mailed out to homes; postal warehouses; clothing factories; even factories that pumped out oxygen to make up for the lack of plants in the cities.

The air inside was thick, a mixture of the marina fog rolling in from the coast and the steam and smog from the factories.

“It always looks like this in the morning,” Jax told me. “They turn on the oxygen fans in the afternoon and pump all the smog out.”

Ten different train lines split the district like veins, coming together and diverging. Along the Willamette River, warehouses stretched and faded into the foggy sky. Planks of cargo were laid out in shipping yards, waiting for trains. Men and women in brown and gray uniforms with their hands covered in thick work gloves hauled shipments in and out of metal garage doors. A gritty, tired energy swelled around me. People stood outside concrete buildings, smoking, a few talking, drinking cups of coffee or eating sandwiches out of brown cloth bags.

The ground constantly shook with cargo trains lumbering by, their engines emitting a low growl. We passed a cluster of brown skyscrapers dotted with tiny black windows, built so close together it looked like they were leaning on one another.

“That’s where the factory workers live,” Jax said. He told me most of the jobs in the downtown factories didn’t pay well enough for workers to afford residential housing, so they occupied the downtown apartments. In between the high-rises were old parking lots, reconstructed into “parks,” consisting of a few benches and scattered plastic trees in giant pots. A few men and women sat in the parks, eating or drinking alone, most of them staring at a phone or a flipscreen. I didn’t see any kids running around. Even though there were people, I hardly saw any signs of life.

It made my quiet neighborhood feel like a green paradise. At least we had turf grass, not a concrete washout for a park. People here dragged their feet and hung their heads like they were all living out a prison sentence.

“No wonder we all escaped into the digital world,” I said. “The real world sucks sometimes.”

When the ZipShuttle stopped, I stretched my neck up at a beige building, the roof lost in the thick gray air so it seemed infinite. Seamor Medical Labs was written in bold black lettering over the front entrance.

We stepped out of the shuttle, and the air smelled cool and gritty, a mixture of gas and plastic. I followed Jax to a digital directory screen on the side of the building. I watched a loading truck across the street packing crates of plastic sheets, probably flooring, onto an empty train bed.

Jax scanned his finger down a list of names until he reached Dr. Luc Viviani, and he pressed it.

“Begin acquisition at the tone,” a female computer voice directed us.

“Face-to-face meeting request,” Jax said into the speaker.

A few seconds went by while the computer was thinking. A red hand popped up on the screen, like a traffic signal telling us to stop. “Due to heightened security at Seamor Medical Laboratory, all face-to-face visits require preauthorized approval.”

Jax groaned at the computer. “You’re killing me, Bridget,” he said into the speaker.

“Bridget?” I asked.

He looked at me. “It’s what I call all female voice commands. It’s also my little sister’s name, and she’s a pain.”

The computer continued. “You may leave a verbal request. We will respond within forty-eight hours. Thank you.”

Jax groaned. “Guess we’re doing this the old-fashioned way.”

I swallowed. Breaking into a medical laboratory would definitely cross the trust line with my dad.

Jax looked around the ground and found a flat rock wedged in a crack in the cement. He picked it up and looked up at the building, counting windows. When he found his target, he flung the rock, and it hit the window with a sharp tap before bouncing back to the ground. A second later a man’s face appeared, an older version of Jax. He had the same dark eyes and hair and easy smile. He had a goatee, peppered with gray.

He opened the window and waved down at us.

“Bridget’s being a brat as usual!” Jax yelled.

“Come on up,” his father said. The door buzzed open and Jax and I entered a lobby of black marble floors and white, bare walls. Our tennis shoes squeaked through the open, empty space. We walked into the elevator, and Jax pushed a button for the third floor.

“Your dad works here.” It was more of a statement than a question.

Jax nodded. “He’s a scientist,” he said. “I think you’ll be interested in his research.”

We tapped open his office door, and Dr. Viviani walked around the side of his desk. He extended his hand to me, and I shook it; his grip was firm, his fingers cold around mine. His dark brown eyes greeted me behind wire-rimmed glasses, and his thick black hair was streaked with gray along the sides. He gave Jax a hug, his eyes filled with pride. I recognized the paternal look—it’s the same look my dad gives Joe whenever he visits.

I was surprised to see real paper books on his office shelves. His desk was crammed full of binders, files, and coffee mugs. His office smelled like coffee, and I noticed an old-fashioned drip machine in the corner. There was a cup full of pens and highlighters on his desk.

He pulled out two folding chairs that were shoved into the corner, behind a plant perched next to a small window. “I don’t get a lot of visitors,” he explained. “How’s work going?” he asked Jax.

“It’s picking up,” Jax answered.

Jax unfolded the chairs and wiped off a layer of dust with the sleeve of his coat before he offered one to me. We sat down and Dr. Viviani spun his office chair around so he could face us. It was oddly comfortable in the small space. I couldn’t help myself—I reached out and touched the green spikes of leaves on the plant and was impressed to discover it was real.

“I’m old-fashioned,” he explained, noting my surprise with a quick flash of a smile.

“The oxygen factory doesn’t do it for you?” I asked, and he laughed.

“I’ve always preferred the real thing,” he said. “I think oxygen from plants and trees is better for you, and some studies prove it.”

He didn’t have any wall screens in his office, and he had a small, old-fashioned desktop computer that wasn’t even turned on. There were so many books and papers stacked in front of the computer, it probably hadn’t been used in months. I noticed some scribbled notes lying on his desk. He wrote longhand.

“Aren’t you a scientist?” I asked, looking for test tubes or lab coats or some kind of evidence that he conducted research. All I noticed were framed photographs of sunsets and a painting of a desert landscape; it looked like one of Jax’s pieces.

“He’s a neuroscientist,” Jax told me, and my mouth fell into a frown as memories of the detention center came flashing back.

“Is that a problem?” Dr. Viviani asked me, amused with my reaction.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to disrespect. I’ve just had some bad experiences with your kind,” I said.

He tilted his head to the side as he studied me with a look that bordered on familiar.

“She served in a DC,” Jax explained for me.

“I see,” he said. “Well, people fascinate me. That’s why I study them. I like to see what holds them together.”

“Too bad your research picks them apart,” I noted, my voice a little hostile.

“Madeline, he’s on our side,” Jax said, and he reached over and nudged my arm. I looked at him and there was that calm expression again, just a trace of a smile.

“Madeline Freeman,” Dr. Viviani said. “I thought I recognized you. You’ve changed your hair.”

“You’ve heard of me?” I asked.

His smile dimmed. “I’m familiar with your father.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “To what do I owe this personal visit?” he asked, his eyes darting between Jax and me.

“Madeline recruited me to help the protesters.”

This time his dad frowned. “Jax, you told me you were done. That was our deal. I thought you were going to sign up for college classes this fall?”

“Not until they’re face-to-face,” Jax stated.

“We’ve been over this,” his father said. “It’s not going to happen.”

“Well, I don’t think you can help people through a screen. You need to dig a lot deeper than that. So how am I supposed to learn to do it through a virtual program?”

His dad breathed out a sigh. “All right,” he said. “As long as you think you can help people, then I’ll support you. You know that’s my only rule.” I gave Jax a jealous stare. If only it was that easy with my dad.

“Speaking of helping people,” Jax said, “tell Madeline about your patents.”

I looked at his father, and he nodded toward his desktop computer.

“I patented the computer screen you look at when you attend digital school.”

“The screen?” I asked.

He nodded. “About twenty years ago a lot of people had eye problems. More migraines and headaches and vision loss. It was proven that direct light from computers and wall screens damages your eyes. If you stare at a screen for more than eight hours a day, it fries your photoreceptors.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I’ve never heard any news about that,” I said.

He smiled. “No, you haven’t. The research was never made public. You know what would happen if people found out staring at a screen was bad for them?”

“DS would never have taken off,” I noted.

“It would have destroyed our entire economy,” he said, and sat back in his seat. “Everything we do is on a screen. Everything we sell comes with a screen. Every service we buy or provide uses a screen. It’s a multibillion-dollar business; it’s what our society is founded on. It would have caused the worst economic downturn this country has ever seen. Technology is what makes this country run.”

“That’s why the media never criticizes DS,” I said.

He pointed back at his computer. “I was hired to help develop a screen that doesn’t produce the same intense lighting as a backlit screen, and apply it to the DS program. I organized the clinical studies to test patients with prototypes.”

“So it cured the problem?” I assumed.

He shrugged. “It made it a little bit better. Reflective light is still the best. It’s the way we were designed to see things. Light bounces off an object, and that’s how we receive it. Most computers shoot light directly at you—there’s nothing to bounce off. That’s why it causes headaches, dry eyes, fatigue. It’s physically hard on your eyes.”

I looked around his desk. “Is that why you use paper books?” I asked him.

“It’s my preference. I read a lot and I prefer reflective light. It’s easier on my old eyes.”

“Tell her about the paper you published six years ago,” Jax said. “‘The DS Addiction.’”

Dr. Viviani cleared his throat. “That paper was banned from psychology journals. A lack of adequate research.” He waved his hand in the air. “I refuted it.”

He was trying to dismiss the conversation, but I was already fascinated. “Why didn’t you fight the ban?”

He blew out a sigh. “There wasn’t enough science to support my theory, and the funding was cut off, so I couldn’t afford to do the research I needed to prove anything with credible merit.”

“Or maybe the journal didn’t want you to prove it?” I guessed.

“Only a handful of eyes saw it.” His eyes darted to Jax. “Is that why you’re here, to discuss a banished research article?”

Jax leaned forward in his seat. “I’m recruiting you too, Dad.”

He coughed out a laugh. “Forget it.”

“You’ve always been against digital school,” he said, getting to the point of why we were here. Jax looked over at me. “My dad was on the team of doctors fighting DS when it became law ten years ago. He led the committee against it.”

Dr. Viviani nodded. “I argued that it would spur such an intense technology addiction that we would never escape from it.” He paused for a second and met my eyes. “Your father has the best of intentions, Madeline.”

“Then why did you work so hard to stop him?”

He lifted his hands. “I’m not trying to take sides here. My work for DS is done.”

“I’m not here to defend my father,” I said. “I’m trying to fight him. Can you prove that DS is physically harming people?”

He nodded. “Yes, I can. But no one wants to hear it. Look, I respect what you two are trying to do, but in my honest opinion, I think it’s too late.”

“What?” Jax and I said at the same time.

“Everyone is addicted. Look around at the world. Do you know how hard it is to battle an addiction? We are all plugged in. We won’t be able to unplug and live outside of digital school without nationwide rehab. And diagnosing the addiction is the easy part. Anyone can pull the plug. It’s making people admit they have a problem that’s the real challenge. People have to want to change.”

His words made chills crawl up my arms. “You really believe it’s an addiction?”

He nodded. “I know it. Our brains have been chemically altered. It started fifty years ago, at the birth of the digital age. Our brain waves have been rerouted, because of technology. I don’t think the face-to-face system you’re fighting for would ever work.”

I slumped in my seat. “We’re human beings,” I said. “We can always adapt to new things. It’s our survival skill; it’s how we’ve lasted this long.”

“Only under extreme conditions do we ever adapt,” Dr. Viviani argued. “Only when forced.”

I was curious about his research. “How can you prove we’re addicted?” I asked.

He took off his glasses and set them on the desk. “I concentrated my study on four brain waves,” he told me. “Alpha, beta, theta, and gamma. Our brains are always active, even while we’re sleeping, and they run on different wave patterns. By determining what stage the brain wave is in, we can assess how people are feeling.”

I nodded; it sounded like what they were doing with MindReaders at the DC.

“Slower brain waves, like alpha and theta, keep us mentally healthy. They fight off anxiety and stress. But we never slow down long enough to utilize those waves, and our brains are losing the ability to produce them. Our minds are constantly on overdrive. We’ve lost our ability to be intuitive, to think deeply and critically. The only brain waves we really use these days are beta waves. They’re short, excited waves that need constant stimulation. They make us alert, like a shot of caffeine, but they also make us more anxious and tense if we don’t balance them out with slower waves. But we are so overstimulated, all the time, that we constantly run on beta waves. They give us a feeling of high energy, they help us focus, they even make us more social. It’s more than an addiction. Our brains have been rewired to require that level of stimulus.”

This was too much to take in. “Is there any way to fix it?” I asked.

“That’s why Seamor Labs hired me. I’m working on an anxiety medication right now that helps produce slower brain waves.”

“And once the drug is available?” I asked.

“It’s going to be a multibillion-dollar market. It will become a household product, as common to take every day as vitamins. Drugstores are planning to market it as a supplement to make it sound less serious so no one panics.” He smiled. “Most of the supplements we take these days are to fix problems the government doesn’t want us to know we have. The worst disease you can spread is panic.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “Instead of trying to fight DS, you’re now encouraging it?”

“I’m doing what I can to help people,” he told me.

I looked over at Jax; he was smiling as if he had already had this argument with his dad.

“Are you?” I asked. “Or are you making things worse?”

“No one will listen to me,” Dr. Viviani said.

“What if we helped fund the rest of your project?” I proposed. “What if we released your paper to the public?”

“I’d love to finish my research. But who would pay for it?” He opened up his hands in defeat. “I do research where the money is. I need to feed my family. Every day that I come to work, I’m thankful I don’t live in the factory district. This is where I would end up if I lost my job.”

I crossed my legs and smiled. “What if I knew people who could give you a research grant, so you could finish your project?” I asked. I knew Justin’s family hacked into Digital School, Inc., bank accounts. They had ways of wiring money.

His dad stood up and closed the office door. He leaned against it and fixed his dark eyes on mine.

“Just what kind of funding are we talking about?”

Chapter Eleven

We rode the ZipShuttle back to Jax’s apartment. The afternoon had been exhilarating and exhausting, like an emotional obstacle course. I was thrilled his dad was willing to work with us, but it made me even more frustrated with my own father. I also realized how much work was ahead of us, like I’d just climbed a false summit only to see a bigger, towering peak in the distance. I didn’t want to turn my life into a constant uphill climb. I saw what that lifestyle was doing to my own family.

When the ZipShuttle stopped, we walked down the path to Jax’s apartment. He wanted to show me his art studio. We headed through a screened-in porch and into a narrow room, empty except for a wall of counters and cabinets. All the walls were stark white. The cabinets were white as well, with black metal handles and long, shallow drawers under the countertops. There were no windows in the room.

“The walls are canvas paint,” he told me.

“Is this where you work?”

“It’s for my job,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

He opened a few of the cupboards and took out red, blue, green, and yellow jars of paint. He unscrewed each of them. I could smell the paint, wet, inky, and acidic. He opened one of the drawers and shuffled around inside, pulling out a handful of paintbrushes, all different sizes, like a mix of people with different personalities.

There was a sink in the middle of the countertops. He grabbed a metal mug out of a drying rack next to it and placed the brushes inside.

When Jax opened a cupboard, I noticed quotes scribbled inside. I read a few of them: Never trust a thought that doesn’t come while painting. There is no natural selection for assholes. And We can’t hope to make it in the world outside until we get real on the inside. I opened up another cabinet and stopped when I saw the word flight, with a definition: the ability to naturally defy and operate independently of gravity and propel oneself through the air at will.

I looked around at the counter space filling with supplies. “Did you take a class on this?”

He shook his head. “I dropped out of DS after I was intercepted. I haven’t gone back. There are two ways to paint,” he said, and looked at me. “You can paint what you see, or you can paint what you feel. You need to figure out what works for you.”

I looked around at the empty walls.

“I only paint what I see,” he said. “That’s why I never liked DS. I never felt like it was real. I only believe what I see, what I experience. But we never actually see anything or anyone in that world. So what’s real? Where’s the truth?” He finished organizing the brushes and pointed out rags, water, and boards for blending colors.

“This is how I counsel people who were released from DCs. They didn’t see anything real inside of there. They just need to realize the truth. Their minds are buried under lies. I know the DC stores memories in your head. I help flush them out.”

I leaned over and studied the paint inside the jars, thick and shining in the light like puddles.

“Go for it,” he said. I ran my fingers over the brushes and admired their soft bristles. Some were soft and submissive, others strong and stubborn. “You know you want to.”

I smiled. At that moment there was nothing I wanted more.

“I’ve never used real paint,” I said.

“You’ll figure it out,” he said. He grabbed a wide-handled brush and dipped it in red. He reached out to hand it to me. The red paint dripped down the handle and over his fingers.

“It’s an experience,” he said. “Don’t think about the end result. Let it create itself.”

I took the brush in my hand and studied the blaze of red paint, a shiny blur against the black, symmetrical rows of bristles.

“I can’t paint without music,” I said.

“I can’t either,” he said. He opened a cupboard and turned on a stereo on the shelf inside.

“Meet Vince,” he said.

“Vince?”

Jax patted one of the speakers affectionately. “My best friend.” He shot me a warning look. “He refuses to play country music,” he informed me. “That’s his one rule.”

He pressed play and hard bass pumped out of the speakers. Rap lyrics shouted out at us. Jax raised his eyebrows and I nodded.

“Perfect,” I said. He turned the volume up and left me alone, shutting the door. I walked up to the blank wall and flung my wrist, sending a splattering of red paint, like rain, over the space in front of me. I stopped thinking and just let my hand go.

I painted an ocean that pushed out a tsunami. I painted a thin fault line that opened into a giant fissure cracking through the ground, sending an avalanche of rocks and trees into the deep crevasse. I drew solid mountains exploding with gas and lava and innocent clouds that swirled into spiraling hurricanes and tornadoes. I drew lightning that punched the ground and sparking fires. I used all the bright primary colors he set out, but I was too impatient to blend them.

The weather is never perfect, the world is never safe, so why should our own lives be any different? Life is supposed to be a risk. It’s written everywhere around us. We are meant to take chances. We are meant to explode and shatter and spiral. Even if we break, we’ll come back to a still point. We are made that way, just another natural element, if we remember to be natural.

I started writing words along the top of the room, like a banner: Surgeon General’s warning: Avoid swimming. You could drown. Avoid running. You might fall. Avoid heights. You might want to jump off. Avoid people. They’re like sharp objects. Turn the blade opposite from you. Keep a safe distance. Always cut away.

I felt like a zephyr, blowing a perfect world into a scattering mess of debris. I studied my strange tapestry. I didn’t realize I had been holding so much in. I didn’t realize I was my own building hurricane. I could feel the water inside of me pounding like rapids. I wanted to settle. I wanted calm.

I turned just as Jax walked into the room. You know those moments, when you say too much? When you catch yourself letting down your guard so low that someone gets in? You catch yourself being completely you? It’s terrifying and liberating all at the same time. That’s the risk of living outside of a screen. People realize you’re a head case.

The music was still blaring. He looked at the walls, but there was nothing scrutinizing about his face. He understood how personal this was. It was like letting someone read my journal and learn all my plans, my thoughts, my faults.

“I love it,” he said. He smiled at me and I felt my stomach tense.

I looked back at the mural and nodded. “It might be my best work yet.”

He turned the music down. He had a camera in his hands, and he started taking pictures of the wall, zooming in on some sections. I had never seen anyone use a real camera before. After he was done, I grabbed it. I liked how its contour fit in my hands and how I could adjust the lens to control my shot. I aimed it at Jax and his face was deadpan when I took a picture of him with a raging forest fire as a backdrop.

“You’re supposed to smile,” I said, and aimed it at his face again.

He reached for the camera but I pulled it away.

“I don’t like having my picture taken,” he told me, his eyes serious for the first time I had ever seen.

“Just smile,” I said.

“No. I never smile in photos. I hate my teeth.”

“What?” I looked at his mouth but he clamped his lips together.

“Nmm-mm.” He shook his head and leaned away as I reached for his arm.

“What’s wrong with your teeth?” I asked.

“There’s a gap in the middle of my front teeth,” he said. “I hate it.”

He opened his mouth so I could see the tiny gap, which was adorable. And sexy. “It’s original,” I said.

“It’s a gap. Between my teeth. You know how much food gets caught in there?”

I laughed and he grabbed the camera out of my hands, his hands covering mine for a second. He looked at me. Something moved even though we weren’t moving. You can move people with arms and legs, but I also realized you can press them with the weight of your eyes. You can push them away or pull them close. Jax was doing that, pulling me in.

He was suddenly standing too close to me. The toes of our tennis shoes were only inches apart. I backed up a step.

“What are you doing tonight?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Jealous?”

I smiled but he just fixed his eyes on mine. “You want to watch a movie?” he asked. “I own everything Simon Pegg has ever done. Nothing beats classic British comedy. They talk so fast, they mumble, and their accents can take some getting used to, but it’s fucking brilliant.”

I stared at him while he rambled.

“Y-you mean. A. Date?” I stammered.

“I. Guess. So,” he stammered back, mocking me. I felt my face heat up. “You don’t have to appreciate British comedy,” he said. “But if you don’t, I’ll lose all respect for you and think you’re a sad, miserable excuse for a person. That’s all.”

“Jax, I don’t, I can’t,” I said. “I have a boyfriend.”

His face looked more puzzled than surprised. “Really?”

His bewilderment made me frown. Was it that hard to believe someone else was interested in me?

“Bring him along,” Jax offered. “I’ll invite some other friends over. Movie night.”

I laughed out loud at the idea of Justin hanging out at a movie party. As if he had the free time. The image was ridiculous, which immediately made me stop laughing. I wondered if Justin’s life would ever slow down long enough that he could just sit around and watch a movie.

Jax studied my conflicting reactions. “Do you guys have plans tonight?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “We don’t really make plans.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, it’s more of a distance thing. We don’t get to see each other very often.”

He was watching me like he was trying to read a book he couldn’t quite translate. I backed up toward the door.

“Thanks for taking me out today,” I said. “I’ll be in touch.” I turned to leave but caught myself at the door and looked over my shoulder. “And by the way, I love Simon Pegg. But the most brilliant British comedian of all time is John Cleese.”

On the train ride home, a thought turned over in my mind. I pulled my journal out of my bag. I chewed on the cap of my pen and started writing because I needed to confess to someone.

May 31, 2061

There is one small effect you have on me, but sometimes the smallest change makes the biggest difference because it tilts your life and forces you to see things at a different angle.

You make it easier to breathe.

Some people steal your oxygen and leave you winded. Some people cut it off completely and you’re left suffocated. But other people, the rare ones, pump oxygen into you, just like a breeze fills a wind puppet and gives it the energy to twist and sway.

Somehow, the older we get, the less able we are to breathe. Why is that? Why do we become so bad, so inefficient, at something we are born to do? Our first breath at the moment we’re born literally saves us. We push out all of the fluids in our chests, our lungs contract and expand, and we take this huge gasp that fills us, and that is how we start our life, with this enormous, strong, brilliant breath. We welcome the world by breathing it in. It’s the first thing we do, our most biological instinct.

Then what happens? Our breaths become shorter. Forced, nervous, startled, uneasy, panicky. Sometimes we forget to breathe entirely and we’re lightheaded and weak. There are training videos for adults on how to breathe. This is so strange to me. What, in our lives, is making it difficult for us to take a long, satisfying breath?

With you it’s different. I’m content. Relaxed. I can feel my breath begin at the base of my stomach and grow until my entire chest expands. I can let it out slow, because there’s no hurry, there’s no worry.

You help me to breathe.

That’s one of the best compliments I can give you.

But why do I feel guilty admitting this? Is it wrong to feel this way?

Chapter Twelve

I sat on my bed reading a book. I liked the sound of turning the pages. They rustled like leaves. I loved how the book stretched out like two arms and how if I pressed it against my chest, it could hug me. I loved the crisp pages, how they still smelled like an inky print machine and a giant warehouse.

There was a knock at my door, and I said to come in.

The door eased open and I waited for my mom to say something, but when she was quiet, I looked up and was shocked to see Justin.

“Hey,” he said easily, like this was nothing new. He looked so strange standing there. I’d never in my entire life had a boy in my bedroom, other than my brother and my dad, which doesn’t generate quite the same feelings.

His hair was windblown and messy, as if he had run here, but it always looked like that. He was wearing a black zip-up jacket that looked soft, and blue jeans. He made me think of being outside and active and free and all the things I craved.

“How did you get in here?”

He opened up his arms. “Easy. I jumped from a plane onto your roof, disengaged the security grid in your basement, crawled into your house through an air vent, cut the security wires on your wall screens, crawled back outside, unlocked a sky window, slid through, and here I am.”

I raised a single eyebrow.

“I knocked on the door and your mom let me in. Crazy, right?”

“You knew my dad was out of town,” I said.

He nodded. “And your mom’s a pushover. I brought her a homemade apple pie so she couldn’t refuse me.”

I closed my book and set it on my lap. “You baked an apple pie?”

He walked around my room, looking at the wall screens. He shook his head. “Riley’s mom baked it. I’m crashing at their place right now. But I helped with the most important step,” he said, and turned to look at me. “The secret is, you brush egg whites and sprinkle cinnamon on top of the crust before you put it in the oven. It makes it crispy.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“A connoisseur of sensual delights.” He grinned and I felt heat flood my face and arms and chest. He was giving me that look again, a look that feels like a furnace snapping on inside me, blowing hot air into my blood.

He walked around my room, taking in the murals slowly.

“I never knew you were an artist,” he said.

I looked down at the ground for a few seconds. No one had ever called me that.

“Who taught you to do this?” he asked me.

“My little friend called isolation.”

He laughed. “That’s right. You’ve been grounded since when, birth?”

“Isolation can be a good teacher,” I said, sticking up for my longtime friend. “In small doses.”

“Why do you do it?” he asked, turning to me. I didn’t understand his question. “Some people play music, some people exercise. Why do you paint?”

I’d never thought about it, but after what Jax had shown me that day, I had an answer. “I think it’s a form of therapy,” I said, and pointed around the room. “I’ve learned how to dream outside whatever walls are confining me. If I can’t physically escape, at least mentally I can.”

He nodded. “You’re like the Mariana Trench.”

“The what?” I asked.

“It’s the deepest point in the ocean. Over thirty-five thousand feet deep. You could take Mount McKinley and fit it inside, and there would still be room underneath. That’s how deep the ocean gets. No one’s ever been down there. Even now, they still can’t get a human being that deep without the pressure killing them.”

I smiled. I knew his point, that everything is limitless, even people. We can try to figure one another out, but we’ll never reach the bottom.

“It’s just a way to clear my head,” I said.

There was a bookshelf in my room, stacked with all the books my mom had given me over the years. Justin was reading the spines. Every year I reorganized the books, sometimes alphabetically, or by genre, or even by spine color. I faced my favorite covers out.

I watched Justin and I liked the contrast he made—my room was soft, the dim yellow glow from the lamps and the murals and the light green bedspread and white carpeting, and Justin was dark and strong against it. Maybe that’s what I’d been looking for all along. A contrast. Somebody who stands out from my typical world. Somebody you notice for being different from everyone and everything.

He sat down on the bed next to me. I studied his hand, so close to mine, on my bed. I wanted to pause this moment because I’d never thought it was possible.

“Never thought I’d be sitting here, did you?” he asked, reading my mind.

“Not without at least one gun pointed at your head.”

He smiled and grabbed my hand. “I want you to come to Scott’s with me. There’s someone in town you should meet.”

I looked at my hand, swallowed inside his. I thought back to my conversation with Clare on the train. I concentrated on his eyes as if I were staring into a foggy crystal ball, trying to see an image inside. “Have you realized we’ve never been on a date?”

He pulled his eyebrows together. “That’s not possible. We’ve been hanging out for over a year.”

“Usually fugitive style,” I reminded him.

“True,” he said.

“I’m not complaining,” I said. “I’m just contemplating.”

Justin pressed his lips on my hand and grazed them over each knuckle. I wanted to shut the door for a night. Just shut out the world and be alone with him. I felt something closing between us, something checking out, and it scared me. I wanted him all to myself.

He looked torn between what he could see I needed and what other people needed from him, and it made me feel selfish. I needed to support Justin. If I wanted my life to be expansive, and inspiring, and real, who was I to try to limit him, the person fighting harder for my life than anyone?

I grabbed his hand and pulled him off the bed. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

I sat next to Justin on the train, heading to Scott’s apartment.

“Is this a meeting about the national vote?” I asked.

“Scott’s in charge of organizing that,” he answered.

“I think it’s stressing him out,” I noted.

Justin nodded. “I can’t help out too much right now. Vaughn’s my top priority. If we can arrest him, we have a shot at bringing down DS.”

“You don’t care about the protest?” I asked.

He lifted his shoulders. “It’ll be great publicity. Like a giant advertisement for our cause.”

I studied his calm profile. “You don’t think we’ll win, do you?”

“No,” he answered without hesitating. “I don’t think we have a chance in hell.”

My mouth dropped open. “Then why go to all the work to organize a riot?”

“Because we don’t want to go down without a fight. These virtual schools have been around for more than fifty years, but at least there used to be other options. Digital school became a law ten years ago. It’s being voted on for the first time since then. If we don’t use our voices now, we might not have another chance. We can’t break the tower, but maybe we can bend it a little. Loosen some of its strength. Knock it down over time.”

“That’s not good enough,” I said. “That’s giving up.”

He smiled. “It’s called being realistic.” He leaned in and brushed his lips into my hair, but I pushed him away.

“I came home to end the program for good,” I informed him. “Not to sign a life contract.”

“I’m open to suggestions, Maddie.” He rested his hand on my leg, above my knee. My mind slipped back to a few nights before and what we were doing in the club. It seemed like months ago.

“How many recruits do we have?” I asked.

“Last time Scott checked, we have about five million supporters.”

“That’s amazing,” I said.

He tossed up his hands. “It’s a small start.”

“Small? It’s five million people. Can we be positive for a second?”

He laughed. “I know, but right now I’m looking on the practical side. There are more than four hundred million people in the U.S. That means about two percent of the people in this country support us. That’s a pretty small margin. If somebody told you that you had a two percent chance of surviving a disease, you wouldn’t feel all that optimistic.

“One hundred million people are forced to go to digital school,” he continued. “And we can barely access them. Our biggest fans are still being held captive in detention centers. Most kids don’t even know we exist. That’s the problem.”

“It’s like what you said last year,” I said. “You hit a brick wall.”

“Exactly. I mean, getting out and recruiting people face-to-face is great, but it hardly makes a dent. Every time we add a recruit, we lose one. The real world shrinks a little more every day. Anytime a site or message we try to send gets too big, it gets blocked online. And since most kids are only online—”

“We’re screwed,” I finished for him, and he didn’t argue. “Which is why you recruited me.”

“Originally, yes, that’s why we recruited you. We wanted your dad’s files. We thought if we used his connections, we could spread something viral and end DS.”

“Is there anything we can do?” I asked.

He nodded. “I think if people knew what Vaughn was doing, it would turn things around. That’s why I’m trying to track him down.”

“Would having all my dad’s listservs still help, so you can start sending messages to everyone in DS? Or is it too late for that?”

Justin shook his head. “Maddie, it isn’t worth it. I don’t want you to get caught again.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Why?”

“It’s just one of the reasons I came home,” I said.

Chapter Thirteen

“How do you detach people from technology?” Clare wondered out loud, tapping the toes of her tennis shoes on the edge of the coffee table.

We all sat in Scott’s living room. There were about a dozen people at his apartment, all Digital School Dropouts. Justin had organized the meeting so we could meet Shawn, who was in charge of recruiting rioters along the East Coast. There were four regions in the country. Justin led recruiting in the West, Shawn in the East, and two more regional heads managed the South and the Midwest. They met up once a month for meetings.

Shawn was older than the rest of us, in his thirties, and he dressed professionally in a blue button-down dress shirt and dark brown khaki pants. He even wore dress shoes. Half of us wore rubber flip-flops. We considered pulling on a pair of socks dressing up.

It was 11 p.m., and we were all wired on caffeine. Half-empty pizza boxes and empty soda bottles were scattered around the table.

“No one’s succeeded at it before,” Scott said. “Technology always wins.”

“Then take away the technology,” Gabe suggested.

“We could spread a nationwide computer virus,” I offered. “It would be like a cyber black plague.”

“It’s been done,” Shawn said. “It was more like a cyber sneeze. It was patched up too quickly.”

“We tried destroying the DS signal. That went over well,” Justin said, and we shared a smile.

“We could detonate a nuclear bomb high enough in the atmosphere to cause an electromagnetic blackout,” I offered.

Molly rolled her eyes. “We want to encourage change, not an apocalypse,” she said.

Clare nodded. “Hospitals would close. Millions of people would die. That might not be the right message to spread.”

“And there’s the whole radiation side effect and getting-ahold-of-plutonium challenge,” Shawn added.

“People are afraid of illness,” Gabe said. “Let’s release a study that shows computers cause blood clots in your brain that can lead to instant death.”

“That hasn’t been proven. You can’t catch anything from a computer,” Scott said.

“Justin, your thoughts here?” Clare asked.

We all looked over at him, like he had all the answers, because we believed he did. He had hardly spoken the entire night. Unlike the rest of us, Justin had an amazing capacity to listen.

“Showing people is a lot more inspiring than telling them,” he said. “Scare tactics are what got us into this mess. Just be honest. Show people they have options. People will see you living a different life, one that’s radically different, and they’ll wonder. They’ll ask questions. So be ready to have answers. They’re living a bunch of ones. Help show them that.”

“‘Ones’?” Clare and I asked at the same time.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s something my mom and dad used to make me sit down and figure out whenever I saw them. One to Ten, they called it. They told me that life is about the tens. That’s what we remember.”

“What’s your rating curve?” Shawn asked.

“Look at what you do in a single day, and rate how much of an impact it has. Let’s say you stream television shows on your wall screen all day. You catch up on seven seasons of your favorite show. What’s the reward?”

“It’s a ten,” Scott said, “if it’s a good series.”

“Okay,” Justin said. “But what’s the impact? What have you done?”

“I’ve thoroughly entertained myself,” Riley said.

“You, yeah, it’s all about you being entertained, but have you done anything for anyone else? What’s the impact?”

“One,” Riley said with a frown.

“Let’s say you game all day,” Justin continued.

“Hey, don’t put down video games just because you suck at playing them,” Scott said.

Justin smiled. “Okay, but what’s the impact? Have you made any difference in anyone’s lives?”

“So, what’s your point?” Scott asked.

“Look at it from another side. What are some of your highlights? Think about the last six months. What do you remember?”

“Meeting you guys,” Gabe said.

“Celebrating Maddie’s birthday,” Clare added.

“Ruining a curve on a test by getting a perfect score,” Molly said. We all groaned.

“Setting everyone in a detention center free.” I smiled.

“Okay,” Justin said. “So, those are tens. Why?”

We all listed reasons. We did something selfless. We put somebody first. We reached out to people. We connected to people. We challenged people.

“You made an impact. I get that ones are fun, they’re easy, they’re relaxing. We all need to do ones once in a while. But when you look back on life, what’s going to make it fulfilling? A bunch of ones? Or tens? What do you want your life to add up to?” He shrugged. “My parents always made me think about this. When I was younger, we’d sit down and discuss our tens. It almost became a competition, and pretty soon, we hardly had any ones.”

“Thanks for making me feel incredibly lazy,” Riley said.

“Yeah, way to one-up all of us,” Clare said.

Justin smiled. “All I’m saying is, let’s show people how to get back to tens.”

I walked into an extra bedroom Scott used for an office and found Molly sitting behind a desk. Every wall screen was turned on, and I felt like I was standing inside a Jumbotron. She was going over some spreadsheets on a screen in front of her. I sat down on the couch next to her desk and curled my feet underneath me.

“Do you know Jax Viviani?” I asked.

She nodded. “Of course I know him,” she said. “He’s almost as famous as you for pissing off the government.” She looked over at me. “He created software that collected names of all the kids being released from detention centers. It intercepted the information when it was transferred through the government files. I don’t know how he did it—we haven’t been able to figure out the program coding.”

“What do you think of him?” I asked.

Her expression turned sour. “I don’t think of him. We don’t talk to him anymore. He’s a skater.”

“A skater?”

She turned her office chair to face me. “It’s what we call people who bail on us. We intercepted him a few years ago when the cops traced him. We don’t intercept people to do our one good deed for the day. We save people’s asses so that they’ll join our side. It’s our recruiting process.”

“What happened with him?” I asked, intrigued.

“Nothing. He hid in a safe house for a while. He came to a few meetings. And then he skated. I heard he does counseling, which I find funny,” Molly said. “What does he know about helping people? He never even graduated from high school.”

I smiled to myself.

“I’m trying to recruit him,” I said, and Molly arched her eyebrows in surprise. “I haven’t told Justin yet. I haven’t told anyone except Clare. I don’t want to get people’s hopes up until Jax actually gives me the software we need.”

She laughed. “Don’t bother, Maddie. We’ve been trying for years. We even offered him money. He said if we bugged him one more time, he’d stop offering his apartment as a safe house.”

Molly turned back to her desk and touched the wall screen. A video of Scott’s kitchen appeared. She started scanning every room in the apartment.

“Where’s Scott?” she mumbled. “He’s supposed to bring me Shawn’s recruit list.” She focused on the living room and used her fingers to zoom in on Scott.

“He needs to shave,” she observed. I looked at Scott’s patchy beard growing in around his chin.

She turned up the volume, and we could hear conversations in the living room. The party was dwindling. Clare and Gabe sat on one couch, leaning into each other and talking, their feet tapping against each other. Scott was typing on his flipscreen. Justin and Shawn were talking on another couch.

“Can they hear us?” I asked.

She shook her head. She zoomed in on Shawn and Justin, and we picked up their conversation.

“Where are you living these days?” Shawn asked him.

“Here and there,” Justin said, and Shawn smiled.

“I hear that’s a charming location.”

“For some people,” Justin replied.

“You ever consider settling?” Shawn asked.

I used my fingers to zoom out, and the conversation faded.

“Okay, turn it off,” I said. “This is spying.”

“Duh,” Molly said. “Why do you think we have these screens? It’s great research.” She zoomed in on Justin and Shawn again, and the speakers picked up their conversation again.

“So, what do you think?” Shawn asked him. “Are you in?”

Justin’s usually calm face was tight. I couldn’t help myself. I leaned closer to the screen and listened.

“Why out east?” Justin asked.

“I’m trying to get all the regional heads together in one place,” Shawn said. “It’s getting tough to do this all from a distance. And if we actually get some publicity at the national vote, we need to group forces while the attention’s hot. Now’s the time to go two hundred percent.”

Justin crossed his arms over his chest and thought about this. “You want all of us to relocate?”

Molly and I looked at each other.

“This is so wrong,” I whispered.

“Shh,” Molly said. We both leaned back toward the wall to listen.

“I think we should stay spread out,” Justin said. “Work on one community at a time.”

“Why?” Shawn whined. “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing for ten years? And what has it done?”

“We need to start establishing models that other people can follow. Work small and grow from there, instead of trying to get too big too fast,” Justin pointed out.

Shawn sat back, sinking deeper into the couch, his forehead creased. “You got a problem with the East Coast?” he joked. “Too fast-paced for your West Coast legs?”

“DS is centered in Portland,” Justin reminded him.

“We need to be where the action is. Megan and Cedar are already in. I’m just waiting on you. I figured you’d jump at the chance. I don’t know why we’re having this conversation.”

Justin drummed his fingers on his leg while he considered the offer. My heart felt like it was drumming as fast as his fingertips.

“When’s the moving date?” he asked.

“Now,” Shawn said. “You can come back with me tomorrow if you want. There’s a place for you to crash.” He frowned at Justin’s hesitation. “Why am I trying to convince you? What’s holding you back?”

My brain muscles started to tighten up.

Justin opened up his hands. “There’s somebody here I can’t leave,” he said. My lungs immediately expanded, and I looked at Molly and we both smiled.

“Vaughn,” Justin said. “I can’t leave here until Vaughn’s behind bars.”

Shawn and I both blew out an exasperated sigh.

“This reality show is lame,” I said. “Turn it off.”

“Wait,” Molly said, grabbing my arm.

“And there’s another reason,” Justin continued. “I can’t leave Maddie right now.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, and Molly and I slapped high-fives as if our favorite team had just scored a goal.

“Should I make some popcorn?” she asked me. “This is getting good.” We both turned back to the screen and waited for Shawn’s reaction.

Shawn laughed. “Madeline Freeman? So the rumors are true.” He laughed harder, and I had the sudden urge to punch his digital image.

“Why is that funny?” Justin asked.

“It’s beyond funny. It’s impossible. J, what are you thinking?” He lowered his voice and I strained my neck to hear. “Are you using her for her connections?”

Something close to a growl came out of my throat. I picked up my hand to slap the wall screen, and Molly held it back.

“I recruited her because of her connections,” Justin admitted. “You think I wanted this to happen?”

“Then don’t let it happen.”

Justin blew out a laugh. “It’s a little late for that.”

“Listen, you need to let this one go. You can’t bring Maddie out east with you. We’d just have her dad on our tails. It’s way too risky. It sucks you have a crush, but you need to get over it.”

Justin laughed again. “It’s more than a crush.”

“J, you told me a year ago your life was going to be about fighting DS.”

Justin’s eyes were hard. “That hasn’t changed.”

“Well, I’m telling you, we need you. Now. You can’t be married to this mission and be there for someone else. Look at what your parents did to you.”

“Asshole,” Molly muttered.

“Let’s say we win the vote,” Shawn continued. “Your dream comes true. We get to rebuild schools. You think you’re busy now, fighting for the things you want? Just wait until you get the things you want. That’s when the work really starts.”

Shawn stood up. He pulled a backpack off the floor and unzipped it, took out a flipscreen. “I know you too well, Solvi. You never step down from a challenge. That’s all this girl is to you right now, a challenge. Trying to date the one girl you shouldn’t. I’m not surprised. But are you really going to throw away everything you’ve worked for, for a pink-haired kid?”

“Thanks to her, we’re close to freeing every detention center in the country. Show the kid some respect,” Justin said through tight lips.

Shawn turned on his flipscreen and set it on the table. “We have a conference call with Megan and Cedar. But listen, I can’t afford to lose you. You’re the heart of all of this. You have way too much fire in you, man. Don’t let that girl put you out.”

Molly quickly snapped off the screen. She looked over at me and I settled back into the couch. My eyes fell to the ground. Shawn’s last statement rolled over in my head until the edges of my brain felt singed.

“Maddie, everything will work out.”

I nodded, but Molly’s voice was distant. Her words didn’t sink in—they floated by. I looked at the time. It was almost midnight. “I’ve gotta go,” I said. I stood up and walked down the hallway, not stopping in the living room to say goodbye. I continued down the stairs and outside and welcomed the cool night air.

I thought about what Clare had said. Emotional insurance. Was she right? Or do people plan too much and forecast too much, and really, when are we ever right? Things happen strictly by surprise in this life, and it’s the surprises that change us, that direct us, not what we plan.

I needed to give up the control. Besides, control is just an illusion. Maybe love is too.

I stood under the glass-dome rain shelter at the train stop. Digital images flashed around inside it, making me dizzy, so I walked outside. I caught my reflection in the black window of a building. I stared at the perplexing image. The cheekbones and nose set at an angle high enough to warn people there was attitude inside. Eyes too large to miss details. I took in my black hooded sweatshirt and dark jeans. I’d spent eighteen years trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted. I looked at my pink hair, bright even in the fog. It wasn’t until I stopped looking so hard that she pointed herself out to me.

I pulled the hood over my head and tightened it. I liked it that way. It cut out some of my peripheral vision so I could see less. Feel less. That was what I wanted right now. Even in the real world, you need to escape.

Chapter Fourteen

I jumped off the train into the cool night, breathing in a deep gulp of the fresh air, always tinted with a plastic scent from the trees and grass. The train sped away and it was quiet, except for a low hum that sounded like a motor running. I looked over my shoulder and noticed a black car parked down the block. The engine was idling. I warily pulled the strings of my hood tight and ducked my head. I quickly crossed the street, heading for my house two blocks away. My senses were alert, and I heard a car door creak open. My heart punched against my ribs.

“Stop!” a man shouted behind me.

Three thoughts instantly crisscrossed in my mind: Run. Scream for help. Get back on a train. I followed my first response, and my legs sprang off the asphalt. Footsteps pounded behind me.

“Don’t shoot her!” somebody shouted. “We need her conscious.”

I shot past dark houses and tried to think. I knew better than to run to my house. They obviously knew where I lived. They had probably been following me since I moved home. I was more angry than afraid, and my feet sprang farther and kicked harder with each step. I imagined my father was behind me, chasing me, which gave me the encouragement to fight through the burn in my muscles.

My dad was still having me followed? I’m not only being tracked, I’m being watched? Does he really think I’m that much of a threat?

I ran parallel to the train tracks, and a light, steady sheet of rain began to fall. My camouflage of dark jeans and a hooded sweatshirt was my only defense. The footsteps didn’t let up, but they also weren’t gaining ground. I ran down the street and could hear the rattle of a cargo train approaching. A yellow light blinked with lazy repetition at the next intersection to warn me the train was coming. I looked back quickly to see two men a block behind me. One of them yelled again for me to stop, but it only made my feet dig harder against the ground. I looked back again and they were gaining. Train lights flashed in my direction, and I took my chance. I ran past the yellow warning light, and an engine whistle screamed, rocketing through my ears as I leaped over the tracks.

A rush of wind blew the hood off my head, and a blinding wall of white light held my body for an instant. I squeezed my eyes shut before I landed hard on the plastic turf on the other side of the tracks. I flipped over, my body rolling on the wet, slippery ground until I dug my feet in and skidded to a stop.

The train whipped past and the cars stretched long into the distance, buying me a little time. I caught my breath and checked myself over, wincing when I touched sticky blood oozing out of my knee. The turf grass had burned a hole through my jeans and torn through the skin around my kneecap. I inhaled a sharp breath through my teeth to hold back a groan as I pulled pieces of plastic grass out of the open sore. I wiped my knee as clean as I could and straightened to my feet, my burned kneecap rubbing and sticking against my tattered jeans. I limped away from the tracks, trying to formulate a plan. I headed down a desolate street, passing an apartment building with nearly every window lit like unblinking eyes following me. Watching me. I was careful to avoid yards, since I might set off house alarms, a mistake I’d learned a year earlier.

I turned in one complete circle, looking for anything familiar. It was pathetic that I didn’t know my own neighborhood. I didn’t know a single neighbor or a place to hide. I was too disoriented from the fall to even know what direction I was heading. Street signs were only used on train crossings, since people rarely went outside anymore. A car engine accelerated in the distance. I decided to stay near the tracks and keep walking; maybe I could flag down a ZipShuttle and call Justin.

I headed down the tracks, along the grass, when suddenly white headlights peeled around the corner, aimed in my direction. That’s when I panicked. These people weren’t working for my father. His men wouldn’t be chasing me down, putting me in harm’s way.

I ran again, forgetting the pain in my knee, and searched the sky for the neon green roof of a ZipShuttle call booth. I could take the shuttle back to Scott’s apartment or at least use the emergency assistance button. The cargo train finally passed me and opened the barricade too soon. Before I heard footsteps, a hand reached around my waist and yanked me off the ground.

I turned around, and in the light of a street lamp Paul’s face glared down at me. His hands pinned my arms to my sides, making them useless. I kneed him between his legs as hard as I could, and he groaned, dropping his hands and bending over. I stumbled back and another set of hands grabbed me.

Before I could scream, someone covered my mouth with a damp cloth.

“I’ve got her,” a voice grumbled. I looked up at a man I had never seen before, his dark eyes glaring into mine. I was trapped, my lungs inhaling the rich scent of ammonia and alcohol. I coughed out one breath only to fill my lungs with another, and my throat burned so badly that tears ran down my face. My tense muscles instantly weakened, and I turned to mush in his steel grip.

I started to slip but he caught me before I slid out of his arms. He dragged me across the street. My feet scuffed along the asphalt. It took effort to keep my eyes open. My eyelids were as useless as my limbs, and I was too woozy to hold my head up. I was already forgetting Paul’s face, as if it were just a hallucination.

I heard an engine humming, closer now, and I felt myself lowered inside a car. The door closed and people sat on either side of me, pinning me in place. I could smell cologne and skin mixed with car leather.

My head was as wobbly as an infant’s. It dropped forward because it was too heavy to hold up, as if someone had attached weights to my forehead.

“Drive,” a man’s voice said. The car peeled out onto the road.

“We need to work fast—we have about three minutes before she passes out.”

This voice I did recognize. It still echoed through my memories. Vaughn’s tone was sharp and it made me wince to hear it, like his words could pierce me.

“Vaughn?” I heard my voice, heavy, like it was dripping through the air.

It was too hard to think. My brain was clenched hard like a fist, and then it suddenly relaxed. My thoughts flooded out. My mind, what I worked so hard to keep safe and private, ran out like a caged animal set free. I wanted to chase it, to call it back.

“Madeline.” His voice hovered around me. It crawled inside me. My thoughts scattered. They ran up mountains, they slipped into cracks, they hid in knots of darkness. They sprang and flew. My head fell back against the seat as we turned a corner.

“We’re going to lose her soon,” the man next to me said. His voice sounded like Paul’s, but my neck was too loose to turn and look at him. He stuck an electrode to the side of my head and monitored lines on a screen in front of me.

“Tell me what your dad’s doing,” Vaughn said.

My eyes blinked shut and I had to force them open. My dad? I didn’t know if I was speaking out loud. My own voice sounded distant, like my words could fly. Then they shot back at me in a slow echo.

“Who does your dad work for?” he demanded.

“You,” I mumbled. “He works for you.”

“Who else?”

“No one,” I muttered. My mouth was dry. I tried to wet my lips, but my tongue felt like sandpaper.

“Who are his connections with the rebels?”

His questions made no sense. “He’s fighting the rebels. He’s against us.”

“Start talking, Madeline!” he shouted. “What do you know?”

“Nothing. There’s no one else.”

“She’s telling the truth,” someone said. “Or we gave her too strong of a dose so she can’t remember anything.”

“Who does your dad know on your side?” Vaughn demanded. “Who are his connections? Is it you, Madeline?”

“No. He’s fighting me. He doesn’t trust me.”

I slowly shook my head, confused and exhausted.

“I need answers!” Vaughn shouted. “Tell me what your father is planning.”

My voice was too dry. It felt like my tongue was swelling in my mouth. I couldn’t form another word.

“She doesn’t know anything,” Paul grumbled. “You want me to finish her off?”

“She’s staying alive until we pry that information out of her head. Where’s the nearest lab?” Vaughn demanded.

A white light suddenly filled the back car window, illuminating Vaughn’s face in the passenger seat in front of me. His wild blue eyes glared at the car behind us.

There were two muffled shots, and the car tires thumped like we’d hit a sharp speed bump.

“Back tires blew out,” the driver muttered with a curse, and the car started to swerve toward the curb. The driver slammed on the brakes, and I crashed forward into the seat in front of me. The next thing I knew, the door swung open and I started to lean and slip out, my body as viscous as water. I fell into hands that picked me up. I knew the hands. I knew the voice.

“I’ve got you,” Justin said.

How? I wondered, but I couldn’t tell if I spoke the question.

“Molly!” Justin shouted. “I need you to look her over.”

Justin yelled more orders, and there was a scuffling of feet and voices. Cars screeched and doors opened and slammed shut. An engine roared and tires peeled off.

“Riley, can you get another car?” Justin called behind him. “Molly, you need to stick with us.”

“Justin, chase them down!” I heard Scott shout.

“I’m staying with Maddie.”

“That was Vaughn,” Molly cried. “Somebody go after him!”

“Would you please just look at Maddie?” Justin shouted. “Send somebody to pick up her mom.”

My eyes didn’t work. I couldn’t tell if they were open or closed. Justin was carrying me. My feet dangled and jostled in the air.

“How?” It was the only thing I could say. I opened my eyes a slit, and Justin pressed an earpod into his ear and started talking.

“I’ve got her,” he said. “Vaughn drugged her.” There was a pause before he continued. “I don’t know—we’re checking her out right now.”

He set me down lightly in the back seat of a car. His hands never left me. I could feel them shaking as they held me.

“Don’t start giving me orders,” Justin snapped. “I did one favor. For Maddie.”

Molly sat on the other side of me, and I could feel her hands checking my pulse. I leaned into Justin’s arms as the car pulled onto the street.

I finally muttered the sentence ripping through my mind.

“How long have you been working for my dad?”

It was all I had the energy to say. I let myself slip into the smooth darkness.

Chapter Fifteen

I woke up to a smell I didn’t recognize—citrusy, like an orange. Something cold and wet wiggled its way into the crook of my neck, and I shoved it away. A familiar warm tongue lapped my cheek, and an anxious whine filled my ears.

“Baley,” I groaned, and pushed her nose away and blinked my eyes open. I was lying on a brown couch in a room I didn’t recognize. A row of windows behind the couch looked out into a green arboretum. I thought it was a wall-screen program until I recognized the painted murals and wood benches. I pulled back a sleeping bag cover to reveal my tattered jeans and the white gauze tape covering my knee. I stretched my leg and my knee was tight and stiff.

My mom walked into the room, carrying a plate full of orange slices and toast.

“What happened?” I asked. “What are we doing here?” She bent over me and softly brushed a few strands of hair off my forehead. She checked my temperature the way mothers do, by pressing her lips to my forehead for a few seconds. Her breaths stirred my hair and it was calming. When I was little, she told me she could kiss all my pain away. If I had a cold or the flu, she could press her lips to my forehead and pull it out. I always believed it. You always want to believe that people and love can save you. I never stopped believing it. Maybe I was foolish, or maybe it was my greatest strength.

I gazed up at her, groggy and confused. My mind felt like it was trudging through floodwaters. I sat up and looked around Jax’s apartment. Baley’s nails tapped against the floor, and I looked up to see Justin standing in the doorway. He stooped down to scratch Baley, and she arched her neck like a cat.

“Hi,” Justin said. His eyes were warm but careful, like he was afraid the surprise would make me relapse into shock. He was acting like I was back in the detention center after a blackout.

“I missed something, didn’t I?” My mind reversed to Scott’s apartment. The last thing I could piece together was getting off the train.

Jax, Clare, and Scott trickled in. Clare and Scott hung back by the door next to Justin, but Jax walked over to me and handed me a mug with a tea bag string hanging over the rim. Our eyes met, and so did our fingers. His skin felt as warm as the mug.

Everyone was quiet as they stared at me like I was a mental patient on home leave. Jax sat next to me on the couch, and my mom sat on my other side. She pointed to the tray on the end table, and Jax picked it up and set it between us.

“How are you feeling?” he asked me.

“Like somebody tried to make a tossed salad with my brain,” I said, and sipped the green tea.

As I helped myself to toast, Justin explained what happened.

“You were followed last night. Do you remember anything?” he asked.

I squinted as I tried to focus on any memory. I slowly shook my head.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone you were leaving Scott’s?” he asked. “We could have taken you home.”

I looked down at the floor. I remembered why I’d left, but now wasn’t the time to get into it.

“You were drugged,” Justin said, and I looked up at him.

“Vaughn?” I asked, and he nodded. I leaned my head against the couch cushions. “I really hate that man.” A few broken pieces of memories flashed back. A black car parked near the train stop. Running and diving past a train. Everything else was foggy.

“Did you catch him?” I asked.

Justin shook his head, his jaw tight. “They had backup waiting.”

I pieced together what he was saying, but one detail wasn’t clear.

“How did you find me?”

In the same instant a memory flooded back of Justin holding me and setting me down inside a car. My eyes must have charged with anger because Jax grabbed the tea out of my hand before I spilled it all over my lap. Or threw it. My heart convulsed and I tossed the blanket off the couch and jumped to my feet, my knee stinging with the sudden movement.

“How long have you been working for my dad?” I jabbed my finger at him and my voice echoed in the room.

His eyes were calm. “I’m not.”

“Don’t you dare lie to me!” I thought back to when we’d first met, when I found out that the reason Justin was seeking me out was to get close to my dad. What if he had been working with him all along?

“Have I ever lied to you?” His eyes dared me to remember a single time. I looked at my mom; she was watching us.

I stuck my hands on my hips. “It’s a little too convenient, you popping up to save me, not that I don’t appreciate it. But only my dad can track me.”

“And it turned out to be the best thing,” Justin stated, his voice as calm as a still lake. “He saved your life.”

“So you are on his side?”

Justin stepped closer and held out his hands. “No, Maddie. I can’t believe you have to ask me that. Your dad called my phone last night,” he said. “He saw your signal zigzagging all over the road. He knew something was wrong. He talked me through your location so I could find you.”

I thought about this. “How did he get your number?” I asked. “You’re not listed.”

“I was a little too distracted with your being kidnapped to ask him that.” Justin threw up his hands. “He’s your dad. He probably has FBI agents pulling information for him, or magic wizards—who knows? He can find anything.”

I believed him, but it still didn’t make sense. “I’m sorry,” I said. “But why you? Why didn’t he just call the cops?”

“I don’t think your dad trusts the cops. I think this was his way of saying he trusts me.”

I sat back down, staring at the wall in front of me. There was a mosaic mirror hung on the wall. Even the cracked and broken pieces spun a beautiful pattern.

“He trusts you?” I asked.

“I think so,” Justin said. “Actions speak pretty loud.”

“Do you trust him?” my mom asked, finally speaking up. She was looking at Justin.

“No,” he said. “I don’t.”

Justin explained that they’d picked up my mom and Baley the night before, in case Vaughn was watching the house. “We’re going to have you guys stay here for a few days. Until we find Vaughn.”

I looked around the studio apartment and at Jax. “We’re staying here?”

“It’s the only safe house in town,” Justin said.

His phone beeped, and at the same instant Clare’s, Scott’s, and my mom’s phones jingled. They all looked down at their screens. Justin’s eyebrows straightened out. My mom and Clare looked shocked.

“Did they catch Vaughn?” I asked. My mom shook her head and Clare bit her bottom lip. Scott squinted at his phone like he was trying to decipher a cryptic code.

“What is going on?” I asked, my tone demanding.

“They just announced the DS vote will be held Friday in Portland,” my mom said. She read the breaking news story as it unfolded on her screen. “‘The central offices of Digital School, Inc., will determine whether DS remains a national law or becomes a state-by-state decision. Each state will be given two votes. Economists are predicting a unanimous decision to continue DS, an educational policy that has been one of the most successful in history, developed by Kevin Freeman sixteen years ago. Fourteen countries have switched to a digital school venue, although the U.S. is currently the only country to have it in place as a national law. U.S. students currently score highest in the world on academic standardized testing. If passed, the law would keep DS a mandatory nationwide program for the next ten years.’”

She set her phone down in her lap.

“It’s already Wednesday,” Clare said.

“Where’s Dad?” I asked, my voice wavering. I was close to tears. “He promised we would talk before any of this happened. He promised he’d work with me.”

My mom looked almost as devastated as I felt. “I’m sorry, Maddie. Your father can’t control the government’s agenda. I think he’s doing all he can.”

“He hasn’t done anything!” I shouted. I jumped up again and headed out the side door because I needed to scream. When I stomped down to the garden, I had so much forward momentum, I kept going. I headed for the gate, my feet grinding the rocks below me.

“Talk to me, Maddie,” Justin said when he caught up.

“Take me to my house,” I said, my eyes on the fence.

“It’s not—”

“Now,” I demanded.

He walked around my side and blocked me at the gate. I glared up at him.

“We don’t know if it’s safe,” he said, his face taut.

“Get out of my way. Please.”

He regarded me. A worry line formed a crease between his eyes because he knew better than to tell me no. “Fine,” he said. He unlocked the doors of a blue van parked on the street, and I sat down in the passenger seat. Scott, Clare, my mom, and Jax, who had followed us, all climbed into the back.

The van was silent as we drove. I could feel the anxiety inside, the shifting, toe-tapping, finger-drumming spiked energy as we all imagined the next two days. I kept my eyes glued out the windows. My hands were folded tight in my lap. My mind was stuck in a desperate repetitive prayer. He did not let me down. He did not let me down.

When the van stopped, I jumped out and Justin hurried after me to the front steps, like a bodyguard.

“There has to be something here,” I said. “I know he left me something.” I refused to believe my dad would go back on his word. My heart was breaking and I needed proof that he loved me. I needed proof that he cared. My eyes burned as I opened the door. I walked inside and scanned the foyer, looking for a note. The room was clean, not even a spot of dirt on the shiny laminate floor. I ran upstairs to my room and threw the door open. My bed was made. My carpet was recently vacuumed. Not a single pillow was out of place. No note. I turned on the wall screen to see if he’d left a personalized message. I scanned my finger. Nothing. I searched the other wall screens in the house for messages. My fingers shook as I turned on the screens. Nothing.

I stormed down the hall, anger climbing through my chest, down to my fingertips. My parents’ master suite bedroom was big enough for twenty beds. I searched the floor for something. Anything. But nothing was out of place.

I turned down the hall and walked downstairs, slowly, taking one step at a time and trying to think. I barely saw the crowd gathered in the foyer, looking up at me. They were an audience watching the worst scene of my life unfold.

I looked in one more place, his office, where he spent more time than any other room in the house. I walked around the oak desk, my father’s domestic throne. I had the urge to smash everything in the room, every gold-framed piece of evidence and ostentatious award of Digital School, Inc.

I sat at his desk and opened the top drawer, the only one that was unlocked. There was nothing inside but a few DS brochures.

I looked up. Everyone had walked into the office.

“I’m sorry, Maddie,” Justin said. “I know you wanted to trust him.”

I looked up at my mom and it gave me one more idea. I ran upstairs, into my bedroom, and looked inside the bookshelf. There was a blue sticky note inside, pasted to the bottom of one of the shelves. It was handwritten, in old-fashioned cursive.

Maddie, I was trying to protect you. Ignorance can be a shield.

The truth has thorns. I’m sorry.—Dad

I reread the note before I crumpled it in my hands and squeezed until my fingers burned.

“I hate him!” I yelled through the empty room, and my voice echoed down the hallway. “I hate him.”

I bolted downstairs, my mind filled with so much anger I couldn’t see straight. I needed fresh air—it felt like the air in our house was toxic to my lungs. I fumbled with a lock on the patio door and slid it open. I walked outside and stopped for a moment to look for the sun, but it was hiding under thick, gray clouds. It was always hiding these days.

This had all been pointless and worthless and useless. I had wasted weeks staying home, all for nothing. And my dad had known all along. He’d never wanted to help me. He’d only wanted to isolate me, to cut me off from the fuel of my friends in order to trap me.

Everyone walked outside in silence.

I wanted to cry or scream or kick a punching bag. I wanted to rip something apart.

Scott looked nervously around. “Anybody have a sedative for her?” he asked, only half joking. “Or maybe some Midol?” Clare slapped him on the back of his head.

I narrowed my eyes at the plastic roses and climbing morning glories. I stared at our small outdoor yard with a high brown fence tucked in around it so we wouldn’t have to see another soul. So we wouldn’t have to connect to anybody. I walked around the soft plastic grass, and I wanted to pull it up and yank it all out of the ground. I looked over my shoulder at Justin, Jax, Scott, Clare, and my mom standing on the patio watching me like they were watching a ticking bomb. But I could hardly see them. My eyes were turned inward.

Why plant these fake flowers? What was the point? We were never out here. No one was. Why make it look homey when it wasn’t? Why look like we appreciate nature when we don’t? It was all lies, it was all aesthetics, it was all bullshit.

My finger touched a thick plastic thorn, and I looked down at the rosebush that was closest to the porch steps. I remembered what my father had told me when he saw me outside a few weeks earlier. Don’t touch that one.

I couldn’t believe it. I looked at the note in my hand. The truth has thorns. I bent down and pulled off a layer of red bricks that were weighting down the ground around the bush. I tossed them to the side.

“Um, what is she doing?” I heard Clare ask.

“Is this really the time for landscaping, Maddie?” I heard Scott say.

I ignored them. My mind was screaming.

I worked on the plastic tarp around the rosebush. My dad had anchored it in with spikes, but I twisted and pulled them loose. I pried the tarp off to reveal plastic mulch. I buried my fingers inside, feeling the cool, smooth substance. I flung the mulch into a pile next to the tarp and ripped the stapled plastic roots out of the ground. I threw them aside and dug into the hole until my fingers hit real, cool dirt, and then I stopped.

It felt like I was finally connecting to something I’d lost.

I took deep breaths and tried to get ahold of the emotions flooding through my veins and controlling my mind and my movements. When I looked up, my eyes shot straight to Jax’s. He was the only one smiling, which made me feel better. I needed someone to remind me I was normal. Or maybe that I wasn’t alone in my insanity.

I sat there with my fists in the cold ground, and there was something soothing about it, so I held my hands in. I looked at my mom.

“I don’t hate Dad,” I said quietly.

“I know you don’t,” she said.

My eyes started to fill with tears. “I want to hate him,” I said. “But I can’t. I’ve been so angry with him for so long. But I can’t hate him.”

“Then let it go,” my mom said. “Vaughn isn’t the enemy and your dad isn’t the enemy. Anger is always the enemy, Maddie.”

I pulled my hands out of the ground and examined the black earth under my fingernails, staining the tips gray. I looked at the sweat glistening on my arms. I took a deep breath and squinted up at a slit of blue sky fighting for a path through the clouds.

“Maddie,” Justin said. I glanced up, but he wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were pinned to the ground by my feet.

There was a corner of a white envelope lying in the heap of mulch I had moved. It must have gotten tossed up in my manic garden maintenance. I stared down at its plastic surface, shiny against a dusting of dull brown dust.

I dug it out of the mulch and wiped it off with shaking fingers. I glanced at Justin as I tore through the opening. Something was starting to come together, even before I opened my dad’s letter.

Chapter Sixteen

The air was quiet. There wasn’t even a breeze. Just the sunlight, just my breathing and my heart racing. I opened the envelope and pulled out a piece of real paper. It was old stationery with a brown border. The note was written in my dad’s elegant cursive.

Madeline,

I knew you would find this. All I have to do is tell you not to do something and it’s like a spark fueling you to do it. It’s always been that way with you, which, I have to say, impresses me.

When you were fifteen years old, you stole listservs that had access to millions of people, to every person in the country attending digital school. I know you and your friends would love to have access to this information. So, here is my graduation gift to you. All of those listservs. I trust you’ll use them wisely.

I shook the envelope out and two storage drives fell into my hand. One was labeled “DS” in white block letters. I stared down at it, so small, just this tiny pebble in my hand. There was another drive, black and unlabeled. I looked back at the letter.

I have a favor to ask of you. Since you will likely be contacting all of these people the day of the national vote, would you spread another message as well? I have a news feed attached to the other drive. It’s the same speech that I will be giving at the end of the vote, and I want everyone to hear it. I can’t be certain my message will be broadcast nationwide, but you can help make it happen. This file is set on a timer. The message will play after the vote is announced. It will only play one time. You’ll have to trust me, Maddie.

I have so much to explain to you. I hope, one day, that I’ll get the chance.

I love you.

Your proud father,

Dad

We sat outside for an hour, dissecting my dad’s letter. We read it a dozen times, looking for anything to decode. But my father wasn’t playing games. Scott checked the drive my dad gave us, and all the listservs were there. We had access to more than two hundred million people. It was in our hands.

“Do you think he’s trying to bring down digital school?” Clare asked.

“If he wanted to end it, he could, anytime he wants,” I said. “He owns the program, doesn’t he?”

“The government owns it,” Justin said.

“At least we have all the contacts now,” Clare said.

“At a cost,” Scott reminded us. We all looked at the black drive lying in the middle of the patio table as if we were afraid to touch it.

“Can you try to crack it?” Justin asked.

Scott shook his head. “It’s designed to self-destruct if anyone tampers with it before the timer. It scrambles the message.”

“We could decide not to play it,” Clare suggested.

I looked at my mom for advice.

“I’m at a loss, Maddie,” she said.

“Your dad has a plan,” Justin said. “It sounds like he’s had it for a long time. It would just be nice to know whose side he’s on.” He pointed at the drive. “That message could be a last resort, to prove all of us wrong. To undo any progress we make at the vote. Can we really take that chance?”

I picked up the drive and handed it to Clare. “Give this to Molly,” I said. “Tell her to program it so the message plays.”

“You mean . . . ?” my mom asked.

“I trust him,” I said. “Besides, we have what we want now. We have the listservs.”

“Can’t you track your dad?” Scott asked me.

My mom’s eyes widened. “What?”

I laughed. “I’ll show you,” I said. I told Scott to open up the GPS program on his phone. I scanned my wrist and we searched for the twin signal. My dad was in Salem, Oregon, thirty miles away.

“Hold on,” Scott said, and zoomed in. “He’s at a detention center in Salem. It’s the only one in Oregon. Pretty small; only about eighty kids are in there.”

“Why would your dad have interest in this DC?” my mom asked.

“Maybe he knows people inside,” Clare said. “He’s probably trying to get evidence.”

“Or maybe he’s trying to clean up all the evidence against him,” Scott stated.

My heart jabbed against my ribs. “My dad isn’t working with the DCs, Scott,” I said through my teeth. “He isn’t a murderer.”

“He killed a student,” Scott reminded me.

“Because he was saving the lives of other kids,” I stated.

“How are DCs any different? Killing off the rebellious kids to save the innocent ones?”

“Stop it!” I yelled at him, and my feet were scrambling toward him before Jax grabbed my wrist. “Take it back, Scott.”

“You guys, let it go,” Jax said. “We’re on the same side here.”

“I’m sorry,” Scott told me. “I’ve despised your dad for a really long time. I can’t instantly forgive him and start rooting for him when he helped build a world I can’t stand. He’s not my father.”

“Instead of standing here arguing and trying to guess what your dad’s up to, why don’t we go and find out?” Jax offered.

Scott and I both turned to look at him.

“Now?” we both said.

“We’re only thirty minutes from Salem,” Jax said.

“What if he’s with the cops?” my mom asked.

“It will make it more fun,” Justin said. He was already on his feet. “You up for it?” he asked me.

All I needed was the edge in his eyes. It was like a spark plug at the end of a fuse. But more than anything, I wanted to prove Scott wrong. I wasn’t sure which was more fulfilling—succeeding or proving people wrong.

I stared down at the two drives, lying patiently on the table. I knew it wasn’t time to think, it was time to move.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Chapter Seventeen

Justin, Jax, Scott, and I stood in a tree graveyard beyond the electric fence looking up at the gated enclosure of the Salem Detention Center. Compared with the boring beige sky-rise of the LADC, where I served for six months, the Salem center had the architectural design of an ancient brick colonial estate. An ornamental tower stood at its center, bold and intimidating, as if it had eyes constantly viewing the commodious grounds. Rusted iron crests clung to the borders of boarded-up windows.

We stood a hundred yards away in the distance, staring at the old building with a mixture of intrigue and aversion.

“It used to be an insane asylum,” Scott told us. “Then they reopened it as a hospital, but the nurses all quit. They said the supply rooms were haunted.”

Jax nodded. “I heard they have an old autopsy room, and a crematorium full of cans of ashes from all the prisoners who died inside.”

The bricks were painted white, but the white had chipped to reveal shades of red underneath, making them look alive, with blood and bones, like a human body slowly decaying. Green ivy leaves wrapped themselves up the sides of the building like spindly arms and fingers. It was haunting and fascinating, but what disturbed me more was the idea that there were living people trapped inside.

“Are you sure it’s a DC?” I asked.

Justin pointed to one of the back wings of the building, where spaces for tall, arched windows had been removed and filled in with bricks and cement.

“I think they only use that section for the DC,” Justin said.

The sky was gray, and a light mist matted my hair against my face. The turf grass between us and the DC was pockmarked with puddles. Dead trees stood around us. Their gray limbs held spokes of straggly branches, drooping with green, stringy moss.

“There’s still a catacombs underneath,” Scott said. “That’s how they moved the inmates around, so people never had to see them.”

“This place is giving me the creeps,” I said, and zipped my coat up to my neck. “Has my dad moved yet?”

Scott shook his head. We had been standing at the south end of the DC for an hour; my father was on the north end, waiting on a side street one block from the entrance. From our angle we could see the entrance drive, all the way to the security gate.

“Look,” Jax said. We all glanced up just as a white van appeared on the entrance road. There were no windows in the back of the van, and the cab windows were tinted black.

“That’s not your dad,” Scott said. He pointed to the map. “But he’s moving.” We all hunched closer and looked at Scott’s screen, where the yellow pixelated image of my father moved along the map, toward the entrance road.

We crouched down behind a line of jagged tree stumps, watching from about fifty yards away. A black car suddenly sped up the road behind the van.

“Enter: Mr. Freeman,” Scott said with a smile. We all watched the road ahead of us.

The van pulled off to the side to let my father’s car pass, but it pulled over behind the van. Both cars idled for a few seconds, and I looked between Justin and Jax. Their faces were locked on the road. I felt my heart drum in my chest.

Two men got out of the van, and a third swung open the back door and jumped down. My dad calmly got out of the passenger side of the car, wearing his usual black business coat and pants. His driver got out as well; he was twice as thick around as my father. Even from fifty yards away his bulky chest was intimidating. It made me feel better.

“Are they armed?” I asked.

Justin and Scott used a binocular function on their phones to stare up the road. “I don’t see anything,” Justin said.

My heart was dribbling against my ribs. I peered at the van as if I could see through the metal walls. “Do you think they’re taking students inside?”

“It looks pretty casual,” Scott said. “It’s probably just a delivery truck.” He pulled his phone back and started typing. “I’ll do a search for the license plate and see if anything comes up,” he said.

I backed up a step. My dad didn’t do casual conversations. He wouldn’t be wasting his time out here to meet with equipment drivers.

The van driver led my dad’s escort inside the back of the van. I swallowed as he stepped inside.

“Let’s go down there,” I said. I looked between Justin and Jax. “Something isn’t right.” Jax nodded and started to follow me, but Scott grabbed my arm and held me back.

“They’re just inspecting it,” Scott said. “We’re here to watch your dad, not help him. We don’t know if he’s worth helping yet.”

I was about to argue when two of the men grabbed my dad and shoved him away from the van. The third man jumped out of the back and slammed the doors closed before my dad’s driver could get out. They all ran for the ditch.

“Dad!” I screamed. I hurdled broken tree stumps and sprinted along the fence toward the entrance drive. I could hear the electric buzzing current as I ran, but my heartbeat was even louder.

“Maddie!” Justin yelled behind me. Just then a succession of explosions ripped the van apart, blowing the roof off with an orange gust of flames. The flames curled and billowed into a cloud of neon orange fire. A black brume of smoke hung in the air and floated for a beautiful, horrible moment before it collapsed with a sigh and fell to the ground.

I stopped, hunching down and covering my face from the hot gust of wind shooting off the explosion.

The smoke cleared and men scuffled to their feet. My dad was getting up off the ground behind his car, where he had dived in time to avoid the explosion.

“Dad!” I shouted again. Justin and Jax caught up with me, and we sprinted down to the wreck. Puddles of water kicked up around us as we splashed through the marshy turf field.

My dad was trying to move around his car to get to the burning van, but one of the men kicked him in the ribs, knocking him backwards against the trunk. His head smacked against the car, and he tumbled off the side to the ground. Justin stopped running long enough to fire a shot, and the man who’d kicked my father fell to his knees and toppled onto the ground next to him.

My feet were soaking wet and as heavy as weights, but I trudged as fast as I could.

The other men raised guns in our direction. Justin picked one of them off, while the other stumbled toward my father, who was pulling himself off the ground. Justin was moving faster than I was now.

The driver aimed a gun at my dad, but Justin shot and I saw the gun fly out of the man’s hand. Justin shot again and the man fell flat on his back, his arms stretched out from his sides.

We tumbled down to the pavement, and I caught my dad’s arm.

“Dad,” I said. He looked at me with wide eyes, glistening with shock. He looked ahead at the burning van. It crackled and popped with life. The metal frame cooked and singed and squeaked, melting in the heat like a steel skeleton.

“Dad, we need to move, now,” I said, and pulled him away.

“Do you have keys?” Justin asked my dad, pointing to his car.

“In the ignition,” he said slowly, his eyes captured by the flames.

“I’m sorry about your friend, but we need to get out of here,” Justin told him. He looked at the burning van. “Scott,” Justin said into his phone, “come down here and see what you can find. And send some backup. We’ll find the nearest boat launch.” He opened the driver’s door of the car.

“Let’s go!” Justin shouted.

I climbed into the back of the car, shoving my dad inside with me. Jax sat in the passenger seat next to Justin. Justin turned the car around and tore down the pavement, burning the tires against the asphalt and kicking up loose rocks.

My dad blinked out of his daze and started to register what was happening. “What are you doing here, Maddie?” he asked.

I held up my wrist. “You told me it was a twin signal,” I said. “Are you honestly surprised?” Before he could answer, I kept going. “Why have you been lying to me? Even Mom?” My entire body was shaking. I had so many reasons to hate my father, but I was still shaking with fear from coming so close to losing him.

“I got a tip that Vaughn was using trash labs to make drugs for the DCs,” my dad said. “We’ve been investigating. I couldn’t tell your mother. I couldn’t tell anyone.”

“Why? Why can’t you just tell us what you’re planning?”

“It’s not that easy,” he said. “I’m trying to keep you all innocent from this.”

Justin peeled around the corner, and I grabbed the side handle to avoid smashing into the window.

“Sorry,” Justin said.

“You’ve been working with Richard, haven’t you? You’ve been letting this happen?”

“No, Maddie. I swear my life on it.” He looked at me and his dark eyes were pleading. Something inside of them let go. A tight grip finally loosened. “I’ve been fighting digital school since the day it became a national law. I’ve been on your side this entire time.”

Chapter Eighteen

“What?” I shouted over the noise of the engine. Justin was driving 90 mph down the city roads, and we kicked up a shower of dust as the car skidded around a sharp corner. My dad grabbed hold of the seat belt across his chest.

“Can you please slow down, Justin?” he shouted.

“I’d love to. After we lose this guy,” Justin said, and pointed his thumb at the back window. I looked around and saw another van down the block.

For a second, Justin’s eyes locked on my dad’s in the rearview mirror. They wore identical stubborn expressions. My dad’s features softened and his mouth cracked into a smile.

“You never give up, do you?” he asked Justin.

Justin didn’t have to respond. The answer was obvious as he peeled around another corner. Jax was quiet and stared straight ahead, probably wishing he’d never met me.

“You’re just like your parents,” my father told Justin. “Your dad, especially.”

Justin’s mouth tightened and he glared at my dad in the mirror. “Like you would know,” he shot back, but then his shoulders stiffened, like he was piecing something together.

“You remind me a lot of your dad. You’re even more determined than he was.”

“You know my dad,” Justin said. It wasn’t a question.

My father nodded. “Best man at his wedding.”

Justin’s face hardened. His fingers were white around the steering wheel.

“College roommates in Arizona. That’s how we met. There was a group of us that hung out. We called ourselves the McMinns. It was the pub we drank at. Your father and I were both set on changing the world, so you could say we had a lot in common.”

I looked from one of them to the other.

“And Mom?” I asked.

“She and Elaine used to be best friends. They used to garden together, hike, camp. Then we had kids and it got tougher.” My dad looked at Justin. “I remember when you fell into a campfire when you were little, Justin. Your dad told me about it. He said you were fireproof.”

My stomach rolled. I felt nauseous, both from Justin’s driving and from the truth finally rushing at me, overflowing the banks of my mind. Justin stared at my dad in the rearview mirror.

“You have an interesting way of treating your best friends,” he said, and my dad glared back at him.

“How’s that?” my dad asked. “By helping them escape from jail? By personally relocating them to Eden, so they wouldn’t be executed? That’s what I did, Justin.”

“Why didn’t my parents say anything?” he asked.

“I told them not to,” my dad said. “For my protection and theirs.”

“Wait a second. You’ve been on our side the entire time?” I asked.

My dad nodded. Justin started to slow down when we turned onto a gravel road following the twisting banks of the Willamette River. I looked behind us and the van was gone.

“I changed my mind about a year after I started DS. I could already see where it was going.”

“Then why did you let it happen?” I asked.

“I needed money to fund it, and Richard Vaughn was the only sponsor at the time. So he took control of it. I never intended it to become a national law. I just wanted it to be a choice, from the very beginning, a safe alternative. But people were so terrified after M28, it just snowballed. People thought it was some kind of a cure.”

“But you let it happen,” Justin repeated.

My dad frowned. “I knew the only way to fight it would be to stay at the top. That was the only way I could keep any kind of control.”

“How have you been fighting it?” I asked him.

He looked directly at me. “I’ve had help. Haven’t you ever wondered why your mom and I differ so much on the digital system? She’s always encouraged you to question it. We meant to encourage you, Maddie. We always have. But I never could. I could never say those words to you. I’ve been just as trapped as you.”

“Wait, you’re saying this whole time you’ve agreed with Mom?” The outside world was becoming a blur. The rocky landscape blended into the gray river as too many thoughts crammed my vision.

“I’m saying DS has gone too far. And I’ve known that for a long time, but I’ve become powerless to stop it. A couple of years ago it occurred to me that one person might be able to shut it down. That was you. I let you meet Justin last year. I allowed him to find you. I wanted you two to meet. I knew you’d join his side.”

I shook my head as this all filtered in. “So, you’ve been using me?” My voice rose into a shout. “If you hate DS so much, why don’t you just end it?”

“I can’t, not after it became a law,” he said. “The only way I can bring down DS is to stay in power until it’s voted on again. If I had stepped down, or been fired, Richard would have replaced me with someone he could control, and then I would have had no way to intervene. I needed to stay in this seat for the national vote. It’s the only chance I have at shutting DS down.”

My mind was spinning. “All those things you said to me. You put me down for years. You told me I was wrong.”

His eyes fell sympathetically. “I’m sorry, Maddie. I had to say those things.”

“Why?”

“All of our wall screens were tapped. Ever since you broke the law, not only are you screened, but so am I. All of my sites have been tapped. All of our phone lines are bugged. Our home has been screened since you were fifteen. They would have known. Even if I told you in secret, I couldn’t risk the chance that it would slip out.”

I narrowed my eyes. “So instead you’ve been lying this whole time?” I rubbed my hands over my face. Too many thoughts were punching my brain. Relief, anger, betrayal, hope. They all mixed and mashed and I couldn’t think straight.

“You could have let me in on this. And Mom.”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“Protect us? By hiding everything? We’re supposed to worry about you. We’re your family. Isn’t that what a family is for? To tell one another, to worry for one another, or be happy for one another? To be there for one another?”

“I couldn’t take that risk. The only way I could protect you and your mother was to keep both of you ignorant. That way if anyone ever questioned you, you would never have to lie.”

“You willingly let me go into a detention center! I was almost killed.”

“I tried to keep you out,” my dad snapped back. “The first time I helped notify your team that you were arrested. That’s why you were intercepted. The second time the police were already involved. I couldn’t do anything at that point. I tried to schedule meetings with Richard, and when he refused, I showed up unannounced. And you know how well that worked out.”

I thought about this. I realized maybe he was right. Maybe all this time, instead of pushing me away, he was just pushing me down a different path.

“You were the only person willing to stand up to me, Madeline,” he said. “You’re just as stubborn as I am. I realized you might be the only person strong enough to help me bring down DS.”

A van suddenly skidded down the hill after us and nearly T-boned the back of the car. Justin gunned the engine. The van kicked up a cloud of dust and rocks as it braked behind us, and then it was on our tail again. Its engine roared, and the fender caught our bumper and shoved all of us forward.

There was nowhere for Justin to swerve. The road dipped with potholes and the car rocked over them, sending our heads into the roof. I held on to the seat in front of me, and my dad tried to keep himself steady with one arm pressed against the door.

The van tried to maneuver around us, but the road was too narrow. Its grille hit our fender again, and Justin shouted orders into his earpod for someone to give him directions to the nearest boat launch.

The road dipped closer to the river, and I looked down at the water next to us, separated only by a ledge of rocks. When the dirt road widened a few feet, the van took its chance and raced forward, clipping the back edge of our car, sending us spinning off the road. A dirt incline lifted the car off the ground.

In my next two breaths this is what I felt: Sailing over a bed of rocks. Flying into dark blue waves. A giant shove. A wall of water.

Chapter Nineteen

We all slammed forward and back against the seat as the car settled into the river. The current caught the front tires and pulled the car downstream.

I blinked with shock for the first second. My hand grabbed for the door handle and pulled, but nothing happened.

“Unlock the doors!” I shouted as water started to seep through the floorboards.

My dad pushed against his door helplessly.

“They’re unlocked!” Justin shouted.

I tried again. “They won’t open,” I said.

“The water pressure’s too strong,” Jax said, his voice scratchy.

“Can we shoot through the windows?” I asked.

“Bulletproof,” Justin said.

The water crawled around my feet in rippling waves that looked like snakes coiling. It bubbled and creaked its way in. Its cold mouth devoured my ankles and greedily clawed up my calves.

I looked at Justin. “Can’t this car fly or self-destruct or something?” I pleaded.

“If you don’t panic, we can do this,” Jax said.

Don’t panic. Funny. The nose of the car was being pulled down, and the water climbed up to our knees.

“Can you swim?” Jax asked me, and I shook my head. “Can you?” he asked my dad.

My dad seemed to be in shock, staring straight ahead at the water that was starting to come over the windshield. He offered a shaky nod.

“We can’t open these doors—there’s too much pressure. We have to wait until the car is completely submerged,” Jax said, and Justin nodded.

“Until the pressure on the inside is equal to the pressure on the outside?” I asked.

“Right. Then the doors should open,” Justin said.

“Should,” I whispered.

“They will,” Jax said.

I gasped with pain as the freezing water sloshed over my waist. My feet were already numb. I pushed my hand against the glass window, hoping it would snap free. I was already panicking.

“Is this a guess in physics or a promise?” I asked.

“I promise,” Jax said. He looked over his shoulder at me. “We might be underwater for a minute. Just hold your breath. The worst thing you can do is panic. Keep the air in your lungs as long as you can.”

I gasped for air as the water hit my chest, stunning my body, so cold it felt like a thousand stings. The front windshield was completely underwater. Murky darkness surrounded us, as if a giant water serpent was swallowing us whole. The serpent jostled us, batting us back and forth like a toy.

I was already struggling to breathe. My lips were shaking. I wanted to punch my way out. I pressed my fist into the window.

“Try to stay calm,” Justin said, his own voice wavering. He turned back to make sure my dad was listening. “We’re going to be fine. When we get out of the car, there’s a current. Don’t try to swim against it—you’ll just exhaust yourself. Let it take you downstream, and slowly make your way over to the edge. Jax, when you get out, grab Maddie.” Justin turned to me. “Let him pull you. If you struggle, it’s going to be a lot more work for both of you.”

The water was almost up to our necks now. The car was completely submerged, and water was seeping through the top of the windshield.

I tried the handle again and nothing happened.

The car started to rotate.

“Deep breaths,” Justin said. “Fill your lungs. Maddie—” Justin had to cut himself off as the water filled the front of the car above his head.

The water was spilling over my chin, teasing the corners of my mouth. I said a silent prayer and tried the door, but it was still unyielding.

I held my neck up for the last few inches of air in the car, gulping desperately. My dad’s hand found mine underwater, and he held it tight. My numb fingers could barely respond.

“We can do this,” he whispered. His lips were purple and they trembled when he spoke.

Thoughts spun through my head, but mostly I was thinking about air. How limited it was. How much I took it for granted.

“I’m so sorry for everything, Maddie,” he said. “You know how much I love you, and Mom and Joe? Don’t you?”

He held my eyes, waiting for an answer, as if his life depended on it. My body was going into shock from the cold. My breaths were short and forced. All I could offer was a shaky nod.

The water swallowed up the last inch of air, and my dad pushed against the door. I could sense his desperation. I opened my eyes and everything was grayish blue. The light above was floating and fleeing away. Air bubbles poured out of my dad’s nose, and I knew he had panicked. He wrestled with the door and let go of my hand to push harder, but nothing was happening. It had probably been five seconds, but it felt like minutes. My lungs started to burn, demanding to exhale, but I knew as soon as I let the air out, the urge to inhale would be even more painful. I wanted to scream. The dark, freezing, claustrophobic space was starting to break me down. I pierced my lips together and held on. My dad’s movements were slowing down. I knew we had only seconds.

I pushed all the weight of my body into the car door. It didn’t budge. I started to cry through the pain, and when I opened my mouth to scream for help, all it did was let every precious molecule of oxygen escape out of my lungs. With one last prayer I pushed again, jabbing my shoulder into the door and groaning through the pain to inhale. I felt the door release from its jamb and I fought harder. I started to inhale and water filled my throat. I gagged it out, only to inhale more. I fought and punched but all I was fighting was water. I tried to grab it, cling to it, but it passed through my fingers like I was fighting a ghost. The pressure on my chest made it ache, as if the car were on top of me, crushing me. I needed to breathe. I clawed the water, searching for air.

I wished I would have told Justin I loved him one last time. I wished I would have told my dad.

I angrily pushed against the door. The air, the precious air, was only a few feet above me, taunting me. I could see sunlight wavering through like a hand extending down that I couldn’t reach.

The door suddenly swung open, and an arm reached out for me through the cloudy water. Jax grabbed me around the waist, and we kicked to the surface. When our faces hit the ceiling of air above us, we both gasped for oxygen. I spit mouthfuls of water, pushing it out from deep in my chest. My lungs screamed for more air, and I gulped, gagging out the water clogging my nose and throat. Jax pulled his arm across my chest and latched it around my waist. I lay back on his shoulder and tried to act like a buoy in the water, but I felt myself sinking and it made me panic. I kicked my legs and Jax tried to hold me, but I dragged both of us underneath the water. Jax shouted as he fought to steady me.

“I’ve got you,” he said. “Just lean into me.” We were both gagging and coughing on the water. We could still drown if we didn’t get to the bank.

I forced my legs to settle, and he grabbed my waist again. I leaned on him like a raft as he paddled with one arm to move us slowly toward the bank. I scanned the water and saw Justin ahead of us, swimming for the edge.

Jax pushed me to the bank and his head slipped underwater as he lifted me up. I climbed up his back and shoulders, and he pushed my legs up, over the rocky boulders. I grabbed his hand and helped pull him up next to me.

My eyes tore through the landscape searching for my father. In the distance I could see the black roof of the car, like a shiny seal’s back, hovering on the surface of the water, and my dad’s white hand clung to the edge of it. His head was bobbing over the waves.

Before I yelled out, Justin dived in after him. Jax and I climbed the rock ledge, using weeds and boulders as hand- and footholds until we reached a sandy dirt trail. I ran downstream, my eyes trained on my dad.

“Dad, hold on!” I shouted as Justin was catching up to the car. My dad was struggling to hold his head above the water.

Justin was still twenty feet away when my dad’s head fell completely under the current. I gasped, imagining that was the last image of my father, this desperate sinking. Justin dived underwater and seconds ticked by. They were both gone and I was crying.

I started to jump down to the river, but Jax caught me and held me back. I fought him, and he pulled my arms tighter, closer to him, to make me stay on the trail. I cried and punched his chest as he tried to hold me, his arms pinning mine. I buried my head in his shirt, which was ripped from getting out of the car.

I heard shouts and looked up to see Justin struggling to lift my dad’s head out of the water. He was easing their way toward the bank on the other side of the river. My dad hung limply at Justin’s side as he paddled his way across the current, trying to move with it at the same time to save his energy. I could see my dad coughing, his lips moving as he tried to expel the water filling his lungs.

I sprinted along with them, practically leaping, following the current until they were safe on the opposite bank. I bent over, panting with relief. I waved across the river at Dad and Justin, who sprawled on the shoreline a hundred yards away.

I was soaking wet and should have been freezing cold, but I had enough adrenaline in my system to numb out any pain. I looked at Jax; his lips were purple from the cold water. We both smiled with a mixture of shock and relief.

I peeled off my dripping-wet coat and did my best to wring out my wet T-shirt.

“Are you all right?” Jax asked me, and I nodded. He looked downstream, but the car was out of sight.

“DS physics paid off. My theory was right,” he said, and blew out a sigh.

“Your theory? You mean you weren’t sure?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Technically it made sense,” he noted.

I frowned. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to punch Jax or hug him. His being half naked, his shirt hanging off one shoulder and ripped along his chest, exposing muscles that clearly weren’t formed from painting all day, would have made the hugging option awkward.

Across the river, Justin and my dad were bent over in the dirt, coughing and getting their breath back. I heard an engine in the distance, and my back tensed. I looked at Justin and watched for a signal to run, but he waved at the boat as it crawled upstream. It looked like an old ferryboat, large enough to haul a hundred people. Justin signaled for the driver to stop.

“I don’t think he can dock here,” Jax said. “Not with a boat that size.” We watched as the driver unlatched a Jet Ski tied to the rear of the boat. He jumped on and drove over to the shore. Justin signaled for my dad to go first. I watched my dad grab the driver’s arm and climb onto the back seat of the Jet Ski.

The sun peered through the clouds, and it felt like a warm blanket against my skin. It helped to thaw out my numb fingers. I sat down on the sandy trail next to Jax and felt the warm sand nestle between my fingers.

“Are you sorry you agreed to help me?” I asked him. He looked over at me, his black eyes fixed on mine. Goose bumps rose over his arms.

“And miss this? You kidding?” he asked, and I smiled.

“Thanks,” I said.

He looked out at the river. “For having so much water in your personality, you’re lousy at swimming in it,” he joked, but my smile faded. How did he know me that well? I didn’t have any online profiles anymore. There was no way to research my likes, interests, groups, contacts, pictures, social sites. I never updated my status or changed my photo billboard. I choose carefully who I let into my life. I want people to have permission to know me, not unlimited constant access to me. It took me almost a year to figure out Justin, to chisel through deeply guarded layers. Isn’t it supposed to take that long with everyone?

I watched my dad and the driver turn back to the boat. The hairs on my arm suddenly spiked, and my back arched as I looked around. I heard movement in the shrubs behind us, and Jax heard it as well. He was already on his feet.

I snapped my head around as two men hurdled rocks and grass toward us. They were dressed all in black, like moving shadows.

Jax helped pull me up and I staggered to my feet, then we sprinted down the side of the trail. One of the men caught up to us and reached out for me, but Jax grabbed his arm and twisted it back.

“Run,” Jax told me.

The second man was on top of us, and before Jax could block him, his fist smashed against Jax’s face with a snapping crack. I lunged at him, but the second man grabbed my arms and held me back. Both men kicked Jax in the ribs, knocking the air out of him and sending him to his knees. There was so much blood on his face, I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It dripped and pooled on the sandy ground beneath him.

“Stop!” I screamed.

An engine roared and I looked over to see the Jet Ski headed our way. In the next instant the man holding me slapped handcuffs over my wrists.

They handcuffed Jax and pulled him off the ground. He used his forearm to wipe off the blood running over his lips. I stared helplessly at the man holding him.

“You want to end up like him, or cooperate and get in the van?” he sneered.

They tugged us over the weeds and up a short hill. I looked over my shoulder and could see the Jet Ski reaching the edge of the river. Justin was in the water, swimming in our direction, fighting the strong current.

At the top of the hill the men opened the back door of a windowless gray van parked in the weeds. They quickly searched us, pulling out flipscreens and devices and throwing them into a black bag. One of the men pulled a switchblade out of Jax’s pocket. He turned the knife in his hand for a second, admiring the old weapon. He pocketed it and threw the bag into the driver’s seat.

The man holding me flipped me around to face the van. He kicked my legs apart while he scanned my thighs, arms, back, and waist.

He shoved me forward and I stumbled into the van. I pulled my legs back before they slammed my feet in the door. The van’s engine roared and the tires pushed off the gravel road. I slid into the metal door as we took off.

Jax grabbed my hands and pulled me next to him on the floor. Air shafts in the sides of the cargo van let in enough light so that I could see his outline.

“Are you all right?” I asked him.

“I’ll feel better when my nose is realigned,” he said.

“Jax—”

“I’m fine.”

He braced himself against the door, and I squeezed in between him and a metal storage shelf. I held on to the side of the shelf, fighting to stay in place as the van swerved and dipped.

“They took everything,” I said. “We don’t have a way to contact anyone.”

My eyes were adjusting. I looked over at Jax to see that his eyes were closed. He was breathing slowly. I couldn’t tell if he was in pain or concentrating.

He leaned his head back against the van wall and cupped his fingers over the bridge of his nose; his eyes tightened in a wince. He pressed his nose between his thumbs and jerked them to the side and I heard a pop. I winced and put my hand over my own nose, feeling a short burst of pain.

He leaned back and laughed. “So much better,” he said.

I couldn’t believe he was laughing.

“This is bad, isn’t it?” I whispered.

“I’ve been in better situations.”

“Any brilliant plans?” I asked.

“Always,” Jax said.

Chapter Twenty

The van came to a stop and the engine cut out. We were both quiet as we listened for a hint as to our new surroundings. All I could hear were Jax’s deep, steady breaths. The doors flew open and white light flooded in, blinding us. I threw my arm over my eyes, but a hand grabbed me and yanked me out of the van.

“We meet again.” Vaughn’s unmistakable voice was close to my ear. “If you want to live, you better cooperate this time.”

I was half running, half tripping next to Vaughn as he hurriedly pulled me along. I looked around at blinking ground lights and realized we were at a small airport. We were crossing a tarmac heading toward a plane parked on the runway. The roar of the engine was so loud, it vibrated inside my ears. I looked around for anyone, but all I saw was a cement runway baking under the sunshine and a couple of abandoned planes parked next to white, windowless garages. I looked behind me to see Jax walking alongside one of the men who’d kidnapped us. He was staring ahead at the plane.

My damp T-shirt and jeans swatted my skin in the breeze.

Vaughn hoisted me onto a ramp at the back of the plane, and I climbed through the hatch into the small space. There were only four seats in the plane; it wasn’t much larger than the back of the van. If the interior had ever had paneling, it looked like it had been ripped off, exposing cables and wires. I sat down on a leather seat and Jax sat a few feet away. We were separated by a few cables hanging from the ceiling. Vaughn’s guard buckled us both in, fumbling with the straps.

I glanced out a small, circular window across from me and looked for a car in the distance. I willed my eyes to see something, but the only movement I saw was dust swirling on the runway.

I looked over at Jax, but he didn’t catch my eye. His eyes were roaming around the plane, absorbing the inside, like he was analyzing its design. Vaughn sat down across from me and studied me with icy blue eyes.

“I wanted to be your personal escort this time,” Vaughn said. “Make sure you don’t slip through my fingers.”

“I’m honored,” I mumbled back.

Jax watched quietly as the ramp slowly ascended and the latch closed behind us. He clocked every movement of the guard and Vaughn, memorizing their actions like he was filing them away. I wondered what he was seeing. All I could see was a trap.

The guard picked up a tan phone in the wall next to him. “We’re clear,” he said, and hung up.

The plane accelerated down the runway. Vaughn crossed his legs and rested his long fingers over his knees. A broad smile stretched across his face. The friction of the tires speeding along the runway gave way to a smooth air stream as we lifted off the ground. I looked out the window one last time at a barren airport below. No one was going to rescue us.

“Why are you doing this?” I shouted over the engine. “You lost, Vaughn, don’t you get it? You lost three months ago when we discovered you’re drugging students. Now we know you’re running trash labs.”

“It’s not over yet, Ms. Freeman,” he said.

I smirked. “You’re going to be arrested the second this plane touches the ground.”

He smiled, ignoring my threat. “I’ve signed you up for a new study. I’ve been working on a new drug for years. If I can crack your impenetrable mind, it should work on anyone.”

I glanced at Jax and his eyes were staring at Vaughn. His mouth was set in a straight line.

“It seems plugging memories into kids’ minds can go only so far. But now I can also erase thoughts. I can reprogram your mind.”

“Have you ever heard of the term ‘unethical’?” Jax cut in.

Vaughn narrowed his eyes. “Ethics is the enemy of discovery. What you call ethics, I call the rape of science.”

“How is this drug going to keep you out of jail?” I asked.

“Once I get it inside all the DCs, I’ll have about twelve thousand kids testifying in my favor. It won’t stack up to what one detention center is claiming, whose students were freed and obviously corrupted by DS Dropout radicals. No one trusts your side, Ms. Freeman. Everyone trusts mine.”

“It will never work,” I said.

Vaughn laughed. “It’s no matter. In a couple of days, both of you will be testifying in my favor.”

“If you’re not caught sooner,” Jax warned him.

“That’s not going to happen,” Vaughn said confidently. “The government is on my side. Not yours.”

“Unless Justin tracks you down first,” I said.

“What makes you think there won’t be fifty people waiting for us the second this plane touches down?” Jax said.

Vaughn glanced at the guard.

“You did scan them?” he asked.

The guard’s mouth fell open. “You said to scan the girl. I just searched him,” he said. “We were a little rushed back there. You think they’re all being tracked?”

I narrowed my eyes and pretended to be irritated with Jax. “Why are you telling them now?” I asked him.

Vaughn looked back and forth between us, trying to call our bluff. “Scan him,” Vaughn said. “If we do find a skin tracker, he’s easy to dispose of.” He rested his hand on the lever that opened the plane hatch.

The guard reached up and pressed a red button over his head, to unlock his seat buckle. He pulled a gun from his holster, holding it in one hand and a scanner in the other. He straightened up to walk over to us, and his head nearly grazed the ceiling of the plane. His head knocked into a cable, and when he looked away for a second, Jax swung his arms above his head and punched the red security lock over his seat.

I sucked in a deep breath. If his aim wasn’t perfect, we were both dead.

Jax’s seat belt snapped off with a click, and he slipped out of the straps in one fluid motion. He stretched his legs out, knocking the guard off his feet onto the floor. The gun flew out of his hand and Jax caught it and aimed it at Vaughn, just as Vaughn was fumbling for his own. The shot reached Vaughn’s neck, and the engine noise muffled the sound of the tranquilizer bullet. Before the guard could catch his footing, Jax shot the gun into his back. He slumped to the floor at our feet.

I blinked down at the guard and over at Vaughn. Jax was already on the floor, searching the guard, and unclipped a silver tube from his hip. He pressed the laser over my handcuffs, and they released. He handed it to me and I released his handcuffs. He slammed his hand into the red button over my seat to unfasten my belt, and I slid off the straps. He reached into the guard’s front pocket and pulled out a phone, as well as his knife the guard had stolen. Jax pocketed the knife and turned on the guard’s phone and started to type a message. Then he stalled.

“Crap almighty. I don’t know anyone’s phone number,” he said. He looked at me and managed a pathetic laugh.

“Send a message to my mom,” I offered. “She’ll know how to contact my dad.” I gave Jax her number, and he typed in a message and slid the phone behind a mess of cables. He looked at a digital screen in the wall that showed our altitude. We were at 11,000 feet.

“Help me move these guys,” he said.

Jax grabbed the guard’s arms and I picked up his legs, and we lifted his heavy mass into a seat; Jax buckled him in, his hands moving easily, as if he had done this a thousand times. We did the same with Vaughn.

“Why bother buckling them in?” I asked.

“You’ll see,” he said.

Without hesitating, he grabbed a harness off the wall, where it hung close to the hatch entrance. He slipped it over his back and fastened straps around his legs, shoulders, and chest. He looked over at me. A small smile grew on his face.

“Oh, no,” I mumbled. I instantly knew where he got his painting inspiration from.

“You wanted me to have a brilliant plan,” he said, and motioned for me to come over. I stepped closer so that I stood a few inches away from him. Dried blood was smeared around his nose and mouth.

“We contacted my mom,” I said, stalling. “And my dad can still track me. I’m sure they’ll send help.”

“Do you really want to wait around and find out?”

I looked over at Vaughn. He managed to snarl even in his sleep.

I pressed my lips together.

Jax set his hands on my hips to turn me around. He slipped black straps around my shoulders and clipped straps across my chest. His hands worked fast. He buckled me in and tightened the straps until I could feel his chest rising and sinking against my back.

“Trust me,” he said. “I’ve done this a hundred times.” He handed me a pair of goggles from a hook on the wall where the holster had been, and I pulled them on.

“It’s going to get windy,” he warned me. “And cold.”

I swallowed. “We don’t need oxygen this high up?” I really wasn’t in the mood to be oxygen-deprived twice in one hour.

“We’ll be okay,” Jax said.

He pressed an emergency latch in the door ramp, and a light indicated that it was locked. Jax opened his switchblade and fumbled with a few wires behind the latch. He wrapped his hand around a tight bundle of green cords and slit the knife through. The hatch cracked open and a rush of wind would have blown us over if Jax hadn’t been holding on to a metal handrail in the ceiling.

I leaned forward and looked over the edge of the hatch. All I could see was sky.

Chapter Twenty-one

“Don’t look down!” Jax shouted. The wind pressed against my goggles and whipped my hair across my face.

“But—”

“Keep your arms at your sides when we jump.”

I clenched my shaking fists. The plane turned sharply and shoved us closer to the open hatch. I screamed and clung to a cable.

“Ready?” he shouted, and we scooted closer to the edge.

“No,” I said honestly, and pulled at the straps around my chest, praying they would hold. My mind told me this was nuts. My heart, surprisingly, coaxed me forward.

“Jump like Superman. Now!” We rolled forward off the side of the plane and fell into the blowing sky.

“Oh, shi—”

My voice was cut off by the tunnel of wind rushing into my mouth—about 150-mph wind, blowing straight down my throat. I looked back at the door of the white plane, quickly growing distant behind us. I tried to hold my hands out and pull it back.

My body rotated in the air and we sailed down, our heads pointed at the ground. My arms instinctively flew out to my sides as I embraced the sky. She was enormous. She was heavy and forceful and whipped around me. She roared in my ears like a lion, but she tasted sweet.

I opened my eyes and could see a soft green expanse underneath me.

“You’ll feel a jolt,” Jax warned me, and I was disappointed. It felt like we’d been falling only a few seconds. “Get ready!” he yelled, and the parachute opened with a loud snap as it caught the air. My body jerked back, and for an instant we were suspended in the air, our bodies caught in a still point. I could feel my blood pumping, I could feel the oxygen exploding through my lungs. I felt like I had sprouted wings, like for the first time in my life there were no limitations, no cages. I could understand how atoms must feel when they divide. The world was spread out for miles in every direction, and I was in the center. Everything inside that moment was completely perfect.

We started to fall again, and the chute above us was crinkled as it fought against the wind.

“Crap,” Jax mumbled behind me. He was trying to adjust the straps suspended above us. “Seriously?” he said.

“Now what?”

I glanced above us and saw that the parachute was caving in at the nose.

“The chute didn’t open right,” he said. We gained speed again as the neon orange parachute twisted around cords.

I looked down at the ground, and in that moment, for some reason, I wasn’t scared. Seeing the world so calm and peaceful, instead of the chaotic mess it was at the surface, wouldn’t be the worst way to die.

“I’m cutting off this chute,” he said. “We have a reserve. We’re going to free fall for a couple more seconds, but we’ll be fine, okay?”

I nodded. Like I had a say in this?

He cut off the twisted chute, and immediately our arms reached out to catch the air. Humans have a flying instinct. I blinked down at the ground, rushing toward us. It was no longer a soft, velvet green blanket. It was jagged with the sharp edges of buildings and hard lines of cement.

It was taking too long. I felt Jax fumbling behind me. I looked down, past the tips of my shoes, and realized there was nothing between my body and the ground but skin. Just as I was about to scream, I was jolted back again, and caught in a slow grasp, as if a giant hand were pulling me back.

The ground was coming fast.

“It’s going to be a hard landing,” he said.

He maneuvered the parachute back and forth, trying to buy us time, and our progress slowed. The mosaic chips of houses and dots of trains and miniature trees looked like a plastic model of a city. Jax aimed our landing at a turf field.

I kicked my legs out when we hit the ground and tried to stay on my feet, but the solid earth, so hard and unforgiving compared with the air, tripped me and knocked me over and I managed to take both of us down. We rolled to a stop, kicking up chunks of plastic turf and tangling the chute around us.

I tried to tug off the chute holding us hostage. Jax’s arm was pinned under my shoulder, and he wriggled it free. My leg was trapped underneath his. We formed an odd human pretzel. He rolled off me so we could both sit up. His long legs straddled my hips, and he unclipped our harnesses. He backed away and I looked up at the translucent sky, amazed I had just fallen through her cold arms. I lay on my back, waiting for my heart to steady and my breathing to settle.

“Nice landing,” I said.

“More like nice collision,” he said. “Not bad for your first jump,” he added, critiquing me as if I knew what I was doing.

“‘Jump like Superman’?” I looked over at Jax. “That was my training?”

He laughed. Then he started to really laugh, deep from his stomach, so his shoulders shook, and I was laughing so hard that tears seeped through the corners of my eyes. It was a well-earned laugh of relief.

“You could have at least used a modern-day reference,” I said. “Superman’s ancient. Didn’t they kill him off a long time ago?”

Jax creased his forehead. He looked insulted. “He always comes back. He’s invincible. He’s the greatest superhero ever created,” he said. He stood up and unclipped the chute, which was splayed out around us, its neon orange as obvious as a smoke signal in indicating our location. He balled it up and stuffed it inside the pack. The tattered remains of his T-shirt blew in the wind.

I pulled off the harness and rubbed my shoulders where the straps had dug into my skin. “Superman’s all right,” I said.

“All right?” Jax repeated. He swung the pack over his shoulder and stared at me.

“He wears knee-high red boots and blue tights,” I said. “It’s not my idea of a warrior.”

“He doesn’t wear tights. He wears spandex. It reduces drag so he’s more aerodynamic.”

“Do you think he shaves his legs, too?” I asked.

Jax shook his head with disbelief. “I can’t believe you’re cutting him down.” He raised his fingers as he listed traits. “He could emit solar heat from his eyes. He could topple buildings with his breath.” He threw up his arms. “The man could break the time barrier,” he said.

“Yeah, but he’s too perfect,” I argued. “It’s boring. His only weakness is a rare piece of rock? Give me a break. Even superheroes need flaws.”

“Like who?”

“Like Miss Martian,” I said.

Jax looked at me with a small, crooked smile on his face.

“You know who Miss Martian is?”

“Yes, because she’s the most amazing, most overlooked superhero,” I said. I picked myself up and dusted flakes of plastic grass off my clothes. I listed her amazing feats.

“She can read minds. She can turn invisible. She can fly. She can change her density and move through walls.”

“She’s green,” he informed me, as if I didn’t already know that fact. “And she’s a Martian. They’re easy to destroy. All you need is fire.”

I looked over at him. “Like I said, everyone needs a flaw.” I examined the barren remains of an old schoolyard ahead of us. A faded sign in the front said RIVERVIEW ELEMENTARY, even though there was no river in sight, just a dry open field. Our feet crunched over old, faded turf grass that looked like it hadn’t been sprayed in years. Blades of real grass poked through, like determined pioneers fighting for land rights. The playground next to the school was fenced in. Two sets of swings swayed lazily in the wind, and the metal chains clanked with a bored drawl.

I squinted up at the expansive blue sky, impressed by the feeling of falling and being held at the same time. I couldn’t see the white airplane.

“Do you think this will work?” I asked.

He shrugged. “They should be able to track the phone signal I sent to your mom,” Jax said. “I think we did the best we could, under the circumstances.”

“How long have you been flying?” I asked.

“Since forever,” Jax said. “My dad has a pilot license. I grew up in planes.”

I followed him across the field full of dry, spiky grass, amazed at how soft it had looked from the sky. I could see why people got a high from diving. The sky is an amazing teacher. You learn that joy can overcome fear. You learn that falling is only one motion, that you can propel yourself in any direction you want.

“How did you know the chute would open?” I asked Jax.

“It’s law for any of those cargo hatchbacks to have parachutes,” he said simply.

“You don’t worry about much, do you?”

He shook his head. “No. Biggest waste of time, with nothing to show for it.”

I nodded. I wished I had his discipline.

“Diving’s never scared me,” he said, and looked at the street ahead of us. I watched his profile. “Being on solid ground makes me more nervous half the time. If I die, falling like that, seeing everything so perfect for one last time, it wouldn’t be the worst way to go.”

I narrowed my eyes and looked away. I felt like our personalities were joined at some kind of an invisible seam.

We headed down a residential street, past silent houses that were eventually replaced by tall apartment buildings. The sun was setting behind a wall of rolling purple-gray clouds climbing over the western hills like thick smoke. Rain was coming.

I studied Jax, becoming more intrigued by him every minute we spent together. He was like a book, where each chapter picks up pace until you can’t put it down. That’s when you know you’ve made a friend—when you want to read more of his story.

“You know where we are,” I noted.

“I know it’s Eugene,” he said. “I recognized a few of the buildings from the air.”

I ran my tongue over my dry, chapped lips. I was dehydrated and starving. We needed to contact Justin. And find a shower. At least my clothes had managed to dry in the 150-mph blow dryer I had just experienced.

He pointed down the street. “I know somebody here who might be able to help us out.”

I watched him curiously. “How do you know what street we’re on?”

“I don’t,” Jax said. “But you can’t miss the building. It stands out, even from ten thousand feet.”

I looked where he was pointing, straight ahead; a couple of blocks away stood an old church. It was a Gothic style of architecture, with two gold spires towering into the sky, reflecting the fading sunlight like lanterns. Stained glass windows on either side of an arched doorway glowed yellow and gold.

As we walked I heard piano music. Keys chimed with light, simple notes. The breeze carried the music to us, followed by voices, children’s voices. The sound made me stop. I spun around in a circle, looking for the source of the music, and noticed windows cracked open in the congregation hall of the church. Shadows of figures moved inside.

“It’s real,” I said. Jax stood next to me on the sidewalk, at the edge of the churchyard. It sounded like a children’s music practice. Their voices were as light and high as bells chiming. I had never heard children sing before. The sound made something nostalgic pull at my heart.

“I thought churches had all turned virtual,” I said.

“They did, for a while,” Jax said. “After M28, people didn’t want to meet in big groups. But they’re picking up again.”

Ground lights guided a paved path to the entrance. It was unusual to see ground lights, to see a signal welcoming people inside. Usually people kept any sign of an entrance hidden, or gated.

I cut across the lawn and peeked inside one of the windows. About a dozen kids stood on a maroon-carpeted stage, and a young man sat behind the piano. Another man stood in front of the kids, leading the song. A handful of adults sat in the front pews, watching the kids practice. Some of the children held hands. Two of the boys had their arms wrapped around each other’s waists. A little girl ran around the stage, singing to the ceiling, a stuffed animal clasped in her hand.

I stared at the children, at their wide smiles, at the way they were all engaged in the song. My mind was two edges, one sharp and one soft. How had I never heard children sing out loud before? Why hadn’t I gotten to experience this? I’d been shut inside my entire life, separated from any contact. I was taught I shouldn’t hold hands with other kids, or wrap my arms around anyone.

Music lessons had all become virtual—even instruments were virtual. Textured strings and smooth keys and padded drums had all become an icon to click, a one-dimensional spot on a screen to press. Even these live voices had texture, the way sounds were pushed through throats and over tongues, the way they echoed and fell, like molecules.

It was both a relief and a deprivation to see what could be and what I had missed.

I sat next to Jax on a sidewalk bench.

“You’ve been here before?” I asked, and he nodded. “How did you find this place?”

He looked at his hands and lifted a shoulder like it was no big deal. “It’s just something I started doing a few years ago, before I was intercepted. I tried to find things that separated us from computers. I called it the Human Project. That’s why I started hanging out with DS Dropouts—at least they want to meet face-to-face. A couple years ago I started researching what people are willing to leave their homes for.” He looked over at me. “Guess what it is.”

I shrugged. “Entertainment?” I assumed. “Movies?”

He shook his head. “That’s easy to do from home. People’s wall screens are better than theaters.”

“Music? Restaurants?” I asked.

“Religion,” he said. “It’s one of the only things that drives people out of the house these days.”

I looked back at the church with surprise. “I would have never guessed it,” I said.

“Me neither,” Jax agreed.

“How did you figure it out?”

“I studied train use. It’s public information. You can see how many people use the public trains on a given day. I started to notice trends, that there were people using trains all going to the same location. Usually it’s for jobs, but then I noticed at night or on weekends, there was still this gathered activity, so I started—”

“Stalking people?” I finished for him.

“Yes, I’m a serial killer wanted in eight states. Did I forget to mention that?” He smiled and looked at the arched door, framed in dark wood. “I took the same train lines and watched where people were going.”

“You go to church?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t belong to a church. It’s more of a hobby. I’ve been to temples, Catholic churches, synagogues. I went to a mosque, a Buddhist temple. I like watching the people inside. There’s something inspiring about it. It’s like they want to be more than informed; they want to be transformed.”

The church door suddenly swung open, and families filtered out. Kids skipped down the pathway, screaming goodbye to one another. Dads carried kids on their shoulders. It was like watching a movie—it seemed too perfect, too choreographed, too happy. This wasn’t reality.

Jax stood up when the last set of parents walked by. A man pulled the heavy wood door closed behind him. There was a red binder tucked under his arm, and a little girl with blond pigtails clung to his side. I recognized him as the man who had been conducting the kids through the music lesson.

“Hey, Pete,” Jax said, and walked up to meet him outside the door. Pete turned and blinked at Jax for a second. He took in his dirt-smeared clothes and ripped shirt.

He smiled at Jax, a warm smile that separated a black woolly beard that covered more than half of his face. I heard him say something about a crash landing. They talked for a couple of minutes before they turned and walked down the path.

I stood up and Jax introduced us. I held out my hand and Pete wrapped his thick fingers around mine in a firm shake.

“Sounds like you two could use some help,” he offered.

I nodded. “We just need to contact some people,” I said.

He scratched his head. “The church has a phone in the office, but I don’t have keys. Your best bet is some apartments down the street. They rent out nightly rooms.” He scratched his head again. “I don’t know of any other hotels in town.”

A hotel? I had never stayed in a hotel in my life. My dad always said they were too dangerous. Strangers weren’t meant to be so close to one another.

“We’re having some friends over for dinner, but you’re more than welcome to join us,” Pete offered.

I nodded slowly, but the idea of dining with a group of strangers was the last thing I was prepared for. I could just imagine the small-talk questions: How was your day? Eventful. What brings you to Eugene? You could say we dropped by.

“Thanks, but we just need somebody to pick us up,” I said. I figured Justin would be raking the area looking for us. After all, my dad still had my tracking signal. They would probably be here any minute.

“Well, the least I can do is give you a shirt,” he told Jax. “We have some left over from a charity event.” He walked inside the church with the little girl and came out a minute later holding a bright pink T-shirt, which he handed to Jax.

“Sorry, it’s all we have left,” he said. Jax opened it, and I ❤ OREGON was printed across the chest, over an outline of the state border.

“Perfect,” Jax said.

The little girl suddenly spoke up. “I want to play dress-up too,” she said. We both looked down at her. She was tugging on Jax’s arm.

“I love playing dress-up,” Jax informed her. “But we have to go.” I almost laughed at Jax. He honestly looked disappointed.

“I can see your tummy,” she told him, and pointed to his ripped shirt.

He knelt down so their eyes were level. “We ran into some mountain lions,” he said. “Four of them.” Her eyes widened. She grabbed Jax’s hand.

“Come over and play,” she told him. “Her too.” She pointed her tiny finger at me.

Jax raised his eyebrows and looked over at me. I stared down at the little girl like I was greeting an alien. The widest, deepest blue eyes I had ever seen looked hopefully back. How could I refuse?

“We’ll come back another time and play,” I promised.

“Can I wear your wig?” the girl asked, and pointed at my hair.

I ran my hands over my head. “Um—”

“Kerstin, let’s go,” Pete said, and scooped her up in his arms.

“Thanks for your help,” Jax said.

“You know you’re always welcome. But I’d get going.” He looked up at the dark, starless sky. “It’s supposed to storm tonight,” he said.

We walked down the sidewalk that Pete pointed out, passing office buildings and apartments. Catwalks crisscrossed above us, like a giant maze in the sky. I pointed them out to Jax.

“They connect all the downtown buildings,” Jax said. “They built them after a street bombing. That way no one has to walk outside.”

I peered up at the glass sidewalks in the sky. It looked like tunnels and tubes built for mice.

When we found the apartment building, a red neon light flashed a vacancy sign outside the door. We walked into a lobby scattered with empty tables and metal armchairs. An entire wall was lit up with vending machines and a digital food counter. Jax used a digital scroll to check us in, and the computer illuminated our room number, which would open using our fingerprint registration. I watched Jax charge the room to his account.

“There isn’t a computer in the lobby we can use?” I asked.

“No, but the room has one,” he said.

We walked down the first-floor hallway, where all the rentals were issued. Jax scanned his finger against the door lock, and we walked inside a small living area with a single loveseat back up against a large window, the only window in the room, which looked out onto two plastic trees cemented in the sidewalk. There was a small kitchen sectioned off next to the living room. Jax pointed out a bedroom down the hall.

He sat down on the couch and opened up a flipscreen on the end table, and I headed down the hall. I didn’t plan on staying the night, but I could definitely use a shower.

I picked a comb through a mess of snarls in my wet hair. When I opened the bathroom door, the steamy smell of soap and shampoo wafted down the hall behind me. Jax was sitting at a table in the cramped kitchen space, drumming his fingers. My nose and cheeks were pink from being outside. Jax just looked tan. The blood on his face was scrubbed off, but his upper lip was still swollen and a purple, crescent-shaped bruise was forming under his right eye. He was wearing the pink T-shirt, which oddly made him look more masculine.

“Any news?” I asked.

He shook his head. “The only contact I have is Scott. I haven’t heard from him yet.”

He stood up and his eyes trailed down my wet hair for a second, but he seemed to catch himself and his gaze snapped away. I could feel heat rush to my face.

“I can’t help that Pete didn’t give me a pretty pink T-shirt,” I said, defending the dirty clothes I was still wearing.

Jax just smiled, a crooked smile, like I’d just missed a joke. A few seconds crawled by.

“The bathroom’s all yours,” I said, and waved my arm in the air, toward the hallway.

“Eating comes before hygiene,” he informed me. “I need some food before I pass out.” He tucked the flipscreen under his arm.

I nodded and rested my hand on my empty stomach, cramping with hunger.

I followed him into the hallway, and a motion light snapped on overhead. It sprayed a white, fluorescent mist of light around us. It took effort to lift my feet. The day’s events were hitting me, and my eyelids drooped, wanting to tuck themselves in for the night.

We walked into the quiet lobby. The only sound was the buzzing of overhead lights and electric screens. I followed Jax to the digital food counter, lit up with neon blue lights bordering the glass order station. We sat on stools and scanned our fingers over meal options. I gazed at pixelated pictures of entrées, each starred and rated as if I needed to read 487 reviews before I tried something as adventurous as macaroni and cheese.

“It’s a good thing there are six hundred reviews of a grilled cheese sandwich,” Jax commented. “Because I couldn’t imagine what it would taste like.”

I smiled. “Let’s play ‘rate the grossest food,’” I said. “I’ll go first.” I scanned the desserts. “Instant-coffee milk shake sounds disgusting,” I said.

“Those are actually pretty good,” Jax said. He scanned the menu, and I noticed how the blue light from the keypad reflected off his skin.

“I’d have to question the freshness of the freeze-dried fish tacos,” he said, and I scrunched my face and tried not to gag. My feet swung under the stool and tapped the side of the counter.

“The spaghetti and marinara looks like a mashed-up brain. Literally,” I said.

“Have you ever tried MealGels?” he asked me, and I shook my head. “You can order whatever flavor you want.” He showed me the selection on the menu. It looked like a bowl of Jell-O, but you could order it to taste like anything—chocolate cheesecake, or steak with mashed potatoes and gravy.

“What’s it made out of?” I asked.

“I don’t want to know,” Jax said. “Probably recycled plastic.”

I played with the options and tried to order a chocolate steak fried cheese muffin. The computer came back with an error page. Jax stared at me.

“You know, censorship was created for people like you,” he told me.

“Thanks,” I said, and smiled. He smiled back at me, the glow of the lights reflecting in his eyes. My stomach knotted, and I looked away and focused on the screen. I wasn’t supposed to be having fun right now. This wasn’t a vacation, but Jax had an amazing talent for distracting me. I just needed to find Justin and get up to Portland.

We placed our orders, and less than a minute later two dinner meals and drinks appeared under the glass counter. The countertop opened so we could take out our food. Before we could even start eating, we were bombarded with survey questions. Would you like to write a review for your order? Please rate the menu selection. Please rate the speed and convenience of your order. Please rate the packaging of your meal. Please rate this survey.

“Is there a ‘shut up’ function?” I said.

“You want to eat outside?” Jax asked me.

“Yes,” I said. We picked up our trays and walked outside to the end of the building, where a bench stood between two fake trees. I sat down and watched a man down the street helping a woman out of a ZipShuttle and into a wheelchair. He gently eased her down and pulled a blanket over her lap. He held up a bottle with a straw so she could take a drink. He kissed her and rubbed her hands before he wheeled her toward an apartment building. I watched how he took care of her and wondered if my dad would ever do that for my mom. It was hard to imagine. I wondered if Justin would ever do that for me.

I studied Jax while he ate. Considering how comfortable he was around people, one thing didn’t make sense.

“I heard you’re a skater,” I told him. He looked at me and laughed.

“Skater?” he said, and set down his sandwich. “Is that the Dropouts’ PC word for an asshole?”

“We don’t think you’re an asshole,” I said. “You’re just like us.”

His smile faded and his face turned serious, as if I had just insulted him. I had meant it as a compliment.

“I’m not, though,” he said. “You guys are all up in your mission. You probably pump your fists together and yell ‘Hero up’ whenever you hang out. Me, I’m just weird.”

I was about to argue, but he cut me off.

“I’ve accepted it,” he told me, and held out his hand. “I like to wonder too much about things. I can know anything in seconds, but it kills all the wonder, and that’s the best part. Wonder is the godfather of weirdness. Being informed all the time is so boring. There’s no buildup.”

“For example?” I asked.

“For example . . .” He thought for a second and looked around the street for inspiration. “Spiders. I wonder if they have ears. Can they hear?”

I considered this. “I don’t think they have ears. I’ve never gotten close enough to one to check,” I admitted.

“But you don’t know for sure,” he pointed out. “What if they have exceptional hearing? What if they’re insanely smart? They’re always hiding out on our ceilings, looking down. What if they’re recording all our conversations? That’s why they’re so quiet all the time. They’re plotting to take over the world.”

He looked at me, his eyes wide. “People are planning for robot and zombie and werewolf invasions. That’s just stupid. Why isn’t anyone worried about a giant-spider apocalypse? They tie up their victims until they’re almost asphyxiated, and then start sucking their blood while they’re still alive. Am I the only person concerned about this?”

“Most likely,” I said.

He shrugged. “Yeah. And DS doesn’t appreciate it. It just ruins it for me. The ‘information highway.’ No thanks. I prefer my own interpretations.”

“Is there anything even left to wonder about?” I wondered.

“I don’t know. But I try to make it a daily exercise,” he said, and took a bite of his sandwich.

One question still hung in my mind. “If you don’t like working with the Dropouts, then why did you agree to work with me?”

He kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead of us. “I have my reasons,” he said.

“There’s more than one?” I asked.

He nodded. “You said three words to me that I can’t say no to. I think they’re the three hardest words to say.”

I thought about this. The three hardest words. “I never said ‘I love you,’” I informed him. “Those are the three hardest words to say.”

He looked at me. “Really?” he asked, surprised, as if he didn’t believe me. “I think the hardest words are ‘I need help.’ You need to be pretty brave to admit it.”

“Or desperate,” I added.

“Either way, you were honest. I don’t meet very many honest people these days. So, that’s one of my reasons.”

I was about to press him for another when the flipscreen buzzed between us and Jax picked it up and checked a message. A call was coming in from Scott, and his voice came through the speakers.

“I’m working on getting a car down to you guys,” Scott said. “All of our contacts are heading to Portland.”

I felt a tinge of disappointment that it wasn’t Justin. “Is everyone okay?” I asked.

“Vaughn’s in custody,” Scott said. “Justin and your dad are already in Portland. How did you guys pay for a hotel room?” he asked.

“I used my account,” Jax said.

“You aren’t scanning your fingerprints, are you?” Scott asked.

“Just to use a food machine,” I said. “We need to eat, Scott.”

“They could be tracing you,” Scott said.

“Who?” Jax asked. “You said yourself Vaughn’s been caught.”

Scott sighed. “We still can’t take any chances. I’ll get somebody down there as soon as I can. But it might have to wait until morning. I’ll send you a message,” he said, and the call ended.

“That kid could use a prescription of nothing,” Jax said. I had to agree. Scott sounded so anxious on the phone that my shoulders were tense just listening to him.

I looked down at my hands. “We have a lot of work ahead of us,” I said. I was surprised to feel jealous of Jax. All my life I had been searching for a middle ground, and Jax was the first person I had ever met who had found the art of balance.

It started to rain, which wouldn’t have bothered me if I knew I had a clean, dry change of clothes waiting. Lightning cut across the western sky, and it was followed a few seconds later by a shaking rumble I hadn’t heard in years. We stood up and made it inside the door just as pellets of hail drummed against the windows like hundreds of fingernails tapping against the glass.

There were rarely thunderstorms in Oregon, inside the rain valley. I could count on one hand the number of times I had seen lightning in my life. When we got inside the hotel room, Jax pulled back the curtains in the living room.

Lightning flashed, streaks of it burning through the sky and illuminating the trees, which were blowing so hard it looked like their limbs would snap off. I was amazed that each delicate leaf had the strength to hold on. Rain pelted against the window, pushed by angry waves of wind.

Jax threw cushions off the couch and pulled out the mattress inside. He lay on the white sheets and propped his feet on the back of the couch cushions so he could face the window. His hair was damp from the rain and curling at the ends.

The wind pushed against the building, and the walls resisted with a low moan. I looked nervously at the window as rain and hail hammered the glass.

“Do you think we should check the weather stations?” I asked.

“We’re fine,” he said, enthralled by the storm. Just then lightning flashed, followed by a crackling roar of thunder that shook the floor. My shoulders jumped but Jax didn’t flinch. He was smiling.

“Why doesn’t it storm more often?” he asked.

I took a shallow breath. “They don’t build up enough energy off the coast,” I said.

The wind wailed and the walls creaked against the force, like they were straining their muscles to push back. Thunder roared and I jumped at another flash of lightning. Jax scooted over on the mattress to give me room, and I sat down on the edge.

I laced my fingers together, over my lap.

“It’s starting to die down,” he told me.

Water trickled down the window into tiny rivers and streams. I noticed that when two raindrops combined, they became faster. The ones that fell flat against the window stuck there like pebbles, worthless until another raindrop rescued it and carried it along. I thought about all the strange things nature can teach us, all these subtle hints it shares when we pay attention.

I was so tired, my shoulders started to sag. I lay down at the edge of the mattress and watched the lightning flash outside, illuminating the leaves being battered in the wind like thousands of flags. My heartbeat was starting to settle down.

I looked over at Jax, watching the storm.

“What’s your boyfriend’s name?” he asked.

I scrunched my eyes with confusion.

“What?” I asked him.

“You said you had a boyfriend,” he reminded me. “Who is he?”

“Are you joking?”

He turned his head to look at me. I stared at him like he was nuts, and he returned the same expression. Then he smiled.

“Oh, I get it,” he said, and grinned. “Does he have one of those embarrassing first names you hate to admit? Like Scorpio?”

I rolled my eyes. “His name isn’t Scorpio,” I said. “Although I agree that would be unfortunate.”

He waited for me.

“Justin,” I said, as if it was obvious.

His eyebrows straightened, like I was messing with him. “Justin Solvi?” He smiled and chuckled, his chest rising and sinking. “Right. Did I mention I’m Zeus, God of Thunder? I actually summoned this storm.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I,” he said. “It’s my trick to getting girls on my bed.” He tapped the open space between us. “Works every time.”

I laughed. Thunder cut through the air and I jumped again. I pressed my hand against my chest and felt my heart flapping like it was trying to escape.

“Why are you so surprised?” I asked.

He folded his arms behind his head. “I guess I didn’t see it.”

“Really?” I looked over at him with mock amazement. “You mean in the past twenty-four hours, since I’ve been kidnapped, drugged, shot at, almost killed several times, you didn’t see our long, loving gazes pass back and forth?”

His eyes trailed between mine, like he was trying to read more than I was saying.

“But this morning, he didn’t . . . he wasn’t . . .” Jax sputtered out a frustrated breath. “Forget it.”

A few seconds went by, and we both watched the storm settling outside. The thunder quieted to a low rumble, and the rain brushed the window instead of slamming against it.

“How long have you guys been dating?” he asked.

“He recruited me last year, to fight DS,” I said. “He talked me into meeting face-to-face. It just happened.”

Jax propped himself up on his elbow and looked at me. His face was so close, I could see a scar above one of his eyebrows, thin, like it was cut with the sharp point of a pencil.

“Wait, so he’s the first guy you’ve ever met? In person?”

“No,” I said. But I thought about it, and realized Justin was the first guy I had met face-to-face, other than our neighbors and family friends.

“He’s the only guy you’ve ever dated?” he asked.

“Yeah. So?”

“Kissed?”

“That is none of your business,” I insisted, and glared at him. “So what if he is?”

“How do you know if he’s any good? You have nothing to compare it to.”

I laughed but Jax wasn’t joking. My eyes flickered to his lips for a second, and I pulled them away.

“What, do I need to sample a make-out buffet before I know if Justin’s a good kisser?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t go the buffet route. You might catch something.” He rolled over onto his back and looked out the window. “I’m just saying, keep your options open. At least date other people before you settle. Consider it relationship research, an anthropological study on prime compatibility before you brand somebody with the boyfriend award.”

“God. You sound like a really nerdy dating forum.” I looked over at him. “Anyway, kissing isn’t that big of a deal. It’s not rocket science.”

He looked over at me, shocked. “Are you kidding me? You only get one first kiss with someone. One.” He held up his finger. “Do you know how epic that is? Do you know what kind of monumental pressure and buildup is put on that one defining moment? And look at all the complications involved. There are so many ways to screw it up.”

I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing. He picked the oddest things to be serious about. “Like?”

“Nose alignment,” he listed. “Teeth avoidance. There might be glasses or hats to get around. It’s like landing a fucking spaceship with your eyes closed.”

I laughed. “Shut up, Jax.”

“I think too much beforehand,” he said. “That’s my problem. I get all nervous and my hands get clammy. And then I hold my breath.”

I stared at him while he bantered with the ceiling. I felt a wave of jealousy flare up over who he’d been experimenting on. I hated that I felt it.

“And worst off, do I need permission to land? What kind of weather am I dodging?” He shook his head with defeat. “Too many risks.”

I was laughing again. “Go to sleep, Jax,” I said.

My eyelids drooped closed, and I fought to keep them open. Even the thunder wasn’t bothering me anymore. It was more of a deep, clamorous lull. I could feel my breaths, long and relaxed and repetitive. I closed my eyes, and the rhythmic tapping of rain flushed out every thought from my mind. A voice buried deep in my head reminded me to move to the bedroom, but the voice grew quieter and my heavy body felt impossible to lift.

The mattress creaked, and I snapped my eyes open when Jax sat up. He was looking out the window in front of us, and his head leaned forward so he could listen. His eyes were concentrating on something.

“What is it? Is Scott here?” I asked, and rubbed my groggy eyes. I started to sit up to get a better look. Car tires squealed against the pavement, and white headlights flashed outside. An engine roared as it sped toward the apartment.

Jax leaned over and wrapped his arms around me. I tried to push him off, but we rolled off the bed and onto the floor just as bullets shot through the window glass. I screamed and covered my ears as a round of shots cascaded across the room, ripping through the doors and walls and shredding the couch. Glass rained down around us, and sheets of plaster and concrete flew through the air. Stuffing from the couch dropped around us like snow. I curled my body tight inside the cave Jax formed with his arms and chest.

When the shooting stopped, Jax rolled off me. He pushed me forward and we crawled along the floor. Jax grabbed his switchblade out of his pocket and swung it free, blade end out, as he opened the apartment door. I followed him into the hallway, my heart jabbing my chest so hard I could feel it all the way to my toes. A man ran around the corner toward us, and before he could react, Jax threw his knife and it caught the man’s jacket, nailing his arm to the wall. Jax was on top of him before he could wedge the knife loose.

Jax grabbed the gun out of the man’s holster and aimed it into his neck. He was about to fire the tranquilizer bullet.

“It’s real,” the man said, gulping.

“What?” Jax asked, his eyes flooded with anger.

The man’s small, brown eyes pleaded back. “The bullets. They’re all real.” His neck was sweating. I watched a drop of sweat slowly slide down his shaking throat.

“Then why the hell are you using them on us?” Jax insisted.

“It’s not for you, it’s for her,” he said, and his eyes flickered nervously to me.

Jax’s face twisted. We could hear more scuffling around the corner.

“You all have guns?” Jax asked him.

He nodded.

I looked down the hallway. “Call them off us,” I said.

“I can’t. I’m not the one in charge,” he told me.

“If you want to live, do it,” Jax said, and pressed the gun against the side of the man’s head.

Two men sprang around the corner, and Jax turned and aimed low, shooting at their feet. I winced and watched as they both fell, clutching their legs, blood splattering the walls. I covered my mouth with my hand, looking at the smear of red shining against the white walls like paint.

Jax smashed the butt of the gun against the first man’s head, and he toppled to the ground. Jax grabbed my hand and pulled me with him.

“Come on,” he said, but my feet wouldn’t cooperate.

“Those guys,” I whispered.

“They’ll be all right. I don’t think they would have done us the same courtesy,” Jax said. He flipped his knife shut, and I followed him down the hall. We ran through the lobby, and I pulled my hand out of his and pointed to the exit sign.

“The catwalks,” I said, and Jax nodded. We ran to the staircase exit and sprinted up four flights until we reached the catwalk landing.

Jax pushed open the door, and the hallway lit up, a bright yellow tunnel made of glass. We raced through the catwalk, and I looked out the window at the maze of buildings. Then headlights glared around the corner. I ran after Jax and a stream of bullets followed us. Glass panes shattered and exploded in our wake. I screamed, but there was nowhere to duck, with glass surrounding us on all sides. We made it to the end of the catwalk, and Jax threw open the door. We both rolled to a stop inside the hallway.

“That idea didn’t work,” I said, panting. Jax offered a hand to pull me up. When I let go, I saw that my hand was smeared with blood. I couldn’t tell if it was mine or his.

“You all right?” he asked, and I nodded.

Jax brushed glass off his shorts, and pebble-size pieces fell to the floor. I followed him down the hall, and we sprinted down the staircase and onto the street. We could hear police sirens in the distance. It was drizzling out now, and the wind was barely blowing. I followed Jax as he jogged toward the church, across the soggy turf yard, and up to the window.

“Sorry, God,” he said, and smashed his elbow through the glass. He ducked inside and I followed. We walked through the congregation hall, past rows of pews that smelled like fresh-cut wood.

“We need to find their phone,” Jax said.

Just when we swung the back door open, we heard people shouting outside, trying to break through the front door. I stumbled back, almost tripping over Jax. Two men crashed through glass windows behind us, and we ducked down behind a row of benches. Jax pulled out his knife. As he turned to look over his shoulder, the front door flew open and Scott and Riley rushed in, guns in their hands. Bullets shot out and I crouched down as low as I could manage and held my head in my arms until everything was quiet.

“I bet you’re happy to see me,” Scott said.

I slowly lifted my head out from my arm cocoon. I looked over my shoulder to see the two men lying motionless on the aisle floor. Jax was breathing next to me, and Riley stood next to Scott.

“You don’t listen, do you?” Scott said, as if I were really in the mood for a lecture. “I told you not to scan anything. Your fingerprint is lethal right now.”

“How did you find us?” I asked.

“You gave me your tracker signal. I told Justin I’d keep an eye on you.”

This annoyed me. “You said you would keep an eye on me?” I said. “Where’s Justin?” I demanded.

Scott looked surprised. “He’s a regional head. He has to be in Portland,” he said in a patronizing voice, as if I was being childish for wanting Justin to care that I almost died three times today. I glared at Scott.

“They were using real guns on us,” Jax said as he stood up. He offered me a hand and pulled me up next to him.

Scott raised his eyebrows. “Then it’s not the cops,” he said, and walked past us. He bent down and examined one of the bodies lying on the floor.

“It’s part of Vaughn’s team,” Scott said.

“I thought Vaughn was in custody,” I said.

“He’s in jail,” Riley assured us. “Somebody else must be calling the shots.”

I leaned my head against the door. “Great.”

Scott looked over at Jax and his eyes trailed down his chest. “Interesting shirt,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-two

Jax and I ducked into the back of Riley’s car. I clipped the seat belt over my lap and sank into the leather. It was cold, but it warmed quickly against my skin. My eyelids drooped and I fought to keep them open. I watched the rain fall. The window was a blur of moving liquid glass.

“Are we driving to Portland?” I asked Scott.

He shook his head. “In the morning,” he said with a yawn. “We need to grab some stuff from my apartment. We can crash there.”

I was quiet as I listened to Riley and Scott talk about the riot and all the planning there was to do. I closed my eyes and let the moving car jostle my head. I looked over at Jax; his head was leaned back against the seat, but his eyes were open.

“So, you can throw knives?” I asked quietly.

Jax looked over at me. I waited for him to make some sort of joke, but he looked too tired to be sarcastic.

He nodded like it was no big deal. “It’s just something I can do,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Everyone needs a party trick,” he said. I kept my eyes on him, my way of telling him I wasn’t satisfied.

He leaned a little closer to me and whispered.

“My silence is a nonverbal response for ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’” he informed me.

“You don’t like serious conversations, do you?” I asked.

“I just don’t like worrying,” he said. “I worried for a really long time. I’m done worrying.”

“What happened?” I asked.

He looked away, out the window. “Is Madeline a French word for ‘pester’?” he asked me. He sank a little deeper into the seat, trying to get his body comfortable in the cramped space.

“When they arrested me, a few years ago, the cops came to my house,” he said, his voice low so only I could hear him. “My parents refused to let them in, so they broke down the door and shoved their way in. They knocked my mom down. They kicked her when she tried to get up, and when my dad tried to help my mom, they smashed a gun against his face. They shot tranq guns into both of my parents. My little sister saw it all happen. She was screaming the whole time, and then they dragged me off and left her there, alone, screaming because she thought my parents were dead.”

I listened, shocked at his experience. I remembered how calm my dad had been when I was arrested, numb and emotionless, as if he didn’t care. Maybe it was his way of trying to keep everyone calm to protect us all.

“I hated that I couldn’t fight back against those assholes,” Jax said. “That I was completely powerless. I just stood there and watched it all happen. I thought I was so smart, hacking around government files. But I didn’t know anything. It’s the worst feeling in the world, when you’re defenseless. So, after I was intercepted, I made sure I’d learn how to fight back. That way I can protect people I love.”

“That’s how you spent your time in hiding?” I asked.

“And playing video games,” he said.

“And painting,” I added. “And you planted trees.”

He smiled. “That was my dad’s idea. He thought it would be good for me, give me something to focus on. Something positive.”

Scott interrupted us. “Justin just sent us a message,” he said. “They’re setting up a tent city in Portland.” I looked in the front seat. I had forgotten Scott and Riley were in the car with us.

I waited for more. “That’s it?” I asked.

He frowned at me in the rearview mirror. “Were you expecting more?” he asked. “I told him we’re all fine. Aren’t we fine?”

I looked away and stared out the car window. That question was too loaded to answer. About a hundred things came to mind.

My eyes fluttered open and I blinked at a window next to me. The sky was dark gray, still on the edge of morning. I rubbed my eyes and turned over and froze. Jax was lying a few inches away from me. At first I was appalled that he had had the nerve to climb into a bed with me. But then I remembered someone lifting me out of a car the night before and carrying me up a set of stairs. I looked around and recognized Scott’s living room. Jax and I were lying on an air mattress. I slapped my hand over my forehead.

Guilt flooded through me. I was lying in bed with another guy. A single, attractive—I had to admit—amazing guy. And we’d talked about kissing. That’s more than flirting. That’s another word all together, one I didn’t want to admit.

I looked over at Jax again. He was sleeping on his stomach, most of his face hidden in the pillow, his hair spread out like black feathers against the white pillowcase. He was lying on top of the covers. Scott must have given him a change of clothes. He was wearing gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt. It looked like he’d showered—his hair was curling at the ends like it was damp, and I could smell soap drifting off his skin.

I stared up at the ceiling and justified the situation. Nothing had happened. We were both fully clothed. We didn’t so much as accidentally bump each other’s feet. But then why did I feel so guilty?

I carefully pulled down the covers and slid out of bed without shifting the mattress. I headed for the kitchen.

There was a coffee machine on the counter, next to a package of Insta-muffins. I stuck the muffin box into the microwave and pressed the timer for two minutes. By the time the kitchen smelled like blueberry muffins and the coffee was poured, Jax’s naked feet padded around the corner.

I sat down at a small table and looked up at his bedhead hair, sticking up straight. His eyes were half lidded.

“You are a horrible bed hog,” he informed me. “Did you know you sleep at an angle?” I glared at him, furious that he knew something so intimate about me. He did an impression, bending down slightly and tilting his body to the side. If I wasn’t so horrified, I would have laughed. I just chewed my nails instead.

He rummaged through the cupboards looking for something.

“Jax, I feel terrible.”

“Why?” He turned and looked at me, his eyes concerned. “What happened?”

“We slept in a bed together,” I stated, like I was naming the title of a horror movie.

“Correction: You slept. I was shoved to the side and hardly slept at all.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I looked down at my hands. I had to confess to someone. “I feel really guilty.”

“You should,” he said, and sat down across from me. “I had no room. You stole my sheets, too.”

“No, Jax,” I said. “I mean about Justin. Do you think I should tell him?” I looked into Jax’s dark eyes.

“Tell him what?” Jax asked.

I fidgeted with the handle of my mug. “I feel like I cheated on him.”

Jax opened up his hands, as if nothing was wrong. “Madeline, it’s not like anything happened.”

He was right. But he wasn’t. “We talked about kissing,” I said.

He blinked at me with indifference. “Did hanging out in a church last night scare you into verbal celibacy?” he asked, and I sighed at the ceiling. “Nothing happened,” he repeated. “So we had a conversation about kissing—so what? It’s not a big deal unless you make it one.”

“You’re right,” I said. “You’re right. It’s not a big deal.” I nodded once. He smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

“What?” I asked.

“You. You’re funny.”

I didn’t see the joke. “How’s that?”

“You have the mind of an adult and the heart of a kid. I understand your mural now. You’re at war with yourself a lot, aren’t you?”

I glared at him for figuring this out. I was always careful who I let in. I had been guarded my whole life, but it appears that some people can pick locks.

“Does sleeping in the same bed with me one night entitle you to see inside my soul all of a sudden?” I asked.

“Maybe,” he said. I was relieved when Scott walked in.

“Can you guys be ready to go in five minutes?” he asked.

I looked at the clock. “It’s barely six a.m.,” I told him.

“Yeah, and we have about twenty-four hours to protest this vote. While you guys slept in, I’ve sent about two thousand messages.”

Jax yawned. “Scott, we just reprimanded the bad guy in a ten-thousand-foot-high assault yesterday, and also managed to escape, so I wouldn’t call us slackers,” he said, which quieted Scott for the moment. I smiled and took a sip of coffee.

“Well, I hope you guys got a good night’s sleep,” Scott said. “It’s going to be your last for a while.”

Chapter Twenty-three

“We’re late to the party,” Jax noted as we crossed the street to Waterfront Park, a turf grass field that stretched along downtown Portland at the edge of the Willamette River. A tent city had been constructed inside the entire park, all the way to the horseshoe-shaped brick foreground of the new city courthouse, a modern skyscraper built next to the Morrison Bridge. The building had won awards for its digital design. Instead of windows, electrical square screens lit each of its ten floors, their colors and images constantly changing to give the building the appearance of movement. The top of the building was designed to look like a wave; it spiraled and twisted into a curl. At the moment all of the screens resembled moving clouds, so that the building looked like it floated in the sky. It gave me a headache; it was like looking at an optical illusion.

It took my senses a few minutes to adjust to the scene. Swarms of people crowded the turf lawn. Stereos were rigged to tents and sign posts, pumping music so loud it echoed against the concrete wave sculptures that lined the river. Saws wailed and hammers pounded as food stands were crudely built in the center of the tent city. Next to the food stands was a cement strip, in the shape of a crescent, where picnic tables and a shelter with public restrooms were located.

We walked past one tent that sounded like it was hosting a rave. Techno music pumped so hard, it shook the tarp walls.

The energy, the pulse of drums, and the spicy smell of food shocked my senses. A group of reporters were being escorted through the grounds by security guards. They stared at us like visitors to a zoo full of endangered species. Some of the tenacious ones threw out cautious smiles and slowly approached groups of rioters for interviews. One reporter, I noticed, had her film crew shooting a documentary about the food carts, as if real food was a news headline.

Clare ran up to us.

“There you are!” she said as she threw her arms around me. “Justin told me what happened.” She let me go and grabbed Jax next.

“Thanks for helping Maddie,’’ she said to him, and looked at me as she dropped her arms from his shoulders. “Are you guys all right?”

Jax nodded and looked around. “I need to find my dad. He’s here somewhere.”

Scott and Riley were already heading toward a mangle of green tents. I looked inside the mass of people swarming around like bees at a giant hive.

It started to hit me that I might never see Jax again, and I had the sudden urge to grab his hand and hold on to him. In the past few days he’d managed to break me down and seep in through the cracks. People have a way of filling in your fault lines, like caulking or glue to help hold you in place.

I fumbled for what to say. One word was obvious.

“Thanks,” I told him. “For everything.”

He smiled. I tried to memorize his face. I knew I’d miss his smile, the way it made his eyes crinkle at the edges. He stalled and looked down at my hands for a second. His hands fidgeted at his sides. He looked between me and the crowd of protesters.

Clare watched our interaction and cleared her throat. She pointed out a cluster of green tents. “We’re staying over there, if you want to find us,” she told Jax. “That’s where all the action’s going to be. There’s a protest meeting in an hour, so you guys can get caught up.”

He shook his head. “I think I’ve had enough action for a while,” he said. “I’ll probably hang back. Good luck tomorrow,” he said, looking at me.

I couldn’t tear my eyes off him. I didn’t want him to leave. But was there a reason to see him again? Were we friends? I had other guy friends—Gabe, Scott, and Riley. Why did this have to feel any different?

Jax surprised me and leaned toward me. He wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and pulled me close. My heart started to race. He bent down low and whispered so only I could hear. His lips grazed my ear.

“By the way, the other reason I agreed to help you is because I love your eyes. You have the most beautiful eyes.” He let me go and held up his hands. “It’s my weakness,” he said, and backed up.

I could feel my heart hammering, but before I could say anything, a girl with long brown hair leaped through the crowd, screaming Jax’s name. She almost knocked him over as she tackled him.

I got out of her way and forced a smile as Jax wrapped his arms around her, picking her up off the ground. She shrieked and laughed, to my annoyance. Was this one of his kissing experiments?

Jax set her down. “Bridget, meet Madeline,” he said. “Madeline, Bridget, my punk sister.”

My smile turned genuine. I held out my hand and shook hers. “Great to meet you,” I said.

“My dad told me all about you,” she gushed. “I’m such a huge fan.” Bridget looked young, probably in DS-3. “Can I have your autograph later, if you’re not too busy?” she asked me. “I just got Justin Solvi’s.” She swooned and held up a DS Dropout flag with Justin’s signature sailing across it.

Jax shook his head and pushed her away, toward the tents. He waved back at us.

“See you around?” he asked me.

“Sure,” I said. I watched them dissolve into the crowd. “Sure,” I said out loud again, to myself. I turned and saw Clare reading my actions with suspicious eyes.

“What just happened?” she asked me, and leaned in close. “Or should I ask, what happened last night?”

I groaned. I hated that friends had x-ray vision into your mind. They made you feel transparent.

“Nothing happened.”

“Then why is your face as pink as your hair?” she demanded.

“I’m awkward at goodbyes?” I tried.

“No, you’re awkward at lying,” she stated, and crossed her arms.

I grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward the tents. “I’ll explain later,” I promised. First I needed to figure it out myself.

Clare gave me a guided tour of the grounds and filled me in on what I’d missed.

“They’re announcing the vote tomorrow morning,” she said.

I watched a work crew hammering plywood boards together at the edge of the park, next to the courthouse grounds. They were setting up a temporary stage. People held picket signs painted on plastic boards: DARK LORD FREEMAN; I DON’T SPEAK ROBOT; TEACHERS AGAINST TECHNOLOGY; UNPLUG US; I DON’T THINK, THEREFORE I’M NOT; FREEMAN: LET US GO. Volunteers were setting up wiring for air speakers around the stage. Two guys hauled up a heavy wood podium. Beyond the stage was the brick promenade at the edge of a long staircase. At least fifty steps arched up to the courthouse entrance.

A line of police officers stretched along the front of the courthouse behind plastic shields, their heads rotating, scanning the tent city. They wore shaded zoom glasses that allowed them to see inside the grounds for any signs of trouble.

“They want to arrest people,” I noted.

“They can’t,” Clare said. “We have every right to be here. Unless we get violent, they can’t touch us. We’re not on government property if we stay on the grass.”

“Hey, little sister,” someone said to me, and I recognized Joe’s voice. I spun around and was shocked to see my brother standing with Pat, an old friend who lived in Los Angeles.

“What are you guys doing here?” I asked. Pat reached out and gave me a hug, but I hesitated with Joe. Our last meeting had been more than eight months earlier, when he turned me over to the police. It hadn’t been our best bonding experience.

“I told Justin if the Dropouts ever pulled off this protest, I’d show up,” Pat said.

“Mom called me,” Joe said. “I had to see this for myself. Freeman versus Freeman.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “This is going to be too good.”

I narrowed my eyes. Mom must not have told Joe about Dad’s letter. I decided to keep it a secret. I wanted to see my brother’s reaction tomorrow.

“Where’s Mom?” I asked.

“In the courthouse with Dad. It probably wouldn’t look good if she was standing on our side right now.”

“Why are you guys standing over here?” I asked. Pat had skated a few months earlier, and my brother’s idea of support was handing me over to a detention center. “Whose side are you on?”

“You know me,” Pat said. “I’m only here for the food.” He smiled at my unbelieving expression. “I’m here to support you guys,” he said. “It’s the grand finale. I couldn’t miss this party.”

Joe looked around at girls in tight tank tops sunning themselves on top of picnic tables, their golden skin shining with sweat.

“Since I’ve never seen so many hot, half-naked women in my life, I can be persuaded to join yours,” Joe confided.

“Excellent,” I said. “Thanks for proving my theory. Guys really do think with their lower extremities,” I said.

“Hey, and our stomachs,” Pat pointed out.

“Listen, Mom told me what happened at the detention center,” Joe said. “I’m really sorry, Maddie. I honestly had no idea. I thought it was going to help.” His blue eyes were sincere on mine. My brother had never apologized to me before, not without parental enforcement. Usually he went out of his way to irritate me.

“It’s okay,” I said. “No one knew what was going on in the DCs.”

He looked me over. “I see it really tamed you.”

“I think it had to happen,” I said. “It gave us the evidence we needed.”

“So, in other words, you should be thanking me?” he joked.

I laughed. “How about I start with forgiving you?” I offered.

He pulled me into his arms. I wrapped my hands around Joe’s back and squeezed my eyes shut to push back tears prickling behind the surface. No matter what happened, the protest was already a success. It brought my family together, in the same place, for the first time in years. Even if we were standing on different sides, we were supporting one another. Maybe that was all I had been fighting for all along. It was my own personal victory.

Joe let go of me, and we were interrupted when a reporter stopped to ask questions. Clare caught my hand and pulled us deeper into the crowd.

I saw Justin standing near the stage and tried to catch his attention, but too many people were swarming around him. A row of reporters followed him like a human rope. I would have to stand in line just to talk to him. Over the top of the stage hung a digital banner with a scroll that read: WHERE DO YOU BELONG? DS OR DS DROPOUTS? The tally was currently 1,003,324 in favor of DS, 54,545 votes against.

“What’s that for?” I asked Clare.

“It was Shawn’s idea,” she said. “If you’re currently a DS student, you can log in and vote on whether you want to stay in digital school or have alternatives. We sent everyone a message with your Dad’s listservs this morning.”

I raised my eyebrows. “It looks a little uneven.”

“It’s still early,” Clare said, her voice hopeful. “There are more than a hundred million kids in DS.”

I stared at the screen, puzzled that it was so one-sided. “Have they released evidence about the trash labs? Or the detention centers?”

Clare shook her head. “It hasn’t made any national headlines yet.”

I frowned. I had expected national outrage about the detention centers.

“What about Jax’s contacts?” I asked. He had told me he had sent Scott his files before we left Corvallis.

“We sent a message out,” she said. “It’s going to take time for the news to spread.”

I sighed. We didn’t have time. “And his dad’s report on the DS addiction?”

Clare bit her bottom lip. “We never released it.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Molly was the only person who could understand it. It’s a research paper for a psychology journal. It was forty pages of graphs and equations. Did you ever look at it?” she asked me. I shook my head.

“We need him to put it in laypeople’s terms before we release it. It’s a great study, but it’s all scientific diction. And according to Molly, it’s going to take a lot more research to prove anything he claims.”

I looked back at the vote: 1,303,685–54,601. DS had just gained 300,000 supporting votes in the last few minutes. And we had gained a whopping 56.

“Maybe we should take that scroll down,” I said. “It’s negative publicity.”

Clare stared up at the screen. “It’s reality,” she said.

I looked around at the crowd. Thousands of people were there to show support, but no one was standing up and screaming or cheering like I had imagined. It was more like a social event, an excuse for people to be outside grilling. Where was the fight?

Clare tugged my arm.

“Come on, the meeting’s starting.”

We maneuvered through people to the main tent. A boy stood in front of its plastic flap door and guarded it like he was on a military assignment. He looked younger than I was, but he was about a head taller. He blocked the entrance with his wide shoulders when we tried to walk through.

“Excuse me,” I said, but he wouldn’t let me pass.

“Name?” he asked, as if I needed to state my rank and purpose. What was this, a military base?

“Corporate Marshal Madeline Freeman, reporting for duty. Sir.” I saluted him, and he didn’t appreciate the joke.

“It’s a press conference,” he snapped. “We’re at capacity. Media only from now on.”

“We’re friends with these guys,” Clare insisted and pointed at the door.

“I don’t have a VIP list for fans, either,” he said. His stubborn face didn’t budge.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “Look, I just want to talk to Justin Solvi.”

He laughed. “You and half of America. Get in line. He’s booked for interviews for the next two days.”

I was really getting irritated. I hadn’t come this far to get turned away by an event volunteer. “Booked? Who are you, his manservant?”

His mouth dropped open at my insult. “Who are you, his girlfriend?”

“Actually, she is,” Justin said. He walked up behind us with about twenty reporters trailing him. He leaned down and pressed his lips against mine. I had to stand on my tiptoes to reach him. The boy backed up, starstruck, and Justin opened the door flap so Clare and I could squeeze through.

“Sorry,” Justin said, pointing behind him. “He’s just trying to do his job. It’s getting really nuts around here.” Justin’s eyes were light with energy, and his cheeks were flushed pink. I knew he thrived in these situations.

I looked around the tight space crammed with protesters and reporters facing the front of the tent, where a long table stood in the center. You could smell bodies inside, a mixture of sweat and rubber and salt. Megan and Cedar, who looked closer to my parents’ age, sat behind the table next to Shawn. Justin was the youngest regional head by ten years.

“You’re more popular than I realized,” I said.

He ran his hand through his hair. “Yeah, this is getting intense. They gave me an assistant to keep track of everything. All the regional heads have one.” He pointed out a kid in the front of the tent, sitting at attention behind the regional heads’ table.

“His name’s Kurt, in case you can’t find me,” Justin said.

I swallowed. I didn’t want to have to track down an assistant to talk to Justin. He set his hands on my shoulders and looked me over.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine.”

He looked in my eyes and brushed my hair back past my shoulders. His fingers lingered on my neck; they were warm and soft. He grinned and his dimples set deep around his lips. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come down and get you last night.”

Me too. “You’re a little busy,” I said.

“I knew you were fine,” he said. “I talked to Scott. And I ran into Jax. He told me what happened.”

“He did?” I asked. Like how we slept in the same bed? And talked about making out?

“I hear you’re a natural sky diver,” he said, smiling. “I wish I could have been there.” He picked up my wrist and kissed my tattoo.

His hands slipped off me and his eyes roamed the room. I felt like I was losing him. I grabbed his hands in mine.

“Justin,” I said, but I was interrupted when Megan stood up, announcing that the press conference was starting. He looked down at me, his eyes taking me in.

“What’s wrong?”

“Justin, we need to get started,” Shawn called over to him and waved his hand.

I looked around at impatient reporters tapping their fingers against their flipscreens, on a deadline.

“It can wait,” I said. Justin squeezed my hands.

“Come on, stay right by my side,” he said. I let him pull me along. What was I honestly going to say? Honey, stop trying to save the world for ten minutes so we can talk about our feelings? I feel like you’re becoming emotionally distant during your time of selfless, heroic tenacity?

Justin motioned with one finger, and Kurt jumped at his command as if his movements emitted sparks. Justin asked for an extra chair in the front row for me.

I sat down and watched Justin pull a seat behind the head table and greet the audience. I was losing him. I felt like I was falling, hanging onto his hand at the edge of a cliff, but our fingers were starting to slip. That’s the scariest moment, when you feel the slip. It shoots panic up and down your spine. And the worst part is, how long do you cling to those fingers? How long do you hold on before you allow yourself to fall?

During the meeting I listened to Megan, Shawn, Justin, and Cedar discuss the goals of the next twenty-four hours. Well, mostly Shawn talked while everyone else nodded and took notes. He answered all of the reporters’ questions before anyone else had a chance to contribute.

“Why are you against DS?” one of the reporters asked.

“I’m against technology. Period,” Shawn stated, and pointed his finger at the audience. “The industrial revolution ruined this country.” I rolled my eyes. That wasn’t the point of our protest. “It broke apart communities and separated families. Cars and railroads and trains encouraged isolation. We’re supposed to live in communities. We’re supposed to be face-to-face, and when you mess with that design, like technology’s done, you don’t help people. You hurt them.”

“How do you suggest we limit our dependence on computers?” someone asked.

Shawn smiled. “Burn ’em.” The fans in the audience applauded; I looked at Justin but he was quiet. He had spent most of the meeting listening and watching, and he didn’t write down a single thing. He didn’t so much as shift in his seat. I couldn’t read his face, whether he agreed or disagreed, whether he was annoyed or tired or bored. He was so mellow, he could pass for comatose.

“They set up an air speaker over the podium,” Shawn said. “Anyone can get up and speak, but I would like direct access to it at all times, in case we need to make an emergency announcement.”

I pressed my lips together. Of course he would.

“I think the four of us should all have access to it,” Megan pointed out.

“True, but only one person can have access to the direct line. I would like to volunteer to be that person,” Shawn said.

You mean, demand? I thought. I looked over at Justin, who was patiently listening.

“I can be in charge of setting that up,” I said, and raised my hand. Shawn acknowledged me with a quick nod. I glanced at Justin; his mouth perked up on one side. He knew why I had volunteered. One person would have direct access, and it wasn’t going to be Shawn.

A huge wave of cheers suddenly shook the sides of the tent and interrupted the meeting.

“The protest is getting its first national news coverage,” said a reporter in the audience.

A wall screen snapped on in the back of the tent, and we all turned to watch a breaking news report. A satellite camera panned the crowd filling up Waterfront Park. Drums pounded; people screamed and waved. I could feel the energy rising.

The scene cut to the inside of the courthouse, where a woman on the DS voting committee was being interviewed. Her light brown hair was cut short, and she wore a dark blue jacket that matched her eyes. She played with the tips of her bangs nervously, seeming uncomfortable to be in front of a camera.

“What are your thoughts on the protesters outside?” the reporter asked. The woman scoffed.

“It’s nothing but a circus out there. It’s not a protest, it’s a nuisance,” she said. “There’s no control, no order, no plan. Is that the kind of leadership you want running education in this country?”

The camera panned the protesters’ site, covered by a mess of tents and food stands. People shouted and jumped at the camera, and it cut back to the committee member. I sighed at the biased depiction of the rioters.

“Digital school keeps our cities clean,” she continued. “It’s safe and quiet and peaceful. There’s nothing peaceful about what you’re seeing out here. It’s a bunch of radicals, sprawling out in droves. No wonder we prefer digital school. What’s inspiring about these savages, in tents, with old picket signs? They look like a herd of livestock. All they’re doing, as far as I’m concerned, is proving our case.” She smiled and I could hear the crowd booing outside.

“It’s interesting that there aren’t any DS supporters here,” the reporter mentioned. “There are thousands of protesters.” The committee member just laughed.

“Our supporters have faith in the system,” she said. “They support us by acting civilized, by staying inside and ignoring all of these distractions. If our supporters came out here, it would only provoke the rebels. It would only stir up more problems, and we’re smart enough to know better. Presence is overrated,” she said.

“Presence has power,” I mumbled at the screen.

After the meeting, we all walked outside into the late-afternoon sun, casting long shadows across the ground. I wanted to catch the sun and pull it back. Time was against us. By this time tomorrow, it would all be over.

I found Justin in a rare moment when he wasn’t engulfed in fans. I grabbed his arm and turned him to face me. “Okay, mystery man, what are you thinking? Why didn’t you speak up more in there?”

“I think listening is the most important thing right now. Did you notice how no one listened? They were all talking over one another.” He pulled his hands through his hair, finally letting his frustration show. “I didn’t want to add to it.”

“Shawn’s pretty ridiculous,” I said.

Justin laughed. “Yeah, but he’s passionate. The Dropouts love him.”

“I don’t trust him,” I said.

The crowd started to cheer, which meant another newscast was featuring the protest. Rioters rigged a giant digital screen between two metal posts near the stage to televise the progress.

A reporter sat inside the courthouse, outside of the committee meeting. She turned to speak to the camera. “The DS committee performed a mock voting session this afternoon before the final vote, which will be announced tomorrow.”

The crowd calmed down. People shushed one another and yelled out to be quiet. I narrowed my eyes at the screen. No one had said anything about a mock vote.

“Each state in the country gets two votes, for a total of one hundred. After counting today, DS won by a sweeping one hundred percent unanimous decision, making this digital program a national law for another ten years. Thank you to everyone for supporting DS and for allowing this system to continue.”

We couldn’t hear the rest of the coverage because the crowd started to roar. Everyone was up, storming the screen. You could feel the energy building. The ground shook under my feet. It was a human thunderstorm, fists jabbing the air like lightning strikes and shouts pelting like hail.

Shawn jumped onto the stage, waving his hands and screaming at the crowd.

“Not good,” I said, and instantly moved after him. Shawn was spraying yellow paint over the giant digital screen that had just played the news report.

“He wouldn’t be that stupid, would he?” Clare asked.

“It’s just paint,” I said. A second later the digital screen exploded in a blaze of fire, sending people stumbling backwards. I covered my face as debris and soot flew toward us in the wind. The screen sizzled and popped and a cloud of smoke curled into the sky. The air had a chemical scent, like melting plastic.

Flames and sparks crackled and burst off the tattered remains of the digital screen. Rioters were trying to contain the fire that was already spreading over tents. Shawn had managed to light up picket signs, and people threw them like javelins into the courthouse pavilion. People threw anything they could toss. Pots, pans, even shoes, flew through the air.

Justin grabbed my hand and Clare’s before we could run for the steps to join people storming the courthouse.

“Stay back!” he shouted, but no one was listening. Justin pleaded for people to back off. Iron gates began to rise out of the ground between the brick staircase and the park, forcing people to move back or get caught inside the courthouse grounds. Everyone inside the gate was getting arrested.

Shots rang out, and I watched as dozens of people fell limp to the ground. Shawn was inside the gates, being dragged away in handcuffs. A dozen rioters were arrested after him, some going willingly, others limp and being dragged off the grounds. I searched through the barricade for Joe, or Jax, but I didn’t recognize any of the protesters trapped inside.

The iron fence buzzed to a stop ten feet off the ground. Police were picking through a scuffle of protesters on the stairs, pushing some of them back through a door in the fence, arresting others.

“Great, this is exactly what the media wants,” Justin said. “Make us look like a bunch of fascist extremists.”

I looked around at small pockets of burning paper drifting through the air like smoldering leaves. The entire crowd buzzed with complaints. People were brushing ash off their clothes and out of their hair. Most of the fire had been contained, but people were already pulling down tents. The energy had turned from warm to frigid.

Scott and Molly caught up to us.

“We need to do something fast. Half the rioters are leaving,” Scott said.

“You can’t really blame them,” Clare pointed out. “Why fight a vote we’ve already lost?”

“Because we haven’t lost,” I said. “That message was propaganda. And standing around looking pissed isn’t going to inspire anybody.”

“Get up there,” Clare told me, and pointed at the stage. “These people need to hear something positive right now. There’s no morale.”

“Me?” I said. “Kevin Freeman’s daughter? I’ll just give them one more reason to hurl a rock at the courthouse.”

“Justin, come on,” Molly urged. “You should get up there. We could use a shot of hope right now.”

“This isn’t about me,” he said, and I understood what he meant. Justin didn’t want to take up the spotlight. He wanted to pass it around.

“But you’re so opinionated,” I said, and he smiled. “You’re leading this riot whether you want to admit it or not. Just talk like you always talk. Believe me, you’ll be inspiring. You’re the best teacher I know.”

Justin’s eyes took a lap around the disgruntled crowd, and he knew he owed it to them to swing their mood.

He picked his way through the protesters to get to the stage. Even though he was a leader, he still preferred to be invisible and it wasn’t because he was shy or timid or insecure. He was the opposite of all of those things. He didn’t want to stand out because, in his mind, he didn’t. He didn’t want to appear larger than life. He wanted to be the same as everyone at ground level.

He climbed up two sound boxes used for stairs. He wasn’t your typical hero. He wore jeans and black soccer shoes. His black hooded sweatshirt was unzipped to reveal a white T-shirt underneath. But even from a hundred feet away you could see a calm confidence in his eyes, this peaceful soldier. It made everyone turn and look, and soon people were saying his name and whistling. Hands started to clap, and the spirit spread until the crowd was on its feet.

Justin were as calm as if he were standing in front of a couple of close friends in an intimate room. But maybe this was intimate to him. Maybe that’s how he saw life, how he maximized it. He let it all be intimate and personal and real, the small moments as well as the enormous ones.

He looked out at the audience before he spoke. It was his way of reaching down and shaking everyone’s hand.

“Here’s the thing,” Justin said into the microphone, and the crowd responded with such a loud cheer, even he looked stunned. The ground shook with drums beating and my face cracked into a smile. Instantly the energy was back. You could feel it. You could climb on it.

“Everybody says you should embrace technology,” Justin said. “But I don’t think that’s true anymore. I think we need to be more careful about what we embrace. I think instead of jumping on every new technology that comes our way, we should take some time to reflect on how it will affect our lives. Isn’t the point of technology to better our lives? Well, has it come to a point where it’s taken over our lives? Where it’s depleting our lives? Those little computers we hold—do we control them, or do they control us?”

Thousands of eyes were still. Bodies stood motionless. People listened to Justin like they were starving and he was serving them food.

“I don’t want to be controlled, especially by something as stupid as a little machine. I’d like to think there’s more to life than what goes on on that screen. Most kids fight to change their parents’ beliefs because they’re too old-fashioned or prosaic. But I’m fighting to bring back my parents’ beliefs. Because I think we’re getting it all wrong.”

The crowd cheered and screamed, and Justin waited for them to calm down.

“Life is about mindfulness. It’s about being in the moment, being aware. And ever since I was little, I was confused about living through a computer so much of the time. I never felt like I was in the moment. I was elsewhere. I was missing the moment. That has become a problem. We are always elsewhere. Our minds are never in this moment, in this now. I guess I’m becoming more acutely aware of the nows, these moments we’re missing because we are always distracted. Can we somehow plug back in to the now?” he asked the crowd.

I watched Justin high on the stage, towering over everyone in the crowd. Thousands of people were crammed around me, but they all seemed to fade away. Even Justin’s voice became a murmur. The past year rushed back to me in fragmented memories. Old conversations resurfaced like photographs. They were as clear as if Justin were whispering them now.

You can trust me. I’ll always be honest with you. But it’s really hard for me to be there for people. It’s just the way my life works. The sooner you understand that about me, the better.

I felt myself caught in a still point. Thoughts spun like a funnel cloud, and I found myself in the middle of it all. And then, just as quickly as the chaotic memories spun, they blew away. My head was clear.

I looked up at Justin, and even though we were standing in the same place, we were in completely different worlds. People don’t change. We only convince ourselves they change. We deny what we can’t accept. We are only as smart as we are willing to see the truth.

“So, why drop out of digital school?” Justin’s voice echoed through the park and snapped my attention back. “It will help our society get unplugged. We can start by spending ten minutes longer, every day, turning off our screens. Get to know your friends, your kids, your neighbors, your parents. Or just turn everything off and breathe. The digital world will always be there. These summer days, these hot summer nights, quality time we can spend with people we love—these are the moments we shouldn’t let pass us by. These are the moments we can never get back.”

“So try it,” he said. “And you won’t be alone. I’m out here waiting to meet you.” He smiled his daring, contagious smile, and the crowd cheered.

I looked up at the scroll over the stage. People were starting to opt out of digital school by the hundreds.

“I think just about every female in DS dropped out,” Clare whispered to me. I smiled. It was definitely motivation.

Chapter Twenty-four

The protest quieted down that night. People’s egos were still bruised. I crawled into Justin’s tent to find him lying down, but with his eyes open. His hands rested over his chest, and his fingers were laced together.

He was breathing long, deep breaths. I lay down next to him and looked up at the perfect seams of the nylon roof joining in the center. I was jealous that something could be so symmetrical.

I hated the questions I was thinking. Is this worth it? Is anything worth it? Is the fight worth it? Are the consequences worth it? When it comes down to decisions, when is it worth it?

“What are you thinking?” I asked him.

Justin blinked. “I’m just trying to stay calm.” He swallowed and took another deep breath. I looked at his body, stretched out and relaxed.

“You’re not calm?”

“It’s a fight sometimes,” he said. “I really wanted to throw something today. I wanted to charge those cops.”

I rolled over and looked at him. “Why didn’t you?”

“There’s no point. It’s what they want. They want a reason to arrest all of us.”

“So your strategy is . . . ?”

“Don’t rise to the bait,” he said. “Sometimes the strongest impression you can make is not to strike back. You beat them in their own game.”

“It’s okay to be angry, you know. Anger can be righteous.”

He smiled. “Righteous?”

“Sometimes anger can be a wake-up call. It can get you moving.”

“I don’t want it to turn that way. It won’t do any good here, not with all these people.”

“Are you nervous about tomorrow?” I asked.

“A little,” he admitted. “I’ve accepted what the outcome will be. I’m just worried how all the people will react when we lose the vote.”

“Have you ever considered that we still have a chance?”

“No,” he said, and looked at me. “This is all a game, Maddie. We’re building a team. That’s what we’re doing here. You can’t do anything without support. We’re showing up tomorrow to recruit a bigger team; that’s how you eventually win the game.”

I was quiet for a few seconds.

“I guess I still never considered losing an option.”

Justin smiled. “It would take a miracle. And I don’t believe in miracles.”

That surprised me. I looked into his clear brown eyes. “Really?” I asked.

“Asking for a miracle is sitting around wanting something to happen. It isn’t acting on it.”

I laughed at the ceiling. I was so exhausted I could barely hold my eyes open. “You don’t think we’ve worked hard enough?”

Justin opened his hands. “I think we’re playing chess. And we’re still waiting for that one move that’s going to change the playing field. It hasn’t happened yet. It’s not impossible, but the odds definitely aren’t looking good.”

“Justin,” a voice interrupted. We looked up, and a boy was leaning in the tent doorway.

“Yeah, Kurt?”

“The police are passing out fines to everyone. For camping on government property.”

“Ignore them,” he said. “They’re just trying to scare us away. We’re not on government property.”

“The fines are five thousand dollars. People are freaking out.”

Justin got to his feet. “Let’s collect all the fines. I’ll deal with them.” He followed Kurt out of the tent.

I waited for Justin, dozing off and on, but I could hear talking and laughter and music outside. I climbed out of the tent. The air smelled like wood campfires, and it reminded me of Eden. There was a scattering of fires burning in old grill pots around the park. The night air was cold, and I wrapped my hands around my shoulders, warming them up. I stopped close to one fire and listened to two guys playing guitars. I stood and listened to the music for a couple of minutes, and my head nodded to the beat.

I needed to find my rhythm. My pacing felt all out of whack. We’re all looking for a rhythm, a movement that isn’t forced, that feels right. I wanted to be more surefooted. I was still searching for the perfect pace.

I found Clare and Gabe sitting next to one of the fires. I sat down next to Clare and hugged my knees to my chest. I recognized a laugh, and my stomach jerked like someone had jabbed my side. I looked across the fire and noticed Jax. He regarded me with a small smile, and his eyes reflected the flickering firelight. I looked away before anything lingered.

I concentrated on the crackling conversation of the fire. I missed sounds of the outside world. Sounds are three-dimensional, just like images. They come at you from every direction.

I watched a girl next to Jax laugh. She leaned her head back and arched her neck and her shoulders shook. They sat on a square blanket together, and there was something intimate about it. I wondered if Jax would kiss her later. I wondered if he really did hold his breath when he kissed. I wanted to stick my head in a hole for wondering.

I sighed and stared at the flames growing and shrinking and playing leapfrog over the wood. They peeked around logs, they jumped, they danced.

“You okay?” Clare asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “We’re so close, and part of me doesn’t even care anymore. I just want it to be over,” I confessed.

“I know what it is,” she said. “You’re not fighting with your heart anymore, Maddie.”

I stared deeper into the flames. She was right.

“My brother always told me the only way you’re satisfied in life is if you’re doing something with your heart. If your heart isn’t in it, you’re not on the right path. I believe that.”

“So what do I do?” I asked. “I’ve never given up on anything.”

“You find a different path,” she said. “That’s not giving up.”

I nodded because what she was saying summed up so many knots in my mind, why they were there, why I couldn’t work them out.

She stood up and I didn’t realize anyone was next to me until an elbow poked my knee. I looked over and saw Jax had sat down. He threw a blanket at my feet. I was surprised how relieved I was to see him, how I instantly felt lighter.

“Thanks,” I said, and wrapped the blanket around my shoulders. Even sitting so close to the fire, I felt the cold wind off the river chill my back and neck. I couldn’t help glancing across the fire, where the brunette with the annoyingly loud laugh had been sitting next to Jax. She was gone.

“Where’s Scorpio?” Jax asked, resting his arms on his bent knees.

I kept my eyes on the orange glow of the flames. They mesmerized me. The coals were the most gorgeous part, burning bright neon red. I wondered if part of their beauty came from knowing you couldn’t touch them.

“He’s busy trying to save the world,” I informed Jax. “I don’t know what else to do.” I looked over at Jax and watched his eyes reflect the orange flickering light of the fire. “I’ve tried everything. I came back home to recruit everyone I could. I even have my dad on our side, and it hasn’t made a dent.”

“You don’t know that,” he said.

“Have you looked at the votes the students are casting?” I asked. Justin’s speech had recruited twenty thousand supporters, which was nothing compared with the millions of people still against us. “Your dad was right,” I said. “People are addicted. And they don’t want to admit they have a problem. No one cares.”

Jax stared at the fire. “Stop thinking about the vote,” he said.

“I can’t,” I said.

“Well, stop worrying tonight,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do right at this second.”

“That’s the problem,” I said.

Jax tapped his hands on his knees. “Let me handle it. I’ll think of something.”

I smiled because he looked sincere, but I knew he was just trying to take some of the weight off my mind.

“I’m serious,” he said. “Have I ever let you down?”

“No,” I admitted.

“I’ll figure something out,” he said. His eyes met mine, and I could see there was an idea taking root behind them. “But what if I need you to help me out?”

I nodded. “Sure.”

“Promise you won’t get mad?” he asked.

I laughed. “Why would I be mad at you for helping?”

“Just promise me,” he said.

“I don’t think you can make me mad,” I told him honestly. His smile faded and he looked back at the fire.

“Okay, no more DS downer talk tonight.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“I’m the president of the fun committee,” he announced.

I looked over at him. “The fun committee? When did that start?”

“About four seconds ago,” he said. He handed me a metal roasting fork and set a bag of marshmallows in front of me. I took the fork and examined it like I was looking at a medical instrument for the first time.

“Haven’t you ever roasted one of these?” he asked.

“Of course I have,” I lied.

I picked a marshmallow out of the bag and stabbed it with the end of the fork. I held it inside the largest flame, and in an instant the marshmallow caught fire. I yanked it back and tried to blow out the flame, and I was left with a giant piece of black, flaky ash. I examined it with a frown. The sight was far from appetizing. I pulled off the ash shell to where it was raw underneath.

I looked at Jax, and he leaned his head to the side, watching me.

I pulled the salvaged remains off with my fingers and ate the sticky sweetness.

I tried a second marshmallow. Instead of placing it directly inside the flames, this time I held it slightly outside the fire. But the flames danced and licked the sides and the marshmallow erupted in a blaze. I pulled it back and blew out the orange flame devouring my snack.

Jax handed me another one and I tried again.

“Put it next to the coals,” he pointed out. “The flame just devours it. You’ll burn it every time.”

I tried holding it over the coals and turning it like Jax was doing, but it took forever. I wanted it now. I inched the marshmallow closer to the flames, and it lit on fire again.

“Crapsticks,” I said, and Jax grabbed the fork out of my hands.

“You’re fired,” he said.

“I can’t keep it away from the flames,” I complained.

“No kidding. That’s your problem.”

I sat back on my hands and motioned for him to explain.

“You need to learn patience. Try it.” He handed me a s’more he had made, and I took a bite. The marshmallow was a layer of warm sugary fluff. The melted milk chocolate oozed around the sides, and the graham cracker held it together with a crunchy crust.

“Wow,” I moaned. “That is amazing. Teach me.” I licked each of my fingers.

“First call me master,” he said.

“You wish,” I said.

He smiled. “The secret is, stay away from the flames.” He looked at me to make sure I was registering this. “I get that fire’s exciting. But it’s too intense. All it does is burn things up, turn them to ashes, and leave the middle raw.”

I narrowed my eyes as he pointed back to the pit, to the red coals sleeping beneath the flames.

“The trick is to go underneath,” he said. “To the coals. You won’t get charred.” He fixed his eyes on mine. “It might take a couple of burns to realize the coals are where you want to be. And you know what else?” He leaned a couple of inches closer to me. “The coals are even hotter than the flames,” he said.

“Thanks for the advice,” I told him.

“Anytime,” he said.

I slowly rotated my marshmallow like it was on a rotisserie. I was careful to keep it away from the consuming flames. The coals tanned it on all sides until it was golden brown. It practically dripped off the fork when I slid it onto the graham cracker. I took a bite and let out a moan.

“Good?” he asked.

“Perfect,” I said, admiring my dessert. “You were right. About the marshmallow,” I clarified.

I woke up to the cold morning air brushing the tip of my nose. Dawn tinted the sky a light pinkish gray. There was a murmur of distant voices, and I leaned my head up. I blinked a few times, forgetting where I was for a second. Clare and Gabe were curled up together in sleeping bags on the ground. I could smell the smoky drifts of campfires. I shivered and pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders and heard someone stir next to me. I looked over and saw Jax passed out a few inches away. We were sharing a blanket.

He had a hood wrapped around his head and was facing me, his body curled in tight to stay warm. His eyes were hidden under his hood—I could just make out the tips of his lashes—but I knew from his long, slow breaths that he was asleep.

I rolled over and shut my eyes. I wasn’t sure what bothered me more, my falling asleep next to Jax two nights in a row or Justin’s not coming to look for me two nights in a row.

I could feel Jax’s body heat close to me under the blanket, as if he were a tiny human furnace. He shifted and stretched out and his arm rested against the middle of my back. I froze from the contact. I didn’t move away. I liked the constant heat.

Chapter Twenty-five

Considering the claim that the digital school vote would be unanimous, voters were taking their time making decisions. By ten the next morning, only five states had voted.

The digital screens along the courthouse listed the voting returns like a scoreboard. So far four states had voted in favor of keeping digital school a federal law and one state had voted against it.

Protests were rising around the country, in parking lots and parks and warehouses and anywhere people could gather. Rioters who couldn’t get out to Portland were still making a statement, even if it meant sticking a sign out in their yards.

Clare and I walked around the food tents, but I was too anxious to eat. I noticed Jax standing with a group of guys. They were talking to a reporter, a young woman who was smiling and seeming to enjoy all the attention. She adjusted a camera badge clipped to her blazer that was filming the interview.

Jax waved when he noticed me, and I walked over as one of his friends was finishing an interview question.

“I thought you were going to hang back,” I told him.

“I promised to help you out,” he reminded me.

“Okay, your turn,” the reporter said to Jax, and he turned to face her. “What is so great about your real world?”

“Getting to know the people,” Jax said.

“You can get to know people online,” the reporter argued.

“It’s not the same,” Jax said.

“How is it any different?” she asked. “What can you do in your real world that you can’t do online?”

His eyes passed over his friends and settled on mine.

“For starters, this,” Jax said, and he yanked my hand and pulled me close to him.

Before I could react, he lifted my head in his hands, leaned down, and pressed his mouth against mine, hard, in case I tried to pull away. His warm lips covered mine, and something like thunder echoed around us. He kissed me like he was scooping my lips up with his, and I stopped breathing. My fingers relaxed and then they clung to his waist and instead of pushing him away, I squeezed his shirt in my hands. His mouth fit perfectly against mine; his lips absorbed every piece of me, like a million little hands holding on to me, until I let myself kiss him back. He was putting more than just his lips into the kiss; he used his entire body. He wrapped his hands tighter around me, digging his fingers into my shoulders and pulling me so close our chests compressed. He opened his mouth, and for just a moment I let it happen. I opened my mouth and breathed him in. I could smell wind and campfire in his skin. I kissed him back. I sucked his hot breath and felt his tongue trace against mine before I dug my hands between our chests and pushed him away.

When he let me go, the sound of cheering crashed around us. I was so lightheaded I had to lean on Jax to get my breath back. People screamed so wildly I almost thought we had won the vote, but they were screaming at us, jumping around like we were inside a mosh pit. The reporter was saying something, but I couldn’t hear her over the crowd.

The cheering started to settle down, and Jax smiled. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes were bright, reflecting yellow sunlight.

I stepped away and he dropped his arm from my elbow. “Brilliant plan,” I mumbled through tight lips.

He wiped his mouth with a bashful grin.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “Sometimes you have to take one for the team.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You are not sorry.”

“You promised you wouldn’t be mad,” he reminded me, and his smile faded. “Are you?”

I ignored his question.

“I’d hire a bodyguard,” I warned him. “Justin’s going to pummel you.”

He smirked. “No he’s not. He was too busy to notice.” Jax nodded toward the tents. I looked over and Justin was there, in a huddle with Shawn and Megan, deep in conversation. He hadn’t noticed.

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” He waited until I met his dark, thoughtful eyes. “He’s always too busy to notice.” Jax broadened his shoulders. “Well, I’m not.”

I dropped my gaze and looked back at Justin, surrounded by a steady swarm of followers.

“He sees you as part of the cause, Madeline,” Jax said. “I see you.”

I felt anger rise and scatter through my core, all the way to my toes. I pushed Jax back.

“Is this funny to you?” I demanded. “Is everything a joke?”

“No,” he said, his face serious.

I shoved him again. “You were just a contact, get it? You were a recruit—that’s it. You were one day out of my life, just a random drop-by.” I raised my hands in the air. “This was never part of the plan.”

Jax gave me a crooked smile, and I realized he smiled like that when he was looking under the surface, when he was seeing me.

“Leave me alone,” I warned him, and backed away. I pressed my fingers against my lips, still tingling from the kiss.

“Look!” somebody yelled, and hands pointed to the digital scroll over the stage. The numbers next to DS were plummeting. The number of dropouts was climbing so quickly, it changed every time I blinked.

The crowd exploded in cheers. I watched Justin’s reaction; he blinked at the scroll like he was imagining it. He looked in our direction and smiled. We had more supporters than ever. The number of DS Dropouts grew and continued to spiral.

I looked back at the votes. DS: 1,212,224; DS Dropouts: 5,432,535.

I couldn’t believe it. Jax’s plan had worked. One single kiss changed the entire swing of the riot. It started the wave we had needed all along.

“Crapsticks,” I muttered. Clare caught my arm.

“Well, Justin didn’t see that, but the rest of the nation did,” she said.

“It was just a publicity stunt,” I said. Clare had a trace of a grin on her face.

“Maybe you should start practicing saying those two really hard words,” she told me.

I nodded. “I’m sorry,” I said.

She shook her head. “No. It’s over,” she said. “That’s what you need to say to him. ‘It’s over.’ Your heart’s somewhere else, Maddie.”

I kneaded my knuckles against my forehead. This was the last thing I could deal with right then, at the brink of the vote announcement. I could taste Jax on my lips, sweet and warm and familiar.

I hated that Jax was right, that I needed to kiss somebody else before I understood how feelings could range. I had to fight so hard to have a small piece of Justin, and Jax opened up and gave me everything. I knew that I deserved everything. People can’t offer you a piece; they need to offer themselves whole, or you will always be asking for more, wishing for more. A piece is never enough.

Chapter Twenty-six

By noon the tally was 48–8. Digital school needed four more votes to secure the win. Though each state gets two votes, both votes go to the side that wins the majority of votes. It’s winner takes all. The sky was clouding up, and so were people’s moods. When you lose, when you see there will be no victory lap, it gets personal. It becomes suffocating.

Inside the locked, guarded courthouse, strangers who didn’t know any of us proceeded to determine our futures and didn’t offer us the chance to speak. They didn’t even offer us their opinions. At 12:30 p.m. the voting updates were announced: 66–10. We had lost.

The crowd stared up at the numbers and waited. We watched commentary videos from inside the courthouse, celebrating the victory. I watched a video on Clare’s flipscreen.

“Is there anything you’d like to say to the protesters?” a reporter asked one of the committee members, who was drinking a glass of champagne.

“Yes.” He looked directly at the lens, as if he could see us through the camera. “You can’t fight technology. You have to embrace it. Technology will always win. Digital school is the best thing that’s ever happened to this country. It’s like electricity and clean water. It makes the world a safer place. You don’t pass up these discoveries. You don’t back away from improvements in our lives. You thank people for inventing them. Now it’s time to go home. This is over.”

A group of guys climbed up on one of the concrete wave sculptures along the riverbank. It started to rock from the weight, and when more people climbed up, the wave cracked. It came down in a shattering concrete pile. People picked up smashed pieces and hurled them at the building. Cops were heading down the steps, aiming their guns at the crowd. Clare and I ran over to Scott and Justin, who were trying to calm people down.

I didn’t want to calm down. I wanted to throw something. I moved in the rioters’ direction and Justin stopped me. He grabbed my hand.

“Don’t,” he said. “It isn’t worth it.”

I met his eyes.

“You’re just going to give in?” I said, and pointed at the numbers projected on the courthouse screen.

“What’s throwing concrete going to do? Make us poor losers? Get somebody hurt? They just want a reason to arrest all of us. Now they’ll get it.”

“Shouldn’t you be a little more pissed off right now?” I shouted over the screams of protesters.

“I don’t see this as losing,” he said, and pointed to the screen. “Look at that—ten votes. Ten. Five states support us. That’s huge.”

“So now what?” I asked. “The law is in place for another ten years.”

Justin nodded. “We’ll start working harder with the states that support us. In ten years we’ll come back here and fight again.”

Justin’s eyes were on fire, his face energized. Losing the vote wasn’t what hurt. It was losing Justin. Today gave him a ten-year dose of inspiration to never stop fighting.

Speakers surrounding the courthouse pavilion turned on, and a voice boomed out.

“Kevin Freeman has something to say,” the voice said. The crowd responded with boos and curses. I felt my stomach curl with disgust. I wanted to crawl in on myself. This was going to be the same speech I had told Molly to broadcast after the vote. What could my father possibly say now?

The front door of the courthouse opened, and my father walked out with four security guards surrounding him. I stood next to Justin and watched his progress like I was watching a snake slither out of a cage.

Out of all of the congresspeople voting, only my father had the nerve to speak publicly. I wasn’t sure if it was confidence or arrogance. At this point, no one appreciated it.

People stopped throwing rocks. My dad stood in front of a plastic shield on top of the steps and wore a microphone clipped to his suit coat. His face was broadcast across all the digital screens on the building. One hundred pairs of my father’s eyes scanned the crowd.

I looked at Justin. His eyes were fixed intensely on my father. He squeezed his fingers around mine.

Chapter Twenty-seven

My father’s pale, stoic face was emotionless, as it usually was before his public speeches. He exuded self-assurance, even in front of so many hostile rioters. It was as if he didn’t see us. All he saw was a world he controlled. There was no drumroll to welcome him, no cheers or applause, just angry silence.

He spoke out and his voice floated around us, echoing through the park like an ominous force.

“The final votes have been counted. Eighty-eight votes to keep DS a national law, and twelve votes in favor of making digital school a state-by-state educational decision.”

The crowd rumbled at this. Thanks for shoving that in our faces, Dad.

“That is a sweeping majority in favor of DS,” he continued, and held up a hand before the audience could shout. “However. Today the law to make digital school mandatory for every state officially expires. In the agreement, one vote is necessary in order to renew this as a law. That vote is mine, as president of Digital School. This law will not pass without my support, without my signature, as I still own copyrights to the DS program.”

A strange silence loomed. I squeezed Justin’s hand. I started to smile because my father’s plan was finally becoming clear to me.

“I will not give my signature to let this vote pass. As of right now, digital school is no longer a law. It will be a choice, and it will be decided on by each state.”

Justin and I looked at each other, our mouths wide open. There was a collective gasp around us, and then the crowd came alive with screams. No one could hear my father. The police in the front of the building stared at one another in surprise to see rioters hugging, cheering, jumping, gathering closer to the iron gates that separated us from the courthouse. My father held up a finger for silence.

“I created digital school. Now, looking back on my system, I have something to admit. Digital school is not working. It is not the answer.” He stopped again when the crowd screamed and celebrated. My heart hammered and I tightened my lips with impatience. Let him speak, I wanted to yell. Slowly, the shouting diffused.

“What I realized is that I tried to fix the moment instead of considering the future,” he continued. “I panicked. I set up a system in response to a tragedy. It was a short-term fix. I didn’t think about the long-term consequences.”

He paused for a few seconds, staring out at the crowd, his head held high.

“After M28, I needed to make an immediate plan. I didn’t have time to weigh alternatives. There was a war going on. How could I know the long-term effects of digital school? No one has ever tried to do what I did. I had politicians, parents, and the government counting on me, waiting for me to solve a crisis. I had thousands of dead children to bury. I had broken hearts to contend with. I had a nation mourning and looking to me to heal it. Someone had to act. Someone had to get us moving forward.

“I thought I found a cure,” he said. “I think, at that time, all we wanted was to escape. I simply built the technology to do it.”

The crowd was so quiet, we could hear the wind flapping a few DS Dropout flags back and forth over tents.

“Now I realize I only exacerbated the problem. I multiplied it. I let all of us live inside of our fears for too long.” He coughed and cleared his throat. I could see the exhaustion in his eyes. I wondered how long he had been leading two lives. “In a time of crisis, people should pull together. Not be ripped apart,” he said.

Justin’s eyes were fixed on the screens, and my mouth dropped open at the expression on his face. He was smiling at my dad. He was agreeing with him.

“I see this now,” my dad continued. “I was reacting more than I was planning. Sometimes all you can do is react. I don’t think my system failed. It kept people safe. It does protect us. And that was my number one priority, but it came at too high a price. Because none of us are free. We’re barely human.” He shook his head and looked out at the crowd. “I once heard that society grows only upon destruction. Something needs to be destroyed for anything new to be introduced. A city is flooded before anyone thinks to build a dam. Someone you love dies and you search for a cure to the disease. It seems that only tragedy compels us to change or move forward. But must we wait for tragedy to strike to encourage us to change? Why don’t we aim to avoid it in the first place?

“Today I stand in front of you and ask you to be open-minded. We should never engrave a rule so thick in stone that it is unmovable. I ask you to be flexible with me. I ask you to consider a new system. One with more choices. One that allows all of us to be free. Let’s not wait for another tragedy to strike to force us to change. Do we need to lose one another to learn to appreciate one another? Can’t we take strides, now, to improve our lives, today?”

He aimed his eyes at the crowd. He seemed to be staring at everyone at the same time. He smiled, and it was the first time I had ever seen him show emotion during a speech.

“I believe there is a better way. I want to reopen face-to-face schools. I want to reinstate real sports teams, tutoring groups, and clubs. I want students to have input on our new school designs. After all, it’s their lives. Shouldn’t they have a say in how they want to learn, on what they want to study? Maybe we should start giving students more of a voice in the matter. These are only a few of my ideas. Let’s begin our change today.” He dropped his hands and took a step back to mark the end of his speech. The crowd erupted in cheers.

Justin grabbed my hand and pulled me forward. “We need to get your dad out of here,” he yelled. “They’re going to arrest him for this.”

“He’s a hero right now,” I said as Justin tried to cut through the tightening mold of fans.

“To us,” he said. “He just made a lot of enemies.”

I looked up at the steps to see a barrage of reporters and police zeroing in on my dad like a hungry flock of birds flapping to a meal.

Rioters surged forward. Justin and I were pushed with a stampede of bodies behind us. I was shoved into Justin, and people fell behind me. I pushed with all the strength in my legs to stay standing under the weight. People in front of us screamed to get back.

Rioters were trying to climb over the gates to get to the courthouse, but the police were opening fire. The ones who did make it over were falling from tranquilizer shots.

People screamed for the gates to be lowered, pleading as bodies collided over bodies.

Before the stampede could crush us, the metal gates dividing the protesters from the steps of the courthouse were lowered. People fell over one another, rolling to their feet, slowly picking themselves up. Some people stayed motionless on the ground.

Justin kept his eyes on the stairs ahead.

“Move,” he told me. His eyes were fixed on the flock of police still pecking at my father. “Now,” he ordered.

I tried to step around bodies lying on the ground. We caught up with Clare and Scott. Blood was smeared across Clare’s white T-shirt. Her eyes found mine for a moment, and they looked blank. Stunned.

“Have you seen Joe?” I asked her. “Jax?” Clare slowly shook her head.

Justin was already ahead of me, flying up the steps toward my dad. We were separated by rioters still pushing and scrambling over one another and cops trying to push people back.

“Justin!” I yelled, but I lost him in the crowd.

I sprinted up the stairs, taking two at a time, when a hand reached out and grabbed me. I slid backwards and Paul Thompson twisted my arm around, pinning me in place. I fought to yank my arm back, and he kicked his knee into my stomach. I doubled over, trying to suck air into my lungs, but it felt like my diaphragm was lodged in my throat. I looked up and saw a gun barrel inches from my face. I could see inside the dark, hollow tunnel. Paul’s face sneered behind it.

“Sore loser?” I said between gasps for air.

He smiled, but his blue eyes were grimacing. “I saved you a little present from the past. Since you seem to prefer living in it.” He used his thumb to push the safety back on his gun, but somebody caught his wrist before his finger pulled the trigger. Jax whirled him around, ripped the plastic shield out of his hand, and used it to smash Paul in the face so hard that blood sprayed across the clear plastic. I staggered back, and Jax smashed the shield across Paul’s back, knocking him to the ground. Another officer was on top of us, but Jax twisted the shield out of his hand and drove it straight into his stomach. The guard’s knees buckled from the blow, and he leaned forward. Jax raised his arms and smashed the shield over the back of his head, knocking him down.

A herd of police officers swarmed in our direction. Jax grabbed both of the shields in time to protect us from a stream of shots. I screamed and held my hands over my ears as shots ricocheted off the thick plastic. They were answered by more shots, coming from the armed rioters behind us.

We scooted up the steps. I grabbed a gun lying under an officer and pinned my back against Jax’s. I fired shots with the rest of the rioters, until we had picked off the swarm of cops.

Jax turned and grabbed my hand and lifted me up. We looked around, taking in our small battle victory.

“And they say you learn nothing from video games,” Jax said, breathing hard.

I looked across the courtyard and finally spotted Justin. He was closing in on my mom and dad, who had descended the steps and were surrounded by cops. Joe was down there too, trying to get close to my dad. We ran down the steps to the street as my dad was being pushed toward a black car at the edge of the courthouse grounds. Justin and Riley managed to pick off the police on either side of my father and separate him from the mob. More shots broke out and Riley fell forward onto the street.

A van pulled up; Scott was in the driver’s seat. We raced down to Justin. He was trying to get my father into the van.

“Leave me here,” my dad ordered. “I’m turning myself in.”

“They’ll arrest you, Kevin,” my mom said.

“Go with the police, Jane,” he ordered her.

“I’m staying with you,” she insisted.

Scott stuck his head out of the van window and yelled for us to get in.

Justin turned to me and stopped when he noticed Jax. They stood a few feet apart, at eye level, staring each other down. Justin’s eyes darkened.

“I’ve got her, Jax,” Justin said, his way of warning him to step back. Jax didn’t budge, and I pushed him back before he could start practicing more video game fight moves. Justin grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the van.

“Don’t move!” Paul shouted, staggering down the steps behind us. Blood was smeared over his face and caked in his hair. I could see the whites of his eyes, wide and focused on me.

He pointed his gun at us, and I ducked inside the van with Justin. A shot was fired, and I winced as a bullet hit the inside of the van door. It caused a deep indentation in the metal frame.

“Stop!” Paul yelled, and my dad looked back.

“Jane, move!” My dad pushed her away from the van as another shot was fired.

I covered my ears. It was louder than any gun I had ever heard. My mom was caught between two policemen. I watched through the window as she shakily ducked inside a cop car. My dad flew forward into the van and Justin slammed the door closed.

Joe dived into the passenger seat, and Scott slammed his foot on the accelerator. The tires squealed hot against the pavement. I wedged myself next to Justin on the floor to keep from sliding on the corrugated metal floor. My dad slumped down and leaned against the wall across from us. We pressed our backs against the cold metal side. We were all panting, and I wiped off the sweat running down my forehead with my sleeve.

Scott hit a train track that lifted the entire car off the ground and sent us sailing back down with a crash. I slid into the dividing grate between the back of the van and the front seats. The metal gate pushed through my skin like a grater. Justin grabbed my hand and pulled me next to him.

“No seat belts back here, Scott!” he shouted.

“Just try to hold on,” Scott barked back. I could see his arms stiff and tight as he clutched the wheel, as if he were holding a bomb that could detonate at any minute.

I looked at Justin. “Maybe we should pull over so you can drive,” I said. He squeezed my leg and told me Scott could handle it. A second later there were sirens behind us.

“Get off this road,” Justin said. “Rule number one. No main roads.”

“Is this really the time for back seat driving? Why don’t you take over?” Scott yelled. “You know I’m not trained for this.”

“With cops on our tail?” Justin said. “See if you can cut them off at the train crossing.”

“Why didn’t we design cars with rear missile ammunition?” Scott moaned.

My dad winced as Scott swerved over a curb. “Scott, pull over,” my dad said. “This isn’t worth it.”

“I’ll slowly burn to death before taking any orders from you, Freeman,” Scott shot back. Justin blew out a long sigh. He and my father regarded each other, seeming to be having a private conversation, and everyone was silent for a few seconds.

I glanced at Joe, who held one hand against the door frame and the other on the glove compartment in front of him, trying to brace himself. He looked too terrified to blink.

I noticed my dad’s face growing pale. He winced as he shifted against the van. That’s when I noticed a smear of red blood, shiny against the silver wall.

“Dad!” I screamed. I slid closer to him, and he shuddered as I looked him over. I moved my hand up his back and felt the warm, sticky trail of blood. It started high, close to his shoulder. I pulled my hand back and it was crimson red, as if I’d been holding it under a faucet of blood. He was losing blood too fast.

“We need to get to a hospital!” I shouted. Justin yelled something to Scott, but their voices were drowned out. All I could see were my dad’s eyes—my eyes, grayish green, with dark green rings around the irises. All I could hear was his shaky breathing.

“Paul was using real bullets,” I said, and he nodded. I looked him over but I couldn’t find the exit hole. The bullet was still trapped inside his back.

His face was turning white, his lips a pale gray.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. His voice was determined.

I grabbed his hands in mine. “Look at me, Dad,” I ordered him.

He opened his dry lips. It took effort to talk. “I can’t focus,” he said.

His eyes started to roll and I grabbed his shoulders.

“Dad. Daddy?”

I hadn’t called him Daddy since I was a little girl, but that’s where I wished we could be, so we could go back and fix everything. Delete delete delete. Rewind, rewind. Redo. Redo. Control alt delete. Start over. The real world doesn’t work that way.

Tears gushed out of my eyes. There are two sides of love, one that makes you fly and one that makes you crash. One that heals and one that hurts. One that cuts and one that sews. I felt myself falling on the sharp edge of love, and I could feel it slicing through me.

My dad slid down the wall of the van, and I caught him and lifted his head into my lap as gently as I could. The van swerved as we narrowly missed sideswiping a train.

There was blood all over the wall of the van, and its iron scent was filling the air. I wanted to cup the blood in my hands and somehow pour it back inside the hole in my father’s skin. I wanted a miracle. My dad was blinking in and out of consciousness.

“He’s going to make it, Maddie,” Justin said, and I just closed my eyes because for the first time in my life, Justin was lying to me. I knew he didn’t believe in miracles.

I leaned my head down and rested my forehead against my father’s damp, cold skin. “I love you,” I whispered.

We swerved off the road as Scott overcorrected the van with a sharp jerk of the wheel. The tires thudded over the grass. Scott jerked the wheel again like he was trying to control the reins of a wild horse. We turned back onto the road, and I closed my eyes and held tight to my dad’s shoulders, preparing myself.

Something smashed into the back corner of the van, tilting us sideways. Before I could brace myself, the van flipped. It felt like someone was kicking me from every direction, and all I could do was curl up and cover my head with my arms as my body rolled. The van finally skidded and stopped on its side.

As quickly as it happened, it was over. I could feel my heart pumping, but I didn’t want to open my eyes. My head felt like someone had smashed a bat against the side of it. I couldn’t move. I started to flutter out of consciousness.

Glass cracked under feet. Metal creaked. A loud voice barked orders, but it sounded distant, spoken through a tunnel. Something heavy next to me was being dragged away. Someone groaned. I opened my eyes just to a squint, only to be blinded by intense light. I covered my eyes with my arm and moaned.

I looked around in time to see Joe, limp and bloody, being dragged away from the ruined van. Sirens screeched through the air, and steam and smoke swirled inside my nightmare. I opened my mouth to shout, but a police uniform loomed over me. Something sharp pierced my arm, and then I slipped underneath a soft, black curtain.

Chapter Twenty-eight

I woke up lying on the padded floor of an empty room. The walls were all mirrors. I looked around and saw clones of myself. The room was shaped like an octagon, so the mirrors projected more mirrors, which reflected more. The deeper I looked, the more images of myself I could see. I was my own stampede. I was the last person I wanted to see.

I blinked up at fluorescent lights burning through holes in the ceiling. I moaned as I moved my neck and tried to sit up. My entire body throbbed.

I was still in my clothes, bloody from the crash. A low buzz vibrated the floor and one of the walls slid open. A man walked inside, wearing light blue scrubs and carrying a black medical bag. His black shoes tapped against the floor.

“I’m one of the practitioners called in,” he explained.

I sat up straighter. “Is everyone all right?” I asked him, and my throat was nearly raw. He handed me a water bottle and I accepted it. I took a sip and could feel the cool water crawl down my throat, all the way to my stomach. I started muttering names, as if he knew my friends.

“There was a stampede at the courthouse,” he said. “Hundreds of people were crushed. They called in every doctor and nurse in the area. That’s all I know.”

“What about the others?” I asked. “Kevin Freeman? Justin Solvi?”

“You’re the first patient I’ve seen” is all he offered me. He knelt down next to me, examining my arm and my head. My arm was caked in so much blood, it was hard to see the cuts. He opened a metal kit and pulled on rubber gloves. He used a wet gauze pad to clean my arm, which made the swollen purple cuts stand out.

“A couple of these are pretty deep,” he said. “I don’t think skin glue will hold them. I’m going to give you some stitches.” I was too despondent to respond. He gave me a shot of anesthetic to numb the area while he worked, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t feel anything anyway. I watched with fascination as my skin was sewn up under his delicate fingers. It was as simple as threading a shoelace. I watched my skin stretch and pull back together. It’s amazing how easy we are to fix on the surface.

“This will scar,” he told me. I traced my finger over the cuts. It looked like my arm had been slashed by a bear claw.

He wiped disinfectant over the stitches and wrapped my arm tightly in gauze. He went through the rest of my exam and told me I had a minor concussion. He offered me pills to help ease the pain, but I shook my head.

He packed up his medical bag. I felt like he had sewn my lips together, too. I didn’t have any words, as if a wire between my brain and my mouth had been severed in the accident.

He looked over at me before he left. “Thank you,” he said.

I glanced up at him with surprise.

“For what you did at the protest. I just withdrew my kids from digital school. I have to admit, I’m a little scared,” he said. “My kids only leave the house about once a month. My daughter’s attention span is so small, she gets anxiety if she has to sit still for more than a minute or two.” He laughed to himself. “My kids have been in DS all their lives, but they don’t know how to think.”

I nodded and looked down at my arm.

“I hope unplugging will help,” he said. When he got to the door it buzzed open, and he left me alone.

I didn’t know what they’d done with Justin or my dad. I didn’t even know if they were alive. All I remembered was seeing Joe’s mangled, broken body.

I was exhausted. Beaten. Trapped. I wrapped my arms around my legs and pressed my knees to my chest. I wasn’t immortal and neither was Justin. No one is fireproof.

We could be executed for this. Our backgrounds would be researched. They’d find out about Justin’s parents. They would investigate my dad. No one could save us. But one question kept running through my head.

What have I done wrong?

Was I insane for feeling innocent? Is this the way all criminals felt? Can every action be justified in a person’s head? But at what point do you cross the line? When you hurt someone? When you hurt yourself?

I must be crazy, I thought, because even after all of this, I didn’t feel guilty.

I glared at my reflection. I got up and stood inches away from my watery, red eyes. I wondered how many people had slammed their faces into these mirrors. I pressed my hand against the reflection, and my fingers softly sank into the walls. The mirrors were reflection paint. The entire room was padded. I watched as my reflection twisted and deformed when I pushed on the wall. My face expanded and then shrank. It scowled and then it arched. I backed away from the walls and sat on the floor and blinked up at the ceiling. Every cylinder of light above me was like a harsh spotlight. I closed my eyelids and could still see red, with yellow flashes slashing across them, like lightning. No matter how tight I closed my eyes, I couldn’t escape this place.

Chapter Twenty-nine

“Madeline Freeman.” The door buzzed open and a guard announced my name like he was doing a roll call, as if there were a dozen other people in the room. I had fallen asleep, curled up on the floor with my arm wrapped over my face to try to block out the spotlights. I lifted my head and blinked up at him.

“Your lawyer is here,” he said. My neck was stiff from sleeping on the floor, and a sharp pain jabbed through my back as I attempted to sit up. I picked myself up and followed the guard into a long hallway, dimly lit compared with my cell. I dragged my feet after him while my eyes adjusted.

He scanned his finger over a security lock, and a door opened into a windowless room with a long white table running through the center. Justin was sitting at the table and all I wanted to do was collapse into his arms, but the guard caught my shoulder. He held me back, slid a chair across from Justin, and told me to sit.

I was so relieved to see Justin that my eyes filled with tears. His eye was bruised and swollen, and a narrow line of stitches ran below his bottom lip. One of his hands was wrapped tightly in gauze. But otherwise he looked fine; the fire was still there, in his eyes. He gave me a small smile.

“You okay?” he asked, and held out a hand across the table. I grabbed his fingers and squeezed.

Okay wasn’t the right word, but I nodded. I didn’t want to lose hope if there was still a chance.

“Where’s my dad?” I asked the guard standing next to the door, and I was answered with silence.

I looked at Justin. “What’s going to happen to us?” I whispered. “Are we guilty?”

“That depends on who’s judging,” he said.

Justin raised his head when a suit walked in. That’s what stood out, his dark black blazer contrasted against a crisp white dress shirt, his black leather computer case, his thick gold watchband and black shoes. I almost expected to see glitter highlights in his hair. He sat down and set his case on top of the table. His gold watch caught snippets of light when he moved.

“Wayne Creighton. Your lawyer for this case,” he said.

“Where’s my dad?” I asked him.

His eyes softened with sympathy, confirming what I already knew. “I’m sorry, Madeline. Your dad passed away last night.”

My face fell into my hands. In my heart I had known all along, but the reality of his words tore through me.

“He was taken to the hospital after the accident, but he lost too much blood.”

“What about Scott and Joe?” Justin asked, his voice scratchy.

“Joe’s in the hospital. He’s in critical condition. Scott’s in surgery. They’re trying to save his leg.”

I tightened my hands together and lifted my face. Surprisingly the tears didn’t come. I felt too empty to cry, too numb to feel anything other than shock. All I could think about was my mom and how much I’d let her down. She’d lost all of us. She was being punished more than any of us.

“Where’s my mom?” I asked. “Can I talk to her?”

“She’s at the hospital with your brother,” Wayne said. He looked surprised that I was more concerned about her than my looming prison sentence.

“What’s going to happen?” Justin asked.

Wayne sighed and looked at his hands. “On paper it doesn’t look good. Treason. Resisting arrest. Shooting cops.”

“They were shooting at us—we can’t defend ourselves?” Justin argued.

“Storming government property,” Wayne continued. “Vandalizing government property. We’ve got a dozen cops with injuries, some critical. The prosecution is pushing for execution. For both of you.” He looked between us. “They’re going to dig deep into your records. Madeline, I’m aware of your arrests, probation, and serving time in the LADC. Justin, I don’t know where to begin with you. You’re notorious.”

“Didn’t you say you’re trying to defend us?” I asked. I wondered whose side he was on.

“What are our chances?” Justin asked.

“I can negotiate it down to a life sentence, but at this point we don’t have many options.”

I grimaced. That wasn’t any better than execution. “That isn’t good enough,” I said. “I need to talk to my mom,” I pleaded.

Wayne shook his head. “We can’t allow any outside visitors before a trial,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

I swallowed. “How long will that take?”

“If it goes to trial, probably six months,” he said.

“What if we’re executed?” I asked, my tongue pushing out the word like bitter food. “Can I see my mom?” I asked.

“I could relay a message to her,” he offered.

My eyes brimmed with tears, and I was afraid to open my mouth and let out a sob.

“The cops were attacking us,” Justin said, fighting harder. “They were using real guns. They shot Maddie’s dad; that’s what killed him. It wasn’t the car accident.”

Wayne nodded. “Paul Thompson will be prosecuted, but that’s a separate case,” he said, his voice soft.

“I want to talk to the prosecutor,” Justin said.

Wayne hesitated. “That doesn’t normally happen,” he said, but Justin’s eyes were hard. “All right,” he agreed. “I can set that up. I need to go over your files and surveillance footage from the riot. I’ll contact your family and friends and do background checks. It will be another week, at least, before we know anything. I’ll do everything I can.”

From the sympathy in his eyes, I knew it was a weak promise. I’d used up all my positive energy at the protest. I didn’t have any fight left. We’d already lost the case.

They kept me in the room of mirrors for days and gave me a diet of stale crackers and cheese. In the morning it was toast and peanut butter. It all left my room untouched.

They allowed me to shower once. Two daily trips to the bathroom with no exceptions. They offered me a pair of dark yellow sweats, the color of dried mustard.

Everywhere I looked was my image, my withering image, like a top-heavy plant. I couldn’t escape myself. The lights never went off. I practiced squeezing my eyes closed so hard that it hurt, so hard that I thought I could make myself blind.

The door buzzed open and a thick-armed guard walked in. He looked down at the floor, studying my usual untouched plate scattered with crackers and cheese that had been sitting out all afternoon.

“That plate isn’t leaving this room until it’s empty,” he informed me.

I glared at him. How could they expect me to eat? I didn’t deserve food; I didn’t deserve anything. I looked away from him—at the wall, at myself, which was worse. I closed my eyes.

“If you don’t eat, we’ll shove a tube down your throat and force the food into you,” he told me. “Don’t go thinking you can starve yourself in here. We wouldn’t do you the favor.” He kicked the plate closer to me. “Eat,” he said. He stood and watched me until I picked up a single square of cheese. I placed it in my mouth and chewed the salty, rubbery texture. I had the urge to spit it out at him, but his hand rested on a gun next to his hip, and his eyes dared me to test him.

I was already mentally on the execution chair. Your actions eventually catch up with you, especially when you live your life dousing yourself with gasoline, waiting for someone to come up to you with a match.

I’d been living too much of my life that way, carelessly, recklessly, never thinking of the consequences. Never thinking anyone held a match. Guilt poured over me in waves. I had destroyed everything my mother wanted. All she wanted was her family and I had managed to rip each one of us away.

After I finished the plate of food, forcing it down my throat like sour medicine, I followed the guard back down to the conference room. Justin was already inside, seated at a table with two empty chairs. He looked beaten down. His hair was sticking straight up, no doubt from pulling his fingers through it for days. My nails were chewed down to the nub.

There were two plastic cups of water set out on the table. I took a seat in one of the empty chairs, crossed my hands over my chest, and waited.

A suit walked through the door with brisk strides. He didn’t bother to sit.

“Roger Murray,” he said, and his eyes shot back and forth between us. “I’m the prosecuting lawyer on this case.” He tapped his fingers on the table. “You might be interested in knowing what your little event ‘inspired.’ Twelve people died in the stampede. A hundred injured, twenty of them cops. It looks like a war zone at the courthouse. All of this hangs on your heads.”

I looked down and thought I was going to be sick. I curled my fingers into fists and tried to breathe, but it felt like I was sucking in air through a narrow straw. This wasn’t my fault, I told myself.

“Find Richard Vaughn,” Justin said. “That’s the man you should be prosecuting; he’s the one behind all the DCs. He’s the reason Kevin Freeman is dead.”

Roger’s eyes darted between us impatiently, as if he was annoyed that we were trying to defend our lives. “All I have here are the facts. If you look over the contracts, everything involving the detention centers is signed by Kevin Freeman. I can’t help that. Contracts are binding. If your father were alive, all of this would be on his head.”

I narrowed my eyes. “It’s pointless to defend Vaughn,” I said. “If DS is no longer a law, all the detention centers will close. It’s over.”

“That might not be the case,” Roger stated.

“What?” Justin and I said at the same time.

“They are talking about reinstating DS as a national law. The committee wants to schedule a revote.”

“They can’t do that,” I said, my voice rising. “My father owns the design.”

“He owned the design,” Roger corrected me. “We would have to rename the program, of course, and hire new administrators, but DS isn’t going anywhere.”

“You haven’t won yet,” I warned him.

His face hardened. “You’re both under arrest for treason. Vandalism. Assault. Resisting arrest. For attacking Richard Vaughn and eighteen other innocent victims and holding them hostage at the LADC. Shall I continue?”

“How can you explain Vaughn kidnapping her twice?” Justin asked. “Drugging her?”

Roger replied with a smile and regarded me. “You’ve been secretly meeting with DS attackers, planning this riot. Vaughn and his men followed you, because you belong in a detention center, which you escaped from. While trying to arrest you, they were attacked, for doing nothing wrong other than trying to infiltrate a dangerous, criminal cult.”

“You’re twisting the truth,” Justin said.

“You won’t get away with this,” I stated.

Roger looked between us and laughed. “You’re both so determined. So confident.” He walked around the table. “It’s a survival mechanism I’ve seen hundreds of times. It’s called delusion of reprieve. It’s a psychological condition more commonly referred to as hope. Condemned people, right before their execution, get the delusion that they might be set free at the last minute. It makes the waiting more bearable. But it’s just a delusion. You know what the penalty will be. Death. One week from today. You don’t have the evidence to fight it. This meeting is over.”

I grabbed on to the side of the table, but a guard picked me up under my arms and pried my hands free.

“No,” I said, fighting against the security guard’s hands, but he dragged me back. I could see a blur of Justin through my tears, and shouts echoed around the room. We were pulled away in separate directions.

I kicked and jabbed my way through the door. The guard dragged me down the hall and pushed open a door, pulling me into the room of mirrors, where all I could do was stare at the mess that was myself. I fell onto all fours and pressed my head against the silver floor. I watched a puddle of tears grow from the flood pouring out of my eyes. I was my own gray sky, I was a river, I was rain. I hated water now, what it meant, all the regret it contained that made me want to drown.

I wanted to hold my breath until I suffocated. I wanted to wrap my hair around my neck like a rope.

The door buzzed and a woman came in, carrying a tray. She was wearing yellow scrubs and had a hairnet over her brown hair, which was pulled up in a bun. I was sitting in a corner of the room with my back pressed against the wall. I was practicing the art of sleeping with my eyes open.

She walked right up to me and set the tray down next to my feet. She knelt alongside me. I winced, as if she was going to grab my arm and shake it.

“You need to eat something,” she said, her voice soothing.

“I have a death sentence,” I said. “I’m just getting a head start.”

“I snuck this in for you,” she said. I looked over at the tray. There were four waffles on a plate. There was a ramekin full of red jelly, one full of chocolate syrup, and a green smoothie in a plastic cup. The sweet, doughy smell almost made me hungry.

“Thanks,” I said, and met her eyes. She was my mother’s age and had a worried edge to her face as she looked over my sullen expression. For a second I wanted to throw myself into her arms to feel some sort of human contact, but she stood up. She smiled and left the room.

I looked down at the green, brown, and red cups like they were bowls of paint. I dipped my finger into the thick smoothie and smeared it across the white plate like it was an easel. I grabbed the plastic knife off the tray, so dull it probably couldn’t cut through paper. I dipped it into the jelly, scooped up the red sauce, and stood up. I flung the jelly at the wall, and it splattered red, shiny droplets over my stale, fading image. I smiled for the first time in a week.

I could feel the dark and brittle ash around my soul start to flake away. I was still alive inside, still raw near the center. Using my fingers, I smeared the jelly on the wall in a cascading swirl. I thought about what Jax had said, that you can paint what you feel or what you see. I always painted what I felt; it was my way of shrinking my emotions before they swelled so huge they split me down the middle. My challenge right now would be to paint my soul.

The jelly dripped and rolled to the floor in a thin red stream. I grabbed more and kept going, letting it rise and start to climb. I wiped green streaks over the wall, like stairs made out of ferns. I licked some of the smoothie off my fingers, and it was cold and refreshing. It made my heavy eyelids start to widen. I smeared brown chocolate in with the green. The colors swirled up the wall like a climbing staircase. At the top, as close to the ceiling as I could reach, I smoothed red back and forth like wings. My hands were shaking. I took a step back and admired my painting, and for the first time since the protest, I had hope. I looked down at my hands, brown and red and sticky.

I rubbed my tattoo with my sticky fingers and thought about the definition of flight; I wasn’t afraid anymore. I imagined one person, and it made me want to be free. I wanted to thank him one more time. For seeing me.

Chapter Thirty

A guard escorted me into the conference room. I sank into the chair across the table from Justin and rubbed my eyes. It was impossible to sleep in the room with mirrors. It’s impossible to rest when your mind is always sprinting from one horrible thought to the next. Even Justin looked exhausted and disheveled. For the first time since I’d known him, all of the confidence had drained from his eyes.

“You have a visitor,” the guard informed us.

I raised my eyebrows. Our funeral director? I wondered. Maybe they would let us pick out our own casket design. That would be fun.

A woman cleared her throat, and I looked up. My mouth nearly fell to the floor. The president of the United States was standing there between two security guards. Her coral suit fit tightly around her tall, lean frame and accentuated her dark skin. She was taller than her security guards. Thin black glasses framed her face, and her dark brown hair fell in tight curls above her shoulders.

I glanced at Justin, who was equally surprised.

“Justin Solvi,” she said, and walked over to extend her hand. She smiled widely and gave his hand a solid shake, which seemed to rattle him awake.

“President,” he said slowly, enunciating each syllable like he still didn’t believe she was in the room.

“Madeline Freeman?” I was almost embarrassed to extend my grimy hand to her meticulous one. I hoped she didn’t look at my nails. She shook my hand and smiled.

“There’s someone here I’m sure you’d like to see,” she said to me.

My mom walked through the door. I half jumped, half fell out of my seat and ran over to her. She held her arms out to me and wrapped me inside. We clung to each other. I gulped back my tears, fighting the sobs building in my chest. My mom made everything real.

She held me while I cried into her chest. All of the exhaustion caught up with me, and my legs felt weak. She lowered me into a seat next to her and kept her arm around my shoulder. Justin slid a box of Kleenex in our direction. I couldn’t imagine what I looked like.

The president sat down at the head of the table. Her light brown eyes regarded us. “I owe both of you an enormous amount of gratitude,” she said. “Thanks to you, all of the detention centers will be freed this week. Kids will go back home, with therapy to help them adjust. Richard Vaughn was behind all of this. He was trying to pin it on your father.”

I blew out a sigh of relief and nodded.

“I’ve been following your progress,” she told me. “You’ve had a busy year.”

I raised my eyebrows. “How have you been following me?” I asked.

“Your mother and I have been in contact,” she said.

I looked between them. “You’ve been talking to my mom?”

“She’s been helping us out, keeping the FBI informed,” the president said.

I stared at my mom. “Since when?” I asked her.

“They hired me as an agent a few years ago,” she told me.

“To spy on Dad?” This was crazy.

The president smiled. “Wives make the best spies,” she said. “She’s been an agent for two years now, recruited at my request, when I took office. I’ve never been a huge fan of this digital education system.”

Justin leaned back in his chair and laughed. He ran his hands over his face. “Your mom is an agent? This is too awesome.”

I was too surprised to laugh.

“We found the evidence we needed,” the president said. “Vaughn’s been drugging students and using them as psychological experiments. He’s killed hundreds of kids in the last year alone, but he covered it up with other medical illnesses.”

“You found the trash lab?” I asked.

“We owe that to your father. He discovered the first one, and we’ve confiscated six more. They were using passenger cars to make the drugs, the same ones transporting students to the DCs.” Her eyes met mine and softened. “I still respect your father and everything he was trying to do,” she said. “He created a wonderful system that we’ll still keep as an alternative. But it’s time to have other options.”

I sat with my mom in the lobby. She had brought me my favorite pair of jeans, soft and worn in, and a camouflage T-shirt from the riots that spelled DS Dropouts over the front. It was a luxury to be in my own clothes again. It made my life, no matter how changed or chaotic, feel closer to normal.

“They’re releasing Joe today,” Mom said. “Want to come to the hospital with me and pick him up?” I nodded. “He’s going to live at home for a few months.”

“You’ll get to know him again,” I said.

She nodded slowly. “I need to be more careful what I wish for,” she said. “Wishes aren’t always granted the way you expect.” She pressed her fingers over the cuff of her blouse. “They’re having a memorial for your dad and all the victims at Waterfront Park, in two weeks,” she said, squeezing my hand, but I was still too shocked to respond. It hadn’t sunk in that my dad was gone. The accident was still a blur. Even the protest felt like a faded memory. My mind refused to see my dad’s pale skin as my last memory. I was already forgetting, and only remembering his strong, confident eyes. How impressionable they were. How on the rare occasion when he did smile, it was the most beautiful expression.

“And Justin,” my mom said. “What will he do?”

I looked down at my feet. “We haven’t talked about it yet. He’ll probably be traveling a lot, helping to coordinate new face-to-face schools.”

“How do you feel about that?” she asked me.

“I think it’s great,” I said with sincerity. “It’s who he is. It’s what he lives for. He literally wants to change the world. He’s more like Dad than I realized,” I admitted.

“Yes,” my mom said. “He is.”

A door swung open down the hall, and I looked up to see Justin walking side by side with the president. Assistants trailed them, and bodyguards led the way. I wasn’t surprised to see it; even in street clothes, Justin fit right in. He had the same determined stride and confident arch to his back. I felt like I was watching a commercial on leadership.

My mom stood up and told me she’d wait for me outside.

“We have a driver taking us home,” she said.

I nodded and stood up to meet Justin. His face was beaming. He was in his element, flying at top speed, finally in an atmosphere he was designed for.

The president shook my hand. “What’s next for you, Maddie?” she asked.

“College,” I said. “Computer law.”

“Good,” she said. “We need people like you keeping technology in check.”

“I’m hoping they can be face-to-face classes,” I hinted, and she nodded enthusiastically.

“That’s what we’re working on.” She looked at Justin. “Speaking of work.”

I smiled because I had seen this coming.

“I want someone like you on my team. I need help coordinating these face-to-face schools. You have the kind of following we need to get this up and running.”

Justin was nodding in agreement before she even had to ask.

“It’s what I want to do with my life,” he said without hesitating. He caught my eye and smiled, one of those smiles that’s so alive, when he’s at his best, when life is a ten.

“When can you be on the East Coast?” she asked. There was a flicker of hesitation in his eyes. Before he could respond, she answered for him.

“I want you to start as soon as possible. Why don’t you sit in on a phone call I have with the education commissioner today? We can’t waste any time. If we’re going to bring back face-to-face schools, it needs to happen now, while the issue is hot.”

“Of course,” he said.

The president was interrupted by an assistant, and she walked away with him, signaling that she’d be back in a few minutes. An office door closed behind them.

Justin turned to me. His eyes were intense. He pulled his hands through his hair, his signature move, indicating that he was overwhelmed.

“This is happening really fast,” he said. He was looking at me but he wasn’t. I could tell that his thoughts were jumbled. I wondered if the room felt like it was moving under his feet, like it felt to me.

“I can’t wrap my mind around it yet,” he said.

I nodded. “It’s not every day all your dreams come true,” I said.

He studied me, and his eyes were so serious, so intense on reading mine, I had to look away. I knew what he saw, and I felt so idiotic for being sad.

So, this was how it ends, fast and final in a brightly lit room where digital canvases stretched above us depicted arched ceilings and sun rays streaking through fake-sky windows. The cream marble tiles shined under our feet. It looked like a fairy-tale ending, and instead I was getting the nightmare. The curse doesn’t lift. Cinderella’s slipper doesn’t fit. The sleeping princess never wakes up. The end.

Even though the ceiling looked like it arched three stories high, the room felt claustrophobic. Something heavy pushed down on my shoulders. I needed fresh air. I needed to walk. I hadn’t been outside in more than a week.

Justin looked at the door the president was about to walk through, and back at me.

He took a step closer, like if he studied me hard enough, he could draw out the words he wanted. “How do you feel about the East Coast?” he asked.

I forced the placid smile into place. He had to do this, and I could never let him doubt it. How could I say those two heavy, awful words to my best friend? The one responsible for waking me up, for putting me on a path that changed my life from a one to a ten?

“I think you’ll thrive anywhere,” I said.

“That’s not what I’m asking,” he said. “How do you feel about it?” The perfect lines of the tiles below my feet were starting to blur. He lifted my chin but I couldn’t meet his eyes. Mine were brimming with tears.

“I have to go back home,” I said. “I don’t want my mom to be alone. My family needs me right now.”

His hand dropped from my chin and squeezed my shoulder.

“Look at me,” he said. I stared into his brown eyes, dark and intense on mine.

“I know you told me that I come first,” I said, “but I’m not going to let you pass this up. You need to do this; you owe it to all of us to take this job. So don’t even think of turning it down for me.”

“Then come with me,” he pressed. “I want you to come with me. I’m asking you.”

“Justin,” the assistant called out to him and waved him into the office doorway. “We’re ready for you.”

Justin said he’d be right there, and turned back to me. Everyone wanted Justin. Everyone needed him.

“We have to talk about this,” he said.

“I’m leaving with my mom in a few minutes,” I said, and pointed toward the entrance.

“So your answer’s no?”

I gulped in a deep breath. I felt my fingers opening and I knew I was slipping. I let myself fall, and there was something so natural about it. It was so much easier than fighting to hold on.

“We want different lives,” I said. “I want more of a middle ground.” He opened his mouth to argue, but I cut him off. “And you say you do too, but you’re a fighter. That’s what I love about you. That’s why I fell in love with you. I don’t want to hold you back.” I swallowed. “But I know that’s your first love. That’s where your heart is. I don’t want to be the one who’s always getting left behind.” My voice was unsteady. Truthfully, I didn’t want to end up like my mom.

Justin’s mouth dropped open when I said this. He was registering words he knew were true. He searched my eyes.

“Is that the only reason?” he pushed.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not blind, you know. I saw the footage.”

My lips tingled at the memory of Jax’s kiss. “I didn’t start that,” I said.

“You didn’t stop it, either. It looked pretty mutual.”

I glared up at him. “Maybe I wanted you to get mad,” I said. “Maybe I wanted you to focus on me, to walk away from your mission for two minutes and put me first. But you let it go, didn’t you? Because it was great publicity. It helped your cause. So, what’s more important to you, Justin? Me, or the cause?”

His hesitation confirmed my decision.

“I’m coming back for you,” he promised.

His eyes were stubborn. But that’s the problem with water. We don’t wait. We keep moving. If you don’t join us, if you don’t keep up, we move on. If you don’t hold tight to us, we slip away. It’s one of our strengths. Maybe Justin would come into my life again, like streams joining in a wide river after solo runs. Things can split apart and come back together—nature proves it. People can too; scars are evidence. It’s written everywhere.

His eyes started to glisten. I had always been afraid Justin would break my heart. I had never imagined I’d break his. He inhaled deeply, and when I was about to say those two words, he held up his hand.

“Don’t,” he said. “I know what you’re going to say. Can you give me one more chance? Just let me figure things out with this job, and then we can talk?”

I looked down the hall. “You shouldn’t keep the president of the United States waiting,” I said, and tried to smile but couldn’t. It was all I could do not to cry.

I turned away first because I couldn’t look into his eyes. I couldn’t let him see mine flooding over with tears. When you grab hold of one thing, you ultimately have to let go of another. Our fingers have spaces between them, just like life, and things fall through. Part of my life was ending so a new part could begin. But first you have to let go. You have to open your fingers and let slip.

I walked down the hall and stood in the entryway for a couple of seconds. I was caught inside another still point, where my next step would change my entire course. I waited to feel a pull back to him. I waited for regret to settle in and make me turn around. But instead, I felt something closer to peace. I knew exactly what I wanted. It’s who we are in the still points that defines us.

Chapter Thirty-one

ONE WEEK LATER:

CORVALLIS, OREGON

My mom was arranging roses in a vase on the kitchen table. They were the first blooms from a real plant she’d bought a few days earlier. Her therapy was working outside. She had already torn up the entire backyard. She had tilled the ground. It was her way of starting over.

The breeze from the open window pushed the smell of roses through the room. My mom’s cheeks were as pink as the petals. Her eyes were light.

“You look really good,” I told her, and sat down at the table.

“Being outside so much helps,” she said, and pulled up a seat next to me. “I hope you’re not worried about me,” she said. “I want you to go up to Portland. You need to get settled, too.”

I nodded. “I know. I’ll move up at the end of the summer,” I said. “Somebody needs to stick around and bug Joe.”

She smiled.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

She looked out the window. “I’ll be okay, Maddie. I’ve accepted what happened. It still hurts, but life is supposed to hurt. Too many people think life is supposed to be easy and perfect all the time. But there is always some hurt. It’s part of being alive. You have to accept it’s a piece that every single person carries. It’s what makes us human.”

I studied my mom. I’d always known she was smart and loyal and sentimental and loving. I’d never realized she was brave.

I looked out the window and I could feel her eyes on me.

“Have you talked to any of your friends?” she asked.

I shook my head. I hadn’t even turned on a computer since I got home. We stayed away from news channels. I was afraid to hear what the media was saying about my father and the riot. I couldn’t take any criticism right now.

“How’s Justin?” Mom asked.

“Busy,” I said.

“You know, your father really liked Justin. We’ve always loved his family.”

I nodded. “I think I wanted Dad to accept Justin so badly because then I would know he accepted me,” I said.

“He always accepted you, Maddie. You’re his daughter. It took a little more convincing for him to accept Justin. Your father just wanted the best for you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

I walked into the living room, where Joe was watching a movie.

“Hey, Kissing Bandit,” he said.

“What did you call me?” I asked, and sank into the couch next to him.

He paused the show.

“Why didn’t you tell me you dumped Solvi? Congratulations, by the way. I always knew you were capable of making a smart decision. That guy never deserved you. But then you replace him in the same day? That’s just cold.”

I glared at him. He was being more obnoxious than usual. “What are you talking about? Replace him?”

He held up his phone and I stared at a picture of me and Jax. Kissing. It had been taken at the protest. It brought back a swarm of feelings I was hoping to keep repressed.

I grabbed the phone out of his hand and gawked at the picture. My pink hair was flying back in the wind, like a flame, and our eyes were closed tight. Jax leaned into me, his fingers cupping my face, pushing everything into the kiss. My stomach flipped when I felt it all over again.

“Where did you get this?” I demanded.

“You haven’t seen it?”

“I haven’t checked my messages,” I said.

“Maddie, it’s all people are talking about. ‘The kiss felt around the world’?”

“Gross,” I said, and threw the phone back at him.

He looked at me with surprise. “This is what destroyed digital school. It’s all over the news. All the kids dropped out not because of Dad’s fancy speech. And not because of the votes. It’s because of this.” He held out the screen. “It went viral. This is what people want.”

I smothered my cheeks in my hands to cover the blush spreading over my face. “This is so embarrassing,” I said. “It was just a joke.”

“Was it?” he asked. “Have you looked at the picture? I’m pretty sure your tongue is in this guy’s mouth.”

“Delete that, Joe!” I demanded.

“No!” he yelled back.

“Now, or I’ll break your other arm.”

My mom walked in and cut us off. “It’s so great to see you two bonding again,” she said. “Package for you,” she said to me, and I raised my eyebrows. My stomach cramped. I grabbed it and looked at the label. J. Solvi.

I tore through the yellow plastic bubble wrapping and pulled out my red leather journal. I must have left it in his tent at the protest. There was a yellow note stuck to the front. I peeled it off and looked at the messy black handwritten words.

Thought you might want this. It’s a good, loyal companion. Hope you like how it ends.—J

I stared at his brief note. I reread it. Then I reread it again. I analyzed it. I hated that I analyzed it, but I did. I even examined his writing, messier than usual, like he was rushed, like he’d hardly had a second to think of me. I shook my journal out, as if there was more inside, like a note or letter or at least more than three busily scribbled sentences.

I looked at that single initial, J, so informal. What was this? This was Justin’s way of trying to win me back?

I crumpled up the note.

“You okay?” Joe asked me, but his voice sounded far away, down a hallway or in another room.

“I hate men,” I announced.

“Hey,” Joe said, looking insulted. “That’s a pretty broad claim.”

“You all suck.”

“Um, I’m still sitting here.”

“You’re all soul-sucking, life-draining, mind-wrenching walking disasters, strategically masked in beautiful bodies with gorgeous smiles. And great hair. And then, just when we’re hooked, poof, you all disappear back to planet Asshole, where you all come from.”

Joe stared at me. “I’m assuming it wasn’t good news?”

I opened my mouth to answer him but then shut it because that was the point. It wasn’t anything.

Joe shook his head. “Just when you show promising signs of maturity, your inner drama queen breaks through and you’re twelve again.”

“Thanks a lot.” I showed Joe the note. “This is all I got,” I said.

Joe used his good hand to smooth out the crumpled piece of paper. He read it and looked at me like I was a relationship hypochondriac. Maybe I was.

“So? He sent you your journal. I would call this thoughtful.”

“Don’t you get what this means?” I asked.

“No. I don’t overanalyze things. I’m not a girl. Thank God.”

“He told me he was coming back for me, that he wanted another chance, and this is all I get,” I said, and held up the sticky note. “Poof. Asshole.”

Joe smirked. “Welcome to the real world. It kind of sucks sometimes. Broken bones,” he said, and pointed to his arm. “Broken heart,” he said, and pointed at me. “Are you sure the digital life isn’t the way to go?”

I stared at Joe. It was strange to hear it that way.

I went upstairs and threw the journal down on my bed. I flopped onto the mattress, hugged a pillow over my chest, and stared up at the ceiling canvas. Justin’s words came back to me. Thought you might want this. It’s a good, loyal companion. Hope you like how it ends.

The last sentence played in my head. I took long, slow breaths. Maybe Justin’s message was hinting at something else. I was so quick to jump to conclusions—Joe was right. I was being ridiculous. People had let me down so many times, I was always anticipating it.

I grabbed the journal and opened it up to the last page. I flipped it over to find a written message.

I’m sorry, Maddie. I’m sorry for all the things I can’t be for you. I just want you to be happy. You deserve it more than anyone.

I have a field trip for you. Come on, you know you love these.

This Saturday. 119 Hawthorne, SE Portland. Noon.

This is my attempt to give you all the things you want. I hope I get it right.

Love always,

Justin

Chapter Thirty-two

I rode the train to southeast Portland. I tapped my feet against the plastic floor and watched a family sitting across from me: a mom and dad and their teenage daughter and her boyfriend. The girl was messaging the entire time and never looked at the boy, who was resting his hand on her leg.

The father took her phone away, and she shrieked and grabbed for it, but he held it out of reach.

“Why don’t you talk to your friend,” he suggested.

She blushed and pouted for a couple of minutes. But then something remarkable happened. She came into the now. She focused on the boy sitting next to her, and they started to talk. When they jumped off the train, the two of them walked away, holding hands, pointing things out. They were paying attention. Their eyes were on each other. They were both in the now, and there was something so refreshing about it. So natural.

I realized what Justin was talking about in his speech. Sometimes it’s rare to see that, two people who aren’t distracted by something, who are together, sharing one moment.

I looked out the window, and emotions pulled me in every direction. I tried to imagine what Justin was planning, if he was going to surprise me and show up. I leaned my head back and hated that I wanted something else more. Justin put too many obstacles in my path to hurdle and climb and crawl through. I just wanted somebody to widen my path and help me flow.

The train slowed down at my stop, and my stomach flipped when I noticed someone standing outside. I stepped down from the train ledge and jumped onto the sidewalk. I caught my breath. He was tall and had short, dark hair, but my face fell as the stranger turned around and I didn’t recognize him. He walked past me and boarded the train.

I looked up and down the sidewalk and was met with an empty street. The train wheezed away, and when it passed I searched the other side of the tracks. Fake maple trees were spaced twenty feet away along the sidewalk, their trunks anchored in the concrete. The sky was clouding up. I followed the addresses to the one I had memorized: 119 Hawthorne Street. I blinked up at a brick building, about six stories high. Its windows were covered in steel bars, and the ground-floor doors were covered with metal sheets.

I looked around and tried to understand what Justin was showing me, but all I saw was desolation. I pressed my hand over one of the plastic white boards. I wondered what this building had been when it had breathed, when it was full of life. I wondered who had put up these boards and what they’d been thinking while they were doing it, if they felt guilty or strange to be shutting up a place built for life. I kept walking down the sidewalk, and at the end of the intersection, where two doors stood at the main entrance, was a freshly painted sign: UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND EXTENSION CLASSES—ENROLLMENT STARTING NOW.

I read the smaller print underneath:

IN AN ATTEMPT TO OFFER ALTERNATIVES TO DIGITAL SCHOOL, WE WILL BE OFFERING LIVE CLASSES THIS FALL. WE HOPE TO HAVE A FULL COLLEGE PROGRAM OFFERED BY 2063. GET UNPLUGGED AND JOIN US.

I looked at some of the fall classes offered: Computer Ethics, Computer Law, Technology Trends.

I stared at the schedule and ran my fingers across the cold glass. They were all classes Justin knew I wanted to take. It was all happening. We’d made it possible. I felt tears prickle my eyes, and I didn’t try to fight them. I wished my dad could see this. My heart was breaking and splintering and swelling all at once.

I heard hammering and looked across the street. There were construction workers taking metal sheets off the door of a red brick office building. I watched as one of the metal slats was ripped free, sweeping up a cloud of dust and flecks of paint.

I kept walking and noticed an advertisement for a café opening. Next to that was a sign for a coffee shop. It was a start. Small steps, but it was making people move.

It hit me, for the first time, the difference we had all made, that I had helped make. Justin was right. We could do it. And it really does start one person at a time. It had all started with Justin. In the DC, it had started with Gabe. It had started with my father, even with Jax. Then people catch on, like fire.

Construction workers wearing hardhats met in the middle of the road and pointed at the buildings. One of them looked over at me, at first looking unbelieving to see a random person on the street. I took a few steps back, realizing that this whole time I had been staring at them like a nomad lost in the intersection.

One of the workers approached me. His eyes traveled from my hair to my face.

“Are you Maddie Freeman?” he asked, his voice low and coarse.

“Y-y-yee-aah,” I stammered with surprise.

“There’s a car coming for you,” he told me. “Should be here any second.”

My eyebrows pulled together. “Who gave you the message?” I asked.

“The guy I’m working for,” he said. “Justin Solvi.”

With that brief exchange, he turned and focused his attention back to some notes on his flipscreen. I backed up to the sidewalk just as a ZipLimo turned the corner. I felt my face flush, and my stomach balled with nerves as the limo came to a stop. The back door slid open and I ducked inside. I sat down and looked around at an empty interior. A monitor in front of me showed a red star lit up on a map: the final destination. I sat back and looked out the tinted windows at a city waking up.

The ZipLimo skirted trains through the city and slowed down in a residential neighborhood of small, bungalow-style homes. The car stopped in front of a two-story house. A gable over the front window shaded a wide front porch. A red brick chimney crawled up its side, and there was a garden between the house and a detached garage.

I stepped out of the ZipLimo, and voices streamed through the screen door.

“It’s Maddie!” Clare’s familiar voice shouted, and she threw open the door, running down the steps to me. She pulled me into her arms and I hugged her tight. Becky and Riley came down the steps, and they all passed me around in hugs.

“We’ve been trying to get ahold of you all week, but you weren’t answering your messages,” Clare said.

“Sorry,” I said. “We’ve been hibernating. There’s a lot to adjust to.”

“Are you okay?” she asked me.

I shrugged. “As okay as I can be,” I said. “They’re planning a memorial for my dad, at the spot of the protest. I think it’s all going to hit me then.”

“We’ll all be there,” Clare said. I looked up the steps and could see a crowd of people inside.

“What’s going on?”

“It’s a multi-themed party,” Clare said. “Scott was just released from the hospital; it’s Gabe’s open house—he just moved in here with some friends.” I followed her up the stairs and through the front door. “And you’re here. We wanted to celebrate your general awesomeness,” she said.

I looked around the room for one person I wanted to see more than anyone. He would have stood out, since he was a head taller than everyone else.

Clare watched me scan the crowd. “Justin couldn’t make it,” she said. “But he helped plan all of this.” Before I could respond, Riley nudged my arm.

“Hey, Maddie, check out my screen saver.”

He showed me his phone and I winced. It was the photo of me and Jax kissing at the protest.

“Great,” I said.

“Look, it’s my screen saver too,” Gabe said, showing me his phone.

“Good for you,” I mumbled.

“Hey, Kissing Bandit,” Scott said from the couch. “Check out my phone cover. ‘Kiss DS Goodbye,’” he said, mocking one of the headlines.

“I get it, okay?” I said, and looked around. Where was Jax? This had all been his idea. He could at least show up to share the load of smack talk. Or, at the very least, to kiss me again.

“What happened with you and Justin?” Clare whispered. We moved back against the wall so we could talk in private.

“He took a job out east,” I told her.

“I know that,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m supporting him,” I said. “I told him he had to take it. I knew he’d get a job offer. I just didn’t expect it would be three thousand miles away.”

Clare gave me a knowing smile.

“Why are you looking at me like that? Wasn’t that the right thing to do?” I pressed. “I can’t say, ‘Come back to Portland, Justin. Give up working for the president and helping to change the world, so we can snuggle and watch movies and have date nights.’”

“Did he ask you to move out east?”

“He did,” I admitted. “But I can’t leave right now. I want to be close to what’s left of my family.”

Clare watched me carefully, as if she was testing me. “You know, it’s great that you’re thinking of your family and Justin and what they need and want. But what do you need, Maddie?” she asked. “What do you want?”

I stalled. I still felt guilty admitting it out loud. Before I could answer her, her phone beeped. She looked down at the screen and back at me. She bit her bottom lip.

“Somebody’s here to see you,” she said.

I felt my stomach tighten into a fist.

“Justin’s here?” I asked. “Did you talk to him?”

She shook her head. “I never talked to Justin directly. I’m pretty sure I talked to his secretary’s assistant.”

“Wow,” I said.

“Yeah. I think he’s a little busy. I heard they’ve already set up more than a hundred face-to-face schools to start this fall.”

“He must be loving life. So you helped organize all this?” I asked, and pointed around the room.

She nodded. “I’m the assistant to his secretary’s assistant, apparently.”

I looked at the door and back at her. My feet didn’t want to move.

“This last surprise was my idea,” Clare said. “You can thank me later.”

I smiled and she nudged me toward the door.

“He just got off the train,” she said. “Go!”

My heart was twisting. Justin had done so much for me. Then why was something sinking inside of me?

Everyone was talking and blurring as I walked through the room. I opened the screen door and walked onto the porch. I peered down the street in each direction. My eyes locked on somebody walking. He was tall. He was wearing jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt. I grabbed the handle of the railing and stood on my tiptoes to get a better view. He had his hood pulled over his head and a bag hung over one shoulder. I looked down at the ground, and my head felt like it was spinning. His bright orange tennis shoes brushed against the road.

When he got closer and noticed me on the steps, he smiled. It was the best smile I had ever seen. It was everything I wished for. My heart jumped so high in my chest, I almost sprang off the steps, but I kept my shaky hand wrapped around the railing.

Jax pulled the hood off his head.

“Surprise,” he said. I just blinked down at him, taking in his hair and his skin, soaking in the calming effect he had on me. He looked over my shoulder at the house. We could hear people laughing and talking inside. “I got a message there was a surprise party for you,” he said. “I guess I’m fashionably late.”

I thought about that for a second. “Can you be fashionably late to a surprise party?” I wondered aloud.

He shook his head regretfully. “No. I’m just the schmuck who’s late. Clare invited me,” he said. “Probably out of pity because I’ve been bugging her every day, trying to get in touch with you.”

I was so happy to see him, I was afraid to move, afraid I would mess up this perfect moment. But then I remembered that with Jax, I didn’t have to be afraid of the unpredictable movements. He was something consistent and steady.

He swung his yellow duffel bag down to his side, and I stepped down one stair and hesitated.

“It turns out we’re famous,” I said, and caught him blushing.

“Yeah, it’s a little weird,” he said, and scratched the back of his head. “I guess our photo’s all over Times Square in New York.”

“The photo of us?”

He nodded. “The kiss that brought down DS. The kiss felt around the world.”

I cringed. “I heard.”

“Sixty-six million sites are talking about it. My friends like to give me hourly updates.” He met my eyes. “I really am sorry,” he said.

“You are?” I asked, disappointed.

“I didn’t mean to make you mad. I get these crazy ideas sometimes, and I never think about the consequences.”

I smirked. “I wouldn’t know what that’s like,” I said.

He walked up the first porch step. His eyes looked me up and down, drinking me in. “Scorpio must be pissed. I wasn’t summoned here for an ass kicking, was I?”

I shook my head. “He moved to the East Coast.”

“Oh.” He started to smile but then caught himself. “I’d say I’m sorry, but . . .”

“You’re thrilled?” I finished for him.

He shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe you guys can make it work. It’s only a quarter mile around the world. You can face-chat and have virtual dates, since I’m sure you’re both into that.”

“We broke up,” I said before he could make any more jokes.

He smiled again and didn’t bother trying to hide it. “I hope not on my account.”

I smiled. It was completely on his account. He was my middle ground. He was the person I’d been looking for all along. It just took me this entire journey to get here.

“Was it just a publicity stunt?” I asked him. “What happened at the protest?”

Jax looked offended. “I told you I had a plan.”

“To gain supporters,” I said.

He shook his head. “It wasn’t for the riot. I couldn’t care less about the riot. I was trying to be romantic. Like I said, a first kiss is huge.”

I looked down at the steps dividing us. “It was pretty good,” I admitted.

“Pretty good?” He leaned closer over the stairs. “It was fucking hot. But now you’ve ruined it for me.”

“How?” I asked.

“I can never top that.”

I met his eyes. “Are you saying you want to kiss somebody else?”

He shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

I sprang down the steps like I was rolling out of an open plane, taking the jump. Every decision we make in life, every new relationship, every job, every change, is a free fall. And it’s not the dive that will kill us. It’s the fear of taking the jump that hurts the most. The secret is to believe we are all capable of flight.

I threw my arms around Jax’s neck, and he lifted me off the ground. I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he pushed our chests together. His lips found mine with a soft, warm, perfect landing.

June 24, 2061

Life.

It isn’t as inconsequential as I once believed. It’s like art. You can buy it, already painted for you, and you can admire somebody else’s idea of it. Or you can create it for yourself, one brushstroke, one chipped piece at a time. You can give it your own colors and textures and patterns. It may not make sense to anyone else, but it will make sense to you.

People are placed on your path to open you up or to dust you off. They come along to change you, or to make or break you. In the moment, you don’t always understand, but when you look back, you see the impact they made. You see how they helped navigate your direction. People come in and out of your life during points where you need them, and some move on and some leave imprints. But it never happens the way you expect.

If life happened the way you planned, how boring would that be? Like a road that never curves. Like land with no elevation. All the unexpectedness, all the changes and contrasts, is what builds the beauty. You just have to open yourself up. To all of it.

Visit www.hmhco.com to find all of the books in this series.

About the Author

KATIE KACVINSKY worked in the entertainment industry and was a high school English teacher before deciding to write full time. Her other books include Awaken, Middle Ground, and First Comes Love, an Oregon Book Award finalist. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her family. Visit Katie’s website at www.katiekacvinsky.com.