Meeka nods because she’s feeling it too. “I knew you’d get there.”

  “It makes sense, right?”

  “Oh yeah. Tons. But I wasn’t going to say it first because he seems like such a puppy dog.”

  “Yeah, but puppy dogs can still bite. So what do we do about our boy Gus?”

  “We let him know we know.”

  “Like, call him?”

  “No. Like face him. Make him know this is real life.”

  Okay. Tomorrow, then. School. I know the perfect place.

  HOLLY

  BREATHE. Breathe. Breathe.

  I’m getting through Sunday supper like I’ve gotten through every Sunday supper of my life. Smiles. Big bites. Pure stamina.

  Carter and Oran are making faces from across the table. On any other day, it wouldn’t bother me. Kids will be kids, right? But Carter recently got Dad’s old iPhone—no cell plan, only data—and he uses it to message with his friends. I’m wondering if he’s seen the meme, and if he’s shown it to Oran. Are they mocking my face in it? Is that what this is?

  “I’m glad you’ve finally found something you’re good at,” I tell them.

  “What?” Carter asks.

  “Being ugly,” I say.

  “Boom!” Oran says, and he starts cackling. He may be the younger of the two, but he’s the more sadistic one. People sometimes call him my “carbon copy,” which I don’t see. At all.

  “I’m talking about you too, buddy,” I tell Oran.

  “Okay,” Oran says with a sneer. “Then you look like a baboon butt!”

  “Not another word,” Mom says.

  And Dad says, “Yeah, quit it or else,” but it’s more for Grandpa’s sake than anything. If Grandpa weren’t here, Dad would ignore all of this, focus on scarfing down his food so he could get back to watching football. But Dad feels like he has to show his father that he’s in control of the madness. Funny thing is, Grandpa doesn’t seem to care. He’s all about the potatoes right now.

  “Lovely mash, Heidi,” he tells Mom. “Are these reds? Or russets?”

  “Yukon Golds,” Mom says. “With a splash of cream and a touch of cauliflower. It was your son who cooked them.”

  “That so? Still delicious,” Grandpa says to Dad as he takes down another forkful.

  I’m not hungry, but this is my favorite meal. Roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, apple slaw. So I eat, because not eating would seem weird. I’ve gotten through enough of it that I can see a window opening up. I can make my escape.

  But Mom delays me with a question. “So, now that you’ve had time to reflect on it, how does it feel?”

  I know she’s talking about the record, but my answer is about the other thing. “It’s not nearly as big a relief as I’d hoped.”

  “It was never meant to be a relief,” Dad says, his mouth partly full. “Success is simply an outcome you earn.”

  Is he trying to be deep? I suppose so, though I wouldn’t put that quote on motivational posters. “I’m looking forward to not thinking about it,” I tell them.

  “I’m looking forward to dessert,” Grandpa announces, and he scruffs Oran’s hair. “Right, pal?”

  “Peanut butter pie!” Oran shouts with a fist up. “Peanut butter pie!”

  As delicious as that sounds, I use this as my cue to exit. “Save me a slice. I’ve got homework to finish.”

  I kiss Grandpa’s dry forehead as I pass, and he pats me on the cheek. Then I hurry to the back staircase and take the steps two at a time. When I’m at the top, I suck in another big breath.

  Okay. Okay. Okay.

  From the back of the linen closet, I snatch Grandpa’s laptop. Actually, it’s hard to call it his laptop because he’s never used it. He never even opened the box. We bought it for him as a Christmas present last year. Mom thought it would be good for him to be on Facebook so he could keep up with the world. Grandpa disagreed.

  “They still print the newspaper and they still make stationery, pens, and stamps, don’t they? Therefore, I will not be needing one of these contraptions.”

  Even for a grandparent, he’s old-fashioned. But then, he’s older than most. Eighty-four, an entire generation separated from the tech-friendly seventy somethings my friends call their pop-pops and nanas.

  Since he didn’t want the laptop and everyone in my house already had their own—and since Mom had gotten it cheap in Williston on Black Friday and didn’t think it was worth returning—we exiled it to a shelf behind some old towels, in hopes of regifting it.

  Happy early birthday to me.

  With the new laptop tucked under my arm, I jog the length of the upstairs and head down the front staircase, then down to the basement. Our house was built five years ago, and our basement is more or less a fortress. The foundation is so thick that you could pile ten houses on top of it and it wouldn’t crack. It’s as well insulated as a cave. It stays cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It’s carpeted wall-to-wall. It’s all part of our builder’s energy-efficient plans. This also means that you can say anything you want down there and nobody is going to hear. You can play an action movie on full volume. If you’re up in the kitchen, not even the faintest sound of an explosion will reach your ears. There’s one way in and out, so it’s the only place in this house where you’re guaranteed a certain amount of privacy.

  I settle into Mom’s comfy reading chair in the corner. I plug in the laptop and power it on. It prompts me for all sorts of information. I enter a fake name, fake email address, etc., and when it asks me to connect to a Wi-Fi network, I have no choice but to select our own. Our neighbors’ houses are too far away to piggyback onto their networks, even if I did know their passwords. I’m taking a small risk, but as soon as I’m done, I’m going to reformat the drive and restore all the defaults, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be in the clear.

  Even though I feel like an idiot for doing this, I open an incognito tab on Chrome and I start to type a question into the search bar.

  How do you make . . .

  The autofill presents some thoroughly odd options.

  French toast? No.

  Slime? Really? Gross.

  Buttermilk? Even grosser.

  Why are these the top searches?

  A meme, I type. How do you make a meme?

  Obviously, I’m not the first person to ask, because there are a ton of results. Most of them link to sites where you can upload your own picture or redo popular memes with your own text. Whether any of the sites will help me narrow down who did this to us is a long shot.

  I need another plan of attack.

  I need to see the meme again.

  Riley posted a version to her Instagram page. Obviously, it’s her passive-aggressive attempt at payback for my breaking her phone in the parking lot. “Not a big deal. It’s insured and I wanted a new one anyway,” she told me at the time, but there was no way she isn’t holding a grudge.

  As soon as I get the meme on my screen, I realize that I haven’t looked at this thing close enough. Whenever I’ve seen it, I’ve turned away, like it’s a dirty picture. Which it is. The dirtiest. But if I’m going to have any hope of figuring out who first spread it, I have to study it. So that’s what I do.

  The version Riley posted has the unfortunate caption FOUR HEADS . . . HALF A BRAIN.

  Which is stupid. Between Meeka, Logan, and me, you’ve got three of the top ten students in our class. Everyone knows this. Okay, so maybe Grayson has a half a brain, but we’ve got—

  THEDLOM

  There, in the bottom corner. A word. It’s like a signature or a watermark. Faint, but clear enough to read, especially when I zoom in. There’s no doubt about it, it says THEDLOM.

  Thedlom?

  Is that a word I should know? Like bedlam?

  Or is it a reference to something?

  I do a search. The first hit for “Thedlom” is a site called TheCavalry.net, but that doesn’t look right. The next is a Twitter account. I don’t have my own Twitter account, but I can click through to it anyway. @THEDLOM’s avatar is a picture of a tongue with a flame on the tip, like it’s a candle. The bio simply reads: Hot memes from a cold land.

  The feed is almost all retweets of memes from other accounts, and it looks like Thedlom follows a bunch of other meme-focused accounts, but if—

  Wait. What am I doing?

  Incognito tab or not, this is too much exposure.

  I go to the settings to clear the cache and browsing history, but that’s probably not enough, so I open the disk utility to start reformatting the drive.

  As it reformats, I put a hand on my chest and feel my heart pounding.

  That was sloppy.

  I should never have even thought of compromising my family like this. I need to find out more, but not here. Not where an IP address can be traced back to our house.

  Tomorrow. School.

  LOGAN

  SOMEONE IS SUICIDAL. How could they not be? Don’t they realize that things could get very dangerous for them?

  Yes, this is me admitting that Holly is right. This person—girl or guy—who started the meme knows what we did. How could they not be afraid?

  I also agree with Meeka. That red box, Cole’s Heart, is of vital importance. Even if that’s not where the files from my cloud are, it means something. And maybe no one has accessed it yet, but they will soon. The police. Or his brother, Craig, when he’s back for Thanksgiving and wondering where Cole is. And, given Cole’s penchant for spying and stealing, who knows what they’ll find on there. We have to nip this thing right in the bud. But how?

  Dinner is over and Mom and Dad are cleaning the dishes while I’m sitting at the breakfast bar, staring at GOTCHYA. I’m not stupid. I deleted everything in it. And it no longer links to my photos or other files. But I haven’t deactivated my account yet. Because I want to understand exactly how it works.

  I have to be humble and I have to accept something. I need help and I’m not going to get it from the others, because I need someone who actually understands what’s possible in terms of hacking, passwords, clouds, all of that stuff.

  I need Esther.

  Esther, along with being absolutely radiant, is president of the hack club at school. Cole used to say it was a club for poseurs and wannabes, but I think that was only because he was jealous. Those kids are legit, and I don’t doubt half of them will get scholarships to Ivys and end up in Silicon Valley changing the world. Or at least that’s what I hope happens for Esther. She deserves it.

  I don’t have Esther’s number, and while I’m sure I could figure it out, it’s probably best for me to keep this communication face-to-face. Luckily, she doesn’t live far away.

  “I know it’s a school night, but I was hoping to go over to my friend Esther’s,” I tell my parents.

  Dad moves his eyebrows up and down and says, “Friend . . . with benefits?”

  He thinks it makes him a cool dad to joke like this, but it mostly makes him creepy.

  “Mike!” Mom yelps, and she throws a dish towel at him, but not in a well, aren’t you a rascal? sort of way. She’s legitimately pissed.

  He puts his hands up in surrender. “That’s how kids talk.”

  “That’s not how kids talk,” I say. “And it’s not like that with her. She’s interested in Logan’s Heroes.”

  It isn’t technically a lie because she told me she was last week. In fact, she’s the exact type of person I should be funding. Smart, motivated, tons of potential, but also in a tough spot.

  “Homework done?” Mom asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Let him go,” Dad says. “Did I mention how impressive he was with Senator Barnes yesterday? A real professional. Just perfect.”

  “So you told me,” Mom says, but she’s clearly on the fence.

  I clasp my hands together and tip my head and do my sweet little angel face that always makes her eyes roll but her mouth curl up in a smile. Which is exactly what happens this time, before she says, “Fine. Go ahead, Mr. Perfect.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Perfect.

  That was also the theme of the meeting with Senator Barnes yesterday morning.

  “The books have to be perfect,” she said to Dad as I picked at my omelet. I could barely keep my eyes open, but that hardly mattered to the state senator. She was talking almost exclusively to Dad, treating him as though he were the one running Logan’s Heroes. Dad kept deflecting the conversation back to me, saying things like “Logan is practically a one-man show.” But Barnes wasn’t having it. She probably figured I was some spoiled brat and it was my parents who were pulling the strings. I don’t necessarily blame her. There are a lot of kids like that.

  To prove I’m not one of those kids, I’d channeled my last ounce of energy into telling her, “I’m taking college-level accounting courses and I’ve already consulted with some lawyers and my uncle is a CPA. If things get to a certain level, then we can hire him.”

  She finally focused her eyes on me. “Clearly, you’ve thought some things through, and that is commendable. But people are going to be watching you closely, so we need you to make sure that as the money becomes available, every cent is accounted for. Yours is not the only reputation that will be on the line.”

  She was right, obviously. And even though I wasn’t going to tell her this, I had already taken steps to make sure the funds would be safe and accounted for. I had ended the Indiegogo campaign almost two weeks ago, after we first started planning our Cole solution. I figured if the funds were secure in the bank, then my work could carry on even if I got caught. If it remained in the Indiegogo account, then someone would probably find a loophole and return all the donations. Which would be a disaster.

  I set up another campaign directly on LogansHeroes.org for new donations, but the $58,000 I raised has been transferred over to the Logan’s Heroes bank account, which I opened on my eighteenth birthday in September. My parents and uncle have access, but I am the one who actually has control of the funds.

  “It’s all handled,” I’d assured Senator Barnes. “I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize my mission to help the vulnerable and downtrodden.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Esther lives downtown, in a ramshackle house across from the Price Chopper. It’s a sad place, sprawling and crumbling and divided into multiple illegal apartments. I’m sure some sketchy stuff goes on there. I doubt Esther is involved, but I worry she might end up being collateral damage.

  Her parents are, quite frankly, a mess. They’re a couple of wayward souls who make ends meet by collecting some rent and selling hemp and CBD products at festivals. I think they followed Phish for a while and sold their stuff at shows—that’s where Esther’s name comes from, a Phish song—but then they bought that crappy house back when it wasn’t quite as crappy and they’ve had friends and “associates” move in over the years. Ski bums, musicians, and artists mostly. Not bad people necessarily, but not model citizens either.

  And yet these are the citizens I’ll be dealing with for Logan’s Heroes—the luckless and underprivileged dreamers of the world. I’m trying to be more comfortable around them. Even if I weren’t popping in on Esther, making a house call at a place like this is a good idea. It shows I’m motivated, and that I care. People rarely make house calls anymore, and that’s understandable. I’m as attached to my phone as anyone. But I also know that showing up at someone’s door, forging an actual human connection, is vastly more important than any digital communication.

  So I pull into the driveway and park next to a rusty van. The yard is littered with cans and the walkway is a strip of dirt leading to the rickety front porch. At the door, names and apartment numbers are written on cardboard and tacked to the siding. The cardboard is warped from moisture and the names are barely legible.

  It doesn’t really matter because there’s only one doorbell. I ring it and I wait.

  There’s music playing above me, something loud and vaguely familiar, music from the 1960s, the stuff grandparents listen to.

  I try the bell again because I worry I didn’t press hard enough and suddenly the music cuts out. Then there’s a voice above me, hollering.

  “Hey!”

  There’s a white guy with blond dreadlocks sticking his head out of a top-floor window.

  “Hey,” I say back.

  “You here about the . . . stuff?”

  “No. I’m here for Esther. Is she home?”

  “She was, fam. Made us all waffles earlier. But I think she bounced for a bit.”

  “Back soon?”

  He shrugs. “Probably. You’re welcome to wait in her room.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Aw man, you don’t know?” he says as he flips his hair back from his face. “Straight through the door, down the hall, past the kitchen. All the way in the back.”

  I’m ready to enter, but I pause. Something bothers me.

  “You don’t know me,” I say.

  “Should I?” he asks, and then he laughs a goofy, throaty laugh.

  “It’s not about that,” I say, and I step back from the door. “You don’t know me, but you’re fine with me walking right in. Some random dude. You give him the keys to the castle.”

  The guy laughs again. “Good point, buddy. But then who am I to decide who gets to come and go? You’ve got free will. You could’ve busted into the place, guns blazing, and I wouldn’t have been able to stop you. But no, you rang the bell. Tells me you’re legit.”

  “Legit what?” I ask. “Criminals can ring doorbells.”