Taped to the inside, a photo of me, Patrick, and Alex at the creek. We’d propped a camera on a rock and set the timer before huddling together, Patrick in the middle, one arm around each of our necks. Our only concern that day had been finding flat rocks to skip.

“Ezekiel used keys,” Alex said. “We saw him use keys.”

“Big deal,” Ben said. “They’re using all kinds of things.”

“The big deal is, lots of teachers have keys to the outside fences,” Alex said. “And it’s clear the Mappers want to record everything.”

“Ezekiel already got the school,” Ben said. “We just saw it.”

“But he didn’t finish. And we don’t know what he transmitted.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Patrick said. “They might come back to finish the job.”

“We need to switch the locks and post lookouts,” Alex said.

I flipped through various textbooks in my locker. A pencil box. An old apple, soft and brown. In the back I found what I was looking for: my composition notebook from English. I ran my hand over the battered black-and-white static design of the cover. The corners were worn, dog-eared, the pages nearly filled. I set it aside and reached for the one beneath it, still blank. The one I was gonna use when I ran out of room in the old one.

Behind me Dr. Chatterjee said, “We have a lot to keep track of.”

“Yeah, we do,” I said, elbowing my locker closed as I turned. At the clang, the others looked over at me. I gripped the new notebook. “We need to start writing all this down.”

*   *   *

In the quiet dark of the gym, surrounded by sleeping bodies, I stared down at my neat, slanted handwriting.

It was past midnight. I was still working in the barn when I heard the rolling door lurch open. I started and lost my grip on a block of hay. It tumbled off the baling hooks.

Once we’d gotten back to the gym, we’d circled up the kids and reported what we knew. Or at least what we thought we knew.

At the mention of the eyeball, terror rippled across the room, stiffening the spines of the kids. Now we weren’t just talking about parasites and altered adults. We were talking about aliens, advanced technologies, government conspiracies. The room buzzed with theories.