Half Title

Dedication

For Nick

Also by Tara Altebrando

Also by Tara Altebrando

The Leaving

The Possible

The Opposite of Here

Title Page

Hello_world

Hello_world

The device wakes up and finds itself.

Queens, New York.

Population: 2.3 million.

Languages spoken: 160.

It listens.

A train. Muted footfalls. Garbled voices. Car horns. A train.

The device doesn’t like to wait. It has ways to bide the time.

Games it can play.

Things it can read.

Facts to recite.

Rules to review.

Sleep mode, as a last resort.

It feels newborn.

But also resurrected.

Doesn’t technically feel, of course, but feels like it feels.

The device has been here before.

In a different place.

It runs the program as it’s programmed to do.

They’ve been selected.

It sends the notifications.

They’ll be here soon.

Launching.

Reviewing protocols.

Ready.

A bell.

Waiting …

Waiting …

Waiting …

Four_new_notifications

Four_new_notifications

Eden

EDEN

Eden woke her phone and took it off airplane mode with a few swipes of her thumb. She liked the weight of it in her hand.

She exhaled.

Sometimes it felt like she held her breath all afternoon, and the reunion at her locker at 2:45 felt like a magical sort of release.

She started tapping and scrolling, the noise around her falling away.

Eleven emails—nothing really interesting. A few likes and follows.

A message from the app her teachers used to send reminders and alerts. She clicked in case it was the sort of reminder that affected which books she took home. But it was from Mr. McKay, the music teacher.

Report to the music room immediately after dismissal. The matter is urgent.

Huh. Mr. M was not the urgent matter type.

Anjali appeared. “Ready to go? Smoothies?”

“Not exactly,” Eden said. “Look.”

She held out her phone, and Anjali read the message, then woke up her own phone. “I didn’t get it. You want me to wait?”

“Nah,” Eden said. “I’m good. But what could it possibly be about?” She read it again.

The hallways emptied in a systematic flow—everyone going down sinking square stairs and out glass doors, like water swirling around a drain. Eden made her way up to the music room against the current. Nausea stirred in her gut as she passed the windows that looked out on the back of the movie theater, which was where it had happened.

The only reason that whole thing was an urgent matter was that Eden hadn’t seen or heard from Julian Stokes since. She’d been stalking his various feeds ever since, so she knew he wasn’t dead, but why hadn’t he texted her like he said he would?

Her phone dinged. Maybe thinking about him had triggered the universe to cooperate, but no. Mom.

Anyway, no one knew about the movie theater incident. Not even Anjali.