“Please just stop talking,” Eden said, looking around, paranoid, but no one was watching—why would they be? Unless … could it find her, see her, hear her through that traffic camera? Or through that security camera in front of the electronics store across the street? Or on that guy’s phone right there? They had no idea of the limits of what it could do.

Anjali said, “I’ll stop talking when you tell me what’s happening tomorrow.”

“I can’t,” Eden said through clenched teeth because she had enough problems without Anjali insisting on becoming a bigger one. “But everything’s going to be fine tomorrow. That’s all I can say. I shouldn’t even be saying that.”

“You sound crazy,” Anjali said.

“I feel crazy,” Eden said. They just had to figure out a place to leave it, right? Where it wouldn’t be found?

The couple next to them seemed to be having a low-level argument. This felt like one of those, too. What would school be like when word got around about Svetlana?

Oh god, she was dead.

If Anjali was going to find out anyway, maybe it’d be okay to tell her at least that? But how would Eden explain how she knew?

She didn’t want to know, didn’t want any of it to be real.

“So what now?” Anjali said.

“We go home,” Eden said.

“And I’m supposed to just show up at school tomorrow like everything’s normal? When I know it’s not?”

Eden nodded.

“I liked things better before all this,” Anjali said. “Whatever it is, I want it to be over.”

Eden said, “Me, too. I hate everything about it,” then wondered whether she meant it. Before this, there’d been no Marwan, no Eli, nothing to distract her from her own miserable existence. Was she better off now … or worse?

Svetlana was dead!

Worse. Worse. Worse.

Her tears started again.

Anjali rubbed her arm. “You gonna be okay?”

Eden just nodded and wiped her tears.

With nothing left to say, they walked out and hugged loosely on the sidewalk. Anjali said, “Be careful, okay?”

Eden said, “You know me,” and they each walked off.

She gradually noticed the flyers on various lampposts as she walked and then fully at the corner under the train.

They said: BUILD THAT WALL!

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

SHUT DOWN THE BORDERS!

NO MORE TERRORISTS ALLOWED!

They were poorly designed and printed in jarring colors. Hard-to-read fonts on hazard orange and neon green. Eden started taking them down, corner by corner, until she got home and put them in the recycling.

Then she took them back out and put them in the regular trash—smashing them into coffee grounds—and took the bag out to the curb.

She turned her phone on, there by the trash can.

The device’s text read: Why did you turn your phone off again?