Once she had a glass of water, Eden went to get her phone to sneak it upstairs. Her mother’s phone was charging beside hers, and it buzzed a text alert from the mysterious NH.

I can’t stop thinking about you.

Eden gasped, like she’d been caught.

She backed away in the dark.

Upstairs, she couldn’t sleep. Her mother was lying to her constantly, and Svetlana was … dead.

Dead.

It was the device’s fault and maybe their fault, too.

Nothing felt real; nothing felt right.

Her stomach tightened, like it had somehow learned from her hands how to make a fist. This couldn’t possibly be happening, except that it was. She should text Ilanka and see how she was doing, but she didn’t want to because it was all too horrible.

She was weirdly thirsty—like a neglected plant—and couldn’t seem to get comfortable. She tried counting her breaths down from one hundred to calm herself and eventually fell asleep, then jolted awake again in a sweat.

She’d had a dream about her dentist injecting foot-long needles into her neck while telling her she was sick and would never get better.

It was only one a.m., and she had no idea how she’d even get through the night.

She checked her phone and saw a recent text from Marwan.

Hope you’re not sleeping.

I mean, I hope this isn’t waking you up. Somebody threw a brick through the restaurant window. Can’t sleep.

I’m here, she wrote back. Awake. So sorry. Did the police come?

Yes.

She felt sick. Did you hear about the flyers all over Broadway?

????

They say “Build the wall” or some garbage. You think same people?

No idea. Also, isn’t that just old? Who’s still talking about a wall? Ridiculous.

What happens now? With police?

Probably nothing.

She wanted to tell him her plan so badly but had to be safe.

She almost wrote, I think my mom’s seeing someone she shouldn’t be. But that would be an overshare. So she didn’t. She only wrote, We should go to bed.

Then, I can’t stop thinking about Svetlana.

I know, he wrote. Same. Try to sleep and I will too.

Her night-light cast a shadow of her white ceiling fan behind it, so it looked like there were two fans up there, and for a second she imagined the whole world was like that; everyone in it always two versions of themselves—one moving through life in broad daylight, and the other, a hidden shadow self, lying in wait.

But waiting for what?