She wrote back, No, of course not!

“Who are you texting?” Marwan said.

“No one,” she lied again. “Just someone making sure I’m okay.”

“Well, I don’t know him,” Marwan said. “And I didn’t think he’d know me, but I guess he knew my name.”

“What are you going to tell your father?” Eli asked.

“I have no idea. But I have to go deal with this now,” Marwan said. “Before things get worse for me.”

“But what will you say when they ask about the device?” Eli said. “The kid saw it.”

An idea took shape in her mind so quickly it was as if she were reading instructions.

“We need something that looks like it,” Eden said. “Just some dumb black plastic thing.”

“How will that help?”

“I don’t know exactly yet; let’s go and we’ll figure it out.”

Still reading the instructions.

“Go where?” both boys said.

“Ninety-nine-cent store,” she said.

Marwan went and got the device, and the bag buzzed when he lifted it. He took the device out and walked it over to her and Eli.

The message said: Should you go for what?

“I don’t understand,” Marwan said.

Eden just said, Should we go for it?

She and Marwan looked at each other. She had nothing. She’d been so careful. It didn’t know … anything. But how could she explain …?

Marwan was still holding her gaze when he said, “She was talking about whether she and I should, you know, be … more than friends.”

Eden felt like a wave had crashed on her, one she hadn’t seen coming because she’d been facing the wrong way. She struggled to catch her breath in its undertow.

“We’ve been, you know, talking about it,” Marwan said. “Talking about whether it would change or ruin things or not.”

I don’t believe you.

“It’s true,” he said, not looking away from her. “Other than you, she’s pretty much all I think about.”

Eden’s heart was rising up in her, like trying to choke her from the inside out.

I don’t believe that’s what she was referring to.

“It was,” Eden said, her voice shaky. “It’s true.”

The device went blank.

Then it said: You are all lying.

They stood for a minute waiting—a police car with a siren on drove by; two people in loud conversation passed on the street; the ceiling fan whirred a faint, pulsing buzz—and Eden felt like a sinkhole might open up right there in the restaurant and pull her through to the other side of something, the dark deep.

She made eye contact with Marwan, then with Eli, and it broke a spell of silence, and the three of them sprang into action.

Marwan dropped the device into his bag again, then threw it on his back, and lifted the gate. They stepped out. He closed it, locked up.