“At this point, I don’t even care,” Marwan said. “All that matters is that it’s gone.”

“Agreed.” Eden felt free. Spared. Her breathing wide open. Like the universe had dropped an oxygen mask down to her.

“Well, I’m gonna go.” Eli walked off down the street, leaving her and Marwan alone. She looked at him, but he seemed not to want to make eye contact.

“You okay?” she asked finally.

“Yeah.” He looked up but again not at her. “You mad at me? For doing that?”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Good.” He finally looked at her. “So it’s got nothing to do with this, but I have to say something since … I don’t know. Since I don’t know when we’ll see each other again?”

“We’re going to see each other,” she said. “What is it?”

“Your mother had dinner at the restaurant the other night. With a man. It was probably just a friend or whatever, but I never mentioned it and I thought I should.”

She inhaled, exhaled, trying to keep her breathing even. “What did he look like?”

“I don’t know. Short blond hair. Fit. I saw his name when he paid the bill. I don’t have to tell you it, but—”

“Dan Rankin,” she said.

Marwan nodded. “Who is he?”

Eden shook her head, about to cry and unable to explain why, and he reached out and took her hand and squeezed it, and it felt like some small relief. Maybe Dan had a work phone? Maybe that was why the numbers hadn’t matched.

Nothing made sense.

Certainly nothing about tonight.

They’d destroyed the device, but had it been the right thing to do? She suddenly wasn’t so sure.

“Why did it want us to think Svetlana was dead?” Eden said.

He shook his head and shrugged gently, letting go of her hand. “To make us scared, I guess. So we’d do what it wanted. I guess that’s why it pretended to be a bomb, so we wouldn’t stay at school and see her?”

Eden got caught on the word “school,” because even though they were standing right there in front of the building, the whole concept of it felt unfathomably foreign. School was Kathmandu. Madagascar. Fiji. It couldn’t possibly be a real place, let alone one she’d ever been to.

“What do we do now?” Marwan asked. “I just mean, it feels weird.”

“We go home,” she said. “We sleep.”

He nodded and took her hand again, and she thought that maybe now a kiss was forming in the space between them and would draw them into each other any second, but then he said, “Come on. I’ll walk you home.”

Eli

ELI