He just wished, somehow, that the whole thing had gone another way, and that he had even an inkling of what it had even meant. He felt sure that, given another chance, they’d do it all differently.

Eden

EDEN

Eden’s mother was reading in bed when Eden poked her head in.

“I’m home,” Eden said softly. She’d arrived home ravenously hungry and had made herself a plate of leftovers downstairs before heading up.

“Yeah, I heard you come in.” Her mother didn’t look up. “I’m glad you’re not dead in a ditch.”

Eden said, “Why is being dead in a ditch worse than being just plain dead?”

“Don’t be fresh.” Now Mom took off her glasses and looked up from her book. “It’s been hours since your last text. I would have expected that on a day when there was a bomb threat in your school that you’d be a little more thoughtful about letting me know your whereabouts.”

“There wasn’t a bomb,” Eden said wearily. This morning felt like another decade.

“Well, we know that now. Where were you anyway?”

She selected a partial truth: “I was with Marwan.”

Her mom set her book aside. “No more hanging out with this guy until I meet him.”

“I need your approval,” Eden said with so much sarcasm that she almost sounded Southern. “Really.”

“I’m your mother,” her mother said. “If you haven’t forgotten.”

“Maybe I should be able to approve of who you spend time with, too,” Eden said, and her heart went wild with panic or something else. Exhilaration? “I know what’s going on with you and him,” she said.

Her mother sat up.

“I don’t even want to say his name because it’s so wrong.” Eden heard her own voice quiver.

Her mother threw off the covers and got up and walked toward the bathroom. “I know it is.” She pulled a tissue from a cube-shaped box with a skyscraper design on it.

“Then why are you doing it?” Eden sounded like a child but couldn’t seem to help it. Why had it said, I know you are but what am I as it died out there in the marshland?

“I’m not!” Her mom sounded childish, too, in a way. “I mean, nothing’s happened.”

Eden said, “Then why are you two texting all the time? And why is he hidden as a contact named NH?”

“Why are you looking at my phone?” Her voice escalating with irritation.

“That’s not the point!” Matching her mother’s tone.

Her mother’s shoulders caved forward; she walked back toward the bed and sat. “He just wants to talk about these … feelings we have. I don’t want to. I should have never admitted I felt them.”

“So you have actual feelings for him?”

“I would never act on them.”