“Did you have these feelings before?” Her father’s ghost was right there, with his arms crossed, eagerly awaiting an answer. “Like when Dad was—?”

“When you’re married, Eden, you don’t suddenly never have a connection with anyone else. That’s an important thing to know going in. The important thing is that you don’t act. Ideally you run in the opposite direction. That’s why I have him in my phone as NH! Never happening.”

“But you’re not running.”

“I’m trying, but it’s complicated.”

“She’s one of your best friends.”

“So is he!” her mother nearly screamed, and the words seemed to travel around the room, leaving a crisscrossed field of red lasers in the air. Eden saw no way to cut through.

“These boys you’re hanging around with”—her mother got up and climbed back under the blankets—“I hope it’s because they’re good friends to you. Not all the other stuff.”

“They are,” Eden said. “I mean, he is.”

Her mother yawned again.

“Promise me you’re going to stop texting him,” Eden said.

“Good night, Eden,” her mother said.

“So that’s it?” Still sounding like a child, like someone who wanted her mother to somehow make everything right and easy again.

Her mother didn’t answer.

In her room, Eden went to close her blinds and saw, in the light of the streetlamp, that their tree was now bag-free. She felt a twinge of disappointment over not having witnessed the precise moment of the bag’s liberation and wondered whether it had floated into the sky like a birthday balloon or blown into the street and been flattened by a car. At the park, she and Eli hadn’t thought to look up, where probably the device was just sitting on a branch of a tree, messing with them. They hadn’t known it could fly.

She changed into pajamas, then crossed the hall and went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth, put her hair up and threw some cool water on her face. Back in her room, she climbed into bed.

She checked her phone.

Marwan hadn’t texted.

No one had.

An iPod had been stolen at a basketball court, and some people were stuck in an elevator.

There were stories to catch up on, but it didn’t feel urgent to do so.

It was over.

She didn’t even know what they’d say to each other tomorrow, what life would be like now. Everything and nothing had changed.

She could tell people about the device now—even her mom if she wanted to. She could explain it all, except that she couldn’t explain any of it.