Returning to the kitchen, Eden’s mom put two bowls of pasta and Bolognese sauce at their usual spots at the table. “So,” she said brightly. “Who’s Eli?”

Eden almost laughed.

Establishing_connection

Establishing_connection

Marwan

MARWAN

At breakfast, Selma and Tosnim were arguing over large hair bows and whether they were or weren’t “in.” They were only ten and twelve but wanted to be teenagers and tried to act cool even though their idea of “cool” had no basis in reality and mostly involved talking about fashion. More than anything, Marwan wanted his sisters to not grow up. He wanted them to stay in their all-girls middle school forever and never have to deal with guys like Christos.

“I have some homework to finish,” Marwan said to his mother as he cleared his breakfast plate. “I think I’ll head to school early and do it in the library.”

His mother said, “Go,” and returned to the table to coax his sisters into eating more, like she did every morning. “Enough about the bows,” she said, and smiled at Marwan.

They’d talked only briefly last night, since getting his sisters to bed took up most of his mother’s night and he’d been doing homework, then listening to the beauty queen podcast and thinking about messaging Eden for so long that it was eventually too late to do it. His mom was relieved about the California gunman, too. And she’d mentioned that supposedly a few of his friends had stopped by the restaurant. “None of my friends would do that,” he’d said, and she’d shrugged.

By his bike out front, he found Eden on Instagram—turned out he already followed her but didn’t remember doing it—and sent her a direct message: Morning! It’s Marwan. How’s it going? Did you put it back?

The “Active now” under her name went away and was replaced with “Active 1m ago.”

She was probably mad at him.

Or maybe it was this simple: she hadn’t wanted anything to do with him before all this and nothing had changed.

The “Active now” was back. He stared at it, trying to glean meaning. He imagined her being surprised to see a message from him but not in a bad way, then remembered a question on a survey he’d taken about phone usage a while back. Do you frequently sit with your phone in your hand waiting for something to happen?

So what if he did? Why wasn’t she writing back?

He wasn’t really into social media, but it was fun sometimes to post photos of funny things he saw in the neighborhood. Like a sign that read, Restrooms for Costumers Only, or a fish company truck with the tagline As Fresh As It Is on the back of it. (His caption: Like, Is It Fresh? Or Not?)