“You don’t have to do this,” Marwan said after a while, when they were both at the bucket wringing out their sponges. “Why are you even here?”

“I want to help,” she said. “And I wanted to make sure you were okay, I guess, when you mentioned cops. I’m sort of a … nervous person. I wouldn’t have, like, been able to sleep.” They went back to washing the window and she said, “Has anything like this ever happened before?”

“To us, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“No,” he said. “Not to us. People we know, yes—people like us—but not us.”

“It’s disappointing,” she said.

“Disappointing?” He was angry.

“I just mean, I expect more. From this place. I mean. It’s not like we’re in, you know, Iowa.”

“You’re saying in Iowa it’d be okay?” he said.

“No.” She was getting it all wrong. “Maybe just more, I don’t know, expected?”

“Queens is still America,” he said. “And America is still America.”

She nodded, not wanting to say another wrong thing.

Someone had run a hose from inside, and Marwan took it and gave the windows a long rinse—the runoff cutting rivers to the curb. Eden backed away to avoid getting soaked. She figured Eli had left by now but he was still there, with the backpack.

Oh right.

She walked over to him. “You could have helped,” she said.

“I wasn’t sure he’d want that,” Eli said. “From me.”

“Never know until you try,” she said.

Marwan came over. “Why are you here?” he said to Eli.

Eli opened his bag and showed Marwan the countdown.

“What’s it counting down to?” Marwan asked.

“We don’t know. But it’ll run out in the morning.”

“And we’re sure it’s not a bomb?” Marwan scratched his head.

Eli zipped up the device. “It says it’s not.”

The cops were heading for their cruiser, and Marwan’s dad approached and put an arm around his son. “We need to close up and go home.”

Eden wanted to say something to him, but it felt pointless because he was an adult and she wasn’t.

Marwan nodded. “I’ll be right there.”

“You going to walk Eden home?” Marwan asked Eli.

Eden could take care of herself. She almost said so. Except that …

“Yeah, sure,” Eli said.

“Thanks for your help,” Marwan said to Eden, then he nodded for emphasis and went inside.

Eden was about to tell Eli it wasn’t necessary for him to walk with her. Julian might still be at Vanilla Sky, and she could maybe wander in but not with Eli. On the other hand, she didn’t want to become a Citizen alert. “Let’s go,” she said.

“How’d you get out tonight anyway?” Eli asked as they rounded their first corner. “I mean, like, what did you tell your parents?”

That word. Would it ever get easier?