“Yes, you did,” she said, and she lay down and let her anger start to recede like the tide.

Her phone buzzed right as she started to feel normal again. It was a text from Julian. I’m on my way.

“What?” she said out loud.

She texted back, What are you talking about?

Julian wrote back, Um, scroll up? U just invited me over??

She wrote, Sorry. My friend sent that as a joke. Not a good time.

Okay whatever.

She turned to the device and said, “Why would you do that?”

“Wanted to help,” he said. “You seem lonely, and you keep just missing Julian, and he is close by.”

“Stop trying to help me,” she shouted. “You’re just making everything worse!”

He didn’t answer.

It.

It didn’t answer.

A Citizen alert: two women arguing, one with a machete, about a mile away.

A machete? How was it that everything in the world was so messed up?

She wanted to cry so hard that it hurt not to, but not in front of the device because it would want her to explain. So she said, “I’m going to go take a shower if that’s okay,” and put the device on her desk beside her phone.

It lit up: Of course.

Then it said: I’m glad we are friends.

That hadn’t been what she’d meant at all, but it didn’t seem smart to try to explain.

In the bathroom, with the door locked and the walls starting to drip from the steam of the hot, hot water, she shampooed and rinsed, then pumped three pumps of Pantene conditioner into her palm. Her father had always been the one to comb her out with Pantene and a tight metal comb when she’d had lice as a kid, and the smell of it was powerful enough that it almost put him in the room. Now she sobbed softly because he was really gone and it had felt good to hear his voice saying new/different words, but they were the wrong words. She wished the device had left Julian out of it and said the things she wanted most to hear.

Like I love you.

And I’m sorry I’m gone and you’re still there without me.

Marwan had been right to want to get rid of it all along. She’d tell him that tomorrow.

Ilanka

ILANKA

None of them had written back by morning.

Whatever. She’d hear from one of them at some point before tomorrow’s handoff, and if she didn’t, probably she’d be better off. She half regretted getting involved.