“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe some high-tech school project?”

It was a half-decent theory—a school project!—and made Eden a tiny bit less freaked out. Maybe it was like those doll babies that some schools used to make students scared of unprotected sex.

They exchanged numbers via texts, and Eli said, “Just be careful. About not talking about it or leaving it unattended and stuff.”

“What do you think would happen? Why did it say ‘or else’?”

“I don’t know,” he said then. “I mean, probably nothing will happen. But just let me know what it does next?”

She nodded.

Eli didn’t know that Eden was always careful. Especially at corners, where cars ran red lights more often than they stopped. Add in deliverymen who raced down the sidewalks on electric bikes, the people holding lattes on rented Citi Bikes who went the wrong way down streets, and idiot kids—even idiot adults—on scooters, and there was the possibility of disaster around every corner.

She walked home under the elevated train that cut through Astoria. This was the subway line that delivered her mother to the publishing company in Manhattan where she was VP of marketing. Every time there was some horrible commute, which was at least several times a week lately (Eden always checked her Citizen app for subway accidents and bombs), her mom talked about packing up and selling their small, brick row house and moving to … well, that was the problem. Where would they even go? And wouldn’t it feel like leaving him?

Stopped at a light, on a piece of sidewalk where a long-ago girl named Natalie had written her name in wet cement and outlined it with a star, Eden plugged her ears as a train rattled overhead. When she was little and they’d be stopped like this, her mom would pretend to be talking to her, like miming a conversation. Sometimes they still did it, just to be silly, but it didn’t feel funny anymore because now there was too much between them that was unsaid, unheard—the air full of silent screams.

I miss him!

I’m angry!

I’m afraid all the time!

Once she turned off the train path, she put her earbuds in and queued up a playlist of her father’s called “Songs from Northern Britain.” She’d been working her way through all his lists and mostly liking them and also feeling bad about not being more open to his recommendations when he was alive.

Two jangly songs later, she was home. She punched the code on the downstairs door and went in and used the same code on the alarm keypad on the wall. The house was hot—summer just wouldn’t let go—so she walked in front of the thermostat to wake up the AC.