“Yeah, I want to get rid of it somewhere farther from my house just to be safe,” Ilanka said, though really she had no intention of getting rid of it, not yet. Let the others deal with it tomorrow; then it’d be their problem again.

Svetlana was on her phone. “Okay, well, your parents said it was fine for us to go to the movies.”

“They did?”

“They did.” Still looking at her phone.

“Okay,” Ilanka said slowly, remembering they were not actually going to a movie. “Where exactly am I supposed to go?”

Svetlana didn’t look up, clearly didn’t care. “You could go to a movie.”

Ilanka said, “I could go upstairs and tell them what you’re actually doing.”

“You’re not going to do that.” She looked up now. “Anyway, I said we were meeting friends, so I can go now even if you don’t. Say you’re not feeling great. Whatever.” She pulled sunglasses from her bag and put them on, then walked out the lobby doors.

Ilanka followed her. “You’re really leaving?”

Svetlana just kept on walking.

The device lit up and beeped three times.

A voice came out of it: “Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”

Svetlana was about to reach the corner. She turned and waved and said, “Really leaving.”

In a frantic female voice the device said, “My friend just got hit by a car. Hurry. It looks bad. Real bad.”

The voice sounded familiar to Ilanka. It sounded like her own.

“Svetlana, stop!” she screamed.

Svetlana stepped out into the street.

Eli

ELI

Sunday mornings were pretty much the only time the whole family was home together, or at least it felt that way. Had he even seen his parents since Wednesday, when this whole thing started? He must have. He’d eaten dinner with his mother and Lily at least once, hadn’t he? And taken Cora for walks? But between his mother’s work as an ESL specialist at a local school and his father’s job in security at a high-end hotel in midtown—but mostly because of all the running around of his sister that they did—he couldn’t be sure from one day to the next what home life would be like.

Except on Sundays.

On Sundays his father bought an actual newspaper to read and his mother made pancakes. His sister always asked for chocolate chips in them, which Eli always protested because it made them too sweet, but mostly he did it for sport. His sister liked to spar. She’d have probably been fun if she’d been born like five years earlier and was closer in age to him. How was it possible she was only eight?

It was weird to share parents with someone whose life was completely different from yours.

His phone buzzed, and there was a text from Ilanka: One of you has to come get this thing.