The cube pulsed new letters.
“What now?” Marwan asked, hand on the doorknob.
Eli smiled. “It says, ‘Do not shake the device.’ ”
“This is freaking me out,” Eden said.
“It’s obviously a game or something,” Eli said.
A new message flashed. Marwan let go of the doorknob and went to look for himself. Two stacked sentences:
DO NOT TELL ANYONE ABOUT THE DEVICE.
DO NOT LEAVE THE DEVICE UNATTENDED.
It went dark again.
“Well, if it’s a game,” Marwan said, “I’m not playing.”
“You’re not even a little intrigued?” Eli asked.
“Nope!”
“Just hold up a second,” Eli said. “I’ll message McKay.” He typed into his phone.
Marwan scrolled through headlines while he waited—only because he liked Mr. M, who’d actually turned him onto Disgraceland, a podcast about notorious rock and roll mysteries.
The top headline was another mass shooting.
California. White guy. Non-Muslim.
Always a relief.
Just last week, Marwan had relistened to a podcast about anti-Muslim crimes in the days after 9/11, and it made his stomach sour. His family wasn’t really religious—his sisters wouldn’t wear headscarves like Numdal did when they got older; his mother didn’t—but they were still culturally Muslim. So people made crazy assumptions about their worldview—or at least people like Christos did.
“This is weird,” Eli said. “The original message I got about the urgent matter is gone.”
Marwan opened the app; his message was gone, too. The girls also reached for their phones.
Eli’s phone dinged. He looked at it and said, “Mister M says there must be some mistake because he’s out sick today and didn’t send the message.”
“Ask him what the deal is with the device,” Marwan said.
“It just told us not to tell anyone about it,” Eli said.
“Are you for real?” Marwan asked.
Eli answered with a defiant look of amusement, but whatever, Marwan had places to be.
“Let’s just go,” Marwan said. “And if anybody asks, the whole urgent matter that’s clearly not urgent never happened.”
“Works for me,” Ilanka said, and walked out.
“But I just told Mr. M about the messages we got,” Eli said. “So he knows we were here.”
Marwan didn’t have time to care.
The device blinked urgently:
DO NOT TELL ANYONE ABOUT THE DEVICE.
DO NOT LEAVE THE DEVICE UNATTENDED.
Eden seemed mesmerized, like if you waved a hand in front of her face, she might not even blink. Marwan was tempted to try it.
“So what should we do?” she said to no one in particular.
A shrieking alarm woke violent vibrations in the instruments around them. Marwan’s hands went to his ears. At first he thought the device was doing it, but no, it was the fire alarm. “We need to go,” he said.
“I say we take it,” Eli said.
“I say we leave it,” Marwan said.
Eden looked at him with a sort of panic in her eyes. Then she looked back at the device … Marwan looked, too.
DO NOT LEAVE THE DEVICE UNATTENDED.
DO NOT LEAVE THE DEVICE UNATTENDED.
DO NOT LEAVE THE DEVICE UNATTENDED.
DO NOT LEAVE THE DEVICE UNATTENDED.
The cube went abruptly dark—Marwan had the strange sense that it was thinking—then lit up with rainbow swirls that quickly tightened into new words:
TAKE ME WITH YOU …
Followed by:
OR ELSE.
Eli was maybe about to reach for the device when Eden grabbed it, shoved it into her backpack, and headed for the door.
“Seriously?” Marwan shouted, following her down the hall, where even the air seemed to be screaming at them to get out. They went down three flights of dizzying stairs and out to the front of the building.
She crossed the street and he followed. Eli was with them when they stopped on the corner and turned toward the sirens; Ilanka was long gone.
A fire truck with a toy skull strapped to its front grill stopped in front of the school, and firefighters wearing their weight in gear leaped from it. The walkie-talkies on their belts crackled as they swarmed the building like alien invaders.
EDEN
Oh god, oh god, oh god. She really shouldn’t have taken it. Why did she take it?
“Now what?” Marwan said.
“I don’t know.” Eden’s heart was trying to burst its way out of her. Adrenaline was no joke. “Do you think it …?”
The timing was too perfect to be coincidence.
“Do I think it what?” Marwan seemed mad at her.
“Do you think it triggered the fire alarm?”
“What—no,” Marwan said, like it was ridiculous.
Maybe it was.
She hadn’t wanted to risk leaving it, though; couldn’t handle doing the wrong thing. The rules on the cube were clear, and she was the kind of person who followed the rules because bad things happened when you didn’t. She went to check her phone and felt a roller-coaster plunge of panic that she’d left it up there. But no, there it was, in her back right jeans pocket.
Eli said, “What’s it saying now?” He looked excited.
Eden peered into her backpack and reached for the device, then held it where only the three of them could see it. It was blank, lifeless.
She dropped it into her bag, zipped it, and checked her phone.
Her mom had texted to see if she was home yet.
Got stuck chatting, she wrote. Leaving now.
She really shouldn’t have taken it.
“Should I go back in?” she asked. “After the firefighters leave? And put it back?”
“What’s the fun in that?” Eli said.
“You think this is fun?”
He shrugged. “Sort of. I mean, I’d take it, but I have a dentist appointment and it seems like that might complicate things. I can take it later, though.”
“I’ve got soccer,” Marwan said. “And I’m already going to be late. I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to go. If it were me I’d put it back.”
He walked off toward a bike rack, and Eden felt disappointed in him for no reason, really. When he said he was sorry, at least he sounded like he meant it.
Putting it back was probably smart … and yet … that would mean it would be unattended.
Or else what?
Eli turned to her. “So what’s the plan?”
It was Wednesday, the one day of the week when Eden didn’t have theater or guitar lessons or therapy or anything that her mother made her do so she’d be too busy to be depressed or anxious or pregnant, even though she was two out of three of those most of the time.
The school security guards were out on the sidewalk shouting, “We need to clear the area. Please just go home! No one’s going back in today, so move on!”
“I guess I can take it and maybe just return it tomorrow?” She shrugged and tried to hide her panic. Deep breaths. Lots of them. Her heart would calm down eventually.
Right?
Right?
She checked her phone.
Starbucks was right there. Julian might still be inside, and she could say, “Hey, Gillian,” and be funny. All she needed was one actual real-life, broad daylight encounter to put an end to the awkwardness of what had happened.