“Let me give you my number.” Eli got his phone out. “I’m kind of, I don’t know, curious. This way you can let me know what else it does.”
“But what is it?” she asked.
“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.
Upstairs in her room, she opened her backpack. Her water bottle had leaked and gotten the device wet—“Shoot”—so she took it out and dried it off with a hoodie.
The device blinked: Do not get the device wet.
She said, “Noted” aloud, and that felt weird.
She sat watching it for long enough that she felt foolish. Maybe that was literally it? The whole game or whatever? Just tricking someone into taking it home?
Eli would be disappointed.
She dug through her backpack again to see exactly how wet it had gotten in there. One of the colored dividers of her binder had bled blue onto some loose-leaf where she’d taken notes for her social studies essay, and this made her irrationally angry. She spread the papers out on her bed to dry, then woke up her laptop and started working on the essay, but who could concentrate, with that thing right there?
She checked her phone.
A fight up on Ditmars Boulevard; a purse snatching on Steinway Street.
She turned back to her laptop and opened the browser. She searched for “cube device” and “cube device with rules” but turned up nothing but the Amazon TV cube, and this wasn’t that.
She sat back in her chair. There were seams around some of the device’s edges but nothing that looked like an opening or a battery case.
She checked her phone.
Julian hadn’t posted anything since Starbucks.
She hearted that post, then sort of regretted it.
A text from Anjali asked what Mr. M’s message was about, and Eden wrote back, Don’t know. He never showed. Then fire alarm.
She wanted to say more; her fingers stayed poised there, but no, that wouldn’t be smart.
Do not tell anyone about the device.
Do not leave the device unattended.
Did that mean she had to take it into the bathroom with her?
She did, just to be safe. Her phone, too, so yes, she was sort of a hypocrite that way. She threw a towel over the device before unbuttoning her jeans. It was listening, so could it also be watching?
Eli texted, Everything okay?
She wrote back, So far, so good. It said not to get it wet. After I got it wet. But that’s it.
Okay keep me posted.
Back in her room she put the device on her desk and waited, phone in hand.
The AC cycled off, and the room felt eerily quiet. She always hated these in-between hours, before her mother was home safe and cooking and not out there where everything bad could happen. In the weeks after the accident, she’d been afraid to let her mother out of her sight, really. They’d long before deactivated the location services on their phones and the alerts that went along with them—“Eden arrived at home,” that sort of thing—but they’d reactivated them for a while right after. The few times she had been alone that week, Eden had tracked her mother’s location like a stalker and also watched the GoFundMe page total go up, wondering how long she could live on it if she ended up an orphan.
A shrieking bird flew by outside, announcing itself.
Two dogs on the sidewalk barked at each other.
Eden listened to that saved voice mail again: “Hey, I’m stopping at Trade Fair. Text me if you need anything.”
He’d never made it to the store, but his voice was so content, so oblivious to what was about to happen, that it soothed her. It seemed like most people lived their lives not anticipating all the horrible things that were about to happen. Her father had. She wished she could be more like him.
Red light drew her eye to the device.
THE DEVICE MUST CHANGE HANDS EVERY FOURTEEN HOURS OR FEWER.
Eden checked the time on her phone, did some math. They couldn’t exactly hand it off in the wee hours of the morning.
She texted Eli and took maybe her first full breath since she’d laid eyes on the thing. He’d come and get it, and she’d be free.
MARWAN
“You’re late.” Coach was at the elevator when Marwan stepped off.
“Won’t happen again.”
“Gear up,” Coach said, and Marwan ducked into the locker rooms and got ready as fast as he could.
He’d raced over on his bike—past the bodega and the halal meat cart and the international grocery store and the Dollar Tree. Past the bookshop and Irish bar and bakery and Colombian diner and wine shop and Dunkin’ and bagel shop and tiny Italian wine bar and cell phone store and vape shop. At one corner, he’d noted a Minnesota plate; at another, California. An old habit. Back when he was maybe ten he’d tried to find all fifty states, but he gave up after about a year when the last one just couldn’t be found. He’d seen Hawaii, even, but he’d still never spotted Alaska.