For a second Marwan wished he’d engaged because it would have meant more access to Eden. He had always regretted not saying anything to her after the accident. But now wasn’t the time.
Gotta go, she wrote.
Wait!
What?
He hated that this thing was freaking her out when she already had enough to deal with.
I can take a turn, he wrote. Only fair. I’ll find you at your locker. Just tell me where it is.
He added his phone number then pocketed his phone and got on his bike and rode off down the sidewalk without sitting. He was maybe a little pleased with himself. After all, he needed to take it if he was going to be the one to get rid of it.
EDEN
There was no sign of Eli by her locker.
Marwan was nearby talking to some of his friends, occasionally making urgent eye contact with her. She’d never noticed how intense his eyes were before, like they somehow allowed you to see further into him than most people’s eyes did. A deep end where others were shallow.
They were a nice-enough-seeming bunch of guys he was with—she’d always liked Kartik—and she wasn’t sure why she didn’t know any of them that well after so many years of being in the same neighborhood and school except that she didn’t know any guys especially well. They made her nervous. The one exception was Mark, an old family friend. And maybe now Marwan?
She checked her phone, decided to follow Marwan on Instagram.
But there was still no sign of Eli, and if they didn’t do the handoff now, it would complicate things. At nine—the fourteen-hour mark—they were all in different classes.
Where are you? she texted Eli. Running out of time.
The warning bell for first period rang, and the hallways started to empty; locks clicked shut, conversations wound down or got paused or drifted away.
Marwan broke away from his friends and walked toward her.
She checked her phone.
He checked his. Did something.
She checked hers; he’d followed her back.
“Where is he?” Marwan asked.
“I don’t know,” Eden said. “He’s not answering my texts. What’s your second-period class?”
“Chem lab,” he said.
“Okay, so at, like, ten minutes to nine, go to the third floor bathroom by the lab.”
She checked her phone.
He checked his.
“I’ll tell Eli to do the same. He’s in my first class. He’s probably just late.”
“What if he doesn’t show?” He was still looking at his phone, and it was irritating.
“I don’t know,” she said, looking at her phone.
Julian had just posted a photo of himself in the music room even though you weren’t supposed to have phones in classrooms.
She put hers in her locker reluctantly, then picked it up and peeked at it one more time, put it on airplane, then put it back down on the tiny white “bearskin phone rug” that her father had given her for Christmas last year. She almost hadn’t brought it to school this year, but that seemed sadder, somehow, than looking at it every day.
She could make up an excuse to just drop by Mr. M’s room? But what if he asked her about the message from yesterday? And what would she even say to Julian?
The second bell rang.
No time.
“Don’t worry, okay?” Marwan said. “We’ll just put it back when he gets here. I’ll do it.”
“But there are probably classes in Mr. McKay’s room all morning,” Eden said. “So it’s not that simple.”
Anjali appeared and grabbed Eden by the arm. “Come on. We’re late.”
Eden shrugged at Marwan and let Anjali pull her along.
Anjali said, “What were you two talking about? I didn’t even know you knew each other.”
“Nothing, really,” Eden said as they arrived at their classroom. “But we do.”
“Nice of you to join us,” Mrs. Whitney said as they slid into the room. She was just closing the door.
“Sorry,” Eden said.
“So sorry,” Anjali said.
Eden took her seat and turned to check the back row for Eli.
He wasn’t there.
Out the windows a train went past painfully slowly—probably track work. A commuter woman in a pink top and black sunglasses seemed to be looking right at Eden, though probably she couldn’t see all the way into the room.
What would Eden—they?—do if Eli didn’t turn up or text?
Go to the principal? And say what?
Go to Eli’s house after school?
She didn’t even know where he lived.
She pictured her phone, alone in her dark locker. She’d check it between first and second periods, even though you weren’t supposed to. In all likelihood, it would light up with apologetic texts of explanation from Eli. Sorry! Overslept! or something dumb.
Another train crawled past in the opposite direction. Looked like the same woman, but no, it couldn’t be.
MARWAN
When the clock on the wall hit 8:45, he asked to be excused. Ms. Lynch rolled her eyes, but Marwan shrugged as if to say, when you gotta go, you gotta go. At least here he didn’t have to compete with his sisters for the bathroom. Not that he even really had to go. But once he walked in, it was like some Pavlovian response. So he took care of that, then washed his hands and waited.
Without his phone, he couldn’t know exactly what time it was. It felt like Eli should be here by now, though.
Christos came in, surveyed the scene, and said, “What are you doing just standing there?”
“I’m washing my hands,” Marwan said, and started washing his hands again.
Christos waited and watched.
“Is there a problem?” Marwan said to him in the mirror.
“Just gonna wait until you leave is all.” Christos folded his arms.
“Suit yourself,” Marwan said, then dried his hands with painstaking care.
One paper towel.
Pat-pat-pat.
Then another.
More patting.
When he pulled a third paper towel from the dispenser on the wall, Christos said, “Why are you so annoying?”
“Me?” Marwan laughed. “I’m the annoying one?” He headed for the door, with no other ways to stall.
Eli wasn’t coming.
“You working tonight?” Christos said brightly.
Marwan turned, holding the heavy door open. “What’s it to you?”
“Just making small talk.” Christos unzipped his fly at a urinal. “Friendly chitchat with a fellow student.”
Eden appeared in the hall. Her hair was hanging down over one shoulder and seemed to pull her head into a tilt. The shine of it made the hall around them seem even more dull and gray.
Marwan let the door to the bathroom float closed and stepped into the hallway. “Well?”
“I ran to my locker just now and checked my phone real quick, and he texted me.” Relief was apparent on her face. “He says it gave him until four o’clock for the handoff and that we all need to meet him at Astoria Park, by the Hell Gate Bridge, after school.”
“Why Astoria Park?”
“We need to find Ilanka,” she said, not registering or maybe just not answering his question. “Do you have any classes with her?”