“What?” I say. “Mom, did you hear anything I just said?” Oh God oh God oh God. I shouldn’t have said anything! Unless, “Is it because of the party? Because the house is fine, and locked up, and I called the cops to let them know we wouldn’t be home in case of burglaries, and I set timers for the lights, and . . .” Ugh. Of course it’s not that. Obviously, Lorna, come on. “Is it the thing with the bear? Because we’re fine! I was just scared, so I wanted to tell someone about it so I could feel less scared. Which I do now! Thank you! Talking to you has really helped. It was nothing. Mom, I just—”
“Lorna. I need you to listen to me. I need you to take a deep breath and listen to what I’m about to tell you, which also happens to be something people could kill me for telling you. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say softly, and now I feel my heart is actually in danger of stopping. Everything’s stopped. The whole world feels like it’s slowing down, and now I’m stuck here, in this moment, for probably forever. What the hell is she talking about?
“Listen. Your father”—she snorts a bit, or else breathes hard through her nose, I can’t tell—“your father believes that this group of orphans Callie belongs to are peaceful and naive and innocent. But there are many people, many of them in the government, who do not feel this same way. These people believe that Callie and the other children like her are a sort of living weapon. A force to be used against us. Against people.”
“What? Mom, are you kidding me with this? That’s insane—”
“Lorna! Let me finish! This is important, you have no idea how important. Because of Jane. Jane—well, Jane isn’t Callie’s caseworker, Lorna. Jane is the government liaison who was assigned to monitor Callie and Ted and three other Orphans. This is why it’s always the same hospitals, always the same doctors.” She pauses for a moment, and my chest feels crushed, like the bear from Ted’s fury.
“Lorna,” she starts again. “Lorna, if you take Callie and that boy, Ted, if you take them back to the place where they were discovered, which is where I’m almost certain they’re trying to get you to take them, if you do that, the consequences will be very, very bad.” She gets quiet here, and she does not elaborate on what she means by “bad.” “We’ve been playing with fire for years by having her here, in our family, in our home, and if you do this . . . If you do this, Lorna, baby, there will be hell to pay.”
“Stop!” I shout, panic engulfing me now. “What the hell are you even talking about? I—I don’t believe you. I don’t believe a single word you say! Where’s Dad? I want to talk to Dad. Please. Now. Put Dad on please. Now.”
“I can’t, Lorna. I told you—he’s not here, he’s at the site, and thank God he is. Please. Please. Please do not take them back there. Please. Please listen to me, and do as I said, and I promise that Jane won’t harm you. Or Callie,” she adds.
Then, after her longest pause yet, during which I’m not talking because I’m shaking so hard and she’s not talking because her desperation is so thick I can feel it through the phone, she says, “Whatever you do, Lorna, please: Please don’t die for Callie. Please. Just please promise me you won’t die for her. I know you love her, I know you love her like she was your own sister, I know that. But do not get between her and the government. Please. Please don’t die for her. She’s not your blood. Please, Lorna—”
I hang up. I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner, but what she said about Callie, about how she’s not my blood . . . I just couldn’t hear any more of it. I look over, and Stan is waving at me. Somehow, blindly and floating like in a dream, I make it there, to the car, and he starts the engine.
“What happened?” he says.
And then I just start weeping and shaking and shaking and weeping.
THIRTEEN
WE’RE STILL GOING NORTH.
Stan’s driving again, and I’m just staring out the window, thinking that if I don’t make a sound, then I can maybe draw all the sounds around us right into me. And then I could drown out the echo of everything my mother just told me.
Weeks pass like this, but then I check the clock on the radio, and it’s only been an hour.
Another ten minutes pass, and that feels like a whole day, and I just want to crawl out of my skin. I feel like my guts want to jump out of my mouth and like my bones want to crawl out after them and head off in another direction entirely, like south, or east, or west, or anywhere but here, and then whatever’s left of me will just be here, in the car, existing. What Mom said. I. I can’t even form thoughts right now, the only things echoing around spookily in my head are a few disjointed words, some underwater sounds. I’m narrating all this to myself to try to give any sort of structure to anything at all.
“Lorna . . .” says Stan, tentatively, quietly, and the sound of my name pulls me up out of myself. A bit.
I don’t say anything, though, because I’m still trying really hard to draw all of the sounds into my body. Except I don’t actually have the capacity to manipulate sound waves. Or to pretend that that phone call never happened. Or to deal with any of this at all right now.