How’re u feeling bae? It’s Mimi.
tired//hungry//great, I text back. The first two items on that list are true, but as to the last one, my plan right now is that maybe I shouldn’t tell anyone what I am feeling, because what I am feeling is basically that all my authority figures are liars, and the government wants to kill my sister, and my parents are at least half-fine with that. And maybe if we get Callie where she’s going safe and sound, she’ll find somewhere she belongs more than with me. Which is great, but also the worst thing ever to have happened. And how do you say that to your best friend, or to the boy with whom you do homework, plus other stuff too? I know that Mimi and Dave only want to help and that they’re worried about me. But they can’t help, no one can help, because I can’t tell them all the things I’ve just learned.
The one thing I do know is that Stan and I have to get Callie and Ted to wherever they’re going. I can’t think about anything else— especially the part about maybe we’ll be killed if Stan and I get Callie and Ted to wherever they’re going. And this is what’s churning around and around in my head when Stan nearly crashes into the guardrail. We stop abruptly. After I turn to make sure Callie’s okay and all buckled in, I whip right around to face Stan.
“What the hell!” I shout.
“Sorry! Sorry! It’s this idiot guy! He’s been, like, waving at me, at us, viciously. What the hell is he doing?”
I look. A car is parked right behind us, and the driver’s side door is open. A guy in his twenties or early thirties gets out, and then I look closer and see a girl sitting inside the car in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead.
The guy approaches and sticks his head in Stan’s window.
“Hi!” he says. “I’m Bobby.”
“Uh, hey, Bobby,” we say, tentative as all heck.
“I see you guys have some Orphans in there,” he says, blocking the sun with one hand and putting his forehead against the back window. “Or AROs, as you might call them?”
“Um,” we say. Stan looks at me, and all I can do is stare blankly back.
“So let’s go somewhere and talk!” says Bobby.
“You want us to go somewhere with you?” I say, every protective instinct in me firing up on all cylinders.
“Wait a second, dude. Why would we follow a complete stranger who nearly just ran us off the highway? What do you want?” says Stan.
“Huh! Good point! Fair enough,” Bobby says, putting his hands up and smiling. “Let’s start over? I’m Bobby, and it’s very nice to meet the both of you. I’m a grad student in anthropology. That’s Greta,” he says, gesturing with a nod toward the girl sitting in his car. We follow his nod and then look back at Bobby. “Greta used to be real close with my younger brother, Alex,” he goes on. “But now it’s just me and Greta. My stipend covers off-campus housing, so she stays with me. Anyway, the other day, Greta built this amazing island.” Stan and I look at each other while trying to make it look like we’re not looking at each other. “And after that, things got what I’d call vaguely . . . nuts. She dragged me to the car, and here we are, headed north. And your friends in the backseat there have that same look.”
“What look?” Stan says. I can feel his defensive feathers ruffling.
“Same as Greta there. Sandy blond hair, pale eyes with that look in them that says that language, or what we call language, doesn’t mean anything to them. Then of course there’s the whole steering the car north thing and all.”
“Could you hold on for just a sec?” I say to Bobby, holding up a finger and smiling weirdly, and then I pull Stan out of the car through my door and walk him around to the hood, as far away from Bobby as I can get without losing sight of Callie.
“Who the hell is this guy?” I ask as quietly as possible.
“I don’t know,” Stan whispers back. “But he’s basically narrating our day back to us, minus a bear attack. And”—he doesn’t look happy saying this—“his sister sounds like she’s probably an Iceling too.”
“So what do we do? Just go with him? He could be anyone.”
“I mean . . . should we just go get a bite and see what this guy is about?”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay, I guess.”
“We’ll be somewhere public. With people . . .”
“So if he tries anything . . .”
“Exactly.”
Bobby is still whistling inconspicuously. Stan pokes his head out and says, “Okay, dude. Let’s go get something to eat. Separate cars.”
“Of course!” says Bobby. “This’ll be great.”
We get back in the car and wait just long enough for Bobby to get his car started, then we pull onto the freeway with this stranger and his sister, his purported Iceling sister, in the backseat, and we all head, convoy-style, toward the nearest rest stop.