“Huh,” Stan says again, then pauses, then says it again. And then: “Shit.” He takes out his phone.
“What?” I say. But he’s not answering. He glances at his phone and looks over to the left and behind us while trying to keep his eyes on the road.
“Stan, what is it?” I say, way more edge in my voice now. I look back to Callie and Ted, and for the first time in a while there is what looks like fire behind their eyes.
“Sorry,” Stan says. “Hold on, we need to call Bobby.”
“What? Why?”
“Call Bobby,” he says into his phone, which he’s put on speaker. It only rings half a ring before Bobby picks up.
“I was just about to call you,” Bobby says.
“So you noticed the thing with the cars too,” Stan says.
“What thing with the cars?” I ask, now really starting to feel invisible. I look out the windows frantically, but it’s all a mess of darkness, trees, and white and red lights. “Bobby!” I shout. “What thing with the cars? Will one of you tell me what the hell is going on?”
“Hold on,” Stan says to Bobby, and he’s turning to tell me, but by then he doesn’t need to. I’m scanning the road and the travelers on it, and I see what they’re talking about. Sitting in the back or passenger seat of almost every single car on the road around us right now are kids, all of them around sixteen years old, all of them staring out ahead, occasionally reaching for the wheel and nudging things north. No doubt about it, they are Icelings, with cheekbones like petals, broad and rising, and that dull blond hair like sweet but dead straw. Through some of the windows I can see that many of the kids are holding objects in their laps, and though I can only see the tip-tops of them, I know immediately what they are.
“They’ve got islands,” I say. “They’ve got island sculptures.”
I spot one that’s made of grass, like Callie’s, and a couple made of papier-maché, of which one is way prettier than Ted’s and one is way uglier. There’s one made of drinking straws and one made of toothpicks and one made of recycled plastic shopping bags and one made of old paper plates that were either used to clean up a murder scene or collected at a backyard barbecue. I see one that takes up the entire back row of an SUV. Some of the Icelings are like Ted and Callie and have come on this trip island-less, and I assume that these are the Icelings who also made sculptures that were way too big to fit in the car. When I scan these cars, I see that Stan, Bobby, and I aren’t the only ones getting wise to the situation all around us. I get this weird feeling in my stomach that is either terror or excitement at the fact that we are all here together for the same reason.
“This is exactly what Bobby said,” says Stan. “A ‘mass exodus.’ Of Icelings and . . . uses.”
My stomach plummets as my mom’s words echo in my head. Don’t die for her. Is that the choice we’re making here? Is that what all these other Icelings on the road are telling us?
“Oh my God,” says Stan.
“I know,” I say. I snatch up Stan’s phone. “What do we do? Do we keep going?”
“I don’t know,” Stan says, looking from the Icelings on the highway to the Icelings in our backseat.
“I say we keep going,” says Bobby.
Stan turns to look at me, then puts his phone on mute. “What do you think?” he says. “Should we trust him?”
I look back at Callie, and Stan’s voice fades away. She’s breathing so steadily, and her skin looks like it’s almost glowing, as if illuminated by moonlight that isn’t there because the sky is really cloudy.
“Uh, Lorna?” says Stan. “Hello?”
“Do they look happy?”
“Huh?” Stan says.
“The Icelings. Ours. Theirs. Do you think they look happy? Like people on their way to somewhere wonderful?”
Stan takes a long look at our siblings through the rearview. “They look completely content, Lorna,” he says. “But you and I both know that that maybe doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means we’re doing the right thing,” I say, without much of a pause. “We’re helping them.”
“How can you be so sure?” says Stan, who has fought his way into the rightmost lane, clearly prepared to make a swift exit.
“I can’t,” I admit. “But look around us. Look how many of us there are. This can’t be a mistake. All around us are people like us, taking care of their brothers and sisters, making this journey all because of love.”
“Okay then,” Stan says. He takes the phone off mute. “You’re right. We’ll keep going.” He finds his way back into a middle lane.