“Yeah.”
“So we’re really going to do this, huh?” he says, his eyes on the road and lit up by the highway lights and the cars around us. “We’re going to help them. We’re going to give them a shot at feeling this same way too. Is that a selfish way to look at this? I mean, we don’t know what they’re feeling. No matter how differently we feel about ourselves and them right now, we still have no idea what they think or feel. Or what they want to think and feel.”
“Yeah. We don’t know,” I say. I spy Callie in the rearview mirror, dozing but not quite sleeping with her head against the cold backseat window, a faint reflection of her face glowing out into the night. “But, cheesy as it sounds . . . we can look in their eyes.”
“Yeah. We can look in their eyes and know we’re the ones best equipped to see the difference between when they feel trapped and when they feel—when they look like they feel—rooted. In themselves and in the world.” Stan’s voice goes dreamy as he says, “I wonder what it’s like for everyone else.”
I roll down the window.
“Uh,” Stan says. “Everything okay?”
I ignore Stan and shout, “Hey!” out the window to no one in particular.
“What the hell are you doing, Lorna?”
I turn back to him. “Finding out what it’s like for everyone else. Duh.” I turn back to the refreshing chill outside my window. “Hey! Someone roll down their window!”
The kid driving the next car over, Indiana plates, rolls down his window. He has a sister in the backseat, her flower-petal cheeks shining with that glow from the absent moon.
“You okay?” shouts the kid back at me.
“We are, yeah!” I say. “Are you? Anything . . . seem weird to you about any of . . . this?” I sweep my arms out wide to gesture to the entire highway.
“Well,” he shouts, “a couple of cops just pulled me over with my sister in the car and didn’t ask me what’s wrong with her that she can’t speak, and that’s never happened before. So there’s that. And, oh yeah, there was that whole thing about my sister building a professional-looking scale model of an island and telepathically demanding I take her on an elaborate road trip to a mystery location. So, yeah. It’s been weird.”
“For us too!” I shout. “Back in New England, my friend’s brother fought a bear.”
“Jesus,” says Stan.
“A bear?” says the guy.
“Yup, a bear,” I say.
“No way,” the other driver says.
I unbuckle myself and lean out the window.
“Careful!” both Stan and our new friend shout at the same time, and Stan swerves the car a little. “Jesus, Lorna!” he says.
“I’m fine!” I say. “You just focus on driving.” I point to the claw marks on the hood of the car.
“Holy shit,” the guy says. “What one guy can do another can do, huh?”
I laugh, loud. I have got to tell you, it feels pretty amazing to laugh right now. Stan isn’t laughing. I guess he never watched The Edge on cable with his dad.
“I’m Lorna,” I say, settling back in my seat.
“I’m Jayson,” he says. “That’s Chantal in the back.”
“That’s Callie, and that’s Ted, and Stan’s driving.”
“Hey,” says Stan, waving, not taking his eyes off the road despite the fact that we haven’t broken thirty-five miles per hour in what feels like days. Traffic’s not at a standstill, but it isn’t exactly racing.
“That’s Charlie in the Nissan just ahead,” says Jayson.
“Oh yeah? Did he yell at you from the road too?”
“Yup. Long time ago,” he says. “Look around. Do you think you’re the only ones who want to know if what’s happening is real?”
“I guess it would be pretty crazy if we were,” I say.
“Bingo,” says Jayson.
Our lane starts to free up, and Stan looks to Jayson apologetically as he gestures to the open space ahead of us.
“Go on!” says Jayson. “Looks like we’re all headed toward the same place anyway.”
We wave to each other as Stan pulls ahead, and soon Jayson’s out of sight. A drawn-out silence fills the space between me and Stan.
“I’m terrified, Stan,” I blurt, and then instantly feel so much re lief at giving voice to that feeling that I add, “but I’m also kind of excited too.” Because it’s true.
“Yeah,” Stan says. “Me too. All of it. At once. The fear and the exhilaration. I’ve been feeling that this entire time.”
“Phew. I’m glad it’s not just me. But we’re going to have to try really hard to remember that. I mean, you take everything that’s gone down over the last few days—the bear, my mom, the cops being creepy with families at the checkpoint, these cars traveling this road with us carrying the same kind of trouble we are.”