“That weird dirty blond. Like faded dirt.”
“Yeah. I mean, they’ve got similar cheekbones, they’re all the same size.” Three run by, all of them about five foot eight, which is to say all of them roughly Callie’s height. “They’re related. All of them. They have to be, right? They’re all the same age and the same size with the same hair, and they all look related.”
We, on the other hand, unlike the happily reunited, seem to be engaging in a contest to find out who’s the most awkward and standoffish. All around us, kids are comparing notes on what they know, what they don’t know, what they think is going on, what they hope is going on, what they hope isn’t going on. At least three people are walking around replaying voice messages from their parents screaming about the things the government will do to them if they find they’ve taken the Orphans “back there.” It soon becomes clear that some of them have had conversations with their parents similar to the one I had with my mom, but that most of them haven’t. You can tell the ones who have from the ones who haven’t by how they respond to the rumor that the government is out to get our siblings. Those who’ve had the conversation react somberly but calmly, and those who haven’t have this horrifying look of surprise on their faces. Like the whole world just took off its mask and the real face underneath belongs to a monster.
“Um, guys,” says Bobby, sidling over to us as fast as he can through this disoriented mob, “you might want to look at that.”
Bobby points, and we follow his finger with our eyes until what we’re looking at is so many Icelings.
What I mean is, while we’ve all been standing around, numb from driving and perplexed by our destination, the Icelings have been gathering. Earlier, they were running around, but swiftly and silently, they slipped away from us completely and segregated themselves on the other side of the marina.
Callie’s gone.
How could I lose track of her? Here, of all places, now? I turn around in circles unproductively as heat rises to my forehead, and I get so hot that I almost rip my hat off and expose my skin to this frigid air, but then someone nudges me.
“Hey,” says Bobby, and he points.
And there’s my Callie.
Over there, with all the other Icelings, who are calmly milling about and among each other, staring up close in each other’s eyes. She’s moving around like they all are, getting up into each other’s faces, looking for what, I can’t say. Themselves is my guess. They’re looking to see what they can see of themselves in one another’s faces. They hold their hands up, as if asking the Iceling across from them to hold their hand up too. Sometimes they do, and then both Icelings make this face that says: Finally. Some of them don’t, and then those Icelings just keep trying.
“They’re pairing off,” I say. “Right? It’s like they’re checking to see which person will be their mirror.”
“Ho-ly . . .” says Bobby, then trails off as he watches Greta lock hands with an Iceling girl who jumped when she jumped.
“Huh,” Stan says. I look, and there’s Ted, standing in front of another broody-seeming Iceling. They glare at each other, raise their hands in sync, and then embrace. It’s a quick embrace, maybe even warm—in other words, nothing like what I’d expect a hug from Ted to be like. “Well,” Stan says. “I guess he’s found his other half.”
“You hear that, Callie?” I ask, forgetting she isn’t there. I look out to where I last saw her in the gathering of Icelings, but she’s not there either. I lost her.
But after a minute of frantic searching, there she is. Way down by the landing, standing with a girl who looks uncomfortably just like her. They’re smiling, holding their hands up, mirrors for one another. And now their hands are trembling, and they’re touching each other’s hair (Callie’s is long, down past her shoulders, and this other’s is lopped off around her chin), feeling it out for all the ways it is and isn’t theirs.
Someone taps me on the shoulder. I jump and reel around to see a girl around my age, dark hair and curvy, with cool glasses. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you,” she says with a bit of a Southern accent.
“It’s fine, you didn’t,” I say, not sure whether I mean it or I’m just being polite.
“I’m Emily,” she says, holding out her hand. I take it and shake it and tell her my name, and she smiles. “Nice to meet you! Under the weirdest circumstances ever? Anyway, that’s my sister over there.” She points with her shoulder to where Callie is standing. “Her name’s Tara. The girl she’s . . . uh . . . talking to. Is that your sister?”
Tara. So that’s the name of the girl with whom Callie is, right now, probably forging a bond that’s deeper than anything we have ever or could have ever had.
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s Callie.”
“I guess they found their Others,” Emily says.
“Their whats?”