The Icelings pick apart the rations to try to see what’s in them, and they eat things they find. Ted pops a whole fun-size candy bar into his mouth. Wrapper and all. He winces. I noticed he’s limping, and his eyes have been wired, but now he looks sleepy and exhausted.
Emily and I pause in the middle of eating to change into the clothes we found, but Stan doesn’t pause until he’s downed two of those emergency meals. Once we’re all changed and shivering a little less, we dare to look inside our pockets and Emily’s backpack to survey the damage. Both Emily’s and Stan’s phones are completely wrecked, but Emily still tosses them in a sack of basmati rice we find in a cardboard box in the back of the locker, “Just in case.” She zips open her sodden and soaked backpack, which is completely full of Luna bars. Stan smirks.
Since I’m my father’s daughter, I had my phone packed in a weird plastic case that’s supposed to be waterproof. I pull it out and it seems mostly dry, but the battery’s dead. I have no idea if my charger still works or if there’s anywhere to plug it in.
I’m still hunting around the boat for an electrical outlet when I notice Callie sitting down on the floor of the boat, leaning against the side wall and looking out across the sea. The other Icelings join her, and then I do too. Stan and Emily follow, and we all sit together, and we watch the island burn.
We watch those weird trees burning from the roots up, the ice that cakes their branches turning into steam, which then fizzles out and dies. Those hills, craggy and rigid in places like mountains, are crumbled and all aflame with a fire that probably started with the jet fuel from the crashed drones and was sustained by the final blast that shook everything down at once. The hills are lit up like a sunset, or like hundreds of sunsets. We can’t see any people, but I know we’re all looking for them. I know we’re all hoping we don’t see any people, in whatever state anyone over there could possibly be in, but that we’re all also hoping that we do see some people, because despite all the fire and ash we can see from our little haven in the sea, we still have no idea what actually happened over there.
“Could anyone have survived that?” Emily says.
“No,” says Stan without a single pause.
“Jane, Bobby, the army,” I say. “The Icelings . . . those kids . . . all of them . . .”
“They’re dead,” Emily whispers.
We stand there, stunned, the fire playing off our eyes like a song. The Icelings are just staring. Then they look away. They can’t, or won’t, watch this anymore.
Suddenly and without any words of warning, Stan grabs hold of Ted, buries his head in his shoulder.
“I’m so sorry, Ted,” he says. “I’m so sorry. You saved my life, Ted. You saved my life so many times—the bear, the soldier. From drowning and hypothermia. And I’ve done nothing for you. Nothing that even comes close.” I have to stop looking at him now, because it hurts too much to listen, to see Stan start to cry, but it also hurts too much to keep looking at the island, so I just inch myself closer to Callie and stare down at the water below lapping sadly against our boat. “You’re my brother,” Stan goes on, still talking into Ted’s shoulder, his voice muffled. “And I can’t do anything except be so completely sorry. I’m sorry for when I hit you because my friends couldn’t come play, and I’m sorry about when I told you hated you—I don’t, I don’t hate you, Ted. And I’m sorry about Mom. I’m sorry she left, and I’m sorry about Dad, about everything about Dad, and I’m sorry about everything. All of it. And it doesn’t do anything, it doesn’t mean anything, I know that . . .” And then he just slowly goes quiet, his voice giving way to quiet sobs and gasps.
I look up. Stan is still buried in Ted’s shoulder, but Ted is still staring at the burning island. He stares at the place he came from, his home, a place he’d seen before, when he opened his eyes for the very first time sixteen years ago, but probably didn’t remember, and now he’s finally seeing it, for real, and it’s on fire. Everything in and on and beneath it, everything that makes it a place, burning. His face is screwed up like he’s crying silently, but he’s not. He’s just watching it. His eyes are wet, perhaps just from the wind, and his jaw is set, and he stands, staring. And when Stan finally lets go and looks up at his brother’s face, he still keeps standing, the expression on his face unchanged for what feels like forever.
Then Ted lifts his arm. He lifts his arm, still staring at the island, eyes still wet, the reflection of the flames burning in them. And then he takes his lifted arm and puts it around Stan, and then he holds Stan to him. And they stay like that.