Whoever planned it, maybe they knew, or at least thought, that whoever took the babies was one day going to come back? Maybe they figured they’d make sure that what happened there, what happened to Callie and Ted and Greta and Tara, would never happen again? I know this is crazy. I know I’m trying to solve a mystery that may as well have happened on another planet, in another time period, to a bunch of characters in a TV show aired in another dimension, one that was cancelled before fans could get any answers. But I can’t help but wonder if maybe an Iceling—or all the Icelings—rigged this whole entire thing to happen exactly as it did, because they felt like it would be better if everyone thought they were dead. Because I have to think that if I were in Callie’s shoes, or in the shoes of an Iceling who was left behind, all alone, while his family was stolen from him and taken somewhere hostile . . . I wouldn’t trust anyone ever again. I would want to disappear, to make everyone think I was dead and gone so that they could never hurt me or anyone I loved again, because in their eyes there wouldn’t be anyone to hurt.
I look over at Callie. I think as hard as I can about everything she’s been through. I think about her whole life, as far as I’m equipped to imagine it, and then I kick myself for thinking I could even begin to do that. For the sheer vanity, the fucking arrogance of thinking that I could ever even attempt to speak for a person whom I have never heard speak, and who has never acknowledged in any definitive way the words that I speak. That I could presume to know how she looks at the world and feels about anyone, especially me. And for the first time, I don’t feel sad because there’s no way to know if she feels anything at all about or for me. Instead, I feel guilty and foolish for never choosing to look at Callie or our relationship in any way besides the one that fits with my world, the one that Callie can’t be a part of.
I close my eyes. I see Callie smiling at me and shoving a Ritz cracker in her mouth. And I see her braiding flowers into my hair and my hair into a crown before every first day of school until I was twelve, when I picked her hands up and put them down at her sides and just left her there, because the girls at school were brutal, and wearing your hair down was the thing. And I see her weaving crowns of grass the other week, and sitting in my empty car for days on end, waiting for me to take her somewhere I didn’t even understand it was possible to go to. And I can see her smiling! And I can remember her being scared about going to school, and I can remember when she didn’t go back to school, when Jane determined there were better ways to socialize and educate, and I can remember not knowing how scared I should have been, how I was just hurt everyone thought Callie was so different. And I can see her throwing her whole room into a suitcase, a look of determined panic on her face, and I see her hands building an island, building her home. I see her sitting in my empty car, day after day, waiting for me to take her somewhere I didn’t even understand it was possible to go. And then I see her watching that place, her home, burn to the ground. And I remember when we took baths together when we were really little, and Callie was so confused and terrified by the water, and me, at four years old, holding her hand, patting the water, wanting to show her it was okay, that even if some thing was scary to her it was all still going to be okay, and taking her hand to pat it, and we patted the water, and it was okay, it was, at that moment I felt it was okay, that I had made her feel okay, but it’s not until now that I see that okay for me and okay for Callie have never been the same thing.
I can hear Emily waking up. Stan checking the motor. I know that Callie’s lying on her back over to my right, in the morning sun. I know the wind’s coming from the aft and blowing a bit toward starboard. I know the water’s a little choppy, but that’s how it gets sometimes.
I close my eyes, and when I open them, what I see is the sea. And a clear sky. And when I turn my head, there’s the sun, and I let it warm my whole face. And what I know right now is exactly what I’ve always known: Callie is my sister, and I love her. But I know something new now too. I know I would die for her. I would. I know that I don’t particularly want to die but that I would die for her. And I’m crying. I touch her face, just to touch it, just to . . . I want to tell her that I’m here for her. I want to tell her that I’ll always be here for her, and that I love her so much, and I want to tell her that I don’t know how to tell her this. So I touch her face, and she lets me, and that’s all either of us can say right now. And if I told you it was enough, I’d be a liar.
TWENTY-SEVEN
WE’RE SEVEN DAYS out when Stan finds a note hidden somewhere on the boat. It is typed. It isn’t signed. It says, Good luck. And it took us a week to find it.
“What the hell?” says Stan, holding it up. It’s the first time he’s spoken in five days.
“This is so creepy,” says Emily. “Do you think . . . did someone know we were coming?”
“Maybe someone knew someone was coming,” Stan says. “But that doesn’t mean that we were the ones they were expecting.”
“But they were expecting somebody,” I say.
“So can we even trust any of this?” Emily says. “And who is ‘they’? And where did you even find that thing?”