“We go to the Galápagos.”
They’re still sitting, but they’re staring up at me, as though to ask, “Um, what?” And I’m grinning like a genius who just discovered something I didn’t know I knew, which was that I know where we’re going. I know where to find more Icelings.
“The Galápagos?” says Stan finally.
“The Galápagos,” I say.
Tara and Greta come up from below deck, which I choose to interpret as a heraldic sign of my discovery. I know it isn’t, but still.
“Why?” Emily says. “How do you know?”
“Because that’s where my parents are.”
“Let’s try again,” Emily says. “How do you know?”
“Listen,” I say, and then I tell them.
I tell them about how it was my dad’s research crew that discovered the Arctic Orphans. I tell the story he tells about the boat and the infants, which they’d all heard before, but maybe not exactly like this. I tell them how, just one night after I saw Stan at the hospital the night Callie had her scariest fit yet, my parents took me to dinner to tell me how proud they were of me for taking such good care of Callie. That they were so proud, in fact, that they’d decided to leave Callie home alone with me while they both went off to the Galápagos to investigate a bizarre meteorological/seismic confluence. I tell them how, after that dinner, my dad got all funny, almost trancelike, and told me a story—a memory—about how when he found Callie and the other Icelings, he saw a trembling field of ice. And that the sky was purple and yellow, and it smelled like lightning, but he couldn’t see any. He asked me if I knew what lightning smelled like, and then he told me, “Don’t. Don’t know that.”
“He told me—like he’s always told me—that he found them on a boat. But everything he described—”
“It’s what we just saw,” said Emily. “On that island. That’s . . . that’s what . . . wow.”
Stan’s and Emily’s eyes are wide. Because now we all know. We know that the weird new details my dad slipped into his old story after the restaurant were what actually happened when they found the baby Icelings, and the boat story was just a cover for that. The trembling field of ice, the sky going purple and yellow while the clouds moved with a mind of their own to shine the sun down on a field of baby Icelings. It’s the same thing that happened when we found the baby Icelings, only the ones we found never even had a chance.
“So do you believe me now?” I ask. “That if that’s where they are, then that’s where we should go? Because if the unusual activity that they’re there to study is at all similar to what we just saw . . . then that must mean there are more of them there. Right? If that’s true, then we have to go. That’s where Bobby wants us to go, that’s why he said I knew where to go. I don’t know what will happen when we get there. It’s not like we can save anyone, but . . .”
“No,” Stan says, cutting me off.
“What?” I say, terrified and, frankly, totally shocked that he’s not even going to consider it. “Are you serious?”
“Oh, wait, no,” he says. “No. That’s not what I meant—I didn’t mean no. I meant no, we can’t not go there. But also no, we can’t think that by going there we’re not going to be able to help. Not after seeing what we just saw, going through what we just went through.”
“All right then,” says Emily, her smile wide. “Let’s do it.”
Stan starts charting the course. He asks if I know which island, and I remember my phone. I finally got it to charge, and miraculously it still turns on. But I can't call or text anyone or do much of anything else with it either, because the only apps that open are the ones that don't require access to Wi-Fi or a cellular network, neither of which we have out here. But I do have the address of where they’re staying and where their office is, written down in my notes app. I bring it up to Stan, and he grins at me, then puts his head back down to complete the course.
“We’ve got a plan, kid sister!” I shout triumphantly at Callie. I know she doesn’t understand what I’m saying, but after I say it, she smiles. And I don’t know if it means what I want it to. But right now, I don’t care.
And then, down below deck, a phone rings.
TWENTY-EIGHT
“WHERE THE HELL is this phone?” shouts Stan. He’s running down the stairs faster than Emily and I can run down the stairs, which we are also doing.
We’re pulling apart the beds, flinging boxes of cereal and tins of rations all over. There’s an upended jug of water on the floor, and in the haze of all this frantic looking I indulge in a half-formed thought about how I hope the cap doesn’t come unscrewed, sending all that drinkable water all over the carpet.
The phone keeps ringing, each new ring sounding to me like a gun going off, except we can’t see the gun or who’s shooting it. RING and we flinch. It’s not on the table. RING and we shudder. It’s not in the cabinets. RING RING and we gasp. It’s not on the floor.
It’s in Emily’s hand.