THE SUNSETS WE can see from this boat are so beautiful you wouldn’t believe them. Which is nice, because sunsets—the way they shiver their way down into the edge of the water while all the warmth leaves the world—are pretty much all I’m comfortable talking about right now. Sunsets and sunrises. I can talk to you about sunrises all day, how they come up over the water all pale yellow and dusky blue, like the sea is the lip of a table, or your life. How the water extends and multiplies the just-woke sun’s glow. You see things like this and you can understand how people once thought the ocean was the edge of the world. You see how you could entertain the notion that, if you sailed out a little bit farther, everything would just fall off.
After two weeks out here, I’m starting to think those the-world-is-flat fanatics might have been on to something. From where I’m standing, the horizon looks exactly like the edge of a map nobody’s figured out how to survey yet. Maybe that’s where dragons are. Maybe we’ll be swallowed up by something too terrifying to even put into a sentence. Maybe that’s what dragons are. Maybe we’ll learn something new about ourselves, and maybe we’ll die. Maybe we’ll end up in the Galápagos after all. Maybe turtles will swim up to us—Icelings and all—with tropical drinks and snacks balanced on their shells, and nobody will shoot anybody, ever, forever. Maybe my parents will take our side, and we’ll bring down the government together, or at least get them off our backs. But maybe I’m just seventeen years old and terrified. And maybe all of this is a dream with no edges to tell me where it stops and the world begins, like a horizon line hidden by sky and water that are the exact same shade of blue.
Except that I know that it isn’t a dream. And I can always make out the horizon, no matter how monochrome everything gets. And every time I open my eyes, we’re still on a boat, aiming for the Galápagos, where the government has sent my parents to hunt for another group of Icelings on behalf of the government, which just tried to annihilate us along with an unknown number of others.
We didn’t get to that phone in time. Or we did, but then we saw Ted, and Stan mattered more than the phone ever did. We don’t know who called. Maybe it’ll ring again, and whoever’s on the other end will tell us something terrible or wondrous. Or maybe it will never ring again, and we’ll just keep going like we were ready to before we even knew anyone had a way to reach us out here.
It’s been over two weeks since I told Mimi and Dave that I’d call them as soon as I was safe, and I have to force myself not to think about how worried they must be that they haven’t heard from me. I miss Dave. More than I thought I would. And I miss my life. And at this point, I’m pretty much positive that there’s no going back. That whatever happens after this, that’s the rest of my life now. There’s no option that’ll take me back home, to the time when Callie was just solidly weird and nothing more, and Jane was just a creepy doctor who lacked social skills, and my parents were just nerdy people who loved me. Because Callie’s a plant person. And Jane murders children. And my parents stole Callie from her home, from her family, from her whole entire life. And that’s my whole world now, and I’m not even sure I have a place in it.
STAN TELLS US we might have enough fuel to make it, but that it’s a good thing that this boat also has sails, just in case. He thinks we’re maybe about halfway there. He wants to make sure we keep some reserve gas on the boat no matter what, so when there’s a good wind, we ride that, even though we move at roughly a third of the speed that we do under the engine. But Stan would rather get there late than not get there at all.
Stan tells us this in a steady monotone, and Emily and I agree that he must be in some kind of shock. Like a sort of fugue state. Like he needs this project, to make an elaborate plan for our voyage at sea, because now that Ted is gone he needs another reason to keep going. But Emily and I are worried about him. Because I look at him and all I can think about is how grief will change things in you. It’ll change how you see things, and how you think you used to see things.
The boat is quiet now with Ted gone, and the solitude between us makes the whole world feel urgent. Like it’s a bomb covered in water and land. Like our heartbeats are ticking out the seconds until we meet the next horrible thing that will rise up to bite our heads off. And the longer we’re on the boat, the more time we have to start to wonder if maybe we’re walking into the same trap all over again.
“Even if we are,” says Emily, “at least it’ll be warm.”
Stan doesn’t turn from the wheel, but I can still see his cheek move up in a fraction of a smile, and I feel I could kiss Emily right now for making that little joke.