IT’S NIGHTTIME NOW, and it’s clear out, so I set myself up next to Callie, and we lay down under the stars, and I tell us stories about them.
My eyes catch on these two stars, one small and bright, one big but softer and more glowy than the other, side by side in the sky and linked by a delicate chain made of tiny twinkles. Those two stars, I tell myself and Callie too, if some part of her can listen, are two girls who grew up together. Though they’ve never spoken, they are like sisters, and they love each other very much. They love each other so much that they are bound together—not in their hearts, but literally by a rope tied around their wrists by a stranger. Because they’ve never spoken, they can never get unbound, so they’ve just adapted to life like that. But eventually, one of them will die. And the one left behind will carry the other’s weight around with her forever.
IT’S NOW BEEN sixteen days since we got on the boat. We cross the days off on the wrong month on a calendar that’s three years old. Nineteen days ago was the last time I slept in my own bed, the last time I woke up with anything resembling a sense that the world was something I understood.
In the distance there’s a storm. There are these strange clouds way, way off, acting like they have a mind of their own, storming along all heavy and low. I look at them and can’t help but think about everything we’ve seen, everything we know.
Callie knows about the storm too. I’m sure of it. She keeps milling about on the deck with me, sticking her nose up to the sky, like there’s something in the air she can smell. Like there’s something she can hear, way off in the distance, that she needs to get to.
I go below deck. I stand in the doorway and lean, holding the top of the frame with my arms, and I sway a bit. I ask Stan and Emily if they’ve noticed the clouds too.
“Yes,” says Stan immediately.
“Yeah,” says Emily at the same time. Then they look at each other. Then they look at me. We don’t even need to specify which clouds we’re talking about. We know which clouds we’re talking about.
Stan gets up, slips past me, and jogs over to adjust the engine.
“He’s going to speed up,” says Emily. “I don’t know if we have the fuel. But he was saying he thinks we’re a few days out. Like, maybe no more than three. Maybe less now.”
We follow him up to see if we can help, but we don’t make it up.
Because, below deck, that phone. It starts to ring.
THIRTY
EMILY’S THE FIRST to the phone. She snatches it up immediately and presses the green button, because we’re not going to let ourselves miss it a second time. Stan rushes down from above and joins us, and we all stare at Emily as she puts the phone to her ear and says, “Uh, yes? This is the . . . uh, boat speaking. Who’s calling?”
My heart starts pounding as I stare at Emily while she listens to whoever’s on the other end of the phone, and Stan edges up closer to her as if to try to listen too. Emily’s brow furrows up, and then her face lights up in either shock or realization, and I’m doing all I can not to reach out and grab the phone from her, and right when I think I can’t hold out any longer, she thrusts the phone out to me.
“I . . . it’s for you,” she says.
“Hell—” I start to say, but I cut myself off, because I realize that the person on the other end of the line is still talking, and at first I think whoever this is must still think Emily’s on the line, but then I stop thinking that entirely when, half a second later, I recognize the voice.
“. . . and anyway, sport,” says my father. “Like I said, I’m just leaving you this voice mail to check in, ask you to call back, see how things are.”
What? Why the hell is my dad calling me on this creepy satellite phone hidden on this boat? Why is he pretending this is a voice mail? “Dad,” I say, “what the—”
“And also to tell you,” he interrupts, “I heard from Mom that you guys had a party after we left, which I can’t say I’m surprised by, and in fact I have to say I’m a little proud.” And then I hear a door closing on his end.
“Listen, Lorna,” he says in a hushed voice just above a whisper, “very, very carefully. As far as I know, Bobby and I are the only ones who know about this phone. I don’t know how much time I have, so just listen. Don’t talk.”