The ranks of the Overtakers battling for the Base had just gotten smaller.
* * *
Finn and Amanda stumbled across the parking lot, wet, weary, and wary. The summons by Ursula might have been the end of it, and it might have just been the beginning.
Finn’s mother’s car was the only vehicle in a lot that could hold a thousand. Finn and Amanda reached a pair of palm trees and paused. Why couldn’t his mother have parked a little closer or moved the car once the party had gotten out?
“Clear?” he said.
But Amanda didn’t answer. Holding back Ursula’s wave had sapped all her strength, drained her to where the tube surfing and running had left her in a stupor of diminished capacities. He took one look at her and knew it was up to him to get her back safely. She was in a zone, and it wasn’t a good one.
“I’ve got you,” he said, taking her gently by the upper arm. “Hang in there.” She’d saved his life. The least he could do was get her to Mrs. Nash’s foster home safely. She tugged away from the contact—was it wrong to grab a girl by the upper arm?—but he squeezed more tightly, not letting her go. Briefly, she leaned her head against his shoulder, just to where it touched. Then she straightened back up and allowed herself to be guided across the vast expanse of open blacktop as Finn raced for the car.
He spotted his mom through the windshield. He rolled his free hand vigorously, signaling for her to start the car and get going. And yet she just sat there. The car remained silent. He opened the back door for Amanda and closed it behind her. He climbed into the front seat.
“Go! Go!” he said. “Mom! Come on!”
Mrs. Whitman reached for the ignition key and started the car.
“How did it go?” she asked.
Finn motioned out at the half-flooded parking lot. “It could have gone better,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
She started the car and the headlights came on automatically. Finn’s mom moved the gearshift and they took off. She drove confidently, though hardly in a hurry.
“Pedal to the metal, Mom. Come on!”
“You’re not in any danger from her now,” she said.
Finn missed it at first, but not Amanda. That was who Amanda was. That was partly what made her so special. Her secretive, intuitive nature, a quality of always being a step ahead and yet right behind you.
“From who?” Amanda said.
Or maybe it was the result of her sitting in the backseat, of her having a good view of the car’s rearview mirror. Of spotting something about his mother’s face that Finn had not spotted.
“From Ur—” Finn said, turning to look back at Amanda, wondering how she could be so tired as to have forgotten the last twenty minutes. But Amanda wore a worried, severe expression. Finn caught himself mid-syllable.
Her…His mother had said “her.”
Mrs. Whitman glanced over at her son, adopting a forced smile that Finn interpreted as meaning one of two things: either she was furious and trying to contain herself because Amanda was in the car, or she was trying to slip something past him. These were the only two alternatives. Between mother and son sometimes words weren’t necessary at all.
They reached the end of the access road into Typhoon Lagoon, where it met Lake Buena Vista Drive. Cars were streaming out of Downtown Disney, the Cirque du Soleil show having just concluded. Headlights shone into Finn’s car so brightly that he looked away from them, averting his eyes and looking directly at his mom. She too recoiled from the glare, holding her hand up to screen her face.
Amanda reached forward and took Finn’s arm the same way he had taken hers minutes earlier. She squeezed hard. For she’d seen what Finn had seen.
This woman’s eyes were green.
His mother had blue eyes.
There are times a laptop computer or smart phone will pause for no reason—just hang as if taking a little longer than usual to think through a mundane instruction. Finn’s brain did just that. It did not jump to conclusions. It did not instruct him to open the car door. It did not suggest an exchange of expressions with Amanda. It froze, stunned.
It must be a trick of the light, his brain said. It must be those new halogen headlights, or the vapor lights in the parking lot, or possibly something to do with the angle of—he had to reach back to science class—infraction? refraction? of light distorting under the effects of a lens. It wasn’t that his mother’s eyes were suddenly green; it was a trick, a special effect.
But then his logic was challenged by his physical senses. However it might be explained, his mother’s eyes were currently green. It didn’t matter how many cars passed—that wasn’t going to change.