“She’s not coming!” Mouse locks the door.
“This isn’t something anyone else can decide for you, India,” Manny explains. He gently moves Mouse’s hand, unlocks the door, and reaches inside to pop my clock out of the backseat. This he places carefully in my lap and waits.
“India.” Finn’s voice is tight as twisted rope. “You won’t be going back to that mansion.”
The door is open, the path in front of me is flooded with light. Where did it come from? I didn’t notice it until now.
The warmth is intense . . . intoxicating. Nothing hurts. There is no pain. The glowing path smells of chocolate cake just out of the oven. It feels like a warm river flowing inside my skin, like my knees are sinking into a feather pillow, like all my hopes have suddenly come true in one dot of the i in my name: India.
I wrap my fingers around my clock and open the door. There’s nothing else to do.
CHAPTER 21
WEATHER ALERT
Mouse’s face is so pale she looks as if she’s been dusted in flour. “What about India? We can’t leave India.”
“Threat level orange for continuing vehicles. Threat level orange,” the mechanical voice drones on.
Manny sticks his head back in the window. “Pretty cold out there. Snow flurries, according to the Weather Group. And the explosive potential is ninety to ninety-five percent. The Operations Group has their concerns as well.”
Chuck’s eyes are full of questions. “Shall I take you back to Falling Bird, Finn Tompkins?”
Just behind us at the border station is a white courtesy phone. My heart thumps so loudly I can’t hear anything but my own doubts.
“No.” I shake my head.
“Finn!” Mouse spits at me. “We can’t leave her.”
Chuck turns back to the guard. “If you don’t mind, sir, they want to continue on.”
“Finn!” Mouse pounds on my chest with her good fist.
“Unwilling passenger alert! Unwilling passenger alert! Would Mouse Tompkins like to return to Falling Bird?” the mechanical voice booms.
Mouse grabs my arm with her good hand so tightly each of her fingers feels like they are carving grooves in my flesh. “No,” she says. “I’m staying with Finn.”
“India needs a sure thing,” I tell Mouse. “We have to get the black box first. Then she’ll come.”
Mouse’s voice is so small I almost can’t hear it. “What if we can’t find it, Finn? What then?”
The guard looks at his clipboard, then down at Mouse. He squats so he can look into her eyes. “Arm bothering you, little one?” he asks softly.
“Can you help her?” I whisper.
“Course. Got full health coverage for citizens. Everybody’s shipshape in Falling Bird.”
“But then we have to go back?” I ask.
“I’m afraid so,” Manny says.
Mouse is huddled up against the door, a crumpled heap of dirty blue corduroy. “You want me to go back with you, Mouse?” I ask her.
“Which way is Mommy?”
“Mommy’s that way,” I say, pointing away from Falling Bird.
She nods. “That’s what Bing says too.”
“You’re set to go then, little Mouse?” Manny asks.
“Yes, Mr. Manny, sir,” Mouse says.
“And Chuck, you checked with air traffic control? No flights coming in for you, number forty-four?”
“Not yet, sir.” Chuck smiles his usual smile, but his hands on the wheel are trembling.
Manny scratches his chin. His eyes are thoughtful, like my mom’s when she really wants to know what I think. “All right then. This is your choice,” he says, pushing a button in the glass booth. The gigantic door in the metal fence opens and Chuck drives through.
The wheels had been hovering over the road, but now they connect directly to the highway on the other side and the temperature drops sharply. Chuck cranks up the heat. Flying bugs hit the glass and he turns on the windshield wipers.
What are we doing? One hundred thousand to one, Sparky said. Who in their right mind would take those odds? Maybe India was right.
The bugs crunch against the wipers, and the whistling wind batters the car, almost lifting us sideways. All of Chuck’s attention is on the road when the radio comes alive. “Forty-four? Dispatch here. Come in, forty-four. Forty-four!”
“Oh no! Not Francine . . . Finn, get the radio!” Chuck shouts. He needs both hands on the wheel to keep the car on the road. “Tell her to put the call through to Sparky.”
Sparky? This won’t count, right? This isn’t a white courtesy phone.
“Forty-four, this is Francine. The Weather Group has requested an immediate return to Falling Bird,” she announces. “The threat level has been modified. We are now at threat level red.”