Malorie is up at the lodge, hurriedly gathering canned goods for what she told him and Olympia is going to be “a long trip.” Neither of the teens has traveled very far from Camp Yadin since they arrived ten years ago. Tom remembers the river well. The school for the blind. The long, winding journey that delivered them here. And here is home. Has been home. He knows every sound in this place, every creak, the wind through the trees, the wind across the lake. Malorie didn’t have to tell him she was going to the lodge; she could’ve just gone, and Tom would’ve heard it all play out, just as he has, just as he heard the lodge door open and close upon her entrance.

“Are you scared?” Olympia asks.

Tom looks to her across the cabin. Olympia’s bed is on the opposite side of the space, a distance they agreed upon two years ago.

“Of what?” he asks. But he can’t hide it. His voice trembles. And besides, Olympia seems to see things nobody else does.

She doesn’t respond with words. Only a serious look that’s meant to underscore the horrors of the world they are about to enter. In this moment, she looks like Malorie to Tom, despite not being related by blood.

“I’m sufficiently scared,” Tom says. He’s on his knees by his bunk, eyeing the many inventions he’s kept under his bed. One is something close to the viewfinders people once viewed eclipses through. It’s not lost on him that the census papers listed a similar method as being an eventual cause of madness. He can’t help but wonder what else he’s been proud of that won’t work. But he doesn’t let these thoughts linger. He moves what’s left of the office’s two-way mirror out of the way and reaches for more.

“She’s going to need our ears in a big way,” Olympia says.

“I know.”

“And she’s gonna need us in other ways, too.”

Tom doesn’t look at her when he responds.

“What does that mean?” he asks.

“It means she’s gotta be feeling a lot.”

“Maybe you read too many books, Olympia.”

“Hey, I’m serious.”

“Feelings? You really think Mom has those kinds of feelings? All she cares about is the blindfold.”

He lifts a helmet from the floor. The visor is supposed to close over the eyes when he presses the line switch. But it doesn’t work right now.

“Are you kidding me?” Olympia asks. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

“She lives entirely by rules,” Tom says. “There’s not much room for invention in there.”

“She lives by the blindfold, yes,” Olympia says. “And so do we.”

“Do we?” Now he does turn to face her. “We’ve grown up in this world, Olympia. Don’t you think we know it better than she does?”