She gets it. She isn’t sure Tom does. The magnitude of this moment. The fact that Malorie has raised them for sixteen years, believing herself to be alone in the world, no family or friends to help. It’s harrowing. At turns, it sounds almost worse to discover they are alive, as if Malorie was not only robbed of the life she thought she was living but had been fooled into sorrow as well.

“What’s wrong?” Tom asks.

Olympia looks to him in the glass. Did her face reveal heavy thoughts? Jesus, sometimes it feels like Tom can hear her thoughts.

“Nothing.”

“Okay,” he says. But it’s the mocking way he has of saying certain things. She sees him reach to his bag, his eyes still on the pages. He fumbles inside until he removes what she knew he would.

His glasses.

His special glasses.

Tom explained them to her in great detail a month after he made them. And while Olympia was frightened by the philosophy he espoused, she was much more scared of him using them.

He wears them now, as he reads.

“Get this,” he says. “A family in Pennsylvania built helmets the size of ‘wardrobe boxes’ so there was room for food and water inside the helmet. I mean, this stuff is unbelievable!”

Olympia eyes herself. She wants to feel the excitement Tom feels. She wants to give in to the rush of being on this train, of moving, of heading north without being forced to lead her mom through woods, along empty roads, in a boat. She wants so badly to be sixteen like sixteen used to be. It sounds like it was once an incredible thing, a magical thing, being a kid. Hanging out with other teens your age. Learning how to drive a car. Sneaking out of the house. Going, walking, looking anywhere you wanted to.

Did people realize how good they had it back then? It wasn’t just a matter of being able to see or not. She’s read of plenty of blind characters who lived brilliant lives. But it’s the fear—of what’s out there. And the constant ringing of a mother’s voice, reminding her and Tom, demanding, commanding, Do you understand? Do you understand? DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

“What’s wrong?” Tom asks again.

When Olympia looks to him in the glass she sees herself, reflected in the lenses of the glasses he’s built. For this, two mirrors face each other, and her own form is repeated, over and over, into infinity.

“Athena Hantz says we’re allowed to look,” Tom says. “She says it’s all a matter of us accepting them. Living with them.”