She goes to the next. “This one I’m really curious about,” she murmurs, adjusting the slide on the screen. “Right around here there are the rocks and a little glimpse of land, I think. If I can only . . . just . . .” She sticks her tongue out of the corner of her mouth as she tries to land on the scene just right.
“There,” she says. She squints at the screen. “In this scene my point of view is from the other side of the ship—I mean, the ferry—as it begins to tip in the water. On the right there’s a splotch of orange and I can see people on it. I think that’s a lifeboat.”
“Interesting,” I say.
“And looking over here,” she says, pointing to the other side of the screen, “I see the top of a building.” She looks closer and shakes her head. “I can’t tell for sure, but I think that’s what it is.”
“Hang on,” Sawyer says, and he rummages through his computer case. “I just remembered I snagged my mother’s reading glasses back when I was going through this, and I never gave them back. This is what helped me read the stuff on the board in the classroom at UC so I could figure out which room it was.”
Tori takes the glasses and puts them on, magnifying the bit of a building. “I take it back,” she says after a moment. “It’s the tops of two buildings. And something red over here.”
“Hmm,” I say. “Two buildings. The edge of a skyline, maybe? Could it be Chicago?”
“I can’t tell.” Tori lifts her gaze. “I’m sorry.” She looks exhausted.
I check my phone clock and see we’ve been here for two hours. I reach out and touch her hand. “Don’t be sorry. You’re doing great.”
She smiles. “If you say so,” she says, taking a deep breath and letting it out. “Let me see what else is here.”
She slides the vision forward ever so carefully. “Here’s the one that makes me sick.” She studies it for a moment. “The ship is half sunk, almost lying on its side, a big wave behind it. There are two lifeboats with people in the water clinging to them. And a third lifeboat that’s empty, floating away, while the remaining ferry passengers fall and slide over the railing and into the water below.”
She stares at the screen, and then slowly picks up a fresh sheet of tracing paper and starts another outline.
I look down at my notes, not sure what to say. It’s probably better just to be silent and let her do what she needs to do.
When I look up again, Sawyer is leaning forward, eyes closed, a bead of sweat dripping down his temple. I open my mouth to ask if he’s all right, but then I close it again. Because I finally realize what it is that’s affecting him.
I think back to a conversation he, Trey, and I had in the school hallway about our biggest fears after Trey had said his worst nightmare was a school shooting.
“Suffocating,” I remember saying mine was.
And then there was Sawyer. Who said drowning.
Twenty-Nine
Trey looks up from Ben’s computer. “There are two ferry services that cross Lake Michigan,” he reports. “One sails round-trip from Manitowoc, Wisconsin, to Ludington, Michigan, and the other goes between Milwaukee and Muskegon, Michigan.”
Rowan, looking at her phone, chimes in triumphantly, “And the second one is white on top and blue on the bottom.”
I turn to see her phone. “That’s the Milwaukee one?”
“Yes.” She shows it to Tori. “Is that it?”
“Wow,” Tori says. “Yes, that’s totally it. You guys are good.”
I look at Trey. Milwaukee is a good hour-and-a-half drive from home. “So, Milwaukee. Is that within our, um, jurisdiction?”
Tori turns sharply, a look of fear in her eyes. “What do you mean? Can’t you guys help me? Is there another team of you vision-solver people up there?”
Trey gives me a dirty look. “As far as we know, there aren’t any other weirdos like us anywhere,” he says to Tori. “So of course we’ll go to Milwaukee.”
And as much as I wanted to call this one off at one point, I’m glad Trey isn’t going to give me a hard time about going forward. Because deep down I am fully committed, and there’s no way I can let Tori deal with this on her own when the reason it’s happening to her is because of me.
We pack up our things to leave and let Tori get some rest. Before I go, she asks, “Did I do all right?”
I lean down to her in the chair and give her a hug around the shoulders. “You did great,” I say. “We’ve narrowed down one of the most important components—the where. Now all we need to figure out is when it happens.” I groan inwardly, because the when has been a constant difficulty in this process.
“And how you’re going to save everybody.”
“Right.” I haven’t even thought about that part yet—the impossible part. “So if you have any ideas, feel free to pass them along.” I manage a weak smile.
“I will.”
“And play around some more with the vision. If you have a DVR, you can pause, rewind, and fast-forward whenever you catch it on TV too, you know. Let me know if you find anything new.” I turn to join the others outside, but then hesitate. “Where’s your mother?”
Tori grins sleepily. “I told her that if she hung around during this meeting, I was going to hitch a ride with you guys to UC to recover in my dorm room.”