A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe) by Martin Leicht, Isla Neal Page A

giant mushrooms poking up out of the ground, hills and valleys and, puckered beside the path, cracks in the ice. Every once in a while we pass a patch that’s broken free from the rest of the ice mass, and the ice floes don’t drift gently out to sea like I’d imagine, but rather crash into each other with the force of the waves below them.
    Far in the distance, there is a loud Crack-BOOM! of thunder, followed by another. Crack-BOOM!
    The sky is crystal clear.
    A shiver crawls up my spine, less from the pervasive chill and more from the eerie thought that that roar of thunder must’ve traveled for miles, and yet it sounds like it’s right on top of us. I guess it’s easy to make yourself heard when you’re surrounded by so much . . . nothing.
    After an hour or so, Olivia takes up her wailing again. Full-throttle screaming that’s so loud, I’m startled when I look around and don’t see an avalanche forming. And even though I have a tiny bit of the blue gel left in my pocket, I’m afraid to use it up so soon. Who knows what food they’ll have for her at the prison? So I try singing again. (Alan, at the front of the sled, starts spasming like my voice is giving him a stroke, but he can just shove it.)
    “I love you, a bushel and a peck.
    A bushel and a peck, and a hug around the neck.
    A hug around the neck, and . . .”
    Olivia is having none of it. She’s screeching louder than ever. From the seat behind me, Dad leans his head over my shoulder. “Hold her closer,” he instructs. “Closer. So she can hear your heartbeat. Good. Now try again.”
    I do as told, but Olivia won’t stop howling. I’m growing more and more shaken. Any second I’m going to be the one crying. I break the song off midlyric. “What am I doing wrong?” I ask over the rush of the wind. My voice is a quiver of nerves. “Why won’t she stop?”
    Dad reaches out a hand, but it’s not Olivia’s head he pats soothingly—it’s mine. “Your baby feels what you’re feeling,” he tells me. “You’re anxious right now, worried, so she is too. The only way to calm her down is to be utterly calm yourself.”
    “How am I supposed to be calm when she’s screaming at me?” I call back to him.
    Even over the wind, I can hear my dad chuckle. “Welcome to parenthood,” he tells me. And then, slightly more helpfully: “You’ve got to find your own inner peace, dearheart, and then give it to her. Channel it to her in your voice, your muscles, everything.”
    “Wouldn’t it just be easier to get a vaccine or something?” I mutter. But I try again.
    “I love you, a bushel and a peck.
    A bushel and a peck, and a hug around the neck.”
    And okay, no, I definitely don’t manage to channel my inner peace, but after a good twenty minutes of my terrible singing, Olivia finally tones the screaming down to a quiet sob. I think she just ran of steam, but hey, I’ll take it.
    “Where are all the penguins?” Cole asks suddenly, leaning so far over the sled that I might worry for his safety, if not for the fact that he is, you know, a rapidly-healing super alien.
    “Emperor penguins don’t surface until they mate,” Dad informs us. Apparently space elevators aren’t the only thing he boned up on in Useless Factoid School. “And they only mate in the dead of winter. Until then, they spend much of their time at sea.”
    “But it is the winter,” Cole replies. “It’s like”—he does the math, which based on the look on his face, is fairly painful—“December sixth. Unless we were drugged without realizing.” He scrunches his nose. “Could we have been held for six whole months?”
    “We’re at the South Pole,” I inform him, and goodness, all that singing must have really tuckered me out, because there is not even a trace of snarkiness in my voice. I bob Olivia at my chest and let out a sigh of pure exhaustion. “The Antarctic winter starts in, like, June.”
    “Wait,” Cole says, like his mind has been totally blown