Chapter 23: The Last Row

Natalie's POV

The bus waited in the Institute's lot at ten to seven, with its engine running and its windows fogged.

It was nineteen below, and the stars were still out.

The chair handed me a clipboard before I had finished my coffee.

"You wrote the plan," she said. "Today you run the count."

I looked at the sheet.

Nineteen students, two instructors, one driver and one researcher on the field-equipment crew.

Twenty-three names, and one more line at the bottom, blank.

"Who's the twenty-fourth?" I asked.

"You."

My mouth went dry.

"I'll stand at the door," I said. "I'll count them aboard."

"Good," said the chair. "Begin."

They climbed up one at a time, in parkas and big boots, and I said each name and checked it with a pencil.

The tall young man in the green sweater came first.

"Good morning, boss," he said, and he grinned.

A woman from Chile, a boy from Kenya, a quiet student from Seoul, two Canadians, a pair of brothers from Finland.

I knew every name, because I had spent three days learning them.

Mikkel climbed up near the end with a duffel on his shoulder and touched his glove to his hat as he passed me.

I ticked him without a word, and my pencil hand trembled very slightly.

At last the clipboard had twenty-three ticks and one blank line.

The driver sat waiting at the wheel.

The instructors sat in the front row with their hands in their laps.

Nobody said, hurry up.

Nobody looked at a watch.

I stood on the bottom step with the cold on my back and my pulse in my ears.

A hand came up in the last row of the bus.

"Cahill!" It was the tall boy in green. "Row seven. We saved it."

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