Tommy told me his morning solo expedition took him on a half-hour trek eastward following the line where the desert and the oasis met. Tommy saw no signs of the oasis curving, which would’ve hinted at its eastern limit. That’s why, he said, his suggestion to the group would be to walk west, to see if the situation was any different in that direction. By the time we rejoined the group, Lori was sunbathing, with her tank top rolled up and her toned stomach exposed to the sun. Her hair, a messy bird nest in the morning, was now tightened into a high ponytail. Rowen, hunched next to her, was holding a gigantic palm leaf over her head to create a shade. His uncovered neck was turning that deep red hue that screamed blisters. He didn’t seem to care.
Minh and Luke huddled together in the shade. Though their voices were too low to distinguish words, it was their aggressive gesticulating and facial expressions that gave them away. They were arguing. Upon my approach, with Tommy lagging behind, the two of them looked up and became unnaturally quiet. I studied Luke’s face—his cheeks were sunken and his eyes, normally bright blue, were darker now, hooded by bloated, reddish lids. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve sworn that Luke looked wronged and betrayed. It didn’t take a genius to suspect it was likely because of my tête-à-tête with Tommy in the bushes. But given the circumstances, it was hard for me to care about Luke’s feelings. I didn’t want to confront him about this tension between us either—it’d just add to the fire of our group disarray that was already burning bright. I focused on Minh instead. She stood up and approached me, but Luke remained seated, feigning indifference while clearly listening to our conversation.
“What’s with Lori baking in the sun?” I asked. “Is this some kind of spa-in-the-desert delusion?”
“She’s in denial.” Minh spared a long stare in Lori’s direction. I followed her eyes to see Rowen pick Lori off the ground and half carry, half drag her into the shade. Lori was playfully fighting him off while laughing.
Minh shook her head at them and said to me, quietly, “We need to get out of here, Alif. And soon. Before Lori snaps and kills us all in our sleep. I swear, I heard her going on and on last night about a ‘sacrifice.’ I know she’s our friend and all, but she gives me the creeps now, and this whole thing between her and Rowen…” She stopped midsentence, her eyes suddenly looking everywhere but at me.
“What do you think Lori meant by that? A sacrifice?” I asked, struggling to keep my tone flat amid the blood rushing to my head, dizzying me.
“Well, she was asleep,” Minh replied. “So it must’ve been some kind of dream or hallucination—either way, something freaked her out. Big-time. I guess it really burned her out, because she kind of crashed after that, hence the sunbathing trance.”
I briefly met Tommy’s eyes, wondering if he was thinking what I was thinking, remembering my recent assurances of Lori’s resilience. Maybe Lori wasn’t as solid as I thought. Then my own dream echoed in my mind in all its surreal glory, and I grew silent. My fingertips were still a little numb from handling the poisonous flowers … Could Minh and Tommy sense that I was keeping something from them? To shift attention away from myself, I focused on our survival plan. “Do you think Lori actually should stay behind after all? Because we were thinking we need to explore the rest of the oasis, and soon.”
“We?” Luke snarled, catching my muted words. “As in Tommy and you?” His voice was unrecognizable, hoarse, and scary-low. “Does this mean you’re finally hooking up with your forever-crush?” The malice in Luke’s eyes made me want to take a step back. I fought the urge to look over at Tommy, who was somewhere behind me.
I met Luke’s stare with one of my own and held his attention long enough for him to grow tense and look away first.
But it was Tommy who spoke. “Seriously? We’re stranded in the desert and you’re still wasting your energy pining over Alif? Just give it up, man, and focus on surviving.”
Luke readied to answer him, sitting up taller and opening his mouth, but whatever words were building inside his throat were swallowed by the wild roar of car engines.
Four-wheel drives! Our rescue was here!
Everyone was on their feet. We exchanged feral glances and then we were running for it, dashing like a pack of wild dogs toward the sound of our salvation. In a flurry of galloping legs and waving hands, we left the oasis.
I caught a glimpse of Lori’s ponytail, swinging as she sprinted ahead of me, heading straight for the gray-yellow cloud on the desert and a jeep emerging from it. The jeep, though seriously covered in dust, spotted a familiar lineup of logos for the dig’s sponsors.
“Dad!” My voice broke into a scream and then a coughing fit. But that didn’t stop me from screaming at the top of my straining lungs. I tripped in my mad dash but held my ground, stumbling my way through the stretch of desert that separated me from my father and the cool breeze of the car’s air-conditioning. The others were around me, on either side of me, behind me, all of us yelling, moving, jumping … If we had a flare gun, it would have been fired.
Not long now. We were saved. A miracle!
As the first jeep approached, I saw another following. I came to a halt, catching my breath, but Luke and Minh kept on running for a few dozen feet before reaching Lori and slowing down. Tommy and Rowen must’ve been somewhere behind me.
People in those cars, they must have seen us by now. I started to move again, not running but walking fast toward the jeeps, which were still a few hundred feet away, speeding at us. Up ahead, Lori fell to her knees and dug her hands into the sand. She sobbed, her cries turning into screams.
I caught up with Minh, our eyes meeting briefly. Together, alarmed, we watched Lori digging her hands into the ground and throwing the sand all around and over herself. I hadn’t been sure what to make of Minh’s story about Lori freaking out in the night, but here was some truly unsettling behavior right in front of me. But even more alarming, though the cars should’ve been slowing down by now, they weren’t.
After coming to her feet again and even taking some tentative steps forward, Lori let out an animalistic sound of defeat. The same suspicion that was building in my brain must’ve hit her too. The jeeps weren’t going to stop. As if they couldn’t see us.
The first car drove straight at Lori, swallowing her in the cloud of dust. The car kept on moving. Half concealed in its swirling column of dirt, it was now headed for me. I squeezed my eyes shut.
Nothing, just some cool breeze on my face.
I kept my eyes closed. Was this death? Was there some sort of an afterlife? I’d read somewhere that because our brain was normally the last organ to go, there was a brief period of time when a dying person knew they were dead. Following this disturbing idea, another thought filled my brain: Descartes said “I think, therefore I am”—cogito, ergo sum. And right now, I was most definitely thinking.
I opened my eyes. The desert all around me was still, undisturbed.
“It went right through her…” Tommy was the one speaking. “A mirage?”
Frozen like an awkward statue carved out of disbelief, Lori was half splayed, half seated on the ground. I looked back in the direction where the jeeps had gone. I could still see them—the cars’ white plates glittering in the sun. And then they were gone over the dunes.
I came to where Lori sat, her legs half buried in the sand. The rest of our miserable group followed suit, surrounding her, our weakest link. I said Lori’s name, but she gave no reaction. Her skin was dangerously red. She needed shade. And water. I was about to say it, but Rowen must’ve been thinking it too. He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her up. Cradling her in his arms, he carried her back into the oasis.
I watched them disappear into the shade of the palm trees. The rest of us followed, our shoulders sagging in defeat.