The rest of my night settled into a flutter of mundane activity amid the promise of some supernatural doom. I hid my piece of the tablet in my messenger bag, which was going to be my carry-on on the flight to Melbourne the next morning. I decided to carry the bag everywhere with me, keeping it by my side while feeling more and more suspicious of every look thrown my way.
My mother managed to get ahold of me, the room’s phone ring making me flinch. She was about to board her flight to Australia, and, after expressing her relief about me being alive and all, we talked about things of little to no importance, things that had nothing to do with my ordeal. Either she could sniff out my unspoken reluctance to rehash my desert nightmare over the phone or she was just out of sync with reality, but the most consequential question she asked was whether I was using sunblock.
I was standing while we spoke, swaying on my feet. Or maybe it just felt like I was swaying. Or maybe the room was. My blinks were long, as my eyes needed extra soothing. Regaining my view of the room after one of those long blinks, everything wavered, and there was mist drifting over the furniture, clinging to the walls. It was a nice-looking mist, I thought.
In this mist, autumnal yellow particles sparkled. I looked closer. They weren’t particles at all but semitranslucent golden dewdrop berries. I touched one and it disappeared into my finger as if by osmosis.
Mechanically, I answered Mom’s next question, my eyes no longer wanting to blink. My retinas were reflecting the yellow glow that was suspended in the air. I wondered if Minh and Lori could see it too. They were in the bedroom part of the suite. I couldn’t hear them at all. When I finally forced a blink, the apparition of the mist and the berries dispersed. I immediately longed for it to return.
With Mom’s boarding delayed, our conversation was starting to go in circles. Hoping to hasten things toward a conclusion, I asked Mom bluntly if she and Dad were getting back together. There was a sudden silence and then an audible click, as if the line went dead. But then Mom was back on and delivering some vague but at the same time enthusiastic response that I interpreted as “maybe.” I was so ready for Mom’s dismissal of the possibility that I took too long to process her response. My extended pause spilled out over the distance and Mom abruptly rushed to finish the call.
I asked myself if I was happy now that I knew there was indeed a strong chance my parents were getting back together. But all I felt in the moment was emptiness. Just nothing. Was it because, after wanting this to happen for so long, now when I finally was about to get it, I was left underwhelmed?
Soon after I spoke with Mom, I could hear Minh on the phone—with her father by the sound of it. Everyone’s families were waiting for them at home. Only Rowen’s mom wasn’t going to see her son ever again. Rowen’s body was likely never to be recovered, left to decompose in that pit, in the cavernous temple hidden in the oasis—which perhaps no longer existed.
Later, Dad ordered room service for dinner, and everyone—including Dr. Palombo and Rufus—piled up in our suite. Being in a fairly small space with so many people at once felt claustrophobic. I kept wanting to retreat somewhere, but there was nowhere to go and my absence would be noticed.
Dad kept glancing my way, concern paling his sunburned features. Whenever he looked at me, I’d force myself to eat something, to take another bite. In the happy house of my childhood, having an appetite was considered a sign of good health. Eating heartily and together meant the family was functioning well. After my parents’ divorce, when Mom moved out, my meals with Dad became affairs of utility, no longer joyful feasts. Now, in this hotel room in Dubai, I was stuffing what looked like delicious food into my mouth and feeling no satisfaction. When he wasn’t staring daggers at me, Luke was fiddling with something on his plate. Lori was focused on cutting up her chicken into a dozen little pieces. Minh wasn’t eating at all, wasn’t even attempting to pretend to.
“Let’s go get some fresh air.” Tommy had snuck up on me, my hand halfway to my mouth.
“It’s probably hot outside,” I told him, though I wanted to go. I wanted to get away from here, from Dad’s concerned looks and Luke’s prolonged stares. Earlier, Lori told us she didn’t want to be by herself, especially since her room was next to Luke’s. We decided she’d stay with Minh and me. It meant I had to give up my bed and move to the couch, but I didn’t care—as long as I didn’t have to sleep on the ground again.
“I’m sure it’s not that hot,” Tommy said, voice lowered. Conversations in the room weren’t exactly flowing, so it was easy to hear what he was saying all the same. “Come on?”
I stood up, my movement immediately drawing Dad’s eyes, then Luke’s, and, as a chain reaction, everyone else’s.
“Just going for a walk,” I said, rushing after Tommy before anyone could stall me—or try to tag along. My tablet piece’s presence in my bag was heavy and heady. It was calling for me to touch it.
Tommy and I didn’t talk till we reached the hotel’s elaborate open-air terrace, home to al fresco dining and relaxing by the swimming pool. As the hour was late, the area was deserted. Only a few lights were left on overnight. Though there was still lingering heat in the air, there was a cool breeze flowing in. Somewhere in the distance, I imagined, the sands rippled, forming waves. There were no trees out here on the terrace, just fancy potted plants lining the perimeter, but in my ears was the unmistakable rustling of palm fronds in the wind.
I headed for the pool and sat in one of the sun loungers facing the water. Tommy took one next to me and pulled out his phone. That reminded me that my phone was still missing in action somewhere, but I couldn’t tell if I needed or wanted it. There was a certain kind of freedom that came with not having that constantly pinging extension of my online life on me at all times.
“I wanted to show you something,” Tommy said, scrolling through something on his phone’s screen.
I stared at him while he frowned in concentration. Did I really kiss him when I thought we were both dying in the desert? Or was that a dream? Ever since we’d returned from the oasis, he was behaving … differently with me. Our status quo was definitely gone—he was now more to me than my father’s assistant whom I was crushing on, and I was … What was I to him? I drifted off, looking away.
“Alif?”
I sat up straighter and faced Tommy. In the eerie light, his eyes were so green, the color didn’t look real. So beautiful, I thought. Or did I just say it out loud? I might’ve, because Tommy’s face rippled in response, the sides of his mouth bending a little, suppressing a smile or a groan.
“There’s something I want you to see,” he insisted.
When I accepted Tommy’s phone, it was open to a browser display of search results. A few of the links were darker in color, indicating items that had been read. The search terms were Noam+Delamer+Dubai. I met Tommy’s eyes over the screen.
“Read the ones I’ve selected first,” he urged me.
The most recent internet search results dated back a few days ago, to reports of when Noam Delamer, dehydrated and close to death, staggered into my father’s dig camp. In the news, there was talk about massive book and movie offers, both centering on Noam’s story of surviving in the desert alone for years—hailed as the ultimate survival story on steroids, Robinson Crusoe, Castaway, and Alive all rolled into one. All of that, including the snippets of his interviews and even a few photos of his face—always hidden behind large sunglasses—made clear Noam was an enterprising man who gave away little for free. He was keeping the circumstances of his miraculous survival close to his heart, saving it for the big payout. Or perhaps his evasiveness during interviews suggested he had something to hide—like the truth about the fate of his fellow victim of the desert, Alain Pinon.
Under Tommy’s watchful gaze, I looked through the rest of the news stories, going further back in time, until I came across an old syndicated feature informing the world of the tragic disappearance of two men who were visiting Dubai for a conference. This was the only mention of Alain Pinon that I could find. With Noam getting so much attention, it was odd that so little was being said about Alain. It’s like the world just forgot about him. Was Alain like Rowen, left in the desert by the survivors and eventually edited from collective memory? I refreshed the news feed and was about to share my thoughts with Tommy, but then I glimpsed a very recent piece by a local newspaper that had Dubai Five in its title. The first photo that accompanied the piece was of a young woman slumped in a chair in a familiar hotel lobby. Her face was frozen in a stupor, eyes staring into space.
I did a double take. The woman was me. I looked older in this picture. Sadder. I felt sorry for myself in this photo.
I clicked on the link. The piece itself was short. Six Australians stranded on the sands, five of them rescued—the lucky ones. One suspected fatality, the body yet to be recovered. And photos of all six of us, plucked randomly from the web, including a younger version of Tommy with a beautiful brown-skinned woman in her fifties, an elegant scarf wrapped around her head. Both of them were grinning, but there was sadness clouding this photo. How little I knew of Tommy, of his life outside of my dad’s orbit.
“Some fuel for your next blog post?” I asked, giving the phone back to Tommy and pointing out the Dubai Five article. He scoffed at the news piece and put the phone away. There were no more distractions between us. Just the two of us sitting out here alone, by the pool, its surface dead, unmoving.
“Yeah, I think I’m done with blogging for now,” Tommy said. “I never mentioned it to anyone, but that post I wrote about Tell Abrar … I had weird dreams about the site, from the moment I first knew Dr. Scholl was going to lead an excavation there. I…”
“What kind of dreams?” I asked carefully.
“It was more of a feeling than some specific dream, really,” he started, uncertain. “It was like I was approaching this glow in the desert, at night, and the closer to it I got, everything in my life became more … perfect. Just the way it was always supposed to be. Celeste was alive and healthy, and…”
He stopped, and I wondered who Celeste was. The grinning woman I just saw in the photo with Tommy? I wanted to ask him but didn’t want to pry. He seemed to be carrying so much weight on his shoulders. I used to feel jealous about his relationship with my father, but I was being petty. If my dad was the presence in Tommy’s life that was going to make things a little bit better for him, how could I stand in the way of that?
We both stayed silent as a full minute ticked away.
Tommy spooked me when he started talking again. “But then the dream changed. It became … like, perfection’s only possible at a cost, if I’m making sense. Like, for example, if you want eternal happiness, you gotta do something ugly first. Like murder.”
Where did that come from? I stared at Tommy in the nocturnal glow and barely recognized him. His face was sharper now, more angular, his bronzed skin paler, green eyes appearing darker in the night. I pressed my bag with the tablet closer to my side. “Murder?”
He didn’t look at me. His silence was haunted. Despite my better judgment, I left my sun lounger to sit next to Tommy. I was close enough to feel his body heat. He flinched at our sudden proximity, but then his body immediately went slack, relaxing. He turned to face me, his expression returning to its normal, kinder features.
I said, “Tommy, we’re all different after the oasis. Minh doesn’t even think the oasis was real. Lori and Luke are obsessed with the tablet. And I…” I stopped myself from confessing my own obsession. Tommy didn’t even know the tablet got broken. Could he feel the presence of one of its pieces in my bag?
He shrugged. “I don’t blame Minh, to be honest. If it’s healthier for her to imagine that none of it was real, then it’s okay. I know what really happened. I was there. But I’ve been feeling odd ever since we came back. Like I lost a part of me, or like someone I cared about dearly has died. And this is different from watching Rowen … seeing him dead. It was awful what happened to him, but I barely knew him. The only way to explain it is … I went through five foster families when I was a kid, but the only time I actually felt like I belonged was with family number four. I was close to my foster mom, Celeste, but she got sick and I had to be moved into a different home. When Celeste passed away and I heard the news, I got this pain in my chest, and it wouldn’t go away for months. Like I was completely scooped out, turned inside out, a piece of me erased. It still comes back sometimes, that pain. Like a bone that healed after being broken, but it still hurts when it rains. Or like the phantom pain of an amputated limb; I’ve read about that.”
I reached out and touched him on the shoulder, to reassure him. But my hand lingered. “We all saw Rowen dead, and now we have to deal with it. We just cope in different ways. And then there’s PTSD or survivor’s guilt or whatever. Isn’t it natural for us to feel that? We’re all going to need professional help when we get home. And the things we did in the oasis … That wasn’t really us. Those were versions of us who were placed in unbelievable circumstances and forced to react to unprecedented events.”
He considered it, my hand still on his shoulder. Who was I, trying to rationalize what happened when I myself needed help understanding it? But perhaps it worked for Tommy, because his features smoothed out.
“Are you saying that kiss wasn’t really us?” he asked, an eyebrow subtly quirking up. Tommy was watching me intently, like he could see through me. But maybe he didn’t see me at all—just a version of me he wanted to see. All the same, I melted under his scrutiny. The tablet piece in my bag pinged. And then I was kissing Tommy, our hands tangling, hearts beating in erratic unison.
Like a long blink, there was a moment of absolute nothingness between our lips not touching and then our lips touching, two states of being that were bridged by a breathless second. Tommy was embracing me, hands sliding over my back. He was a good kisser, excellent even, and I was eager to melt into the sensation of his mouth moving against mine.
When we let go of each other, he was looking at me the way I’d seen people look at their objects of desire in movies. In the moonlight under the starry sky over Dubai, this was the most real moment I’d experienced ever since escaping the oasis. I patted my bag, and the tablet within it, when Tommy wasn’t paying attention. If all of this was really the tablet’s doing, did I really care?