Marisol was better at survival than I was. She had pitched her first tent in a field and left it there within the crucial starting hours, buying a new one, a khaki one that blended in. She had driven the first car into a lake and swum to the surface some way away, hoping they were watching and would presume her dead. She had done a swap, a trade, for the second, but she didn’t elaborate.
You need to let yourself remember how you did it before, she said to me as we drove. The system has failed us. But our bodies got us here the first time. We can survive, you know we can survive, we are living proof.
Marisol was a country girl too. On her own journey she had acted as the mother, even though she was one of the youngest, had been struck by puberty almost before she had time to get used to the idea of it. Where I had let the girls go off alone she had tried to keep everyone together, and like that they had moved through the countryside. I felt ashamed of how I had not cared about what would happen to the other girls. I had just let them go. I had let them walk into whatever disaster was waiting. But then they had done the same to me, too.
My theory, she said, is that they’re watching every move we make, and they want to see how well we’re doing. Don’t lose sight of that. We have a lot to prove.
We drove all through the night, the mountains giving way to twisting woodland. It was very warm. Marisol had heaped bottles of water everywhere in the car; they rolled under the seats, moved from side to side. She held an open one between her thighs, and when it was my turn to drive she periodically reached over and tipped it up to my mouth. I was very aware of her hands near my lips.
From time to time we stopped to pee together, opening the car doors to create a screen. We were bashful about it at first but soon stopped. Our bodies felt both functional and transgressive. There is a person inside of you, I said to Marisol, and she replied solemnly, And inside of you.
Russian dolls, she said, when we had finished laughing. We go on and on and on. Do you ever think what the baby will be like?
I have no frame of reference, I said.
They are two strangers coming to meet us, she said. Are you ever afraid about that?
I am now, I said.
I pictured them not as babies but as two tall, mysterious figures walking towards us from a moon-like landscape.
When we parked, Marisol showed me what was in the boot. Tinned food, packets of pasta and oats, powdered milk and soup, a gas stove and spare canisters, a mess kit. I held up one mysterious package, unmarked. Hot chocolate, she said. Army-issue. High-calorie. I didn’t ask where she had got it.
We slept in the car, parked far off the road. Marisol tilted the driver’s seat partly back. I prefer to sleep sitting up, like this, she said. Then if they come you’re not meeting them at a disadvantage.
Have you seen them? I asked, making a nest in the back out of my sleeping bag.
Sometimes I think I have, she said.
Are you afraid? I asked her.
Only sometimes, she said.
Her breathing slowed. I could not sleep with her right there. I ran through our interactions, the times she had touched me or looked at me, an inventory, trying to solve her. Nothing could be taken for granted. Her hair tipped over the headrest, skull at an angle. I felt protective towards her neck. I reached out to touch the very ends of her hair and fell asleep, eventually, curled up like that in the cold blue.