Oasis

by Katya de Becerra

  I woke up to the sound of Lori screaming Rowen’s name.

  REALITY? ANY TAKERS?

  Suddenly, I was upright and stumbling, dashing toward Lori. She was sitting, messy legs splayed underneath her and pulling out her hair. One long torn lock was already hanging from her clenched fist.

  Tommy was just ahead of me, but he slowed down and hovered over Lori, unsure what to do. It was Minh who acted—she appeared from the thick growth and rushed at Lori, half tackling, half hugging her. But Minh was lighter and weaker than Lori. Lori pushed her away and stood up.

  With her hair sticking out and eyes red-rimmed, Lori was a twisted version of her usual well-put-together self. The oasis was driving us all to the brink of our personal collapse.

  “Calm down, Lori…”

  “Please stop it…”

  “You had a nightmare…”

  “You’re awake now…”

  We all talked at Lori at once, while, up on her wobbly legs and fidgeting like a panicked animal, she slowly backed away from Minh.

  “Where is it?” Lori asked, eyes flitting between our faces.

  She meant the tablet. I moved to the front of the group and took another step toward Lori. “It’s on the ground over there. I think it was making you hallucinate, so we took it away.”

  She deflated and gave me a slow nod, actually meeting my eyes. I hoped this meant she was coming back to her senses. She unclenched the fist that was still holding a lock of her hair, letting it fall to the ground. Absently, she went on to pat the right side of her head. I watched her wince. The pain must’ve been kicking in right about now.

  With our combined silence pressing on her like a heavy, dark cloud, Lori marched toward the spot I indicated. She steered clear of us, walking in a wide circle before dropping to her knees to pick up the tablet off the ground. As she pressed it tightly to her chest, Lori’s mouth spread in a blissful half smile.

  The rest of us, tied together by a common thread, started to approach Lori, encircling her slowly. She must’ve been in that in-between state, about to give in to the tablet’s influence but still partly present in the now, because she looked up at us, sensing danger. Right then Lori was a trapped animal, and we were a pack of encroaching hyenas. But whatever half-hatched intervention we had in mind was interrupted by a distant roar.

  Thunder? Wind?

  Luke must’ve been thinking the same thing. His voice shook. “If another sandstorm is coming, we need to hide! Now!”

  “It’s not thunder,” Tommy said.

  We all became silent, listening and staring in the direction the sound was coming from—where the oasis ended and the sand began. Whatever it was, it was coming, and it was coming fast.

  * * *

  We stood in a semicircle around Lori, tense but reluctant to move. It was like we had more important things to do than run and greet the cars—I could swear they were the same ones we saw yesterday—speeding toward us. I’m sure all of us were expecting the first car to pass right through us.

  But this time the cars didn’t turn into ghosts. Their drivers hit the brakes just in time, the vehicles coming to a full stop amid rising clouds of dust. All doors on either side of each car opened, spilling out a bunch of people. Most of them were wearing the familiar khakis and white shirts from Dad’s dig, but there was also a man and a woman dressed in blue scrubs, the latter also sporting a matching head scarf.

  There was something staged about the cars’ arrival, and I couldn’t stop my uncontrollable grinning as I watched all these people running at us. I recognized Dad in the group, but I couldn’t move, frozen in shock and disbelief.

  The five of us stood still, staring at our rescuers. My eyes were misted with sweat or tears. I didn’t know anymore what was real and what was a desert-generated dream.

  Lori was first to react to our changing reality. Nervously eyeing the rescue team approach, she stuffed the tablet underneath her tank top and shorts. It bulged out, even when she covered it with her hands, hugging herself and bending over slightly, like she was about to hurl.

  “Alif!”

  Dad’s shout carried in the desert air, reaching the very insides of my soul and teasing silent tears out of me. Dad was close now. There was some dirty piece of fabric in his hand that he was waving like a flag. The colors of that rag seemed familiar. Dad was smiling.

  “We found the towel you kids left behind!”

  * * *

  We were packed into the cars. I ended up riding with Tommy and Lori while Luke and Minh were taken into another car. We were given a bottle of water each and instructed to drink it slowly. Dad, who was in my car in the front next to a driver I didn’t recognize, kept turning to look at me. He was saying something, but I could hear only bits and pieces, my mind unable to put the whole picture together. One word stuck out from Dad’s monologue: Rowen. A flicker of recognition raised its foul head in my mind. I strained to listen closely to Dad’s stream of words, and it hit me he was repeating the question I’d been dreading: Where is Rowen?

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Instead, I hung my head low, resisting the urge to stuff it between my knees and sob. It was Lori who replied, her voice cool, composed. “Rowen didn’t make it out of the camp with us. We got separated during the sandstorm, and the last time I remember seeing him was when something heavy landed on top of our tent. Rowen was running away from the tent, and we never saw him after that.”

  I looked at Lori sideways and caught Tommy staring at her too. I tried to catch her eyes to communicate my confusion without openly questioning her, but Lori’s face betrayed no signs of her lie.

  Then something else took my mind completely away from her and her alternative reality: In the car’s rearview mirror there was no sign of our oasis. Only the desert, flat and endless, stretched behind. I gasped.

  That got Lori’s attention. She faced me, suddenly angry. She shook her head once and gave me a cold stare.

  Don’t, she was telling me.

  I was thinking about the oasis as we drove to safety—how it sprang out of nowhere and how none of us were aware of any patches of life in the desert for miles and miles surrounding the camp. And how odd everything was about those fruit and berries and the temple … that horrible place with its drawings and the killing pit. Could any of that have been real? And if it wasn’t real, then what happened to Rowen?

  Exhaustion crept into my body. I struggled to keep my eyes open. I was drowsing when I heard Dad talking with someone on his satellite phone. His voice was soothing, affectionate. It was a tone of voice he used only with me and, long ago, with one other person: my mother. Like that distant memory of my parents being happy together that the tablet showed me, hearing Dad’s voice now made me nearly delirious with contentment.

  Before I gave in to a fretful sleep full of shadowy presences and illuminated by the fire of a hexagonal tablet falling from the sky, I overheard Dad say into the phone, “Yes, Dahlia, I agree. I think she needs us both. And I need you too.”

  My mind zeroed in on my mother’s name, and I let my eyes close at last.

  RECOVERY

  We weren’t going back to the excavation camp. Was there even still a camp after the storm raged all over it like a distraught monster, crushing electricity poles and throwing cars around like Ping-Pong balls? I dreaded to ask Dad about the fate of his grand dig project. He’d worked so hard to secure the funds, to liaise with partner universities and sponsors, and now it all could be ruined.

  But I knew I had bigger problems. At some point, I’d have to talk to Dad—and probably the authorities—to answer questions about what had happened to us in the desert. Should I tell Dad about the oasis? But how would I even begin to explain its mysterious appearance and then its convenient disappearance?

  I wanted to confer with my fellow survivors first. We needed to get our stories straight. I urged myself to calm down, to take deep breaths. There was no reason to be scared. We weren’t on trial here. Or were we? We were just a bunch of e
xhausted, malnourished kids who’d gone through quite an ordeal and survived. Well most of us did. One of us was dead now.

  His mother was going to demand answers.

  My mind was completely shrouded in dark thoughts by the time we sped into the city. Dubai’s glittering beauty of modernity was lost on me. I pressed my forehead against the cool window and watched the world outside blink by. I was looking for sure signs this was indeed real, not another mirage cooked up by the oasis and offered to us on an elaborate plate.

  Our cars navigated Dubai’s busy afternoon streets on the way to a hotel aptly named Jewel of the Sands. It sparkled in the afternoon sun. The five of us had to wait in the icy, air-conditioned lobby while Dad and Dr. Palombo secured rooms. Lori, Minh, and Luke were on the next couch over, while Tommy was splayed next to me but facing away, eyes closed. I was very still, eyes trained on the floor, watching the granules of sand falling from my clothes and settling into the lush carpet. The hotel cleaners would have a hell of a time vacuuming the lobby after us.

  There was some commotion behind me where the hotel’s main entrance was located, but I was too lethargic to turn around and check it out. Then a bright flash of light illuminated my face. There was an unfamiliar white woman in jeans-and-a-blazer business-casual attire, a serious-looking camera in her hands. The woman was being escorted off the premises while Dad was running toward me.

  “Let’s go!” he said.

  I let him usher me away from the lobby and toward the escalators. Lori, Minh, and the rest were not far behind.

  “Bloody vultures…,” Dad was muttering under his breath. I had no strength to care.

  He explained that most of our luggage had been rescued from the dig camp and was soon to be delivered to the hotel. But all I could think about right now was a hot shower. The hottest I could tolerate. I would burn my oasis clothes. And then I would use up all the free body lotion in my room to soothe my sun-damaged skin. In that order. I knew I couldn’t actually burn my clothes, but entertaining the possibility felt nice.

  I was to share a suite with Minh, which made me selfishly grateful I didn’t have to deal with Lori. I was operating on fumes by now, having to make an effort to focus whenever someone spoke to me. I nodded when I thought it was expected of me and smiled, hoping to reassure those around me that I was indeed okay.

  Two paramedics who were part of our rescue effort had already done some basic checkups on us, and now they were doing rounds, attempting more thorough examinations, as much as their carry-on medical equipment allowed. I didn’t know why we weren’t being taken to a hospital, but I was glad of it.

  It was at least a whole other hour before everyone cleared out of our suite, leaving me and Minh alone. Minh went to use the shower first, and after I had my turn, I emerged from the steam, cleansed but not renewed, to find Minh on the floor in front of a TV. It was set on some news channel, but the sound was turned off. Minh was completely engrossed by the screen. I got dressed and sat next to her on the carpet. Mindless, we stared at the flashing images together. The soundless lips of the telecaster were putting me into a daze.

  When the news segment went to commercials, it was time for us to talk.

  “On our ride here, Lori lied to my dad about what happened to Rowen,” I explained. “She said the last time she saw Rowen was in the camp when the storm hit.”

  “That was a smart thing to do.” Minh looked away from the TV screen and focused on her bruised knees sticking out from under her hotel bathrobe.

  “Lori’s clever. She’s already cooking up her story in case they want to do mental-health assessments with us. I mean … we all hallucinated that whole oasis thing. Including what happened, or what we think happened, to Rowen. The sooner we admit it, the better.”

  Her bluntness had a shock-wave effect on me. My ears burned from all the blood rushing into my head. I struggled to control my quivering voice.

  “You can’t possibly mean that. We know what happened. We know what we saw. At least I know I do.”

  “But do you? Really?”

  “It was all too real to be made up! The sensations, the smells, the hunger! And what, you’re telling me we all had the same delusion? A delusion that maintained itself for the entire time we were stuck in the desert?”

  “I’m sure it’s not the first time it’s happened. Mass hallucinations are more common than you think.”

  “Okay … But how do you explain our relatively good health? You heard it yourself from the paramedics—we’re not nearly as dehydrated as we should be, considering the official story is that we’ve been rolling around in the sand, unconscious or whatever, for days!”

  “Alif … the truth is that we don’t really know what happened. We can’t know that. We might’ve been unconscious, or seeing things that weren’t there, but we could also have found some kind of water source and it sustained us long enough till the rescue came.”

  “I don’t believe what I’m hearing. Okay, one last try … What about the tablet?”

  At my mention of it, Minh edged a few inches away from me, a shiver shaking her body. Another news segment started on the TV, but Minh had lost interest. She was looking at me so intently now, it required an effort on my part not to look away. The truth was, everything about her—but especially her eyes, bloodshot and bleak—was starting to scare me.

  Her dry lips squeezed out, “I’m not even sure that was real.”

  “It was real. It is real. I touched it and it screwed with my mind. There’s something wrong with that thing … Lori’s got it now, and she’s so possessive of it…”

  “Sure, but what if it’s nothing but a piece of flat rock? We came across it in the desert, and it became a part of our group delusion. Our minds just imbued this rock with whatever power we think it has.”

  But she hadn’t touched the tablet. She didn’t know what it could do.

  “Minh, I’m telling you, I touched that thing, and it showed me these … images. Like it was sorting through my head, searching for my deepest secrets and desires. It was scary … but also wonderful … And then Tommy held the tablet for a moment and I had this overwhelming need to kiss him. So I did. But when he let go of the tablet, the compulsion was over. But that sensation, that enchantment, it didn’t just appear out of nowhere—I wanted to kiss Tommy before but was always too shy, too scared, or too proud to do it. All my inhibitions were lifted and it was just me, like pure subconscious-me took control.”

  “You kissed Tommy?”

  I studied her. “I thought we were going to die anyway, so I had this nothing-to-lose attitude going.”

  “Whatever.” Minh stood up and opened one of the closets. She untied her robe and dropped it to the floor. In her loose white singlet and boy shorts, Minh wasn’t how I remembered her. She was always tall and slight but not skinny exactly. Now her ribs were protruding whenever she lifted her arms. Plus, her skin was painfully red all over. Seeing this physical evidence of our ordeal was heartbreaking. I looked away.

  “Lori could see Rowen, alive again, when she held on to the tablet,” I said, unwilling to let it go and also eager to distract myself from Minh’s emaciated body. “She spoke to him.”

  “Lori wasn’t exactly in control, was she?” Minh rummaged through the closet. “Plus she needs to have all the attention on her all the time.”

  I knew what she meant, but still, she seemed unnecessarily harsh. “Her boyfriend just died. Cut her some slack.”

  “Rowen wasn’t her boyfriend,” Minh said, suddenly annoyed. Or angry. I couldn’t tell. “She just wanted someone to hook up with during this trip. He didn’t mean anything to her. You know how she is.”

  This was getting personal. And uncomfortable. I never asked Minh about Rowen and what went down between them. But I also remembered Lori telling us back in the tent at the dig how she really liked Rowen. All of it felt unreal now, childish even, just like my own crush on Tommy, but now Rowen was dead and Minh was angry and Lori was unwell.

  �
��Were you in love with Rowen?” I blurted out.

  Minh’s shoulders sagged, hands releasing her pile of clean clothes to the floor. “What does it matter now?”

  “Of course it matters.”

  She sat down on the edge of her bed. “I thought I was. I loved him as a friend, and maybe that messed with my head. I imagined that perhaps I loved him in other ways too. I always found him good-looking and funny. I slept with him once, you know. Just once.”

  Stunned, I stared at her. Her words were simple, clear, and yet their meaning was unreal to me. How well did I really know these people I called my friends?

  “You what?”

  “I…” Minh’s bravado was fading. I could tell she hadn’t shared this with anyone. “I didn’t love that. It was just … It felt wrong—with him. But I kind of mishandled it afterward. I just pushed him away because it felt easier that way at the time. I think he went straight for Lori as a way to validate himself or something. And now he’s gone, and I miss our friendship so much. I don’t care who he’s with. I miss him.”

  She wasn’t crying. Our time in the desert must’ve burned all tears out of us, leaving us with nothing.

  “Minh, you still have me.” I came to her and sat next to her on the bed. “You’ll always have me. And it’ll be okay, I promise … And we’ll figure out what to do. And we’ll figure out what’s going on with the tablet.” I was now mostly talking to myself.

  At my mention of the tablet, Minh snapped out of it. “Okay,” she said, returning to her usual self—or a version of it. “So we have a difference of opinion on this whole tablet matter. And this object, currently in Lori’s possession, is your only proof that the oasis was real. That is, if the tablet really does what you say it can do.”