Minh picked up her clothes from the floor and got dressed. A pair of denim shorts and a red short-sleeved blouse were hanging off her thin frame. But despite her diminished physique, Minh was brimming with renewed determination.
“Anyway, I agree that we gotta do something,” she told me. “If that thing is from the oasis, then maybe it’s somehow responsible for what happened to Rowen.”
“And now you believe that the tablet has … powers?”
Minh shrugged. “I’m just entertaining hypotheticals.”
“What do you want to do exactly?” I asked.
Minh’s lips were tight, her damp hair long and ruffled. “I’m going to Lori’s room, and I’m going to demand to see that tablet. I want to see it with my own eyes in the light of day, and I want to see it now.”
“You and me both.”
REALITY FISSURES
We left the room and headed for the elevators. What Minh had shared with me—about Rowen and herself—had brought us a little bit closer, I felt. In addition to my own grief, I was now also mourning Rowen with her, as a lost friend and perhaps something more for Minh that now was never meant to be.
The hotel’s air-conditioner was set on freezing, and the fragrance of some bitter incense permeated the air. There were piles and piles of dried figs on silver plates positioned on chubby decorative stands along the corridor’s walls. I grabbed a few figs and devoured them, without pausing to appreciate the taste. Nothing tasted right following our return from the desert. The shiny apples and gleaming strawberries the oasis gave us were more real than anything I’d eaten since arriving at the hotel. All food since was nourishing but kind of empty—just something my body needed in order to function. The taste of water from the stream was what real water tasted like. Nothing civilization offered could compare.
A muffled conversation wafted from Dad’s room as we passed by. I wondered if he was talking to my mother on the phone again. It didn’t even occur to me to call her. She was so far away, physically and emotionally. Thinking this, I was expecting a pang of guilt, something, anything at all, but I mostly felt nothing. For a moment though, I allowed myself to fantasize that my parents were getting back together and this wasn’t just some temporary truce brought on by my near-death experience. Maybe I should get lost in the desert more often?
As we journeyed to Lori’s room, I kept close to Minh, our shoulders almost brushing. She smelled of cherry blossoms. Her favorite perfume had spilled in her bag during the sandstorm, and everything Minh owned in Dubai was now infused with its heady springtime scent.
The echoing boom of an aggressive conversation greeted us as we approached Lori’s and Luke’s rooms. We paused—and then the sound of a bang followed by a whimper made me break into a run. We never should’ve allowed the tablet to stay with Lori—not after the way she’d been acting in the oasis.
The door to Lori’s room was open. I exchanged a look with Minh as we advanced, our steps suddenly slow and cautious. Amid Lori’s swearing, Luke’s hoarse voice boomed, “Enough of this! It’s draining your brains out!”
I froze in the doorframe, looking in. Disarray. Towels on the floor, a chair on its side. Lori, trapped in a far corner and crouching on the floor. No obvious signs of struggle on her. Her hair was styled into a chic wave and her face was made up to perfection, layers of makeup hiding the sun damage and patchiness of dehydration and exposure. Only her black mascara, already running down her cheeks, disturbed the perfect illusion.
Luke, on the other hand, didn’t look great. Still wearing the clothes he’d been rescued in, his short hair dirty and matted against his scalp, he was standing over Lori. He was gesticulating as he spoke. A familiar object—the tablet, the artifact—was on the floor at Luke’s feet. Lori reached for it, but Luke leaned over her and pushed her away.
I went in and tried to wedge myself between them. “Leave her alone!”
“I’m helping her!” Luke shouted right back. “Can’t you see it’s messing with her head?”
I was close enough now to see the deep frown lines around his mouth, his lips bitten badly and so dry, the skin was peeling off. Had I also aged so visibly over the course of only a few days? I was avoiding looking at myself in the mirror too closely, only catching stray glimpses here and there. Afraid of seeing myself truly. Afraid of how the oasis had changed me.
“What’s going on in here?” Minh asked from the doorway. But we both knew exactly what was going on and what Luke was talking about. Minh was just stalling him, I realized, probably hoping he’d cool down enough to engage in a rational conversation instead of throwing chairs around and hounding Lori into a corner.
“That thing!” Luke pointed at the object on the floor, lying innocently at his feet. Luke’s hand was shaking. “That alien … thing! Lori’s been carrying it around with her this entire time, and it’s messing with her. Didn’t you hear her talking to Rowen, like he’s right in front of her? Well she’s been doing that again—here! I could hear her from next door!”
“Is that true?” I looked at Lori, not really wanting to hear her answer. “Do you really think you see Rowen? Do you talk to him?” Does he talk back? What does he say to you? What promises does he whisper?
“You don’t get it.” Lori’s voice was calm now, free of tears and frustration. “None of you do. Rowen is the reason we’re free. He was our sacrifice to get out of that demonic place. But I can bring him back!”
She launched herself out of her corner and made a grab for the tablet. In one seamless motion, she swept it off the floor and elbowed Luke’s knees. Caught off guard, Luke crumpled down. I spread my arms wide in an attempt to latch onto Lori and take her down, all the while wondering if Minh was still blocking the only way out of the room. We had to stop Lori from hurting herself. At least that’s what my rational mind was telling me. What was lurking deeper inside just wanted the tablet.
Locked in a fight-or-flight mode, I went for it, my fingers brushing the fabric of Lori’s top but not taking hold. She evaded me with almost supernatural ease, jumping over the overturned chair like a pursued gazelle before ramming into Minh and throwing her out of the room and into the corridor. With a muffled oomph, Minh landed on her butt. Ouch. With Luke still down and rubbing at his knees while Minh was also scrambling to get up, I, by virtue of being the last woman standing, took off after Lori.
By the time I exited the room, Lori had already reached the end of the corridor. I was expecting her to call the elevator, but she swerved left, going for the fire stairs instead. I slid into the stairwell after her. “Lori, wait!” I could see her below, hair flying in a blond halo as she raced down the steps. Carrying the tablet was slowing her down—and I could only imagine what it was showing her.
I was gaining on her when she attempted to open the door to the second floor of the hotel, but it was locked against reentry. Lori roared, scratching and banging at the door with her free arm, the tablet pressed against her chest.
“Enough!” I cornered her. Where the hell were Minh and Luke?
Lori faced me, her back to the door. Her pale blue eyes, circled in black mascara smudges, were glowing silver in the fluorescent light. “Stay out of it, Alif!”
“Lori, I don’t want you to hurt yourself! This … this thing is doing something to you. To all of us. You haven’t been yourself since you started carrying it around!”
“You just want the tablet for yourself, just like the rest of them. I know what you’re all planning! I heard Luke talking to Minh. I even saw how Tommy eyes the tablet when he thinks I’m not looking. You all want it! It promised something to each and all of us, but there’s only one tablet and six of us!”
“You mean five, Lori. There are five of us left, not six.”
She didn’t contradict me, but I could tell she really didn’t care what I had to say. Still, I had to try reasoning with her. “Lori, you’re confused by what happened to us … by what happened to Rowen. He died in the oasis. It’s horrible, but it’s what rea
lly happened.”
She appeared briefly disoriented, bright eyes clouding with a dreamy haze, her whole body growing slack.
I used the distraction to come closer. “How about we just drop this and go back to your room?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Luke wants the tablet. He’ll end up taking it from me one way or another. He wants it for himself. But his dreams are so mundane. Mine are more important. Why can’t you see that?”
“Lori, you’re not making any sense.”
“Oh, stop it, Alif!” She snapped out of her confusion. “Haven’t you figured it out yet?”
In her fidgeting hands, the tablet’s surface was never still, catching the artificial light and reflecting it at peculiar angles. The faintly greenish gleam of it brought memories of my own interactions with the tablet. Seeing my parents laughing, dancing … Me getting a letter of acceptance rather than rejection … Kissing Tommy and being kissed back … What else was there that I didn’t retain—other wishes and promises of fulfillment? With aching clarity, I recalled how gentle Dad had sounded when he was talking to Mom on the phone earlier. Could the tablet really do that? Bring my parents back together? Could it give me other things I wanted? But what did I want? Maybe the tablet knew my deepest desires better than I did. The prospect of that chilled me.
Like Minh said, there was only one way to know. I had to get the tablet away from Lori. Out of the five of us, she seemed the least stable. A decision was made in my head, and without another thought, I went for the tablet. A dim kind of light started to seep from its surface—the tablet was anticipating my approach. It was egging me on. It liked being fought over.
I saw Lori’s eyes widening, pupils shrinking in size, making it look like she had no pupils at all, just whiteness where her eyes should’ve been.
She shifted sideways, my hands meeting hers over the tablet and slipping and tugging and not letting go. Growing colder and colder to the touch, the tablet was now full-on glowing with greenish light—and too slippery to hold on to. Lori grunted in frustration when the tablet slipped out of our hands.
It met the cement floor, breaking in two.
* * *
We stood frozen still, staring down in shock and disbelief. There the tablet lay, broken into two uneven pieces.
One piece was bigger, and that’s the one Lori went for the moment she snapped out of our mutual shock. She knelt and swiped the larger piece off the floor. Moving on autopilot, I picked up the other one before she could grab it too, just in time for Minh and Luke to find us crouching on the stairs as they descended from above. I expected the tablet to hit me with visions the moment my skin made contact, but there was only a faint buzz—and even that fizzled out after a few moments. My piece of the tablet was no longer glowing. It was just a rock, rough to the touch now that it had a jagged edge.
“What the hell?” Luke demanded, looking between us, venom in his eyes.
I showed my piece of the tablet to Luke, but not too closely. I was starting to share Lori’s suspicion that Luke was after the tablet.
“It fell,” I said.
Luke stared at the fragment in my hands, and then his gaze slid up to my eyes. “What does this mean? For us?”
The plaintive look on his face confused me—did he mean “us” as in he and I, or “us” as in our group of survivors?
I said, “I’m not sure yet. But we’re taking these pieces to Melbourne with us. We’ll figure out what to do then.”
“And you two have self-nominated to be the guardians of the broken tablet?” he asked, while Minh stood silent by his side.
“You got a better idea?” Lori scoffed, her eyes back to normal.
“We all have to guard it together,” Minh said sternly. “We can take turns. Lori and Alif can take the first few days, so they’re responsible for smuggling the pieces to Melbourne. You all agree?” Out of our group, she appeared the most coolheaded. I wondered if that was because she really didn’t believe in the tablet’s powers. Or was she just pretending not to? I met her eyes, wishing I could see inside her head and read her thoughts, but she remained closed off.
Slowly, I nodded, and so did Lori, but judging from her expression, she had zero intention of giving up her piece of the tablet to anyone. And I knew exactly how she felt. My own piece was slowly returning to life, pulsing in my hands to a rhythm only I could perceive. It was setting roots into my flesh and blood, growing on me and on my will while bending mine to its liking.
THE REAL TALE OF THE DESERT MAN
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 me
ant 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.
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