“Well, the sun is going west and it was . . .”
“Directly overhead. I can't remember. Let's get going. She must be over that far hill just as you say.”
We started in that direction and Teal met us in the middle.
“Did you see her? Is that where she went?” she asked, nodding in front of us.
“We think so, but we're not sure.”
“This is crazy.”
“No. It's part of a plan, I'm sure,” I said. “They want us to be frightened, to suffer, to cry and to panic.”
“Well, I have news for them,” Teal said. “We are doing all that so they can stop it. Stop it!” she screamed.
“Keep walking,” Robin said. “You're just acting like an idiot.”
“I'm acting like an idiot? My feet are burning. These sneakers are too thin and the sand is so hot it's like walking over the top of a stove.”
“Maybe we can catch a bus over the next hill,” Robin told her.
“Funny. Boy, are you funny.”
“You're wasting your energy, both of you,” I chastised, and I walked harder and faster, leaving them a good twenty or thirty yards behind me, their bickering sounding like a dozen chipmunks. When I reached the far hill, I stood and looked around again, and again I saw no sign of M'Lady Two. Where could she possibly be? The cacti were too narrow for her to be hiding behind one and the bushes were too low, I thought. I would see her.
While I waited for Robin and Teal to catch up, I took my first drink of water. Then I sat on the sand, nearsome brush. One of Natani's thorny devil lizards peered out at me curiously. I watched it and was amazed at how still it could be. As soon as the other two came up, it pulled itself back into the darker areas of the brush.
“What?” Robin asked.
“She's gone,” I said.
“Gone?” Teal said.
“How can she be gone?” Robin wondered, and lowered herself to the ground. She saw I had taken a drink from my canteen and took out her own.
“It's like she just disappeared into thin air,” I said.
I stared at the vast stretch of desert sand and brush in all directions. Still, nothing large enough to be M'Lady Two moved. The heat wavered over the ground, making it all look unreal. Above us, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. It seemed all sun, one gigantic ball of fire bearing down and over us.
I watched another lizard, a chuckwalla, burrow itself deeper into the sand and I nodded.
“What?” Robin asked, seeing a smile on my face. “What's so funny? We're lost in hell.”
“I think I know what she did. She had time to bury herself in the sand before we reached the top of that first big hill back there. In our panic and excitement, we might have walked right past her.”
“You're crazy,” Teal said. “She couldn't do that.”
“It wouldn't take all that long to do, and who would have expected it? We were looking out there, searching for the sight of someone walking.”
“I can't believe it,” Teal insisted.
“I can,” Robin said. “I think Phoebe's right.”
“Well . . . well, why would she?” Teal asked, the dread and the fear slipping into her voice.
“She waited until we were far enough away and thenshe came out of the sand and probably walked back to where the van dropped us off,” I said, imagining what their plan might have been.
“You mean, they've left us out here?”
“See that, Teal,” Robin said, “when you're left to your own, you can think and reach conclusions.”
“Very funny. They wouldn't, couldn't do that. Why, look at this?” Teal said, waving her arms at the desert around us. “This is the desert.”
“You ran off into it before, didn't you?” Robin said.
“I didn't get half as far as we've already walked. I followed a road that just disappeared on me, but it wasn't like this. There was ...”
“What?”
“That road. I thought about going back to it. I just got too tired. This is different. This is really the desert.”
“You sure made it sound like you almost got away,” Robin reminded her. “What are you saying now, you went only a little ways from the ranch before you had to take a rest?”
Teal was silent.
“You probably didn't get half a mile away. How pathetic.”
“At least I tried,” she whined.
“Can't you two shut up?” I said.
“What do you really think is happening, Phoebe?” Robin asked.
“It all makes sense now ... Dr. Foreman ordering Natani to give us desert lessons, giving us these clothes . . . we're in another one of her tests, I suppose. If we survive, we'll be better for it. Something stupid like that.”
“Then she knows where we are?” Teal asked hopefully.
“In a very general way, maybe.”
“A general way? What if we die out here?”
“So, we tried to run away and we died,” Robin said. “Right?”
I nodded.
“Well, what should we do?” Teal practically screamed.
I stood up and brushed off my legs.
They both looked up at me.
“Yeah,” Robin said, “what should we do?”
“Survive.” I started to walk again.
“Wait,” Robin said, rising.
I paused and looked back. “What?”
“Why are we going in that direction? Shouldn't we try to get back to where we were?”
I thought a moment and shrugged. “Can you remember the way back?”
“Yes,” Robin said. “Or we could just follow our steps or look for something familiar.”
“You have to be kidding. Familiar?” Teal said. “It all looks the same.”
“We'll look for our steps. We'll get back there to that place, I'm sure,” Robin insisted. “And then we could follow whatever road they took, or hopefully whatever is left of the tire tracks.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let's try.”
We began to walk back. For a while we did see signs of our steps, but the wind had come up and the sand was beginning to flow like waves in the sea. Soon, it was as if we had dropped a tablespoon of water in the ocean and then tried to find it again. Teal was screaming
