From the corner of my eye, I see the girl’s brow furrowed deep in concentration, trying hard to interpret what we are saying.
“We don’t know what she will do with that information. She’s not our problem—we have to worry about ourselves,” I say.
She’s worn out and weak—she will slow us down. She will use up our food and water supply. She will discover our secret.
“So we’re just going to leave her here to die?” Mira throws at me, blasting through my justifications. I feel my defenses crumbling to the ground. I sigh, agreeing.
Mira turns to face the girl. “Puedes venir con nosotras a la siguiente casa segura,” she says. You can come with us to the next safe house.
The girl bows her head, wrapping her fingers around a rosary she pulled from her pocket.
“Gracias,” she says softly.
Mira and I shoulder our bags and open our umbrellas, preparing for departure.
“Me pueden llamar Lucía,” the girl offers. You can call me Lucía.
I nod, not offering our names in return. The less she knows about us, the better.
Mira extends a smile, and we move out into the unforgiving desert. Lucía hesitates, uncertain.
“?Salimos ahora? Es más fresco viajar en la noche. Con menos ojos,” she says. We are leaving now? It’s cooler traveling at night, with fewer eyes.
“Puedes venir con nosotras ahora o quedarte,” I answer. You either come with us now or stay.
She’s right, but we have no time to waste.
The big Texas sky is without mercy.
The sun assaults the brushy, rough terrain we walk on, beating through our umbrellas, drenching us in a sticky sweat.
We travel in a tight line. I lead, with Mira in the middle and Lucía bringing up the rear. In every direction we turn, there is only scorched, flat land. I’ve never seen a skyline without soaring skyscrapers dominating the horizon. I take in the unobstructed view, refusing to blink until my eyes fill with water. I breathe the open air deep into my lungs. Surrounded by so much danger, I’ve never felt more free.
No one speaks. We all simply walk, one step in front of the other, focused on our own thoughts to help melt away the hours.
It takes about twenty minutes to cover one mile. I calculate we have sixty miles until the next safe house. If I keep track of the time and we keep up the pace, we face roughly twenty hours of trekking through the arid, seemingly endless desert. We will have to strictly monitor our ration intake—it will be a miracle if our water supply doesn’t run out before we reach Dalhart and the next name on Father’s map: Kipling.
This safe house can’t be empty.
I’m worried about Lucía’s stamina. I’m not sure her body can make it to the end of this desert journey. She’s only taken a few sips of water and refused any of Mira’s offers to take a break. I peer over my shoulder to gauge her condition.
Body slightly hunched, she marches along with no umbrella to shield her from the sun. She’s been completely exposed to the elements for who knows how long, and it shows.
I can’t help but wonder where her final destination leads. It’s hard for me to believe it’s in the United States. While the US is better off than her home country of Mexico, the allure of the country that once famously proclaimed “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” has faded. Canada is now where the masses flock in droves. Not to breathe free, but to survive. One of the few countries to come out on top when the climate crisis shook up the global power structure, the Canadian superpower possesses the lucky trinity: a moderate climate, an enormous supply of freshwater reserves, and a robust food resource thanks to a melted Arctic Ocean. The International Boundary Wall that protects the border between Canada and the United States is the longest and tallest wall in the world. Lucía may have done the impossible and somehow successfully made it through our southern border, but there’s no chance in hell she will ever make it through theirs.
She feels my gaze on her now and quickly pulls her shoulders up, high and proud. “Puedo seguir,” she says. I can keep going.
Yes, but for how long? We have another ten miles before we stop to rest.
I lower my umbrella and pass it back to Mira, who in turn offers it to Lucía. With a small nod the girl takes the handle, and I slow my pace to walk in step with my sister, sharing her shade.
And the three of us continue onward.
The vast landscape seems to swallow us whole as we make our way between a maze of rock formations that look like massive tabletops.
While my feet continue to take me north, I keep my head turned to the west, unable to tear myself away from the setting sun. I stare at the breathtaking yellows, purples, pinks, and oranges of the bright, unhurried ball that sinks lower and lower into the ground. Not a glass or concrete building in sight.
Mira stops abruptly. “We should camp here,” she says. “These rocks will give us protection.”
I nod. “We will rest in shifts, then head out again at midnight,” I say.
Interpreting the plan, Lucía moves to set up camp against an indentation in a large rock face. Mira remains still beside me. She is as transfixed by the setting sun as I am.
I look up just in time to see the top of the majestic star disappear into the horizon, and I smile to myself, knowing I will watch it rise free and clear on the horizon tomorrow. I give Mira’s hand a quick squeeze, and I can actually feel my heart inside my chest.
There is hope, and I can see it.
MIRA
I lie beneath our umbrella shelter, wide awake. I stare unblinking out into the dark expanse where Lucía disappeared, ticking off her absence in my head.
It’s been twenty-four minutes since she left camp. What is the girl doing out there? She seems genuine, but in the cold midnight hours, my sympathy shifts to doubt.
I really should be sleeping. There’s only one more hour until it’s my turn to take over watch. Two more until the forty-mile hike to the next safe house. The sore muscles of my quads and upper back tingle, and I know at least my body is recharging. But my brain just won’t shut off.
It’s all this quiet. It’s deafening.
I look up to see my sister gazing down at me from her seat against the rocks, her binoculars still raised and pointed toward the placid darkness that borders our meager camp. I notice Father’s journal rests in her lap, pages opened to the clean, short lines of the poem.
“Have you slept at all?” Ava whispers, voice rough with fatigue.
For the first half hour, I tried to drift asleep to the soft mutterings of her recitation, visualizing her mouth forming each new word, repetitive and devout like the memorization of a prayer. But as my mind wandered in and out of consciousness, the nightmares were right there waiting for me. I was falling, the hands were everywhere, and this time my mother did not sing. Instead, I heard my father screaming.
“Mira, there’s two of us so we can do two things at once. You sleep, I guard. You guard, I sleep,” she says reasonably.
She turns back to the eyepiece, her elbows on her knees, and combs the desert with her night vision. The filters on the lenses make the eyes of her binoculars glow an emerald green, reminding me of our old eye color.
“Two against one is better odds if Lucía decides to attack us,” I reply.
“I thought you trusted her?”
Then everything happens in one synchronous moment. Lucía materializes from the shadows just as the first vibration of an aircraft thunders across the night sky, and I shout “Hide!” as Ava throws her hands over her head and nosedives into the umbrella shelter.
I cushion her landing with my arms and help her onto her knees. We huddle close, listening blind as the low buzz of the aircraft builds to a deep roar, surrounding and encompassing us. Swallowing us.
“Did you see it?” I whisper, her ear smashed against my cheek. “Is it a drone?”
“I couldn’t see anything above the clouds.”