By: Chloe Xiao

I swore I heard Bethany’s voice screaming in my head to light up a green or blue flares so that maybe, just maybe someone could see us. It was kind of hot when I finally woke up from that weird little message in my head, I could finally see my surroundings, and with it, Julian shaking my limp body. “Julian!” I felt my very soul being shook out of my weather-beaten body, and to make it even weirder, Julian had this strange look of determination on his face while doing it.

After a bit of me pushing his burning body away from my already hot skin, Julian finally let go and then for some reason looked peeved at me. “Stop looking at me like that!” Julian immediately sighed, dropped the face and just gave me a flat face.

“Alright, alright, Noelle” Julian looked like he was ready to drop but still went on “But still. You literally zoned out for like, I dunno, five or more minutes? Our fire spiraled out for a bit, and I kept screaming at you to run, but you just didn’t respond I guess. Your hair also kinda caught on fire, so I stamped it out, sorry if it’s ruined but uhh yep. And don’t ever zone out again please. You’re really heavy to carry around”

I just narrowed my eyes at him. I did not understand most of what he said but I did hear him calling me heavy and that he ruined my amazing hair. Well, I heard some of the rest but he normally doesn’t even talk that much, so that was weird. But now I get why the place was so hot compared to normal. While I was looking back on the ruined state my hair was in, Julian asked what I had been daydreaming about. Oh. Right.

While I flooded out all of that long and complicated information that I got from listening to Bethany ramble on about desert safety for flares, Julian pretty much ignored me and did his own thing with the fireworks. “Are you seriously not listening? I could be telling you lifesaving information right now!” Julian just looked annoyed and replied like he was too tired to deal with all this nonsense. “ Noelle, not to be way too mean but some of that info was very dumb.” I made an extremely exaggerated intake of air sound thingy, but he continued on. “The way you would have set up those flares would have made us breathe in really intoxicated air, loads more than if you had read and followed the instructions. Well after that I just sat and pouted, glaring at Julian while he set up the firework- flare, I really don’t know.

After a lot of pain and tons and tons of effort on my side, Julian finally finished setting it up. After we waited for around five minutes after we set off the firework, another flare responded. This one was a cyan blue with red interwoven into it. That seemed, really familiar for some reason. Oh well.

After a good 15 or so minutes we could see a mini dust storm in-coming and decided to take shelter in our tents. Well, that was the plan until the mini dust storm came close enough that we realized that it was created by people running. After that our plan was to hide in some sparse bushes. An absolute trash hiding spot, but hey? We literally had nowhere else. So we waited. And waited.

Then we saw the silhouette of a few people. I looked over and saw three people. Two boys and one weird looking figure. The shadow makes that person look like they’re hunched over, with something covering them. It sure don’t look like anyone from our group. But still one less than what our group should have separated into. Hmm. Wait someone’s talking. Lemme quiet down so we can hear them. “I swear they were here. If they ain’t here we are not going out to find the other one.” “Hey hey hey, don’t you worry. We’ll find them in no time. They will show up.”