Just Deserts (17 page)

Suddenly the sound of the
ney
was joined by a beat. Two of the other men were using water containers like drums. Then another man began to sing along. All three—voice, drums and
ney
—blended together perfectly.

There was such a sense of balance, of order, as if this was exactly what
should
happen. The sound was almost hypnotic. I lay on my back on the sand, the music all around me, staring up at the sky above, and felt at peace, at ease, as if somehow this was where I was supposed to be. It all felt so … so … strange.

I sat bolt upright. This
wasn't
where I belonged. I shouldn't be here. Not with these people, not being forced to do what I was doing. I wasn't going to get sucked into this. I stood up, and without saying a word, I went to my tent.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE MUSIC WENT ON
for more than an hour. I couldn't really tell for sure because I'd lost track of time and I wasn't going to turn on my headlamp to check. I didn't want them even to know I was still awake. I lay there, thinking, wondering, questioning, part of me longing to go back outside and join in the music and conversation and laughter, but the bigger part of me wanting to stay outside their circle. I wasn't going to be tricked or bribed or coerced or fooled into being a member of this little group. I wasn't part of their “team.” I wasn't buying in to their story about being proud of working together and achieving some pointless accomplishment. I was too smart to be a lemming or a sheep. We weren't going to suddenly bond and become lifelong
best friends forever,
and this wasn't going to change my life. Did my father—did Larson—actually think that some little light bulb was going to go off in my head, and that I'd see the errors of my past and be transformed into somebody new, somebody different,
somebody they thought was good? That
wasn't
going to happen.

I knew I had to be more careful from now on and not let my defences down, not get sucked in. Nobody gets in, nobody gets any closer. I wouldn't make that mistake again.

The music stopped. Was it a break between pieces or had the night finally come to a merciful end? Voices came closer and I heard footsteps. The beam from a flashlight passed by the tent, and then there was the sound of the zipper opening up. I turned away from Connor's side of the tent, certain that in the darkness I could easily pretend to be asleep. There was nothing I wanted to say and nothing I was going to ask.

Connor climbed into the tent, shaking out his shoes and then closing the zipper behind him to seal out the scorpions, spiders, vipers and at least some of the sand—assuming we didn't have another sandstorm.

He used his headlamp to see so that he could settle in for the night. I could
feel
him moving around, and then, listening closely, I could hear him humming one of the songs from around the campfire. I recognized the tune because I'd been humming it to myself before he got here.

“Ethan, are you awake?”

His question startled me for an instant. Slowly,
sleepily, I turned around. He was sitting on his side of the tent looking through the mesh.

“I'm awake now,” I muttered.

“Sorry, I just thought the music would have kept you up.”

“It did, for quite a while.”

“It was pretty amazing, wasn't it?” he asked, sounding as enthusiastic as ever. This guy was like the Energizer Bunny of happiness.

“I just wanted to thank you again for being the one sharing the tent and putting up with my snoring,” he said.

“Maybe you should thank me for putting up with your talking when I'm trying to sleep. How about turning off the light so I can get
back
to sleep?”

He turned off the light and the tent became dark once again.

“Ethan?”

I sighed. “Yes?”

“Thanks also for putting up with my talking.”

He giggled and I turned over, stifling the urge to giggle, too.

I knew when Connor had dropped off to sleep because he started snoring. And I'd learned that waking him up would give me only a few minutes of respite before he started snoring again. When he slept, he snored. The only way to keep him from snoring was to keep him from sleeping. But how?

Maybe I could unsettle his thoughts. I mean, I liked the guy, but as I said, we weren't going to be best friends—that just wasn't going to happen. And it was his turn to be on the receiving end of some of my patented mind games. But how did you unsettle somebody who didn't seem to have a care in the world? Then it came to me—he'd already apologized for talking; I'd just take it one step further.

“Connor, wake up!” I called out.

He snorted louder and then woke up. “Um … sorry … was I snoring again?”

“Not snoring, you were talking in your sleep,” I said.

“Talking. I didn't know I did that.”

“You do. Really loud, but not so clear.” I paused.

“What was I talking about?” he asked, sounding both interested and much more awake. He turned on his headlamp, sat up and looked through the mesh at me.

“It was hard to tell … really … it just seemed like you were really upset … like you'd been hurt.”

“Like somebody had punched me?” he asked.

“More like somebody had broken your heart.” I paused. “She really did hurt you, didn't she?”

“What?”

“The girl. She really hurt you badly.”

I was just taking a guess, but I could tell by the look in his eyes that maybe I had hit something. Then
again, who hasn't been hurt by somebody at some point?

“I couldn't even make out her name. You were mumbling but you kept saying her name again and again and—”

“Was it Ashley?” he asked.

“That's it, Ashley! I couldn't tell if it was Ashley or Ashton or—”

“Ashton is a guy's name!” he exclaimed.

“I just knew your heart had been broken. I'm not here to judge or—”

“
Her
name is Ashley!”

“Sorry, I didn't mean to imply anything. Look, I don't know you that well … I know you probably don't want to talk about it, but it's obviously still pretty tender since you're talking about her in your sleep.”

He let out a big sigh. “I thought I was over her … over it.”

“Obviously not. You know, denial is not just a river in Egypt.”

“What?”

“Bad joke. I was saying that obviously you're not, that you're just denying it. Whether you talk about it or not, it's still here,” I said, touching my heart, “and here,” touching my head. “No matter how much you think you can push it down, it still bubbles to the top. That's how the subconscious works.”

He nodded his head knowingly.

“You know what Freud said.”

“I don't even know anybody named Freud.”

“Sigmund Freud, you know, the father of modern-day psychoanalysis,” I explained. I'd just finished a big assignment on him, so I'd be able to throw out a few quotes and fake enough insights to make it sound as though I knew what I was talking about. I'd gotten a good mark on that assignment … which made sense, since I'd paid good money for it. It was amazing what you could find on the Internet.

“Oh yeah, sure, of course. So what did he say?”

“He said that the mind is like an iceberg. It floats with only one-seventh of its bulk above the water.”

“So a lot of what we think and feel we don't really show, right?” Connor said.

“Not in your conscious mind, but it's all there in your subconscious. Even when you don't talk about it or think about it, it still bubbles up from underneath when you can't defend yourself, like when you're really tired or you've had too much to drink.”

“Or when you're sleeping.”

“Exactly.”

“Sounds like you know a lot about this stuff.”

“I'm interested in psychology,” I said. That was no lie. I was interested in anything that would help me understand and then be able to manipulate or control other people. Psychology was useful for that, and this
was a case in point. I'd certainly gotten into his psyche.

“You really are pretty smart about things,” Connor said.

Toss around enough quotes and you look smarter and more insightful than you are. Quote Gandhi and Mother Teresa and you look like a saint.

“Freud also said, and I quote, ‘We are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love.'”

“Wow, that's so … so deep.”

“He was a pretty smart guy.”

“Like you,” Connor said.

“And if you don't talk about things, they get stuck inside of you because you're repressing them. It's sort of like if you don't take out the garbage it starts to stink inside.”

“Did Freud say that as well?”

“Something like that … not an exact quote.” I was just making things up now. I could probably throw in some song lyrics and he wouldn't know any better.

“You know, talking is good for the soul,” I suggested.

“I just couldn't talk to anybody about how I was feeling. I didn't want to worry my parents and I didn't want my friends to think I was so whipped.”

“True friends wouldn't judge you,” I said.

“I would
really
like to talk about her. There's so much I need to get out. Could I talk to you?”

“You can talk to me,” I said, “but not now. Tomorrow. It's the middle of the night and we both need to sleep.”

“I don't even know if I
can
sleep.”

“Maybe it's even better that you don't,” I said.

“Really?”

Now I had to think up a reason for that, other than
so I can sleep
.

“You can spend the rest of the night thinking, letting things come to the surface in your head, and then tomorrow, when we're walking, we'll have plenty of time.”

“We will have plenty of time. I just don't want to talk in front of everybody else. It's sort of private, you know, embarrassing.”

“No problem. It's a big desert, and we can walk behind or in front of them and talk.” Well, he could talk and I could pretend to listen. “But right now I have to go to sleep. Can you turn off the light again, please?”

“Sure, of course.”

Once again it got dark and I settled into my sleeping bag. The darkness hid my smug expression. This was easy. Very easy.

“Ethan?” Connor said softly.

This wasn't part of the plan.

“Thanks … and good night.”

“You're welcome … and good night, too.”

I rolled over and away from him. I felt a pang of guilt, and that surprised me. Why should I feel guilty? It wasn't me or anybody else who'd forced him to come on this insane expedition. The only one here against his will, the only one here who'd been abandoned in the desert, was me. But still, I felt guilty.

CHAPTER TWENTY

IT WAS BARELY SUNRISE
, but Mohammad, the rest of the nomads, and their camels and goats and motorcycles were all gone. If it hadn't been for their footprints leading away from the oasis, the whole thing could have been a mirage. It was the sound of those motorcycles that had finally jarred me out of semi-sleep.

I'd been awake a good part of the night not listening to Connor snore. He had obviously stayed awake thinking, and I'd stayed awake feeling guilty about making him stay awake. Why was this bothering me so much? I'd just met the guy a few days ago, and it wasn't like he was a friend … well, not a real friend. Did I even have one of those? And
was
there anybody or anything that made me feel passionate? This was garbage thinking.

I heard the sound of a zipper and turned around in time to see Connor climbing out of the tent.

“Good morning, buddy,” he said cheerfully.

Up half the night and still happy. I wasn't sure what
drugs this guy was on, but I definitely wanted to speak to his doctor.

“A good morning would be me waking up in a real bed in a real house in a real city,” I said.

“Seriously, is there any place else you'd rather be this morning?”

I laughed. “Weren't you listening? Real house, real city … any real city, but I'd be willing to start with Tunis.”

I walked over to where the fire had been and where Kajsa was already sitting. She really should have been the type of girl I was attracted to—tall and blond and pretty—but she lacked one important element I needed. She was neither damaged nor lacking in confidence. Aside from her little worries about her bladder—worries I'd planted there myself—she was completely self-assured. I hated that in a girl.

She had put out the cookies and was just getting out the bread and marmalade. There were flies buzzing all around the food. The camels and goats seemed to have left behind some of their entourage.

“Hungry?” she asked, offering me a piece of bread.

“Hungry, yes … for that, probably not.”

I reached down and grabbed some cookies. They contained chocolate, sugar and starch—the breakfast triumvirate of carbo-loading before setting out on another wonderful day of walking across the desert.

Involuntarily I moved my toes up and down in my shoes. They were sore but not really painful. A halfday's rest instead of a full day's wear had had a positive effect. I guessed the only question was how long that was going to last. By the end of the day I might not be any better off than I'd been at the end of the day before.

I caught sight of Andy coming out of the dunes. He was moving slowly, and there was something about his expression that didn't seem right. His normal look of determination was undermined by a hint of doubt. What was that about?

“How are the knees?” I asked, trying to sound both innocent and caring.