I didn’t know whether to stay in the doorway or step outside. I started calculating how long I could live off the food and water in my backpack. A couple of days. Tops.

After a few minutes, she got up. “You can sleep here until we figure out a solution to this shitty situation,” she said, pointing at the couch. Then she went to her room and came back two minutes later with a pair of square-rimmed sunglasses and jeans. I was left alone in her house, trying to understand how I had gotten myself into this mess. I lowered my backpack, slipped off my shoes, and lay on the couch. I tried to fall asleep, but the heat permeating through the walls kept me wide awake. I still hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask her name.

4.

THE FOLLOWING PERIOD was marked by dire attempts to leave her planet. I spent hours on the sprawling dunes near her house, searching for a signal so I could text someone to come rescue me. I couldn’t bear the thought of spending the next four months on her boiling planet. Four months of nothing but dodging the sun and her nervous glares.

We barely spoke. I slept on the couch and she’d slip in and out of her room with a grumpy pout, closing the bedroom door behind her and then storming back out. Every once in a while we’d sit together at her kitchen table, eating cans of peas and corn or crackers with jam, sometimes just an energy bar with too many raisins. We never ate anything nice. In each of these meals she’d put a single glass of water before me, advising me to drink slowly because that’s all she had to offer. I brushed my teeth without water. Showers were obviously out of the question.