For so long in their lives, it had been a great disappointment that there was no special understanding between them. Everything had to be spoken aloud. They had not sensed each other when Olivia was in a car accident. They did not feel when something especially good had happened to the other. Sometimes, they lied to people who asked them about it, assured them that being a twin was special in a mystical way. You never feel alone, Ayanna had once said at a sleepover. This was one of the few times where they could look at each other and understand all the knotted-together emotions the other was experiencing.

“Well, we seem pretty fucked,” Ayanna said, “but at least we’re together.”

Olivia sat down. She put her head to her knees, took a long, deep breath and released. Did it again. Another. “I feel like I’m on the urge of a panic attack.”

“Verge,” Ayanna said.

“I didn’t believe you,” Olivia said. “I mean, I did and I didn’t. It seemed impossible, a door to elsewhere, so I feel like even when I agreed to do this, on some level I was doing you a favor because you had been tricked.”

It didn’t bother Ayanna. If this were dinner or if they’d been playing Wild Thoughts, maybe it would’ve bugged her. But there was no point now, and Olivia’s actions showed Ayanna how little she understood the situation. What did the explorers she admired most do? They played unexpected circumstances cool in public and lost their shit in private. There was no privacy, so Ayanna resolved to be the captain for as long as she could. It’s beautiful here, Ayanna thought. The sky was permanently in the twilight state where it was richly blue but never too dark to see. There were hills, and when she looked down, the grass shifted to lighter blues.

“What should we do?” Olivia asked.

Ayanna handed her a small slice of dried mango. “Eat this.”

Olivia took it.

“What do you have in your purse?”

In the tote were four Band-Aids, four tampons, three different kinds of cinnamon gum, two granola bars, a Shakespeare reader with thin pages and small text, an extra pair of socks, a bunch of loose cough drops, thirty-eight cents, two hair ties, a cell phone charger, a small pouch with pink lipstick and two Advil in it, and sunglasses.

“This is helpful,” Ayanna said. “We’ll have fresh breath, and we can get fives on our AP literature exams because we have this to study.”

Olivia didn’t laugh.